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The Trump administration is escalating its attack on Cuba, cutting off the island’s access to oil in a deliberate attempt to induce famine and mass suffering. This is collective punishment, plain and simple.
In response, we’re releasing a public Call to Conscience, already signed by influential public figures, elected officials, artists, and organizations—including 22 members of the New York City Council, Kal Penn, Mark Ruffalo, Susan Sarandon, Alice Walker, 50501, Movement for Black Lives, The People’s Forum, IFCO Pastors for Peace, ANSWER Coalition, and many others—demanding an end to this brutal policy.
The letter is open for everyone to sign. Add your name today. Cutting off energy to an island nation is not policy—it is a tactic of starvation.
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VIDEO:
What Cubans Really Think About Trump
By Jeff Seal, May 28, 2026
Mr. Seal is a comedian and a visual journalist.
Born in rural Ohio, Howard Keylor attended a one-room country schoolhouse. He became a member of the National Honor Society when he graduated from Marietta High School.
After enlisting in the U.S. Army, Howard fought in the Pacific Theater in World War Two, during which he participated in the Battle of Okinawa as a Corporal. The 96th U.S. Army Division, which Howard trained with, had casualty rates above 50%. The incompetence and racism of the military command, the destruction of the capital city of Naha and the deliberate killings of tens of thousands of Okinawan civil-ians – a third of the population - made Howard a committed anti-imperialist, anti-militarist and anti-racist for the rest of his life.
Upon returning to the United States, Howard enrolled in the College of the Pacific, but dropped out to support Filipino agricultural workers in the 1948 asparagus strike, working with legendary labor leader Larry Itliong. He became a longshore worker in Stockton in 1953. As a member of the Communist Party, Howard and his wife, Evangeline, were attacked in the HUAC (McCarthy) hearings in San Francisco. Later, Howard transferred to ILWU Local 10. In 1971 he, along with Brothers Herb Mills, Leo Robinson and a ma-jority of Local 10’s members, opposed the proposed 1971 contract which codified the 9.43 steadyman sys-tem. This led to the longshore strike of 1971-1972, which shut down 56 West Coast ports and lasted 130 days. It was the longest strike in the ILWU’s history.
In Local 10 Brother Keylor was a member of the Militant Caucus, a class struggle rank-and-file group which published a regular newsletter, the “Longshore Militant”. He later left the Militant Caucus and pub-lished a separate newsletter on his own, the “Militant Longshoreman.” Howard advocated deliberate defi-ance of the “slave-labor” Taft-Hartley law through illegal secondary boycotts and pickets. Running on an open class-struggle program which called for breaking with the Democratic and Republican Parties, form-ing a worker’s government, expropriating the capitalists without compensation and creating a planned economy, Howard won election to the Executive Board of Local 10 for twelve years.
The Militant Caucus was involved in organizing protests and boycotts of military cargo bound for the military dictatorship in Chile in 1975 and 1978 and again in 1980 to the military dictatorship in El Sal-vador. The Caucus also participated in ILWU Local 6’s strike at KNC Glass in Union City, during which a mass picket line physically defeated police and scabs, winning a contract for a workforce composed pri-marily of Mexican-American immigrants.
In 1984, Brother Keylor made the motion, amended by Brother Leo Robinson, which led to the elev-en-day longshore boycott of South African cargo on the Nedlloyd Kimberley. In 1986, Howard again partici-pated in the Campaign Against Apartheid’s community picket line against the Nedlloyd Kemba. When Nel-son Mandela spoke at the Oakland Coliseum in 1990 after his release from prison, he credited Local 10 with re-igniting the anti-Apartheid movement in the Bay Area.
Other actions Brother Howard initiated, organized or participated in included the 1995-98 struggle of the Liverpool dockworkers; the 1999 coastwide shutdown and march of 25,000 in San Francisco to de-mand freedom for Mumia Abu-Jamal; the 2000 Charleston longshore union campaign; the 2008 May Day anti-imperialist war shutdown of all West Coast ports; the shutdown of Northern California ports in pro-test of the murder of Oscar Grant; the blockades of Israeli ships to protest the war on Gaza in 2010 and 2014; the 2011 ILWU struggle against the grain monopolies in Longview; Occupy Oakland’s march of 40,000 to the Port of Oakland, and countless other militant job actions and protests. Throughout his life, Brother Keylor always extended solidarity where it was needed. He fought racist police murders and fas-cist terror, defended abortion clinics, and fought for survivors of psychiatric abuse. Having grown up in Appalachia, he has always been an environmentalist, and helped shut down a Monsanto facility in Davis in 2012, as well as fighting pesticide use and deforestation in the East Bay.
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Petition to Force Amazon to Cut ICE Contracts!
https://actionnetwork.org/letters/tell-amazon-end-contracts-with-ice/?source=group-amazon-labor-union&referrer=group-amazon-labor-
Amazon Labor Union
Over 600,000 messages have already been sent directly to Amazon board members demanding one thing: Amazon must stop fueling deportations by ending its contracts with ICE and DHS.
ICE and DHS rely on the data infrastructure provided by Amazon Web Services. Their campaign against immigrants and those who stand with them depends on the logistical, financial, and political support of companies like Amazon.
But workers and communities have real power when we act collectively. That’s why we must expose Amazon’s role in the deportation machine. Help us reach 1 million messages and force Amazon to act by signing our petition with The Labor Force today:
Tell Amazon: End contracts with ICE!
On Cyber Monday 2025, Amazon workers rallied outside of Amazon’s NYC headquarters to demand that Amazon stop fueling mass deportations through Amazon Web Services’ contracts with ICE and DHS.
ICE cannot operate without corporate backing; its campaign against immigrants and those who stand with them depends on the logistical, financial, and political support of companies like Amazon. Mega-corporations may appear untouchable, but they are not. Anti-authoritarian movements have long understood that repression is sustained by a network of institutional enablers and when those enablers are disrupted, state violence weakens. Workers and communities have real power when they act collectively. That is why we must expose Amazon’s role in the deportation machine.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) rely on Amazon Web Services (AWS) as its most commonly used cloud platform. DHS and ICE cannot wage their attack on immigrants without the critical data infrastructure that Amazon Web Services provide, allowing the agencies to collect, analyze, and store the massive amounts of data they need to do their dirty work. Without the power of AWS, ICE would not be able to track and target people at its current scale.
ICE and DHS use Amazon Web Services to collect and store massive amounts of purchased data on immigrants and their friends and family–everything from biometric data, DMV data, cellphone records, and more. And through its contracts with Palantir, DHS is able to scour regional, local, state, and federal databases and analyze and store this data on AWS. All of this information is ultimately used to target immigrants and other members of our communities.
No corporation should profit from oppression and abuse. Yet Amazon is raking in tens of millions of dollars to fuel DHS and ICE, while grossly exploiting its own workers. Can you sign our petition today, demanding that Amazon stop fueling deportations by ending its contracts with DHS and ICE, now?
https://actionnetwork.org/letters/tell-amazon-end-contracts-with-ice/?source=group-amazon-labor-union&referrer=group-amazon-labor-
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End Texas Torture of Revolutionary Elder Xinachtli
Organization Support Letter
Letter to demand the immediate medical treatment and release of Chicano political prisoner Xinachtli (Alvaro Hernandez #00255735)
To the Texas Department of Criminal Justice,
We, the undersigned organizations, write to urge immediate action to protect the life, health, and human rights of Xinachtli (legal name Alvaro Hernandez). Xinachtli is 73-year-old Chicano community organizer from Texas who has spent 23 years in solitary confinement and 30 years incarcerated as part of a 50-year sentence. His health is now in a critical and life-threatening state and requires prompt and comprehensive medical intervention.
Since his conviction in 1997, Xinachtli has spent decades in conditions that have caused significant physical and psychological harm. As an elder in worsening health, these conditions have effectively become a de facto death sentence.
Xinachtli’s current medical condition is severe. His physical, mental, and overall well-being have declined rapidly in recent weeks. He now requires both a wheelchair and a walker, has experienced multiple falls, and is suffering from rapid weight loss. He is currently housed in the McConnell Unit infirmary, where he is receiving only palliative measures and is being denied a medical diagnosis, access to his medical records, and adequate diagnostic testing or treatment.
A virtual clinical visit with licensed medical doctor Dr. Dona Kim Murphey underscores the severity of his condition. In her report of the visit, she wrote: "Given the history of recent neck/back trauma and recurrent urinary tract infections with numbness, weakness, and bowel and bladder incontinence, I am concerned about nerve root or spinal cord injury and/or abscesses that can lead to permanent sensorimotor dysfunction."
Despite his age and visible disabilities, he remains in solitary confinement under the Security Threat Group designation as a 73-year-old. During his time in the infirmary, prison staff threw away all of his belongings and “lost” his commissary card, leaving him completely without basic necessities. He is experiencing hunger, and the lack of consistent nutrition is worsening his medical condition. McConnell Unit staff have also consistently given him incorrect forms, including forms for medical records and medical visitation, creating further barriers to care and communication.
A family visit on November 29 confirmed the seriousness of his condition. Xinachtli, who was once able to walk on his own, can no longer stand without assistance. He struggled to breathe, has lost more than 30 pounds, relied heavily on his wheelchair, and was in severe pain throughout the visit.
In light of these conditions, we, the undersigned organizations, demand that TDCJ take immediate action to save Xinachtli’s life and comply with its legal and ethical obligations.
We urge the immediate implementation of the following actions:
Immediate re-instatement of his access to commissary to buy hygiene, food, and other critical items. Immediate transfer to the TDCJ hospital in Galveston for a full medical evaluation and treatment, including complete access to his medical records and full transparency regarding all procedures. Transfer to a geriatric and medical unit that is fully accessible under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Xinachtli requests placement at the Richard P LeBlanc Unit in Beaumont, Texas. Approval of Medical Recommended Intensive Supervision, the release program for individuals with serious medical conditions and disabilities, in recognition of the severity and progression of his current health issues. Failure to act will result in the continued and foreseeable deterioration of Xinachtli’s health, amounting to state-sanctioned death. We urge TDCJ to take swift and decisive action to meet these requests and to fulfill its responsibility to safeguard his life and well-being.
We stand united in calling for immediate and decisive action. Xinachtli’s life depends on it.
Signed, Xinachtli Freedom Campaign and supporting organizations
Endorsing Organizations:
Al-Awda Houston; All African People’s Revolutionary Party; Anakbayan Houston; Anti-Imperialist Solidarity; Artists for Black Lives' Equality; Black Alliance for Peace - Solidarity Network; Columbia University Students for a Democratic Society; Community Liberation Programs; Community Powered ATX; Contra Gentrificación; Diaspora Pa’lante Collective; Down South; DSA Emerge; Entre nos kc; Fighting Racism Workshops; Frontera Water Protectors; GC Harm Reductionists; JERICHO MOVEMENT; Jericho Movement Providence; Montrose Anarchist Collective; NYC Jericho Movement; OC Focus; Palestine Solidarity TX; Partisan Defense Committee; Partido Nacional de la Raza Unida; PDX Anti-Repression; Red Star Texas; Root Cause; San Francisco Solidarity Collective; Shine White Support Team; Sunrise Columbia; UC San Diego Faculty for Justice in Palestine; Viva Palestina, EPTX; Water Justice and Technology Studio; Workshops4Gaza.
