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We Support Dockworkers Blocking Weapons on October 30, 2026
Unions representing workers at 40 ports in Europe and the Mediterranean are calling for an international day of action on October 30. Read more here. |
| World Federation of Trade Unions |
We Support Dockworkers Blocking Weapons on October 30, 2026
Unions representing workers at 40 ports in Europe and the Mediterranean are calling for an international day of action on October 30. Read more here.
Statement from the World Federation of Trade Unions:
Ports For Peace – Jobs With Dignity
Following the Third International Meeting of Mediterranean and European Dockworkers’ and Port Workers’ Unions, held in Istanbul in May 2026, the participating unions have launched a common international day of action on 30 October 2026.
The meeting focused on the struggle against wars, genocide and military aggression, while also addressing the challenges facing dockworkers and port workers, including wages, working conditions, automation projects, and occupational health and safety.
The participating organizations, CGT Ports and Docks (France), ENEDEP (Greece), LAB (Basque Country), Liman-İş (Turkey), ODT (Morocco), and USB (Italy), representing workers in more than 40 Mediterranean and European ports, are calling on dockworkers and port workers to mobilize together on 30 October 2026.
This mobilization is based on the Istanbul Declaration, adopted unanimously by the participating organizations and now fully endorsed by ORSA Porti of Gioia Tauro (Italy), which has joined our international network.
The declaration sets out the following demands:
· An immediate end to the genocide of the Palestinian people and recognition of an independent Palestinian state, recognized by the international community, within the 1967 borders and with East Jerusalem as its capital.
· An end to the US-Israeli wars of aggression in the West Asia and against Iran, and full solidarity with the peoples of Cuba, Venezuela and Sudan, alongside support for the right of all peoples to resist occupation and to self-determination.
· Ports must not be used for the transport of arms, ammunition, military equipment or troops destined for war zones.
· They must not become military bases for NATO, the United States or the European Union, nor serve as tools for shipowners and monopoly groups.
· No to the war economy, government rearmament plans, and the project of militarization of ports and strategic infrastructure from EU. Public resources must be used to meet people’s social needs, not to finance war.
· Collective agreements must guarantee real wage increases, secure employment, reduced working hours, and fair pension provisions.
· Technological progress, mechanization, automation and artificial intelligence must not be used to eliminate jobs or undermine workers’ rights. Dockworkers and port workers say NO to automation.
On October 30, all actions will be united as part of a common international struggle to stop wars, genocide and the militarization of ports at a very critical moment in history, while defending workers’ rights and better working conditions. Each union will decide the most appropriate form of mobilization according to its national circumstances, starting from strike action and from a shared commitment to prevent the loading of death and destruction.
The signatory trade unions of the Istanbul Declaration call on ALL dockworkers’ and port workers’ unions to join this international mobilization. We are ready to meet with organized groups of dockworkers and port workers from any other ports interested in becoming part of this common struggle.
CGT FNPD France – ENEDEP Greece – LAB Basque Country – LIMAN-IS Turkey – ODT Maroc – ORSA Porti Italy – USB Italy
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NOVEMBER 1-7
WEEK of GLOBAL RESISTANCE
to STOP U.S. IMPERIALISM & GENOCIDE
This year SHUT DOWN DRONE WARFARE (SDDW) Fall Actions will be a "Kick Off for A New Campaign": We want to help build a stronger network of global communities working in coordination to STOP U.S Imperialism & Genocide. Several other national organizations are already co-sponsors. (see below) This global call to action in the fall is only the beginning. We invite national and international organizations to sign on as sponsors/endorsers of the week and to plan simultaneous actions at U.S. Bases, Weapons Industries and AI Data Centers around the world. Organize actions for one day, or numerous days during or near the Week of Global Resistance. We recommend planning actions during weekday commute hours, if possible, when personnel are going into and out of military bases, weapons industry workplaces, AI Data Centers, etc. Educate, educate, educate and encourage resistance from within. Please spread the word: Help us get more sponsors & endorsers! More details to come soon.
"Week of Global Resistance" Co-sponsors: ShutDownDroneWarfare.org, BanKillerDrones.org, Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space, and Witness Against Empire.
Will your organization sponsor or endorse? Please contact: toby4peace@sonic.net
The above global call to action is part of SDDW Fall Action Week:
SHUT DOWN DRONE WARFARE! (SDDW)
ShutDownDroneWarfare.org
SDDW Fall Action Week:
NEW: Simultaneous Actions at both Creech AFB & Holloman AFB!