Sign the endorsement letter for your organization here:
https://cryptpad.fr/form/#/2/form/view/MiR1f+iLiRBJC7gSTyfhyxJoLIDhThxRafPatxdbMWI/
IMPORTANT LINKS TO MATERIALS FOR XINACHTLI FREEDOM CAMPAIGN:
PHONE BLAST: Your community can sign up for a 15-minute-long call shift here: bit.ly/xphoneblast
FUNDRAISER: Here is the link to Jericho's fundraiser for Xinachtli: http://givebutter.com/jerichomovement
CASE HISTORY: Learn more about Xinachtli and his case through our website: https://freealvaro.net
CONTACT INFO:
Follow us on Instagram: @freexinachtlinow
Email us:
xinachtlifreedomcampaign@protonmail.com
COALITION FOLDER:
https://drive.proton.me/urls/SP3KTC1RK4#KARGiPQVYIvR
In the folder you will find: Two pictures of Xinachtli from 2024; The latest updated graphics for the phone blast; The original TRO emergency motion filing; Maria Salazar's declaration; Dr. Murphy's report from her Dec. 9 medical visit; Letter from Amnesty International declaring Xinachtli's situation a human rights violation; Free Xinachtli zine (which gives background on him and his case); and The most recent press release detailing who Xinachtli is as well as his medical situation.
Write to:
Alvaro Hernandez CID #00255735
TDCJ-W.G. McConnell Unit
PO Box 660400
Dallas, TX 75266-0400
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Self-portrait by Kevin Cooper
Funds for Kevin Cooper
Kevin was transferred out of San Quentin and is now at a healthcare facility in Stockton. He has received some long overdue healthcare. The art program is very different from the one at San Quentin but we are hopeful that Kevin can get back to painting soon.
For 41 years, an innocent man has been on death row in California.
Kevin Cooper was wrongfully convicted of the brutal 1983 murders of the Ryen family and houseguest. The case has a long history of police and prosecutorial misconduct, evidence tampering, and numerous constitutional violations including many incidences of the prosecution withholding evidence of innocence from the defense. You can learn more here .
In December 2018 Gov. Brown ordered limited DNA testing and in February 2019, Gov. Newsom ordered additional DNA testing. Meanwhile, Kevin remains on Death Row at San Quentin Prison.
The funds raised will be used to help Kevin purchase art supplies for his paintings . Additionally, being in prison is expensive, and this money would help Kevin pay for stamps, books, paper, toiletries, supplies, supplementary food, printing materials to educate the public about his case and/or video calls.
Please help ease the daily struggle of an innocent man on death row!
An immediate act of solidarity we can all do right now is to write to Kevin and assure him of our continuing support in his fight for justice. Here’s his address:
Kevin Cooper #C65304
Cell 107, Unit E1C
California Health Care Facility, Stockton (CHCF)
P.O. Box 213040
Stockton, CA 95213
www.freekevincooper.org
Call California Governor Newsom:
1-(916) 445-2841
Press 1 for English or 2 for Spanish,
press 6 to speak with a representative and
wait for someone to answer
(Monday-Friday, 9:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. PST—12:00 P.M. to 8:00 P.M. EST)
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Dr. Atler Still Needs Our Help!
Please sign the petition today!
https://www.change.org/p/texas-state-university-give-tom-alter-his-job-back
What you can do to support:
—Donate to help Tom Alter and his family with living and legal expenses: https://gofund.me/27c72f26d
—Sign and share this petition demanding Tom Alter be given his job back: https://www.change.org/p/texas-state-university-give-tom-alter-his-job-back
—Write to and call the President and Provost at Texas State University demanding that Tom Alter be given his job back:
President Kelly Damphousse: president@txstate.edu
President’s Office Phone: 512-245-2121
Provost Pranesh Aswath: xrk25@txstate.edu
Provost Office Phone: 512-245-2205
For more information about the reason for the firing of Dr. Tom Alter, read:
"Fired for Advocating Socialism: Professor Tom Alter Speaks Out"
Ashley Smith Interviews Dr. Tom Alter
—CounterPunch, September 24, 2025
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 Boris Kagarlitsky International Solidarity CampaignAn appeal for financial supportMay 12, 2026 Dear Friends of the Boris Kagarlitsky International Solidarity Campaign, It has been more than two years since Boris Kagarlitsky began serving the five-year sentence meted out to him by a Russian military court as a way of silencing and punishing him for his opposition to Putin’s war on Ukraine. With a multitude of longstanding friends and colleagues throughout the world, Boris is one of the best-known victims of the steadily escalating political repression in Russia. He has borne the gross injustice of his incarceration with characteristic courage, determination and defiance. But there is no denying that Putin’s gulag takes a toll on even the most valiant spirits. The Boris Kagarlitsky Solidarity Campaign has worked continuously these last two years to draw attention to Boris’s plight, and by extension to that of other prisoners unjustly condemned for protesting the ongoing war that has already cost upwards of half a million lives and vastly more maimed, according to estimates. We have sought, through a variety of activities, to bring pressure to bear on the Russian authorities to free Boris. The many people involved in the Campaign are happy to volunteer their time. However, we rely on the generosity of the Campaign’s supporters to cover the periodic expenses we incur. We recently reached out for help to defray costs associated with the participation of Boris’ daughter and tireless advocate for Russian political prisoners, Kseniia Kagarlitskya, in the international antifascist conference in Porto Alegre at the end of March. That trip was a great success. It allowed Kseniia and Mikhail Lobanov, Russian mathematician, political activist, and former associate professor at Moscow State University, to introduce the thousands of conference-goers from Brazil and across the world to the grim realities confronting Russian political dissidents. The Boris Kagarlitsky International Solidarity Committee has many plans in store for the coming months and especially the fall, including a virtual conference devoted to the global manifestations of political repression. We are appealing to you for a little financial help to carry out our projects and support the day-to-day ongoing work of the committee. We would be deeply appreciative of any assistance you can provide. Because the members of the Campaign coordinating committee are scattered across Europe, North America and beyond, it has been a little complicated to set up a campaign bank account, although we are making progress on that front. For the time being we are asking that you send any contributions you can manage directly to our de facto treasurer Suzi Weissman who is located in Los Angeles, California. The details of her account are: Bank: Wells Fargo Swift/Bic: PNBPUS6L Account holder: Susan Claudia Weissman Account number: 0657205076 International wire transfers: WFBIUS6S wise.com personal account: @susanclaudiaw We thank you in anticipation of any contribution you can make to help keep the Campaign running. Yours in solidarity, Dick Nichols Russia Confirms Jailing of Antiwar Leader Boris Kagarlitsky In a secret trial on June 5, 2024, the Russian Supreme Court’s Military Chamber confirmed a sentence of five years in a penal colony for left-wing sociologist and online journalist Boris Kagarlitsky. His crime? “Justifying terrorism” — a sham charge used to silence opponents of Putin’s war on Ukraine. The court disregarded a plea for freedom sent by thirty-seven international luminaries. Kagarlitsky, a leading Marxist thinker in Russia’s post-Soviet period, recently addressed socialists who won’t criticize Putin: “To my Western colleagues, who…call for an understanding of Putin and his regime, I would like to ask a very simple question. [Would] you want to live in a country where there is no free press or independent courts? In a country where the police have the right to break into your house without a warrant? …In a country which…broadcasts appeals on TV to destroy Paris, London, Warsaw, with a nuclear strike?” Thousands of antiwar critics have been forced to flee Russia or are behind bars, swept up in Putin’s vicious crackdown on dissidents. Opposition to the war is consistently highest among the poorest workers. Recently, RusNews journalists Roman Ivanov and Maria Ponomarenko were sentenced to seven, and six years respectively, for reporting the military’s brutal assault on Ukraine. A massive global solidarity campaign that garnered support from thousands was launched at Kagarlitsky’s arrest. Now, it has been revived. This internationalism will bolster the repressed Russian left and Ukrainian resistance to Putin’s imperialism. To sign the online petition at freeboris.info —Freedom Socialist Party, August 2024 https://socialism.com/fs-article/russia-jails-prominent-antiwar-leader-boris-kagarlitsky/#:~:text=In%20a%20secret%20trial%20on,of%20Putin's%20war%20on%20Ukraine. Petition in Support of Boris KagarlitskyWe, the undersigned, were deeply shocked to learn that on February 13 the leading Russian socialist intellectual and antiwar activist Dr. Boris Kagarlitsky (65) was sentenced to five years in prison. Dr. Kagarlitsky was arrested on the absurd charge of 'justifying terrorism' in July last year. After a global campaign reflecting his worldwide reputation as a writer and critic of capitalism and imperialism, his trial ended on December 12 with a guilty verdict and a fine of 609,000 roubles. The prosecution then appealed against the fine as 'unjust due to its excessive leniency' and claimed falsely that Dr. Kagarlitsky was unable to pay the fine and had failed to cooperate with the court. In fact, he had paid the fine in full and provided the court with everything it requested. On February 13 a military court of appeal sent him to prison for five years and banned him from running a website for two years after his release. The reversal of the original court decision is a deliberate insult to the many thousands of activists, academics, and artists around the world who respect Dr. Kagarlitsky and took part in the global campaign for his release. The section of Russian law used against Dr. Kagarlitsky effectively prohibits free expression. The decision to replace the fine with imprisonment was made under a completely trumped-up pretext. Undoubtedly, the court's action represents an attempt to silence criticism in the Russian Federation of the government's war in Ukraine, which is turning the country into a prison. The sham trial of Dr. Kagarlitsky is the latest in a wave of brutal repression against the left-wing movements in Russia. Organizations that have consistently criticized imperialism, Western and otherwise, are now under direct attack, many of them banned. Dozens of activists are already serving long terms simply because they disagree with the policies of the Russian government and have the courage to speak up. Many of them are tortured and subjected to life-threatening conditions in Russian penal colonies, deprived of basic medical care. Left-wing politicians are forced to flee Russia, facing criminal charges. International trade unions such as IndustriALL and the International Transport Federation are banned and any contact with them will result in long prison sentences. There is a clear reason for this crackdown on the Russian left. The heavy toll of the war gives rise to growing discontent among the mass of working people. The poor pay for this massacre with their lives and wellbeing, and opposition to war is consistently highest among the poorest. The left has the message and resolve to expose the connection between imperialist war and human suffering. Dr. Kagarlitsky has responded to the court's outrageous decision with calm and dignity: “We just need to live a little longer and survive this dark period for our country,” he said. Russia is nearing a period of radical change and upheaval, and freedom for Dr. Kagarlitsky and other activists is a condition for these changes to take a progressive course. We demand that Boris Kagarlitsky and all other antiwar prisoners be released immediately and unconditionally. We also call on the auth *..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........* *..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........* |
Mumia Abu-Jamal is Innocent!
FREE HIM NOW!
Write to Mumia at:
Smart Communications/PADOC
Mumia Abu-Jamal #AM-8335
SCI Mahanoy
P.O. Box 33028
St. Petersburg, FL 33733
Join the Fight for Mumia's Life
Since September, Mumia Abu-Jamal's health has been declining at a concerning rate. He has lost weight, is anemic, has high blood pressure and an extreme flair up of his psoriasis, and his hair has fallen out. In April 2021 Mumia underwent open heart surgery. Since then, he has been denied cardiac rehabilitation care including a healthy diet and exercise.
He still needs more complicated treatment from a retinal specialist for his right eye if his eyesight is to be saved:
Donate to Mumia Abu-Jamal's Emergency Legal and Medical
Defense Fund
Mumia has instructed PrisonRadio to set up this fund. Gifts donated here are designated for the Mumia Abu-Jamal Medical and Legal Defense Fund. If you are writing a check or making a donation in another way, note this in the memo line.
Send to:
Mumia Medical and Legal Fund c/o Prison Radio
P.O. Box 411074, San Francisco, CA 94103
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Resources for Resisting Federal Repression
https://www.nlg.org/federalrepressionresources/
Since June of 2020, activists have been subjected to an increasingly aggressive crackdown on protests by federal law enforcement. The federal response to the movement for Black Lives has included federal criminal charges for activists, door knocks by federal law enforcement agents, and increased use of federal troops to violently police protests.
The NLG National Office is releasing this resource page for activists who are resisting federal repression. It includes a link to our emergency hotline numbers, as well as our library of Know-Your-Rights materials, our recent federal repression webinar, and a list of some of our recommended resources for activists. We will continue to update this page.
Please visit the NLG Mass Defense Program page for general protest-related legal support hotlines run by NLG chapters.