November 1-7, 2026
Nov.1-7, Creech AFB Fall Action, Indian Springs, NV
Nov. 4-6, Holloman AFB Fall Action, Alamogordo, NM
17 years of persistent resistance! Come for all or part of Fall Actions!
Shut Down Drone Warfare (SDDW) Campaign is Co-Sponsored by Veterans For Peace, Ban Killer Drones & CODEPINK
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To Iran’s Political Prisoners, trapped “Between Two Blades of a Scissors”
Open letter
August marks the anniversary of the 1988 mass executions in Iran, a horror that echoes in the country’s current surge in death sentences. It also marks the August 19 anniversary of the UK- and U.S.-orchestrated coup against the prime minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953. Amid the current, indiscriminate waves of U.S.-Israeli military assaults against Iran, this letter of solidarity denounces the repression of the Iranian people and their political prisoners by forces both at home and abroad.
To our fellow activists, students, thinkers, workers, artists, and other prisoners of conscience held behind the walls of all detention centers across Iran:
We write to you from a place of deep solidarity, our hearts heavy with the knowledge of the struggle you face within Iran’s prisons: the torture, the systematic neglect, the enforced silence, and the brutal reality of sham trials and executions. As former and current political prisoners, activists, and scholars committed to the global project of abolition, anti-authoritarianism and anti-imperialism, we see you across the distances of geography and the silence of censorship and internet blackouts. And we stand in solidarity with you, as you are at the intersection of two sources of oppression.
On one side, you face the Islamic Republic that, from its inception, enforced absolute social and political control based on an exclusionary ideology. It is a system that claims to counter imperial power while using its very logic of domination and systems of carcerality, torture and execution. On the other side, you face the aggression and violence of the very imperialist and Zionist forces the Islamic Republic purports to stand against. The U.S. and Israel instigate brutal wars, destroy civilian infrastructure, kill innocent schoolgirls, and treat you as collateral damage in their pursuit of regional dominance. We remember the horror of June 23, 2025, when Israel struck the Evin prison complex, flattening its hospital ward, transgender section, and visitor center. You best exposed this dual oppression when you voiced that you “feel stuck between the two blades of a scissors, the evil regime that imprisons and tortures [you] and a foreign force dropping bombs on [your] heads in the name of freedom.”
In the past year, we witnessed both blades of the scissor sharpen. We see the arbitrary arrests and the horrific wave of state executions. We see the deepening criminalization of the working class and unemployed, the targeting of Kurds, Arabs, and Baloch, and the scapegoating of Afghan migrants: all desperate attempts to kill the spirit of people they cannot contain. This is the logic of carceral states everywhere: when they fail to address the crises people face, they simply attempt to criminalize or disappear the people themselves.
We see the same logic of domination when Israel uses “administrative detention” to hold Palestinian political prisoners for years without charge. We see it when Israeli authorities celebrate a new law that allows them to execute the Palestinian political prisoners they cannot dominate. We see it in the ICE detention centers where the U.S. government imprisons our people in the pursuit of a political agenda of racist exclusion or detains our political activists for daring to speak against the U.S.-backed Israeli genocide. We see it in the history of the U.S. targeting freedom fighters, particularly Black, Indigenous, Puerto Rican and other anticolonial organizers, locking them away for decades to crush movements for national liberation and sovereignty. And we see the connections between these carceral systems sharing intelligence and governance techniques, such as when the USP Marion prison in Illinois became a blueprint for prisons built in Iran and Israel in the 1960s. Whether it is a border wall or a prison gate, the goal is the same: to silence people through fear, domination, and isolation.
Your struggle is as global as our collective dreams of freedom and dignity. We stand with you, and we reject the false binary of imperialism and hollow anti-imperialism. We invite global civil society and anti-imperialist activists and organizations to extend their unconditional support and solidarity to all incarcerated kin fighting for our collective liberation, to build relationships with Iranian political prisoners and uplift their voices, to put pressure on the Islamic Republic by challenging its narrative, and to call upon that government to immediately stop all the executions and free all political prisoners.
The Iranian authorities must stop their inhumane practice of death and incarceration now. And the U.S. and Israel must end their barbaric wars and brutal sanctions that knowingly devastate our communities.
In solidarity and with love,
Alberto Toscano, emeritus professor of critical theory, Goldsmiths, *University of London
Angela Davis, former political prisoner, distinguished professor emerita, *University of California, Santa Cruz
Bernardine Dohrn, retired professor of law, *Northwestern University
Bill Ayers, professor, *College Unbound
Cherríe L Moraga, distinguished professor emerita, University of California, Santa Barbara, Chicana feminist writer, and activist
Dan Berger, professor of comparative ethnic studies, *University of Washington Bothell
Hossam el-Hamalawy, Egyptian socialist, scholar and former political prisoner
Jairus Banaji, historian, research professor, SOAS, *University of London
Jason Stanley, professor of philosophy, *University of Toronto
Judith Butler, distinguished professor in the Graduate School, *University of California, Berkeley
Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, author, From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation, professor of African American studies, *Princeton University
Michael Löwy, emeritus research director of sociology at the* Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris
Michael Mansfield, human rights and civil liberties Bbarrister
Mumia Abu-Jamal, current political prisoner, educator, journalist and activist
Ricardo Jiménez, social activist, former Puerto Rican political prisoner
Ruha Benjamin, professor of African American studies, *Princeton University
Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Graduate Center, *CUNY
Walden F Bello, international adjunct professor of sociology, *State University of New York at Binghamton
Yasin al-Haj Saleh, Syrian writer, political dissident, and former political prisoner in Syria
* Organizations for identification purposes only
** Signatories are sorted alphabetically
—The Guardian, August 20, 2026
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/ng-interactive/2026/aug/20/iran-political-prisoners
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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.
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. Alter 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) These Generals Fought for Israel. Now They See ‘Jewish Terrorism’ as the Threat.
A growing number of former Israeli generals, intelligence officials and prime ministers are accusing settlers in the West Bank of committing ethnic cleansing with government support. “Once a society behaves this way,” one said, “that society is doomed.”
By Azam Ahmed, Natan Odenheimer and Ronen Bergman, Photographs by Ivor Prickett, Aug. 31, 2026
Israeli flags lined the roadside next to Palestinian farms in an area of the Jordan Valley in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
Maj. Gen. Eyal Ben-Reuven spent his life fighting for Israel. He survived the Arab-Israeli war of 1973, when his platoon was nearly wiped out, then went on to command a division in the West Bank and lead Israel’s ground forces in the 2006 war against Hezbollah.
But in recent months, he has returned to the Israeli-occupied West Bank, touring the territory with retired generals and former Israeli officials like himself. He has walked through the remains of a Palestinian school looted by Israeli settlers, and listened to Palestinian shepherds and farmers describe being tortured by settlers who seize their livestock and land.
Now, General Ben-Reuven says he has an entirely different understanding of the risks facing Israel today.
“This, what the settlers are doing here, is the real threat to Israel,” he said, his eyes welling with emotion. “This is more concerning to me than Iran, Gaza or Lebanon.”
Other former high-ranking Israeli officials touring the West Bank with him shared the same indignation.
“This is ethnic cleansing, to put it simply,” Ephraim Sneh, a retired brigadier general and former minister of health, said of Israeli settlers’ attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank.
Asaf Agmon, a retired Air Force general, went even further, comparing it to what some Israelis’ forebears endured in the Holocaust — not in the scale of the violence, he explained, but in the effort to erase the Palestinian presence from much of the West Bank.
“Once a society behaves this way,” he said, “that society is doomed.”
Since the Hamas-led terrorist attacks of Oct. 7, 2023, when as many as 1,200 Israelis were killed, war has consumed Israel: first with Hamas, leaving Gaza in ruins and tens of thousands dead. Two rounds of fighting with Hezbollah in Lebanon. Two campaigns against Iran.
But in the shadows of those conflicts, a quieter front has emerged in the West Bank. Armed Israeli settlers, emboldened by the most right-wing government in the nation’s history, raid and torch Palestinian homes, mosques and villages with seeming impunity, openly trying to drive them out of the territory.
Israel’s top military commander in the West Bank has warned that the violence risked setting the territory ablaze. Settlers have waged thousands of attacks in the West Bank since Oct. 7, 2023, injuring thousands of Palestinians, according to the United Nations. More than 3,200 Palestinians have been displaced by settler attacks this year alone — double the rate of last year.
As the pace of violence climbs, the U.N. says, the number of Palestinians injured in settler attacks has risen from an average of one every three days in 2020 to more than three per day in 2026.
The retired generals condemning this violence are part of a small but rapidly expanding array of influential Israelis, including many from the upper echelons of the military and intelligence apparatus, who are publicly declaring the lawlessness in the West Bank a threat to Israel’s existence as a democracy.
More than 200 prominent Israelis signed a letter in June demanding that the government stop the attacks against Palestinian civilians in the West Bank. The signatories included two former prime ministers, more than three dozen retired Army and Air Force generals, the former heads of the nation’s foreign and domestic intelligence services, as well as rabbis, a Nobel laureate and one of Israel’s most revered novelists.