Emergency Hotlines
If you are contacted by federal law enforcement, you should exercise all of your rights. It is always advisable to speak to an attorney before responding to federal authorities.
State and Local Hotlines
If you have been contacted by the FBI or other federal law enforcement, in one of the following areas, you may be able to get help or information from one of these local NLG hotlines for:
Portland, Oregon: (833) 680-1312
San Francisco, California: (415) 285-1041 or fbi_hotline@nlgsf.org
Seattle, Washington: (206) 658-7963
National Hotline
If you are located in an area with no hotline, you can call the following number:
National NLG Federal Defense Hotline: (212) 679-2811
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Articles
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1) This Could Be the Worst Ebola Outbreak in History
By Jeremy Konyndyk, Graphics by Taylor Maggiacomo, June 9, 2026
Mr. Konyndyk is the president of Refugees International and a former U.S.A.I.D. official in the Obama and Biden administrations.
Arlette Bashizi for The New York Times
In August 2014, I traveled to Liberia and witnessed firsthand how devastating an uncontrolled Ebola outbreak can be. I was serving as the director of foreign disaster assistance at the U.S. Agency for International Development and coordinating the U.S. government’s response to that outbreak. At a hospital in Monrovia where several prominent doctors had died from the virus, the maternity ward stood eerily silent. Hospital staff explained that fear of Ebola was deterring mothers from coming to the hospital. Cases across the city were rising so rapidly that Ebola treatment units were over capacity and turning away patients. The outbreak overwhelmed all efforts to contain it.
That surge in cases grew into an epidemic 67 times as large as any prior Ebola outbreak — a warning of what the virus is capable of if not contained early. It came to an end because the international community, led by the United States, stepped up to help frontline health workers and leaders in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea in their fights against the virus. Wealthy countries sent doctors and nurses, military resources, mobile laboratories, masks, gloves and other supplies, and built trust with local leaders to stop transmission in their communities.
When Ebola emerged in 2018 in the eastern areas of the Democratic Republic of Congo, a region embroiled in conflict for decades, the international community stepped up again to support local responders, this time with the World Health Organization coordinating and ample U.S. government backing. Even with more than 700 W.H.O. officials deployed to reinforce the Congolese Ministry of Health, it took two years to contain it, and the outbreak claimed 2,300 lives.
The current situation in eastern Congo and Uganda combines some of the most dangerous aspects of the 2014 and 2018 outbreaks — the worst Ebola outbreaks in history. The virus was already spreading for several months before it was detected in May, and there are no approved vaccines or treatments for this particular form.
As bad as this situation is, we have a playbook for addressing such crises. But it requires a huge team effort — and this time, the United States has undermined its ability to help by shuttering U.S.A.I.D., cutting staff at C.D.C. and withdrawing from the W.H.O. Thousands of people could pay the ultimate price for that recklessness.
To contain the virus, the international community will need to pool hundreds of millions of dollars to set up specialized clinics, buy lab diagnostics, carry out large-scale contact tracing, manage safe burials, send personal protective equipment to health workers and build trust with skeptical community members.
Conditions on the ground in eastern Congo will pose even bigger hurdles than in 2018. Security has deteriorated markedly as the government has lost control of large parts of the area. Over 100 armed groups are now active in the region, many of them hostile to the national government and international groups. Goma, a key humanitarian and logistical hub, is under the control of the Rwanda-backed M23 rebel group, and the city’s airport, which is essential to aid operations, has been closed since January 2025.
This profound instability poses security risks for Ebola responders, who will also have to navigate the kind of mistrust of health authorities that recently led some community members to set fire to Ebola clinic tents and attack burial teams. The ongoing displacement of local people could help spread the virus, too. Some 3.4 million people are displaced in Congo’s eastern provinces, nearly a million of them in the outbreak’s epicenter, Ituri province.
Amid these challenges, the resources and people to help keep the virus in check have been painfully slow to materialize. This is not surprising, given that aid organizations were forced to dramatically cut back operations in eastern Congo last year after U.S.A.I.D.’s departure. In 2024, after years of steadily increasing its support for Congo, U.S.A.I.D. sent the country $545 million. This year, funding has plummeted to $84 million.
Other donor countries have also cut back funds as global aid budgets have fallen and defense spending has increased, leaving health facilities across the region without the supplies in place to combat the virus.
The task ahead is enormous. The virus has a dangerous head start, and getting out in front of it now will take leadership, resources and research to develop approved vaccines and treatments. The United States must shore up its response capacities, and restore support to humanitarian organizations it has abandoned. Other countries with sufficient resources and expertise must rapidly increase their support as well. Ebola can still be contained — but only if the world finds the will to do it.
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2) Science Should Not Be Subject to Loyalty Tests
By Melissa L. Finucane, June 9, 2026
Dr. Finucane is a professor of social and behavioral science at Stony Brook University.
Chloe Niclas
A new kind of institutional vandalism appeared last month in the form of a 412-page Trump administration regulatory proposal and a comment period. If the proposal passes, it will damage one of the most rigorous, productive and valuable scientific enterprises in the world.
The Office of Management and Budget has called for a rule change that would impose restrictions on the kinds of research that can be funded and give political appointees the final authority to deny federal funding for research deemed inconsistent with presidential priorities. Such a revision is necessary, the agency said, because there is a “lack of transparency, accountability and proper oversight” in the way federal funds are dispersed. That led to the waste and misuse of federal funds to “promote a ‘woke’ policy agenda,” according to the agency, particularly the diversity, equity and inclusion programs of the Biden years.
O.M.B.’s solution is to weaken the very process that already ensures a strong degree of accountability: The proposal demotes peer review where expert scientists, working inside and outside the agencies, evaluate research based on the scientific merits and strengths of the underlying evidence. Instead of being “routinely deferred to,” peer review would now be only “advisory.” That upends the longstanding compact between the federal government and the scientific community, where Congress appropriates funds, agencies administer them and scientists (through peer review) determine which proposals represent the best science.
Right now, the political appointees who lead agencies such as the Department of Health Human Services have broad authority to administer their agencies’ programs and set new priorities. But they didn’t typically do political evaluations of scientific research proposals. The new rules expand their power over which grants get approved based on whether the projects align with political ideology. The incentive to prioritize loyalty to a political leader over quality and America’s needs would be strong.
Scientists are not infallible. This is why we have checks and balances — enforced by our peers — built into the grant review and publication process. From the outside, it may look inefficient, and it certainly is not perfect. But it’s the best, most transparent and externally verifiable process we have. The proposed rules would take us in a different direction, corrupting the conditions under which rigorous science operates for the public good.
Let’s say the administration doesn’t like the scientific justification for a grant proposal on climate change, vaccines or the health disparities that women of color experience. A political appointee would have the power to deny funding relating to these topics. Appointees could also terminate an active grant project if they decide it is politically or ideologically inconvenient. As written, the proposed rules would govern virtually every grant from every federal agency, including housing, disaster recovery, transportation and Medicaid. Such sweeping power would affect billions in grant funding paid for by taxpayers.
Who would benefit from the proposed rules? For one, politically connected industries — including those that may want to obscure scientific links between their products and harmful health effects. Other beneficiaries of the proposed rules might include partisan think tanks, pseudoscientists or even government agencies that may shirk their legal obligations to protect the public.
Other knock-on effects would be profound. Scientists and graduate students would learn quickly which topics are unlikely to be approved. Entire fields could wither without funding not because the science is weak or unimportant, but because it is unwelcome. One day, American taxpayers might wake up and demand to know why we fund research on baseless conspiracy theories rather than investing in our collective future.
An alternative path to the proposed rules exists: the Scientific Integrity Act, a bill with bipartisan support that was reintroduced in the House in 2025. It would protect federal agencies and scientists from political interference by requiring that every federal agency that funds, conducts or oversees scientific research establish and maintain clear scientific integrity standards. It would also help ensure that policy decisions are based on independent, evidence-based science. If the bill were to become law, scientific integrity would become a robust and permanent requirement rather than something vulnerable to executive branch interference.
The O.M.B. proposal is open for public comment until July 13. Congress has a bill on the table. We should defend and improve upon the system by which we rigorously and transparently establish facts. It is how we advance the health and prosperity of all Americans.
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3) Billionaires’ Billions Are Increasing Faster Than Ever
Elon Musk’s potential new status as a trillionaire demonstrates in real time why there has been such a rapid rise in the concentration of wealth at the top.
By Patricia Cohen, June 9, 2026
Patricia Cohen, the global economics correspondent in London, has been covering inequality and wealth for more than 10 years.
Nicolas Ortega
Fifteen years ago, the world’s billionaires collectively had $4.5 trillion.
By 2024, their wealth had more than tripled to $14.2 trillion.
Now, their combined wealth totals $20.1 trillion — an amount that is equivalent to nearly a fifth of the entire world’s total yearly output.
The stunning figures — calculated by the French economist Gabriel Zucman, director of the International Tax Observatory, a research organization funded by the European Union — reveal more than a surprisingly rapid increase in the concentration of wealth at the tippy top.
They also reflect a series of important global trends: the growing dominance of a few technology companies leading artificial intelligence development; the shrinking slice of the economic pie that goes to workers; and a deepening inequality that will be handed down to the next generation.
These developments are particularly prominent in the United States, where roughly one-third of the world’s nearly 3,000 billionaires reside — and perhaps the first trillionaire, Elon Musk, depending on how the initial public offering of his rocket and satellite company, SpaceX, goes on Friday.
Their rising wealth, a 40 percent increase in just two years, has coincided with significant changes to U.S. tax laws over the last decade that largely benefited the country’s richest families and stockholders and led to an increase in their political influence.
Wealth of the top 0.0001% as a share of global G.D.P.
Why have billionaires seen such a rapid rise in their wealth?
One reason for the sudden surge of growth at the peak of the wealth ladder is the boom in artificial intelligence, which has funneled trillions of dollars of capital investment into a small clutch of tech companies. Nvidia, Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Meta and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation, for example, are each worth more than $1 trillion. Their founders and early investors have reaped most of the financial gain.
We can see it happening with SpaceX’s public offering — set to be the biggest in history. The anticipated Day 1 valuation of the company, whose shares are expected to begin trading on Friday, aims for $1.77 trillion. With 42 percent of the stock, Mr. Musk is poised to become an instant trillionaire.
It’s hard to wrap your head around such vast sums. But consider that only 21 countries in the world have economies that are able to produce enough annual output to reach the trillion-dollar mark.
The stock market is where much of the billionaire alchemy happens. Soaring stock profits have been disproportionately captured by the richest sliver. Yes, you may have a stake in stock prices if you have a 401(k) retirement plan. And those nest eggs will help pay for housing, food, car, gas, electric and other bills when you stop working.
But it’s the top 1 percent of Americans who own half of all stock, according to data from the Federal Reserve. The top 0.1 percent of Americans — a group of about 135,000 households — own stocks that total $13.7 trillion. That is nearly double the $7.1 trillion owned by the bottom 90 percent of Americans, a group of about 115 million households.
The tech firms that are playing an outsize part in generating those returns have created jobs — but so far the numbers of employees are relatively small. Billionaires’ returns are based on investments in capital much more than in those companies’ employees.
Inequality is growing.
The rise of billionaires is accelerating at the same time that workers are getting a smaller share of the wealth that national economies are creating.
Financial assets have traditionally brought home bigger returns than a weekly paycheck. But since the early 2000s, the gap between the two has been growing. Economists point to several reasons: the declining power of labor unions’ bargaining power; the spread of automation, artificial intelligence and other technologies that can replace workers; the movement of manufacturing and other jobs to countries like China; and policies that tax wages much more heavily than income from investments.
Another culprit, though, is the rise of what David Autor, an economist at M.I.T. and the faculty co-director of the Stone Center on Inequality and Shaping the Future of Work and other economists have labeled superstar firms — behemoths that dominate sectors.
These businesses have shifted the balance of power in the economy, allowing owners rather than workers to gobble up more financial rewards.