The retired officials come from across the political landscape, including from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s own party, and many were considered security hawks.
In their letter, they called for an end to “Jewish terrorism” and the “ethnic cleansing” underway in the West Bank. And they accused Mr. Netanyahu’s government not just of being negligent in failing to stop it, but of pursuing “a deliberate government policy in which the entire security establishment — including the military, Shin Bet and the police — is knowingly complicit.”
The signatories cited tens of millions of dollars in government spending on illegal Israeli outposts and farms, and demanded a full accounting of all public money spent on roads, water, electricity, vehicles and weapons to support them.
They also accused the military of being complicit in the violence, saying soldiers stand by and watch as Palestinians are attacked, or sometimes even join settlers to assault Palestinian villages together.
The public denunciation, given whom it is coming from, is staggering. Activists have often asserted that Israel commits atrocities in the West Bank. But accusations of ethnic cleansing from such a large group of former prime ministers, generals and other top Israeli officials — the same people who once led their nation’s security forces — are virtually unheard of.
Many of the Israeli critics took part in extreme violence during their own military careers, ordering targeted killings, deadly airstrikes, raids and other attacks on Palestinians, including in the West Bank. But they say they were acting in the interest of Israeli security, under a chain of command and legal oversight.
The difference now, they say, is that the violence is unchecked, indiscriminate and targets innocent civilians, with the intent of clearing large stretches of the West Bank so that Israelis can take it for themselves and stamp out any prospect of a Palestinian state.
The injustice today, they contend, has crossed a moral red line in which the state is allowing, and sometimes helping, Israeli civilians beat, stab and shoot others with almost no consequences.
Azriel Nevo, who served as military secretary to four prime ministers, argued that other prime ministers he worked for “would have never allowed this to occur.”
“Shocking,” is how he described what he saw on the tour.
Some of the retired officials contend that the campaign against Palestinians in the West Bank is reminiscent of Nazism — an extraordinarily contentious assertion, especially in Israel, where many Jews found sanctuary after their families were eradicated in Europe.
Moshe Ya’alon, the former army chief of staff who served as defense minister under Mr. Netanyahu until 2016, recently likened the ideology of extremist Israeli settlers in the West Bank to that of World War II Germany.
“What is Jewish supremacy?” Mr. Ya’alon, long considered a security hawk, recently said on Ynet, an Israeli news site. “Eighty years after the Holocaust, ‘Mein Kampf’ in reverse. The master race is us.”
The prime minister’s office declined to answer questions about the growing accusations from former generals and other officials, and the government did not respond to multiple requests for data on settler attacks in the West Bank.
In the past, Mr. Netanyahu has dismissed settler violence as the unlawful acts of “a handful of kids,” while some ministers in his government have said there is no such thing as Jewish terrorism.
But as the condemnation of settler violence grows, including from the United States, pressure is building on Mr. Netanyahu to respond more forcefully. Settlers recently besieged several Palestinian homes, one of which belonged to an American citizen. In a rare statement over the weekend, Mr. Netanyahu said such “criminal acts” cause “immense harm” to the law-abiding settlers and “damage Israel’s standing in the world.”
The Israel military rejects any suggestion that it supports “the actions of violent groups” in the West Bank. It says its mission is to “protect all residents,” and that any soldier who takes part in settler attacks or stands by while they occur is “acting in complete disregard” of their orders.
Religious leaders who support Israeli settlements in the West Bank have applauded the military and government for backing a record number of new outposts and farms, which the retired generals say fuel settler violence in the West Bank.
But Rabbi Elyakim Levanon, who oversees a religious council in the West Bank, recently cautioned supporters to avoid violence, saying critics were using it as justification to harm the settler movement’s “reputation both in Israel, the U.S. and worldwide.”
The settler attacks are unfolding at the same time the Israeli military is acting much more aggressively in the West Bank.
Since the Oct. 7 attacks almost three years ago, more than 1,100 Palestinians, some of them combatants, have been killed in the territory, the vast majority of them at the hands of Israeli forces. That is roughly the same number of Palestinians killed in the West Bank from 2005 through 2022, according to the United Nations. Since 2023, 67 Israelis have been killed by Palestinians in the West Bank.
As the violence mounts — and killings, burnings and lootings go unpunished — even some who once defended the occupation are sounding the alarm.
“If I had to, I could make a legal defense of what the Israel Defense Forces have done in Gaza,” said Gal Levertov, the former head of the international division at the Ministry of Justice, who represented Israel before the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
“But what is happening today in the West Bank?” he added. “It’s indefensible.”