Superstar firms can also function like monopolies to set prices and keep down workers’ wages and benefits or impose uncomfortable working conditions.
Mr. Autor emphasized that many billionaire entrepreneurs have added enormous value to the economy. But he added that the way they have at times used their money to distort the political process can be “fundamentally corrosive.”
Measuring inequality is difficult. There is a lot of debate about the precise size of the gap between those with the most and those with the least, as well as the degree to which labor’s share of the pie has declined. But there is general agreement among economists who study the issue that the wealthiest are pulling away from everyone else at a faster pace than before.
Tax policy plays a role in building billionaires’ wealth.
In the United States, changes in the tax laws over the past 10 years have steered more benefits to the wealthiest sliver of households, reducing the amount of taxes they have to pay.
A drastic reduction in the corporate tax rate has supercharged the wealth of the ultrarich, enabling them to double down on their gains as corporations use the increased profits to buy back their stock.
The reduction in taxes owed by corporations and the wealthy increases the tax burden on workers, who pay both income and payroll taxes — two types of tax that barely scratch billionaire wealth. It also reduces the public revenue available to pay for health, education, defense, infrastructure and other public benefits at a time when governments are in deep debt.
The mind-busting fortunes have stirred some political support for wealth taxes. The idea was embraced at the Global Inequality Conference in Paris last week. Proposals for wealth taxes have been debated most seriously in France, but also in Germany, Britain, Brazil and the United States.
In California, where more than 200 billionaires live, union leaders helped put the 2026 Billionaire Tax Act on the November ballot. It would impose a one-time tax of 5 percent on a billionaire’s net worth.
The measure, constructed with input from Mr. Zucman and Emmanuel Saez, another economist who has been at the forefront of research on global wealth and inequality, was based on calculations that found California billionaires’ wealth exceeds $2 trillion today — an amount that equals half of what all of the California economy produces in a year. From 2023 to 2025, the wealth of the state’s billionaires grew 144 percent.
They point out that the surging financial and political power of a few hundred individuals contributes to a growing inequality that is likely to persist for generations because most of that wealth escapes taxation, creating a self-perpetuating aristocracy.
As Dario Amodei, the billionaire chief executive of Anthropic, the maker of the chatbot Claude, wrote this year: “We are already at historically unprecedented levels of wealth concentration,” adding that “the thing to worry about is a level of wealth concentration that will break society.”
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4) The House passed a $70 billion bill to fund immigration enforcement.
By Catie Edmondson, Reporting from the Capitol, June 9, 2026
The House on Tuesday narrowly passed Republicans’ $70 billion immigration enforcement bill, as the G.O.P. banded together to steer around unified Democratic opposition and send President Trump legislation to fund his deportation crackdown through the end of his term.
The vote was 214 to 212 along party lines, with every Democrat opposed. The action capped a tempestuous and dysfunctional journey to push through the multiyear bill to fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection.
Republicans did so using a maneuver that was never supposed to be employed for routine spending, after Democrats refused to fund the agencies unless changes were made following the fatal shooting of two Americans by federal immigration officers in Minneapolis.
Its passage was a major victory for Republican leaders in Congress, who had toiled for weeks to unite their conference around legislation that Mr. Trump had demanded they pass, and that G.OP. lawmakers were eager to advance ahead of midterm elections in which they are fighting to keep control of the House and Senate.
“We were sent here by the American people who gave President Trump an overwhelming victory,” said Representative Jodey C. Arrington, Republican of Texas and the chairman of the Budget Committee. “Every swing state, the popular vote, the electoral vote, gave us unified Republican leadership in Congress. The No. 1 reason they did that was to restore the rule of law and to put the American people’s safety and security first. And that’s exactly what we’re doing today.”
But what began as a measure that unified Republicans eager to support Mr. Trump’s hard-line immigration stance devolved in recent weeks into a political albatross for the party, putting election-year divisions on display.
G.O.P. lawmakers balked at the president’s demands to include $1 billion in security funds for his ballroom project, and they refused to move ahead with the measure without assurances that no federal money would be used to create a $1.8 billion fund his administration announced to pay people who claim they were victimized by the government.
While the administration said it would not move forward with such a fund, several Senate Republicans voted with Democrats to attach a prohibition or limitations to the bill. But those efforts failed, leaving the measure silent on the matter.
Still, Senate Republican leaders were able to put down the revolt in their ranks and pass the measure early Friday.
And Mr. Johnson quelled a short-lived rebellion of his own on Tuesday, after a clutch of conservative Republicans briefly withheld the votes needed to allow the measure to clear a key procedural hurdle, demanding a vote on a separate sweeping border security bill to crack down on unlawful immigration. They eventually backed down and allowed the measure to move ahead.
Democrats were unanimous in their opposition to the bill, saying they would not lend their votes to fund immigration enforcement tactics they characterized as wildly out of control.
“Donald Trump promised America that he would target violent felons who are here illegally,” Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the Democratic leader, said. “But instead, taxpayer dollars are being used by ICE and his violent mass deportation machine to target and brutalize American citizens — in some cases, killing them.”
Republicans pushed the $70 billion legislation through Congress using a process known as reconciliation, created to allow the majority party to dodge a filibuster and pass bills aimed at tackling federal deficits on a simple majority vote. In doing so, they effectively gave up on the normal, bipartisan appropriations process that has always been used to fund major government agencies.
The circuitous dispute over funding for immigration enforcement began in February, when federal agents in Minneapolis shot and killed the two American citizens during Mr. Trump’s immigration sweeps, and Democrats demanded guardrails to rein in the officers’ tactics and conduct.
Mr. Trump and Republicans refused to yield to a number of Democrats’s demands, including barring immigration officers from wearing masks and requiring them to obtain warrants for searches. Unable to reach a bipartisan agreement to allow a regular spending bill to move forward, Senate Republicans and Democrats struck a deal to fund everything except for the immigration enforcement agencies.
Even then, the deal languished for weeks because conservatives in the House refused to vote for a regular spending bill that did not fund ICE and border patrol. House Republicans passed it only after the White House ordered them to do so.
In the interim, Mr. Trump said he was funding both agencies with money approved by Republicans tucked into the tax law enacted last year, which also passed using reconciliation.
Their use of a process meant to make it easier to do the politically risky work of enacting major budgetary policy to steer around normal appropriations has raised the specter of the maneuver becoming routine whenever lawmakers are unable to come to a consensus on spending.
“They’re using the partisan reconciliation process to pass a budget because they refused to negotiate through the normal appropriations process,” Representative Mary Gay Scanlon, Democrat of Pennsylvania, said. “We asked that ICE and C.B.P. be held to the same standards as every other responsible law enforcement agency in this country. Republicans said ‘no.’ They said no to everything.”
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5) Inflation Jumps as Iran War Intensifies Price Squeeze
Consumer prices rose at a faster rate for a third-straight month in May, to 4.2 percent annually, as the energy shock put more pressure on the U.S. economy.
By Lydia DePillis, June 10, 2026
Note: Data is seasonally adjusted year-over-year change in the Consumer Price Index. October 2025 is missing because of the government shutdown.Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics. Keith Collins/The New York Times
U.S. inflation accelerated for a third-straight month in May amid a stalemate in negotiations to end the war with Iran, adding to the price pressures confronting consumers.
The Consumer Price Index report rose 4.2 percent in May from a year earlier, new data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed on Wednesday. That is up from a 2.4 percent annual increase before the conflict in the Middle East started in February and is the fastest pace since April 2023. Over the course of the month, overall prices jumped 0.5 percent.
Energy prices drove the bulk of the increase in May, rising 3.9 percent over the month. Once those were stripped out alongside food prices, the “core” index rose 2.9 percent on a year-over-year basis. Core prices rose 0.2 percent for the month, a 0.2 percentage point decrease from April’s monthly rate.
Energy costs have been spilling into categories where they make up a large chunk of the ultimate price tag, including food and airline fares, which rose 2.7 percent in May and are up 26.7 percent since this time last year. Hotel rates also increased 0.5 percent, in a possible indication of impact from the World Cup, although the hospitality industry has been disappointed in demand for rooms.
For the Federal Reserve, which will vote next week on whether to change interest rates, the most important question is whether stickier categories like manufactured goods and services — the core inflation — are also being affected. This core reading was slightly softer than expected, and it may reassure monetary policymakers that they can stand pat for now, even though the labor market appears to be strengthening.
The war in the Middle East is not the only factor pushing prices up. The data center boom has created demand for the memory chips that go into nearly all consumer electronics, reversing a long slide in the cost of technology. And a persistent drought has thinned out production of some crops and livestock, especially beef.
The main factor keeping a lid on prices: consumers, who have by now spent their tax refunds and have lately seen smaller increases in their paychecks. Annual increases in average hourly earnings have now fallen behind inflation for two months in a row. If some categories are not accelerating, it could be because shoppers simply lack the ability to pay more.
“Weakening of pricing power tells you something about how the seller was thinking about their final consumer, and that tells you a little bit about growth,” said Atsi Sheth, chief credit officer at Moody’s Ratings. “Despite the still relatively low unemployment, the household’s capacity to consume is eroding.”
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6) After U.S. and Iran Exchange Strikes, Trump Issues New Threat
President Trump said Iran would “pay the price” for taking “too long to negotiate” an agreement to end the war.
By Lara Jakes, Leo Sands and Adam Rasgon, June 10, 2026
President Trump threatened Iran again on Wednesday, warning that Tehran would “pay the price” for taking “too long to negotiate” an end to the war, a day after saying a peace deal was imminent.
As Mr. Trump both threatens to reignite the monthslong conflict and promises peace, neither is happening, leaving it unclear how the war will end and prolonging the turmoil in the Middle East.
Mr. Trump made the comments on social media hours after the U.S. military said its jets had hit Iranian targets in response to an attack on an American Apache helicopter near the Strait of Hormuz on Monday.
The exchange of strikes, and Mr. Trump’s latest threat, came hours after he said that a deal to end the war with Iran could be signed within days. The president has made such claims repeatedly, though there has been no clear sign of progress in negotiations.
A delegation of Qatari officials arrived in Iran on Wednesday to discuss efforts to negotiate a deal, according to a regional official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters. Qatar, alongside Pakistan, has served as a key mediator between Iran and the United States in diplomatic efforts to end the war.
Iran has not admitted or denied downing the helicopter, but its Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps said the American strikes had been conducted “under false premises.” In retaliation, Iran said it had launched attack drones against U.S. naval targets in Bahrain and fired missiles at American military facilities in Jordan. The extent of any damage was not immediately clear, though officials in the countries said that the strikes had been intercepted.
Esmaeil Baghaei, a spokesman for Iran’s foreign ministry, said the U.S. attacks undermined diplomatic efforts to end the war, according to Mehr, a semiofficial Iranian news agency.
IRIB, the Iranian state broadcaster, reported that the U.S. attacks hit drinking water facilities in the Bamani district of Sirik County, in the southern Hormozgan Province, cutting off water for thousands of people. Video footage of the damage, published by IRIB, was verified by The New York Times. U.S. Central Command did not respond to a request for comment on the report.
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7) Six Takeaways From the Story of How the Epstein Files Paralyzed the White House
By Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, June 10, 2026
Protesters at the White House last July. Alex Wroblewski/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Last summer, as pressure mounted on the Trump administration to release material it held on Jeffrey Epstein, the president’s top advisers gathered in a series of meetings, many of them in the White House Situation Room — typically used during national-security crises — as they struggled to contain a scandal engulfing Donald Trump himself. The discussions included the vice president, JD Vance; the White House chief of staff, Susie Wiles; the White House counsel, David Warrington; the deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche; and the F.B.I. director, Kash Patel, among others.
The reporting, which documents many previously undisclosed conversations and conflicts, is drawn from our forthcoming book “Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump.” We discovered how the Epstein files consumed and often paralyzed the highest levels of the Trump administration, far more than the public knew.
Here are six takeaways from the article in The Times Magazine.
The government’s national-security bunker became an Epstein war room.