The Tour
The retired Israeli generals came to the West Bank on a trip organized by Yaakov Or, himself a retired general who spent much of his career in the West Bank.
Outraged by the escalating settler violence and what he views as the state’s involvement in it, Mr. Or has made it his mission to bring as many Israeli notables as he can to the West Bank to see for themselves.
He often begins with a warning.
“When I take you to see what is happening in the West Bank, you will have two choices,” he said to a group in June. “You can stay silent, and be complicit,” he told them, “or you can speak out, and tell everyone you know about what is happening.”
He then invited anyone who preferred not to be put in that position to leave.
Mr. Or, 79, began his military career fighting for Israel in the Arab-Israeli war of 1967, which ended with the Israeli occupation of the West Bank. He went on to oversee civilian and security affairs in the territory, before retiring from the state comptroller’s office, where he was responsible for investigating the Israeli defense establishment.
Since he began organizing the tours a little over a year ago, more than 250 participants — former military brass, high-ranking intelligence officials, prominent lawyers, economists and diplomats — have joined.
The New York Times accompanied him in June as he led several former officials including generals, a cabinet minister, a military aide to four prime ministers, an intelligence official, a state prosecutor and an ambassador on an arc through multiple villages in the middle of the West Bank. Along the way, highways were lined with Israeli flags, equally spaced, kilometer after kilometer.
Mr. Or asked the visitors to note the miles of new fences erected by settlers to hem in Palestinian villagers and keep them from accessing their own land.
And he urged participants to look for the prevalence of settler outposts, the makeshift frontier encampments placed on hilltops throughout the territory.
“It is showing us the overall concept — how to widen areas of control and narrow the places where Palestinian communities can live,” he told them.
‘They Want to Take My House’
In the village of Burin, Bashar Eid, a Palestinian farmer, took the visitors to his roof, limping behind them with a cane, the result of a settler attack that left him permanently impaired, he said.
He told them about the constant attacks from settler outposts, which were visible from the roof, positioned along the hillsides surrounding him. The settlers enter the village every day, he said, even during the Sabbath.
One recent morning, he said, he spotted a young settler boy walking on his land. When he asked him what he was doing, the boy told him to shut up or they would break his other leg.
“A kid told me that,” he said, shaking his head.
He could no longer farm his land, he said, because settlers attack him when he tries. His days have been reduced to sitting on his roof, watching for settler incursions.
“I don’t know what to do,” he said. “They want to take my house.”
The participants took notes as the heat bore down from above. The scent of sunscreen filled the air.
A former chief state attorney raised his hand. “It is absurd that Israeli forces are not doing their duty to protect them — it is embarrassing to even ask, but why don’t the Palestinians defend themselves?” he asked.
“I’m afraid if I defend myself, it will be even worse for us,” Mr. Eid said.
Mr. Or agreed: Any violent response from the Palestinians would invite retribution, which would be much more severe and likely include the Israeli military, he said. Retaliation against the settlers would be deemed terrorism, prompting more crackdowns, he said.
Raphael Schutz, a former Israeli ambassador to Spain, Norway and the Holy See, mopped sweat from his brow as he processed what he had heard.
He thought of his mother, who had fled Nazi Germany as a 9-year-old with her parents and siblings, he said.
Today, he said, when she watches videos of settlers setting cars ablaze and shooting innocent farmers, she feels shame.
“To her,” said Mr. Schutz, 68, “it is inconceivable that Jews can behave this way.”
“I’m glad I left the foreign service,” he added. “It would be impossible for me to explain this.”
A Community Erased
The Jordan Valley runs north to south along the banks of the Jordan River, a fertile plain that marks the eastern border of the occupied West Bank.
In the last few years, settler violence has displaced several Palestinian communities from the area, largely Bedouin encampments like Hamamat al-Maleh.
Just a few months ago, during a separate visit to the community by The Times, a few families were still holding on. Violent incursions in the middle of the night had already forced most to flee. But when we visited in February, we came across a couple of Palestinian families holed up in a stone edifice from Ottoman times, clustered together on mattresses on the bare floor.
“We don’t even sleep an hour,” said Mohammad Khalil, 37, who was born in the community, as his father had been. “If they come and you’re asleep, you won’t survive it.”
At the time, a school constructed with donor funds sat empty. The last of the students had fled a few days earlier. By March, after a series of settler raids, thefts and attacks, Mr. Khalil and the other holdouts gave up and left, too.
Not long after, residents and activists said, settlers came with a bulldozer and leveled the school. Settlers shared a video of themselves celebrating Passover amid the ruins.
By the time the retired Israeli generals and other dignitaries arrived in late June, the Palestinian residents were long gone. Mr. Or wanted to show them what an erased community looked like.
The group walked past the broken school structure, where loose strands of rebar poked through the rubble like unkempt hair. A roll of artificial grass lay in dirty folds. A broken concrete wall betrayed traces of a destroyed mural.
Within the old Ottoman structure, an office was upended. Desks in disarray, a door torn from its hinges lying on the floor.
Elie Avidor, an activist who helps organize Israeli volunteers to protect Palestinians from settler attacks, said he was in the village not long after the school was destroyed and took video, which he later shared, of settler women and children looting notebooks and markers from the office.
Left behind were piles of academic detritus, smashed cabinets, shards of glass and scattered papers.
“When you are burning books, when you are destroying knowledge and attacking children, you’re like the Germans,” said Nehemia Dagan, 86, a retired Air Force general who helped build Israel’s helicopter capabilities and also served as the chief education officer of the Israel military.
“We have lost ourselves, and we have lost this fight,” he said, shaking with rage.
“We must separate,” he added, referring to the two-state solution, which would establish an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel. “Not for their sake, but for our own.”
‘It’s Like a Jail’
On the last stop, in a barren valley in the northern Jordan Valley, a young Palestinian farmer stood before the ranks of Israeli visitors and pointed.
Behind him, a settler outpost had been scraped into the side of a hill, the Israeli flag flying over it. In front of him, a few hundred feet away, stood a long line of Israeli flags, planted one after the next, as if lining a parade route.
Nearby, settlers had erected a fence, turning his farm into something of a holding pen.
“Six months ago, this was our land,” he said. “Now, it’s like a jail.”
As recently as January, life in his village had been relatively normal, he said. They farmed, grazed their sheep, and came and went as they pleased.
That ended abruptly with the arrival of the first settlers, who stationed themselves on the hillside, he said. Now, the farmer and his family could no longer use his farmland or harvest his crops.
He was forbidden from accessing it, he told the assembled visitors, and every time he tried, settlers called the police. He had already been arrested four times, he said, though he was always released.
But whenever he called the police to report harassment, or vandalism of his water tanks, “they never answer,” he said. The Israeli national police said they “investigate every complaint or incident involving suspected criminal activity, impartially.”
The Palestinian farmer said he decided to sell his sheep, rather than lose them to settlers or starvation because he could no longer go out and graze them.
“They should see this reality, and not accept it,” the farmer said, referring to the Israeli generals.
Many of the men assembled had played their own roles in violence against Palestinians — authorizing killings and striking locations, knowing that children might die in some cases — because they believed it helped ensure Israel’s security.
But the settler attacks in the West Bank were not making Israel safer, several of the retired generals said. Instead, the violence and intimidation were having the opposite effect, they argued.
“When you ruin the image of Israel, the diplomatic value of Israel and the core values that hold the military together, you achieve nothing,” said Mr. Agmon, the retired Air Force general.
“I’ve earned the right to speak,” added Mr. Agmon, 78, whose grandson, an Israeli soldier, was killed in Lebanon last year. “My family and I paid the highest price for this country.”
“I am ashamed of what our people are doing here,” he said.
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2) U.S. and Iran Exchange Strikes Overnight After Monthlong Calm
The renewed attacks were the latest sign that the war that began six months ago appears far from over.
By Aaron Boxerman, Aug. 31, 2026
The Strait of Hormuz, the waterway in the Persian Gulf that has been at the heart of the conflict between the United States and Iran, on Monday. Credit...Reuters
The United States and Iran exchanged attacks for the first time in a month overnight on Monday, underscoring how a war that President Trump had promised would be over quickly has repeatedly frustrated his attempts to end it.
The U.S. military said on Sunday that its forces had bombarded Iranian troops on Larak Island that were preparing to launch rockets armed with mines into the Strait of Hormuz, the vital shipping corridor for oil and gas that Iran has blockaded. The Iranian foreign ministry said several people were killed and wounded, without providing specifics.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps said it retaliated by firing at bases in Jordan and the United Arab Emirates that host U.S. military personnel. The Jordanian authorities said that they had intercepted eight missiles that entered their airspace, while the Emirati military said it had “responded to” a drone coming from Iran. There were no reports of any damage or casualties.
The exchange of fire broke a tense monthlong calm that had prevailed after Mr. Trump pulled back from the brink of a renewed full-blown war, following concerns over dwindling U.S. munition stockpiles and calls for restraint from Gulf allies like Saudi Arabia.