The secure Situation Room complex, where President Obama and his team monitored the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, became the setting for a string of meetings in which the Trump administration’s most senior officials gathered — without the president — to manage the fallout from public fury over their failure to release the Epstein files. To their surprise, much of that backlash was coming from what they had considered the reliably loyal MAGA base.
As the calls for disclosure grew louder, Trump’s inner circle spent more and more time in the Situation Room, which became inseparable from the crisis — a guarded space used not to weigh a foreign threat but to steer the president around a political problem concerning a notorious dead pedophile.
The officials knew that prominent people, including Trump, were named in the records of F.B.I. agents’ interview notes with witnesses, some of whom were Epstein’s victims. While many of the claims made in the notes were not corroborated evidence, releasing them was, for most of the president’s advisers, a nonstarter.
The president wanted the whole thing buried.
Trump made clear to his aides that he had no interest in releasing anything related to Epstein. He snapped at anyone who raised the issue, and his staff mostly learned to avoid the subject in front of him. They were left to worry and plan among themselves. The president’s refusal to acknowledge that a crisis existed, let alone that it was growing, complicated every path his team wanted to take.
As The Wall Street Journal prepared a damaging article about his relationship with Epstein, the president tried to kill it. He called News Corp.’s chief executive; its owner, Rupert Murdoch; and the paper’s editor in chief, Emma Tucker. The president, practically shouting as he threatened to sue, told Tucker, who is British, that she must “hate America.” When his efforts to stop the article failed and his advisers settled on a limited gesture of transparency, the president went along grudgingly.
Vice President JD Vance wanted to release all the files — even the unsubstantiated material about Trump.
Within the White House itself, no one was more vocal about releasing the Epstein material than the vice president. “This is a huge problem,” Vance told colleagues in the Situation Room. Others thought he appeared panicked about how the issue was splintering the MAGA coalition. Wiles would later describe the vice president to associates as an Epstein conspiracy theorist.
Vance pressed repeatedly for the administration to release everything — even unsubstantiated material about Trump — arguing that Congress would force the issue eventually and that getting ahead of it would earn the White House credit for transparency.
He floated the idea of enlisting Tucker Carlson to interview Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s longtime girlfriend and co-conspirator, in prison, and fretted to colleagues about how the crisis was alienating the young, low-propensity voters who had backed the Trump-Vance ticket in 2024. But the vice president’s suggestions were far from popular with the core Trump team, and most of them went unheeded.
Expletive-laden blowups fractured the top of the Justice Department.
The lingering distrust between Pam Bondi, then the attorney general, and the F.B.I.’s top two officials — Kash Patel and Dan Bongino, then his deputy — exploded over the Epstein controversy.
The day the Justice Department released a memo intended to put the Epstein matter to rest, Bongino marched into a daily meeting and erupted at Bondi. He and Patel told White House officials that Bondi should resign; at a later meeting, the two said they suspected that she had leaked damaging stories about them. When Wiles accused Bongino of a leak of his own, he stormed out of the Situation Room complex. Bongino privately warned associates that the Epstein crisis would become “President Trump’s Iran-contra.”
Advisers found themselves having a surreal debate over an unverified allegation about Mr. Trump.
At an August meeting in the Situation Room, one of the president’s senior aides raised an uncorroborated and secondhand claim that had been made nearly a decade earlier, about Trump aggressively flicking and sucking a young woman’s nipples until they “looked incredibly painful.”
The claim about Trump had surfaced in 2024 in unsealed court filings from a civil suit unrelated to him, and when the matter was raised by another official, Vance argued for including this and many other accusations on the Justice Department’s website, saying that it would show maximum transparency and that Trump wouldn’t mind, given that he had been accused of worse. Wiles shut that down, saying the president would not, in fact, be fine with releasing it. One official later said it was “surreal” to be debating the nipple accusation in the White House Situation Room.
More than a year later, the files were still damaging the president.
In late March 2026 — a full year into the White House efforts to manage the fiasco — a confidential memo from Trump’s pollster, Tony Fabrizio, summarized responses from focus groups conducted with voters earlier that month, in which the Epstein files ranked as the sixth most important political issue, ahead of crime, the military and being pro-working class. The memo flagged the Epstein issue as “a real negative with some of these voters.”
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8) U.S. Ebola Unit Sparks Fury, Protests and a Political Crisis in Kenya
Hundreds of Kenyans have marched through the streets to oppose a quarantine facility that would be reserved exclusively for American patients.
By Matthew Mpoke Bigg and Eric Schmitt, June 10, 2026
Matthew Mpoke Bigg reported from Nairobi and Eric Schmitt reported from Washington
Protesters confronting Kenyan police officers at a demonstration against a U.S. Ebola quarantine facility in Nanyuki on Tuesday. Luis Tato/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
The U.S. plan to open an Ebola quarantine facility in Kenya was meant to help contain the outbreak by isolating American patients exposed to the virus.
Instead, it has caused an outbreak of violence and political rancor, with hundreds of Kenyans taking to the streets in protest.
Last month, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that no Ebola patients would be allowed to enter the United States after the World Health Organization announced a dangerous outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Mr. Rubio later appeared to soften that stance.
U.S. government officials later told reporters that the Trump administration planned to send to Kenya all U.S. citizens exposed to the virus, rather than bring them home. The Americans would be observed and treated at a 50-bed quarantine unit exclusively for them, set up at Laikipia Air Base in central Kenya, the officials said.
The outcry in Kenya has been fierce.
Hundreds of people have marched through the streets of Nanyuki, the town closest to the air base, to protest the facility. The police have used tear gas to disperse crowds, and at least three protesters have been shot and killed, according to the Kenya Human Rights Commission. The Kenyan police did not respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.
Critics of President William Ruto of Kenya accuse him of bowing to U.S. interests and risking Kenyan lives by letting exposed American patients into the country when they are being barred from the United States.
Others have asked why Kenya, which has never recorded an Ebola case, would agree to host the unit when U.S. government officials say Kenyans would be excluded from receiving treatment there.
“We are utterly disgusted by the government’s apparent willingness to trade national biosecurity and the lives of its citizens for foreign aid,” the Kenya Medical Practitioners Pharmacists and Dentists Union said in a statement.
The full details of the agreement between the United States and Kenya have not been made public. But a U.S. official told The New York Times that talks were still continuing when U.S. government officials told reporters about the plan.
In a comment to The Times, the State Department said it planned to provide transportation for Americans to the Ebola unit, but made no reference to whether Kenyans would be admitted.
Kenya’s High Court temporarily suspended the unit from opening last week, after a legal challenge brought by the Katiba Institute, a civil society organization. The court ordered the Kenyan government to disclose the terms of its deal with the United States by Tuesday. It also said it would set a date for the next hearing on the case on June 23.
Despite the court suspension and the protests, a second U.S. official said that U.S. Africa Command was still at work building out the unit at the air base as recently as Saturday, and that around 300 U.S. troops from Djibouti, Europe and the U.S. were helping to erect large tents and set up specialized medical equipment to treat Ebola patients.
The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss operational matters, said that the facility could eventually hold up to 250 patients, and that the State Department was coordinating with several Americans who are seeking to leave Congo, but whose exposure to the virus has not yet been determined.
The U.S. military has continued the work on the unit because Mr. Ruto’s government has not told it to stop, the official said. Work on the facility was on hold on Tuesday because of the protests, the official said.
Dr. Mehmet Oz, a top federal health official in the United States, told journalists at the White House last week that the State Department would “be able to work out something with Kenya.”
American health experts have also criticized the plan not to repatriate American patients back to the United States for treatment, arguing that the government had an ethical responsibility to do so.
The Katiba Institute in Kenya said it would likely return to the High Court this week to seek a contempt order over what it called a violation of the court’s ruling. “Kenya has independent courts and they need to be respected,” said Nora Mbagathi, the executive director of the institute.
A former chief justice of Kenya, Willy Mutunga, went further, arguing that disregarding the court’s ruling to stop moving forward with the facility was a violation of the Constitution and highlighted what he said was Western hypocrisy.
“The West constantly pontificates about democracy and the rule of law, but what annoys me is that they also find our supreme law inconvenient,” he said.
The U.S. Embassy in Kenya last week issued a statement that framed the Ebola unit in terms of a decades-long health partnership between the two countries.
Abraham Korir Sing’Oei, a top official in Kenya’s foreign ministry, acknowledged U.S. support in fighting epidemics, and said politics were motivating critics of the facility. He said they were likely looking ahead to next year’s presidential election in Kenya.
But speaking of the deal for the new unit, Mr. Sing’Oei conceded that communication “could have been better.”
One particular source of outrage is that only U.S. citizens — not Kenyans — would be eligible for treatment at the facility. Mr. Sing’Oei said that Kenyans could also be treated, but the U.S. government has so far not publicly agreed to this.
That discrepancy has put the Kenyan government in a difficult position and reflects “clumsy diplomacy,” said Cameron Hudson, an Africa analyst based in Washington.
A failure to finesse the agreement has undermined the administration’s policy of leveraging long-term U.S. support for African countries to secure better terms for future bilateral agreements, Mr. Hudson said.
“The Kenyan government is twisting in the wind and the U.S. doesn’t seem sensitive to what their partner is going through,” he said.
Experts fear the current Ebola outbreak could be the worst on record. Congo’s health ministry on Monday said that there were 550 confirmed cases in the country and 101 deaths.
Apoorva Mandavilli contributed reporting from New York and Brian O. Otieno contributed reporting from Nairobi
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9) Federal Judge Blocks Alabama From Using Nitrogen Gas in Execution
The judge ordered the state to find an alternate method if it is going to move ahead with the execution of Jeffery Lee, who was convicted of murder.
By Rick Rojas, June 10, 2026
A mask similar to those used in nitrogen hypoxia executions was held up during a protest against the death penalty outside the Alabama State Capitol building in Montgomery, Ala. last year. Jake Crandall/Advertiser, via USA TODAY NETWORK, via Imagn Images
A federal judge has blocked Alabama from using nitrogen gas in an execution scheduled for this week, forcing the state to turn to an alternate method if it is going to carry out the death penalty against Jeffery Lee, a convicted murderer.
The decision, which Judge Emily Marks of the Middle District of Alabama handed down on Tuesday, is the latest twist in a legal battle over the fate of Mr. Lee, whose execution had been set for Thursday. Mr. Lee was sentenced to death in 1999 for killing two people during a pawnshop robbery.
In 2024, Alabama carried out the first execution by nitrogen hypoxia in the United States. It involves inmates breathing in nitrogen through a mask, which forces them to lose consciousness and then die from a lack of oxygen. Alabama turned to the approach after struggling to obtain the drugs needed for lethal injections, which had been the state’s preferred method of execution.
It was not immediately clear what broader implications the ruling could have on the state’s ability to carry out executions using nitrogen hypoxia going forward.
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10) Hegseth Visits Guantánamo Bay Amid U.S. Tensions With Cuba
The trip comes as the Trump administration pushes for political and economic changes on the island.
By Carol Rosenberg, June 10, 2026
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth traveled to the U.S. Navy base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, on Wednesday as the Trump administration has been increasing pressure on Cuba’s government to make political and economic changes.
The Pentagon said the purpose of Mr. Hegseth’s visit and a stop later in the day at the headquarters of U.S. Central Command in Tampa, Fla., was “to engage with troops.”
Mr. Hegseth posted nothing about the trip as he departed from Andrews air base near Washington early Wednesday. En route, he reposted a remark by President Trump hailing a U.S. blockade against Iran as the most successful “in the history of Naval Warfare.”
About two weeks ago, Gen. Francis L. Donovan, the commander of U.S. military operations in Latin America and the Caribbean, met with a senior Cuban military official at the fence line separating the U.S.-controlled territory from the rest of the island. It was the first visit between U.S. and Cuban forces at the base in more than a year.
John Ratcliffe, the C.I.A. director, also traveled to Cuba last month.