Even as the fighting ebbed, there was little evidence of a durable solution to the war that Mr. Trump began in late February alongside Israel. A short-lived “memorandum of understanding” between Iran and the United States broke down only a few weeks after it was signed in late June.
Anwar Gargash, a senior Emirati official, lamented on Monday that the June cease-fire had “failed to outline a practical and acceptable road map” for ending the conflict. He called for a new agreement that would return the Strait of Hormuz to its prewar status, although he did not say what that would look like.
“The state of neither war nor peace cannot be a sustainable solution,” Mr. Gargash wrote on social media.
The United States and Iran are now in an economic battle of wills centered around control of the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran has used to throttle global energy markets since the war began.
Iran has fired on ships passing through the waterway, severely curbing the ability of U.S. allies to export oil and gas. Iranian leaders have demanded steep and immediate concessions in exchange for reopening the strait, which U.S. officials have rejected as a nonstarter.
The Trump administration has sought to squeeze Tehran economically by enforcing a naval blockade on Iranian ports, imposing heightened sanctions on Tehran and threatening to impose similar penalties on countries that trade with Iranian institutions.
U.S. forces have also quietly worked to guide ships through the southern waters of the Strait of Hormuz near Oman.
Adm. Brad Cooper, the head of the U.S. military’s Central Command, said this week that Iranian mines had successfully been cleared from the waterway’s international shipping lanes. There has been an uptick in oil tankers successfully making the crossing, but the route remains perilous. At least two seafarers have been killed in the past two weeks, and another is missing.
Vivian Nereim and Sanam Mahoozi contributed reporting.
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3) Do D.E.I. Bike Paths Exist? The Trump Administration Says Yes.
The administration has revoked funding for bike paths, and encouraged removing some. A cycling advocate said it is playing on the idea of “that dork on a bike.”
By Richard Fausset, Visuals by Alex Kent, Aug. 31, 2026
Four years ago, after Joe Biden fell from a bike, Donald Trump made a pledge to the American people.
“I will never, ever ride a bicycle,” he declared.
The joke landed because Mr. Trump is known to be more of a limo-and-golf-cart sort of guy. But more recently, his administration has begun acting on its deep aversion to cycling, revoking federal grants for what it calls “D.E.I. bike lanes.”
In a high-profile move earlier this year, the administration even tried to remove a bike lane near the White House.
Sean Duffy, Mr. Trump’s transportation secretary, has argued that when bike lanes cut into space for cars and trucks, the result is more congestion, “longer travel times and wasted fuel.”
But Mr. Duffy and his colleagues have also deployed rhetoric that suggests the bicycle is hopelessly lefty, belonging in the same category as green-haired baristas, Rosie O’Donnell and yard signs professing that love is love.
Last month, the Transportation Department told National Public Radio that liberals believe “that everyone should ride a bike to their shoebox-sized apartment to eat crickets to achieve a phony climate agenda.”
The attacks are depressing to longtime cycling advocates like Bill Nesper, executive director of the League of American Bicyclists. “There is something there that they’re playing on, which is ‘Look at that dork on a bike,’” Mr. Nesper said.
Whether this strategy pays off politically remains to be seen. A 2025 YouGov poll showed that 76 percent of Americans supported bike lanes in and around where they live, including 66 percent of Republicans. But it also showed that only a third of Americans are pining for more.
As it is, many American communities, regardless of politics, have embraced bike-friendly policies, on the grounds that bikes are good for the planet, for the body, and address congestion by taking cars off the road. Often inspired by bike-friendly European cities like Copenhagen and Amsterdam, the moves are a major shift in the way American communities approach transportation planning.
There are now 4,400 directional miles of protected bike lanes today, up from 108 directional miles in 2000, according to PeopleForBikes, an industry trade association and advocacy group. (Directional miles are miles that can be traveled in one direction; with a two-way bike lane one mile long counting as two directional miles.)
The group notes that more than 25,000 miles of rail beds have been converted to bike-friendly trails, double what it was two decades ago.
But the Trump administration is trying to put the brakes on the trend.
In Nashville, the future of an ambitious series of bike lanes, called the East Nashville Spokes project, is up in the air after the Trump administration froze a $9.3 million grant, prompting a court battle that remains unresolved.
In Washington this year, the administration announced it was tearing out the 15th Street bike lane as “part of the president’s initiative to revitalize” the city. But in a 61-page ruling in April, Judge Amy Berman Jackson temporarily blocked the demolition plan citing an “absence of reasoned decision-making” in justifying the removal.
In Fairfield, Ala., a majority Black city of 9,500 people southwest of Birmingham, the administration canceled an $11.7 million grant for a bike and walking path, originally awarded under the Biden administration as part of a “sustainability and equity” program. Advocates had said that 17 percent of the families in the area do not have access to a car.