The U.S. military base, which is behind a Cuban minefield and secured by a unit of Marines, functions like a small American town, entirely independent of the Cuban economy. It is resupplied by ships and aircraft from the United States, which bring liquefied natural gas from Georgia and food for the commissary and restaurants on a twice monthly barge from Florida.
Mr. Hegseth last visited the base in February 2025 and enthusiastically put a focus on the Trump administration’s plan to house tens of thousands of detainees there as part of its crackdown on immigration. At the time, 26 immigration detainees were being held on the base.
The program, run by the Homeland Security Department and the Pentagon, never expanded. Fewer than 900 immigration detainees have been brought to Guantánamo. As of this week, five migrants were detained there.
It is a sleepy time for the base of about 4,500 residents. The school for sailors’ children is in summer recess, and some families have returned to the United States for vacation. Camp Justice, where the Pentagon holds hearings for some of the 15 wartime prisoners held there, is closed until early August.
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11) Pro-Palestinian Activists at U. of Michigan Face Conspiracy Charges
The new charges appeared to signify an escalation in the federal government’s approach to campus activism.
By Mitch Smith, June 10, 2026
The University of Michigan campus in Ann Arbor. Sylvia Jarrus for The New York Times
Eight people who federal prosecutors said had ties to the University of Michigan were accused Wednesday of conspiring to threaten campus leaders and others into severing ties with Israel.
An indictment unsealed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, accused the pro-Palestinian activists of crossing the line from campus protest to crimes that included threats and vandalism. The defendants face varying charges, but the indictment included federal counts of conspiracy to transmit threats, witness intimidation and destruction of property to prevent seizure.
The charges in Michigan, all felonies that carry the possibility of years in prison, appeared to signify an escalation in the federal government’s efforts to crack down on pro-Palestinian activism that roiled American campuses in recent years.
“Their criminal activity included spray-painting threats, breaking windows and throwing glass jars filled with noxious chemicals into family homes,” the indictment said. “They marked their victims with threatening symbols used by Hamas, including red inverted triangles and red handprints. They used the internet and social media to broadcast their message to ensure their threats and commitment to continuing criminal activity were heard by their victims and others who support Israel.”
The Trump administration has taken a hard line against pro-Palestinian protesters, whose activism after the Hamas-led October 2023 attack on Israel and the subsequent war in Gaza led to tumult on campuses. Until now, the administration had mostly targeted universities themselves over their response to protests, although it did move to strip visas and deport some individual students last year.
Activists said that the administration was trying to limit free speech and target its political opponents. Critics accused the administration of conflating criticism of Israeli and U.S. policies with antisemitism.
But Amy V. Doukoure, a lawyer for the Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said the indictment should be read in the context of a federal administration that “has a certain political viewpoint that they would like to stamp out in America.”
“The intent of this is to chill speech on campuses,” Ms. Doukoure said.
Thousands of people were arrested at the peak of the campus protest movement in 2024, but those cases generally resulted in relatively minor charges in state courts or no charges at all.
Among the most serious charges filed in state court were felonies against Stanford protesters after demonstrators broke into the office of the university president and barricaded themselves inside. A California jury deadlocked on those charges this year.
A University of Michigan spokeswoman did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Court records did not make clear whether most of the defendants had hired lawyers, and none of them could be immediately reached for comment.
Six of the people charged in the indictment were described by prosecutors as Michigan residents: Paige E. Feyock, 26; Amatullah A. Hakim, 21; Zainab A. Hakim, 23; Mariam M. Odeh, 24; Colin H. Weger, 24; and Jonathan H. Zou, 22. Ahmet K. Korkaya, 28, of Wisconsin, and Alexander M. Sepulveda, 23, of Illinois, were also charged.
At least four defendants made initial appearances in federal court on Wednesday and were ordered detained temporarily. A fifth defendant appeared in court and was released on bond.
Many of the defendants had been publicly associated with campus protests at Michigan in recent years, and some had been identified as members of pro-Palestinian campus groups. At least six of the eight defendants had identified themselves online as University of Michigan students, and a seventh had worked as a researcher there. At least two appeared to have written opinion pieces in The Michigan Daily, a campus publication, expressing support for the Palestinian cause or anger over university policies.
“The university maintains deep ties with Israeli institutions that fund research and develop technologies for the genocide in Gaza,” said an opinion piece published in December and co-written by Amatullah Hakim.
One defendans, Mr. Zou, appears to be the same person who sued the University of Michigan last year over a campus ban for his actions during a protest. That lawsuit, filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan and another group, accused the university of responding with a heavy hand response to campus protests.
“These trespass bans have upended plaintiffs’ daily lives, disrupted their education and work, and are blocking their ability to speak and protest freely on the university’s vast campus,” the lawsuit said.
Wednesday’s indictment described how pro-Palestinian activists at Michigan planned their actions in private messages and posted publicly on social media afterward. Prosecutors described social media posts, including at least some that remained online, as evidence of unlawful conduct.
“Those who engage in coordinated campaigns of threats and intimidation should expect to be held fully accountable under federal law,” said Jennifer Runyan, the special agent in charge of the F.B.I.’s Detroit field office, in a statement.
The indictment mentioned a pro-Palestinian protest encampment in 2024 on Michigan’s campus, but it focused on actions that took place after university officials broke it up.
Prosecutors accused the group of traveling at night to the homes of university leaders, as well as businesses and organizations deemed supportive of Israel, and leaving spray-painted messages and threatening notes. In some cases, prosecutors said, protesters “caulked doors shut, bike-locked entryways, broke windows, and threw glass jars” filled with acid and dye into homes.
Among those targeted, prosecutors said, were the university president and provost, a university police officer, a Jewish organization and businesses including Rolls-Royce and Maersk.
The indictment accused some of the defendants of traveling to the home of an elected university regent before 6 a.m. in May 2024. Once there, prosecutors said, those defendants “littered the yard and porch with small tents, sheets wrapped to look like dead bodies, dismembered and bloody baby dolls, and a broken crib.” The group also left a note at the door demanding that the university divest from Israel, prosecutors said.
Though the indictment did not include the regent’s name, it quoted from a social media post that remained online on Wednesday and that included video of several people in masks on the driveway of a home. That post identified the regent as Sarah Hubbard, a Republican.
“I’m very appreciative of the tireless work done by various levels of law enforcement on the University of Michigan campus, in Michigan and across the United States to bring this matter forward,” Ms. Hubbard said in a social media post after the indictment.
Ms. Doukoure, the lawyer for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, took issue with how the indictment relied on what would otherwise be protected speech to make the case that vandalism was part of a broader, threatening conspiracy.
“If they did vandalize buildings, we’re not saying that that’s pure speech, and that that’s not a criminal act,” Ms. Doukoure said. “But what I am saying is that when you write an indictment in a way where the bulk of the indictment is about the speech itself and not about the criminal act, that sends a message that we don’t want to hear the speech.”
Aaron Terr, the director of public advocacy for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, said that to prevail on the conspiracy charges, the government has to prove that the messages in the indictment were actual threats and not mere posturing.
“A true threat is a serious expression of intent to commit unlawful violence against a person or group,” Mr. Terr said. “It doesn’t include jokes, hyperbole, or inflammatory rhetoric that does not seriously communicate an intent to use violence.”
Michigan, one of the country’s most highly regarded public universities, was far from alone in seeing heated protests in 2023 and 2024 over the fighting in Gaza. There were high-profile clashes at Columbia University, Indiana University, Northwestern University and the University of California, Los Angeles — and the tumult spread across the country.
Pro-Palestinian protesters on some campuses persuaded administrators to agree to certain concessions. The demonstrations also led to accusations of antisemitism in American higher education.
After returning to power in 2025, President Trump and his administration described what they saw as a pattern of policies hostile to Jewish and Israeli students and pressed for changes. The Justice Department has sued some of those universities, though critics have argued that the campaign is motivated in large part by a desire to punish elite institutions seen as hostile to the president’s agenda.
Jeremy W. Peters contributed reporting.
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12) U.S.-Iran Strikes Risk Dangerous New Phase
The exchanges of fire this week have raised fears of a return to all-out war. The U.S. military struck another tanker it said was carrying Iranian oil and three Indians were reported killed in an earlier American attack at sea.
By Lara Jakes, Eric Schmitt, Leo Sands, Anupreeta Das and Jonathan Swan, June 11, 2026
Enghelab Square in central Tehran on Monday. Credit...Arash Khamooshi/Polaris for The New York Times
The United States and Iran traded a new round of attacks early Thursday, bringing the countries back to the precipice of all-out war after President Trump vowed to keep up military pressure on Tehran to make a peace deal.
Mr. Trump threatened in a post on social media on Thursday that the United States would hit Iran “VERY HARD TONIGHT,” and soon take Kharg Island, the heart of Iran’s oil economy. The president has repeatedly made such threats, hoping to compel Iran to agree to his demands to shutter its nuclear program and end the conflict.
But the tit-for-tat strikes this week have risked pushing the conflict into a perilous new phase, with no clear signs of whether the fighting could be contained. Iran’s foreign ministry said on Thursday that the latest round of strikes on Iran by the United States had effectively rendered the cease-fire they reached in April “meaningless.”
The U.S. military also sought to raise pressure on Iran at sea, striking an oil tanker in the Gulf of Oman on Thursday for “attempting to transport Iranian oil,” U.S. Central Command said. The Indian government announced that three Indian crew members had died in a U.S. strike on another tanker a day earlier, the first seafarers known to have been killed in the U.S. military effort to enforce a blockade to starve Iran of oil revenue.
The latest American attack in Iran began shortly after midnight in Tehran and lasted about four hours, according to Central Command. Explosions were heard in Qeshm near the Strait of Hormuz, as well as the southern cities of Bandar Abbas, Minab and Sirik, Iranian news outlets reported. Mr. Trump told Fox News that strikes would resume the following night if Tehran did not capitulate in negotiations.
Iran said it had responded with two waves of attacks on targets at U.S. bases in Kuwait and Bahrain. Kuwait’s military said on Thursday morning that it was intercepting hostile targets, and the authorities briefly closed the country’s airspace to civilian aircraft. Sirens were activated in Bahrain, the country’s interior ministry said, without saying what had triggered them.
Iran also said that the Strait of Hormuz was now closed to any type of vessel, including oil tankers and commercial ships. The U.S. military said the strait was not closed.
On Wednesday, Mr. Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said that the new strikes were meant not as retaliation for a particular military action but to pressure Tehran to agree to peace on Mr. Trump’s terms.
“If we need to negotiate with bombs, we’ll negotiate with bombs,” Mr. Hegseth told reporters.
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13) Women Who Fled Iran Are to Be Deported to Central African Republic, Lawyers Say
The women are among nearly two dozen people slated to be sent to a country where the U.S. government has advised “Do not travel for any reason.”
By Megha Rajagopalan and Hamed Aleaziz, June 11, 2026
The Trump administration is working to find ways to deport some migrants to third countries as a way around court orders barring their return home. Valerie Plesch for The New York Times
The Trump administration is preparing to deport nearly two dozen people to the Central African Republic on Thursday, including at least two Iranian women who had sought refuge in the United States, according to lawyers and a government official.
The flight, which is also expected to include migrants from Afghanistan and Syria, would mark the first such deportation to the Central African Republic, a deeply impoverished country that has been plagued by conflict. The country is so dangerous that the U.S. State Department states on its website, “do not travel for any reason.”
At least some of the migrants have received court orders in the United States prohibiting their deportation to their home countries because of the threat of persecution or torture, their lawyers said. Migrants face a higher burden of proof to win this “withholding of removal” status than they do to qualify for asylum.
The Trump administration is working to find ways to deport people despite these court orders. The government is cutting deals with other countries willing to take them. The U.S. has sought or signed agreements with dozens of countries, including Ghana, Equatorial Guinea and Eswatini.
The Iranian women scheduled to be on Thursday’s flight have no criminal record and have been granted court protection against deportation to Iran, said Sahar Jalili Pawelski, one of their immigration lawyers. The precise circumstances of their cases were not immediately clear, but many Iranians who hold this protection fear persecution over their political beliefs or religious identity.
The women were in “serious disbelief” when they realized they were scheduled to be sent to the Central African Republic, said Ali Rahmana of the Iranian American Legal Defense Fund, who recently met with them.
The Department of Homeland Security said it would not confirm future deportations for security reasons. The planned deportations were confirmed by a U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the plans were not public. A senior immigration official in the Central African Republic said he had no knowledge of any final agreement.
The migrants have no ties to the country, and it is unclear where they will live or whether they could ultimately be sent back to Iran. The U.S. government has documented significant human rights abuses in the Central African Republic, including unlawful killings, torture and arbitrary arrest and detention.
“It’s one of the hardest places in the world to live, and the idea that it would be considered a safe third country is absurd,” said Anjli Parrin, director of the Global Human Rights Clinic at the University of Chicago Law School.
The existence of a deportation deal with the Central African Republic was earlier reported by Reuters.
Ms. Parrin, who has worked extensively in the country, said it has no functioning health care system and that fears of violence are constant despite a tentative peace agreement between armed groups and the state.
Mr. Trump campaigned on a promise to curtail immigration, and the White House is looking to step up deportations to third countries as a way to make good on that pledge. The deportation of Iranians would be another example of that policy extending to groups that had previously been seen as U.S. allies or aligned with its values.
The administration had been in talks with the Democratic Republic of Congo to deport more than 1,000 Afghans who had aided the U.S. war effort in their country, rather than allowing them to immigrate to the U.S. as planned. Negotiations stalled after a wave of public criticism, leaving the administration to seek new alternatives.
Margaret Stock, an Alaska-based immigration attorney and a member of the legal team for an elderly Syrian man who was told he would be on the flight to the Central African Republic, said he has scars all over his body from being tortured in his home country. He feared returning to Syria because he is a Sufi Muslim, she said, and a U.S. immigration judge agreed that those fears were credible.
The man, she added, suffers from diabetes — a grave risk in the Central African Republic, where medical care, even for routine ailments, is extremely limited.
“He’s not going to be able to access his medication, and he’s going to die,” Stock said. “And they know he’s going to die if they send him there.”
Ms. Stock said the man, who she said has no criminal record, had been released from immigration detention, but was later taken into custody again at a traffic stop.
Megha Rajagopalan is an international investigative reporter based in London.
Hamed Aleaziz covers the Department of Homeland Security and immigration policy for The Times.
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14) Analysis of Satellite Image and Videos Suggest Precision U.S. Strikes on Iranian Water Facility
It is unclear if the U.S. intentionally struck the facility or knew what it was. Deliberately targeting civilian infrastructure could constitute a war crime.
By Christoph Koettl and Christiaan Triebert, Published June 10, 2026, Updated June 11, 2026
Reporters with The New York Times Visual Investigations team
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/10/world/middleeast/precision-strike-iran-water.html
Strikes early Wednesday destroyed what appears to be a drinking-water facility on Iran’s southern coast, near the Strait of Hormuz, according to an analysis by The New York Times. Around the time of the strikes, the U.S. Central Command said in a post on X that it had conducted attacks near the strait “with precision munitions from U.S. Air Force and Navy fighter jets.”
Iranian state media reported that the U.S. had hit water storage buildings and a local official said that water was cut off to more than 20,000 people living in a town and villages nearby. Temperatures in the area have reached above 100 degrees Fahrenheit this week.
A commercial satellite image from the morning of June 9 shows two small water structures in the village of Bemani. Both have light blue pipes, typical for water distribution infrastructure, as is their location — on a hill outside of a populated area. The buildings are consistent with the description of the two storage tanks that Abdolhamid Hamzehpour, the head of the provincial water authority, said were destroyed.
It is unclear if the U.S. intentionally struck the water facilities, or knew what was in the buildings. Deliberately targeting civilian infrastructure could constitute a war crime under international law.
Videos released on Wednesday by Iranian media outlets, including state media, and the provincial water authority show that the roof of the smaller building collapsed.
The larger facility next to it still stands, but images show that it has a small impact hole in the center of its roof. The Times confirmed the images of the structure by matching the visible surroundings to reference imagery of the site.
A photo of fragments that Tasnim, a semiofficial Iranian news agency, said were recovered from the site showed remnants identified as a GBU-39 bomb by researchers with the Open Source Munitions Portal, a database of weapon fragments documented in conflict zones.
The GBU-39, a small precision-guided glide bomb in the 250-pound class, is consistent with the damage shown in the footage of the damaged building: a clean hole punched through the building’s roof and limited blast damage around it.
Both buildings stand outside the village, and there is no other infrastructure in the immediate vicinity. Hitting remote buildings and striking the center of a roof are considered likely indicators of a precision strike. Capt. Tim Hawkins, a spokesman for Central Command, said the military is aware of the reports and is looking into them.
Mr. Hamzehpour, the provincial water authority leader, said that mobile water tankers had brought in water to supply residents while crews built a new service line that bypassed the damaged tanks, a task he said had been accomplished within 12 hours.
John Ismay, James McManagan and Eric Schmitt contributed reporting. Alexander Cardia contributed graphics editing. Translation was contributed by Artemis Moshtaghian.
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15) We Can’t Let My Former V.C. Colleagues Buy Off Our Democracy
By John O’Farrell, June 11, 2026
Mr. O’Farrell is a former general partner at Andreessen Horowitz.
Flo Meissner
I first came to America from Ireland in 1984, as a young engineer about to attend business school. I chose Stanford University — partly for the weather and natural beauty, but more for the electrifying entrepreneurial spirit coursing through Silicon Valley. I was riveted by Apple’s 1984 Super Bowl ad — an athlete hurls a sledgehammer into Big Brother’s screen, shattering IBM’s grip on computing. More than an advertisement, it was a manifesto that technology could dismantle power.
Over the past 40 years, I’ve been privileged to play a leading role in three start-ups and be the first general partner hired by the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. I saw how the internet democratized information, how the iPhone put a computer in everyone’s pocket, and how the cloud unleashed a tsunami of new software. Each wave showed that technology could be a powerful force for good, that the upstarts could win on the merits and that open competition and debate were values the tech industry welcomed and promoted.
Just as artificial intelligence is on the rise, that ethos is now under threat — and the threat is coming from inside Silicon Valley.
Some of the most powerful players in A.I. — led by some of my friends and former partners, to my great sadness — have raised hundreds of millions of dollars to forestall a more serious and meaningful debate about how A.I. should be governed. They have helped create political action committees to help defeat candidates who want strict regulations on A.I. and to promote those who can be counted on to stay out of their way. I believe this is a huge mistake.
A.I. is not just another technology. It could drive productivity to new heights while automating away work for millions. It could find a cure for cancer, while accelerating biological risks we’re not prepared for. It could transform how our children learn, while leaving them unable to tell real from fake. It could concentrate economic power in ways that would make the Gilded Age look quaint.
The rise of the A.I. industry demands a national conversation about how to share its potential benefits widely while addressing people’s legitimate fears. That conversation is beginning to happen, between unions, child safety advocates, civil rights organizations, economists and A.I. companies themselves. What’s missing is political leadership — legislators who are informed enough, and independent enough, to translate that debate into durable policy. Tech industry leaders should be doing everything they can to encourage more politicians to get up to speed and to engage.
The playbook we’re seeing comes from the crypto industry, which successfully neutered efforts to regulate it by spending tens of millions of dollars to help defeat pro-regulation candidates and elect industry-friendly politicians in 2024. Andreessen Horowitz, in fact, contributed heavily to a crypto PAC, Fairshake, which pioneered that model. Last year, the firm helped found an A.I. PAC, Leading the Future. Other Leading the Future contributors include the OpenAI co-founder and president Greg Brockman, the Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale and the A.I. company Perplexity. The PAC has raised over $125 million — not to make the case for their vision of A.I. policy, but, in my view, to intimidate politicians who appear to engage too aggressively with the question of how to govern A.I.
Leading the Future’s first target was Alex Bores, a New York State assemblyman who co-sponsored state-level A.I. regulation and is now running for Congress. The $6 million of ads the PAC has run against Mr. Bores make little mention of A.I. An attack ad in January on Mr. Bores by an affiliate of Leading the Future focused on claims that he made his money developing technology for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, allegations that Mr. Bores has said are false. The message to every other legislator seems clear: Touch A.I. regulation, and we will come for you, too.
Public First Action, a pro-regulation PAC backed by executives from Anthropic and others, which was formed with the explicit aim of countering Leading the Future, has waded in with more than $3 million to support Mr. Bores, part of $6 million from four PACs. I understand that impulse, but I don’t support this move either. Huge political spending is toxic to our democracy. It distorts the electoral process, and it won’t give the American people the thoughtful A.I. policy we deserve.
I believe this attempted political infiltration by the A.I. industry will fail. It misreads the public mood entirely. Americans believe the system is rigged by the wealthy and powerful. They’re also deeply concerned about A.I. — a backlash is building, and it will become fiercer when voters learn that a handful of billionaires are altogether spending nine figures, apparently in an effort to try to stop debates about regulation from further developing.
As the A.I. industry’s political spending is exposed, candidates who accept it run the risk of being seen by voters as being in the industry’s pocket. (I should disclose that I’ve been approached by people interested in more aggressively exposing the A.I. lobby’s attempts to buy political influence, and I may contribute my own money to these public awareness efforts.)
I understand the fear driving this spending. Bad regulation could hobble a transformative technology. Our politicians have not always distinguished themselves, with some unsophisticated, ill-informed attempts at technology regulation. But you don’t achieve balanced, intelligent regulation by silencing debate — you get it by engaging seriously and earning trust.
There is a far better use of those hundreds of millions spent on campaign consultants and negative ads. The A.I. industry could sponsor nationwide university boot camps to educate politicians, civil society organizations, regulators and the general public on A.I. — not promotional roadshows, but genuine, rigorous learning. It could fund experiments in using A.I. to radically improve public services, such as better health care access in underserved communities, more responsive local government and better schools.
That money could fund a moonshot to try to prove A.I. can, in fact, discover a cure for cancer. It could endow policy institutes focused on solutions for the hardest questions: how to share the economic gains broadly, how to address job displacement, how to preserve the dignity of work and how to build safety frameworks that keep pace with the technology itself. It could champion international cooperation on A.I. risk.
I’m still convinced that technology can be a powerful force for good. A.I. epitomizes that power. While I disagree with my former partners, none of my criticism is personal. This is a question of what’s best for America and the world. We have an extraordinary opportunity to model good citizenship and principled leadership by actively promoting A.I. policies that work for everyone. Let’s not waste it.
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16) Democrats Once Vowed to Stop Oil and Gas. Now They’re Not So Sure.
As the midterm elections approach, many leading Democrats are rethinking their approach to climate change
By Lisa Friedman and Brad Plumer, Reporting from Washington, June 11, 2026
A talk on rising energy costs on Capitol Hill hosted by Democrats, from left, Sen. Martin Heinrich of New Mexico, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, in March. Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
Democrats and environmentalists are shifting their approach to climate change, as the economic fallout from war in the Middle East has reshuffled the politics of energy.
With voters worried about spiking gas prices and inflation, some of the party’s leaders argue that they should stop trying to throttle oil and gas, which heat the planet when burned. It’s a rejection of the approach taken during the Biden administration, which treated climate change as an existential threat and tried to stop new drilling and pipelines.
The most recent example came in California, where Tom Steyer, a champion of fighting global warming, was edged out of this month’s gubernatorial primary by Xavier Becerra. Mr. Becerra, a moderate Democrat, questioned the state’s most stringent climate goals, like ending sales of new gasoline-powered cars by 2035, and received donations from oil and gas companies.
Across the Northeast, Democratic governors have started to consider gas pipeline expansions, once unthinkable in the most climate-conscious states in the country. Even climate hawks in Congress have shifted their tactics, lawmakers said in recent interviews. And though the co-sponsors of the Green New Deal in 2019, Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, still rail against the fossil fuel industry, they rarely emphasize their once-influential plan to mobilize the U.S. economy to fight climate change.
The result could be a less ambitious climate agenda if the party returns to power in Washington.
During the 2024 election, Republicans accused Democrats of wanting to ban gasoline-powered cars and gas stoves and cast themselves as the party of lower prices and consumer choice. Pledging to “drill, baby, drill,” President Trump derided climate change as a hoax, promised to cut Americans’ energy bills and claimed that renewable energy would drive up costs.
Now many Democrats argue that the path back to power means abandoning some of their most aggressive stances on climate change. When they do promote renewable energy, they frame it as a way to lower electric bills and avoid the gas pump, not because of the effects on the planet.
Some environmental activists are muting their demands to keep fossil fuels “in the ground,” a rallying cry that had defined the climate movement for more than a decade.
“It’s something we are struggling with,” acknowledged Cassidy DiPaola, a spokeswoman for Fossil Free Media, a nonprofit group that wants to rapidly end the use of coal, oil and gas. “We are still committed as a movement to the ideas of keeping it in the ground, but as a campaign message, it’s more effective to talk about building clean energy.”
That’s a far cry from 2020, when activists pressured Democratic presidential candidates to forswear oil and gas donations, blackball anyone with a fossil fuel past from cabinet positions, and commit to eliminating the nation’s planet-warming emissions in just a few decades.
Democrats are trying to figure out how to talk about a problem that many voters still say they want to see the government tackle, but without opening candidates to attacks from Republicans calling them out of touch.
Mr. Markey said he isn’t abandoning the Green New Deal and legislation he has sponsored to prohibit new federal oil and gas leasing. But these days, he said, “I talk about the positive vision for what clean energy represents as a solution to the affordability crisis.”
A recent Economist/YouGov Poll showed that just 5 percent of Americans say climate change is their top voting issue. By contrast, 29 percent say their top priority is inflation and prices, and 13 percent cite jobs and the economy. A number of strategists have urged Democrats to stop talking about the issues that excite already-committed voters and broaden their appeal.
Still, voters want solutions. In February, a YouGov poll found that 57 percent of Americans thought the United States should do more to address climate change. A quarter of Republicans agreed, as did 58 percent of independents. Among Democrats, 90 percent of voters wanted to see more action to curb global warming.
Rather than pushing green solutions only, many Democrats say they have a better way to bridge the gap: Be the party of yes to all forms of energy. After all, they argue, wind and solar power are often the cheapest forms of electricity and the fastest to deploy. On an even playing field, they say, renewables would beat fossil fuels.
“We shouldn’t be against the domestic oil and gas industry, but we have to be for the energy transition,” said Simon Rosenberg, a Democratic strategist. “Democrats should be running toward that instead of away from it.”
A Biden-era battle over fossil fuels
The Biden administration’s signature climate achievement was the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. The law offered hundreds of billions of dollars in incentives for wind, solar, nuclear, electric vehicles and other nonpolluting technologies.
Yet Mr. Biden also faced enormous pressure, particularly from young climate activists, to aggressively end the use of fossil fuels.
“Some of the extremist voices on the climate side were saying, ‘You can simply say ‘no more drilling’ or ‘no more fossil fuels,’” said Amos Hochstein, who served as a senior energy and foreign policy adviser to Mr. Biden. “This was a battle that existed inside the administration.”
In response, Mr. Biden promised “no new drilling, period,” on federal lands and waters. He canceled the Keystone Pipeline to bring oil from Canada; sealed off millions of acres in Alaska from oil and gas exploration; supported a California plan to ban the sale of new gas-powered cars by 2035; and stopped construction of new liquefied natural gas export terminals for nearly a year.
Biden administration officials hoped their positions would not only help the planet, but also pay off with young and climate-minded voters. It didn’t work out that way. Young people, especially men, turned away from the Democrats in 2024.
After Mr. Trump won the White House and Republicans claimed both chambers of Congress, they systematically dismantled most of Mr. Biden’s climate policies.
Mr. Trump also promoted fossil fuels and waged war on wind and solar power, leaving little to show for Mr. Biden’s ambitious climate agenda less than two years after he left office.
Almost immediately after the 2024 election, some strategists argued that Democrats should stop talking about the threat of global warming altogether. A growing number of Democratic politicians agree.
Senator Ruben Gallego of Arizona said recently he and many others aren’t discussing climate change during the midterm election season because “we want to win.”
Rahm Emanuel, the former congressman, chief of staff to President Barack Obama and mayor of Chicago who is exploring a 2028 White House run, said Democrats need to focus on household budgets, specifically electric and gas bills.
“I’m not against talking about climate policy, but you’ve got to talk about it as energy and energy prices,” Mr. Emanuel said, “and you talk about it as it relates to protecting ratepayers.”
He argued that Democrats “were talking to the faculty lounge and to another Aspen conference on climate change,” and added, “That’s not how you win political arguments.”
That sentiment isn’t universal; many Democrats said they are still firmly committed to raising alarm about a planet that has already warmed by about 1.3 degrees Celsius since the Industrial Revolution.
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island, has criticized “climate hushing” — downplaying the changing climate to avoid perceived political backlash, a tactic he says leads to a self-reinforcing cycle. “When leaders don’t talk about something, enthusiasm falls among voters,” Mr. Whitehouse warned on social media recently.
Saad Amer, a climate activist and founder of the consultancy Justice Environment, said he believes voters still want to know how politicians will tackle the crisis.
“The folks who are saying we shouldn’t talk about climate change are unimaginative hypocrites who don’t have any vision of what a future should look like,” Mr. Amer said.
But even lawmakers who have been committed for decades to the climate fight said the party should move away from calls to ban fossil fuels.
“It may be emotionally satisfying to shut down something bad,” said Senator Brian Schatz, Democrat of Hawaii. “But if we’re going to effectuate the transition, it’s all going to take over a decade. We have to get serious about what that looks like.”
A shift on oil and gas
Democrats said they are coalescing around a future agenda that begins with immediate relief for families. That includes bolstering programs Mr. Trump has tried to eradicate that provide federal aid for heating, cooling and utility emergencies. They also are exploring ideas like paying states to freeze or lower electricity rates, or banning utility shut offs for low-income families.
Most of those ideas aren’t directly related to climate change. But after those short-term steps, they’d also restore investments in wind, solar, electric vehicles, battery storage and other clean energy products that Republicans wiped out, and champion upgrades to the nation’s transmission lines to handle more renewables.
At the state level, some Democrats in the Northeast have recently supported expanding natural gas pipelines, acknowledging that renewable energy alone can’t meet domestic demand cheaply.
“We have growing energy needs in this country, and that’s why we need to embrace an all of the above approach,” said Governor Maura Healey of Massachusetts. “Gas is still an important part of our portfolio.”
Senator John Fetterman, a Democrat from the energy-rich swing state of Pennsylvania, said the party should embrace all forms of energy, a notion supported by research on voter attitudes.
“We’re going to need more energy,” he said. “Democrats — we were, in my opinion, pretending that we are not going to need fossil fuels like natural gas, and the Republicans, they canceled wind, and that’s crazy.”
The idea of an “all of the above” energy policy used to be more closely associated with the Republican Party. But Mr. Trump has largely abandoned that approach, attacking solar and stifling offshore wind farms partly because he doesn’t like the way turbines look. His war on wind has cost states thousands of jobs and imperiled energy security, analysts said.
Peter Maysmith, president of the League of Conservation Voters, said that while his group continues to oppose new oil and gas projects, environmentalists should pay more attention to efforts to expand clean energy right now.
“Something that is quintessentially American is choice and freedom, and the whole notion of bans often runs counter to that,” he said.
Activists and lawmakers acknowledged that an increase in wind and solar energy without a concurrent drop in fossil fuel use might not cut U.S. emissions as quickly.
But, they said, it could lead to policies that endure longer than the Biden administration’s efforts.
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17) Private Medicare Plans Often Deny Access to Special Care, Analysis Shows
Two reports by U.S. investigators reveal how Medicare Advantage is quick to reject requests for short-term nursing home or inpatient rehab services.
By Reed Abelson, June 11, 2026
Two reports found that the three major insurers that sell Medicare Advantage plans denied about 13 percent of patients’ requests to go to a skilled nursing facility to recover from surgery or a serious illness. David Goldman/Associated Press
People enrolled in private Medicare Advantage plans have been inappropriately denied admission to a skilled nursing home when leaving the hospital, according to a new analysis by federal investigators.
These private plans, which cover about 35 million older Americans under the federal Medicare program, have drawn sharp criticism for delaying and denying medically necessary care. Federal investigators have previously raised similar concerns about the plans’ tactics.
Insurance companies offering Medicare Advantage plans often require prior authorization before agreeing to cover treatment.
Plans are paid a fixed amount to care for patients, so they have a financial incentive to spend less on care. To achieve savings, these plans often deny people expensive specialized inpatient care, like tailored rehabilitation or therapy services, and may instead send them to outpatient facilities or back to their homes, according to the analysis.
Two new reports from the inspector general’s office at the Department of Health and Human Services focused on major insurers — UnitedHealth Group, Humana and CVS Health, the large for-profit companies whose plans cover the bulk of people enrolled in Medicare Advantage. The companies denied about 13 percent of patients’ requests to go to a skilled nursing facility to continue their recovery from surgery or a serious illness, according to the first report. The investigators also raised concerns about whether outside contractors being used by the insurers to decide whether a patient should get more specialized care were being adequately supervised.
“The dominance of a few large insurance companies in Medicare Advantage and the use of contractors to process prior authorization requests means that the policies and performance of just a few companies can impact care for millions of people,” Rosemary Bartholomew, who led the government team, said in an interview.
Overall, about one in five patients appealed the insurers’ denials, and nearly all were reversed, according to the investigators’ review of denials by 19 companies in June 2024. UnitedHealth, which received the highest number of requests for appeal, reversed 99.7 percent of its rejections, according to the inspector general’s inquiry.
The high percentage of denials that were overturned suggests some people’s care was inappropriately delayed because of the insurers’ decision, and others may not have gotten the care they deserved because they never appealed.
Investigators also detailed the physical and mental toll of the delays and denials for many patients who waited a week or more to get into a facility. Some were stuck in the hospital, adding unnecessary costs for the hospital and angst for patients.
A lack of information or some other hiccup might have triggered initial denials, but the high reversal rate suggested a more systemic problem. “Obviously, that’s not the ideal outcome,” Ms. Bartholomew said. “You want those requests to be approved at the first request as often as possible.”
The report also highlighted the role of a company owned by UnitedHealth, the former naviHealth, to review patients’ requests.
The company is often hired by other plans, and investigators found it had higher denial rates than plans that made the decisions themselves or used other contractors. It also had high rates of denials for patients seeking inpatient rehabilitation services, according to a second report from the investigators.
NaviHealth has been accused of using algorithms to deny claims, and UnitedHealth is the subject of a class-action lawsuit. It has previously denied these allegations.
Nursing home patients, whose daily care is often paid for by federal-state Medicaid programs, sometimes qualify for short-term services under Medicare. These patients were denied skilled nursing care 40 percent of the time, according to federal investigators. “The extremely high denial rate for skilled nursing facility admission for patients who were living in nursing homes prior to their hospitalization raises concerns that they may not be receiving the intensity and frequency of care after their hospital discharge that they need,” Ms. Bartholomew said.
The investigators urged the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which oversees the private Advantage plans, to collect more detailed information about denial rates for specific services and the use of outside companies to do the reviews. They also urged the agency to focus on how the initial reviews were conducted to see why so many of the denials were overturned.
In its written response to the investigators, Medicare said it audited the plans and was conducting a pilot program to collect more information from the plans about their use of prior authorization. The agency “uses several oversight tools to ensure that the M.A. program provides adequate health care access to enrollees,” it said.
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