In an interview, the city’s mayor Herman Carnes, Jr. said he did not know why the grant had been canceled. “It got ripped away from us,” he said.
Bike lanes have long enjoyed bipartisan support. In 1967, Ronald Reagan, then the Republican governor of California, signed a law that for the first time allowed city governments to create bicycle lanes.
Ray LaHood, a Republican who served as transportation secretary under President Barack Obama, avidly supported federal money for bike projects. He once wrote of “the end of favoring motorized transportation at the expense of nonmotorized.”
But as the bike-lane revolution picked up steam — along with calls to make cities more walkable — some conservatives feared that it amounted to a series of intrusive social engineering schemes.
In a few conservative circles, city planning even became falsely linked to dark conspiracies about Agenda 21, a nonbinding United Nations resolution encouraging sustainable development, and the voguish concept of the “15-minute city,” which said that people should be able to walk or bike to amenities like grocery stores in 15 minutes or so.
It was not long before the bicycle itself was portrayed as a political cause supported by left-wing dingbats. In 2020, Matt Walsh, the right-wing pundit, painted cyclists as childish hobbyists.
“If you want to play with your bike, go to a park, or a bike trail in the woods, or maybe daddy can take you down to the tennis court near the playground so you can ride your Big Wheel,” he said.
Last year, President Trump poked fun of Pete Buttigieg, the Biden-era transportation secretary, for riding a bike, tossing in a gratuitous reminder that Mr. Buttigieg is gay.
“Buttigieg, who has no clue, you know, he drives to work on his bicycle, in all fairness, with his husband on the back, which is a nice, loving relationship,” he said.
At a conference last year, Mr. Duffy suggested that the idea of European bike-friendly cities were unsuitable for Americans. “We’re not Europe,” he said, citing vehicle sizes. “I don’t think we should necessarily buy into the European model.”
This summer, Mr. Duffy pushed for more change. On July 22, Mr. Duffy wrote a letter to a group of senators, urging them to restrict future funding for bike lanes and support removing ones “that contribute to congestion.”
To Mr. Nesper, the letter represented something “much worse” than canceling or stalling individual grants. Mr. Duffy, he said, was now calling for ripping out existing lanes and advocating for “a systematic change in transportation law to restrict the funding of bike lanes overall.”
Hostility to bike lanes, in fact, can be found in surprising places.
In Boston, Mayor Michelle Wu, a progressive Democrat, had put in miles of lanes, but eventually slowed down because of complaints.
Her administration is currently navigating opposition in some traditionally Black neighborhoods to a plan to redesign Blue Hill Avenue, a major thoroughfare. Much of the criticism has been directed at a proposal for a center-running bus lane, which some say will create new traffic problems.
But a plan to add bike lanes has also rankled critics like Reggie Stewart, a real estate agent and climate and environmental justice chair of the Boston NAACP.
“You’re taking away parking and adding to an already congested corridor,” he said.
Mr. Stewart and others are now asking the Trump administration to rescind an $80 million grant to fund the project.
“Ironically, in my climate and environmental justice work, we’re opposing a lot of what Trump is for,” Mr. Stewart said.
But in this case, he said, the president might be an ally.
“Mayor Wu,” Mr. Stewart said, “falls into that category of liberals who think they know best without having real conversations with the people affected.”
Marcela Dwork, a spokeswoman for the city of Boston, said officials would continue “to work with community members” on the design proposal, with a number of meetings scheduled for September.
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4) From Top Civil Rights Post, She Spars With the Left, and Her Colleagues
Harmeet Dhillon, who leads the Justice Department’s civil rights unit, has extracted flashy agreements and personnel moves from big universities and sought to force states to turn over confidential voter data.
By Glenn Thrush and Michael C. Bender, Reporting from Washington, Aug. 31, 2026
Harmeet Dhillon has waged President Trump’s war on the left through a relentless pressure campaign against 100 universities over their diversity and antisemitism policies. Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call, via AP Images
Harmeet Dhillon offered a four-word summation of her four-decade campaign to tear down the ramparts of liberal academia during a private gathering last September.
“I’m going after Harvard,” said Ms. Dhillon, the head of the Justice Department’s civil rights division, according to audio of the event in New Haven, Conn., obtained by The New York Times.
Ms. Dhillon, 57, has repurposed a unit created to address Jim Crow injustices into a battering ram against the elite left. In part, it represents the culmination of a mission she began as an undergraduate at Dartmouth College — to impose conservative change on liberal institutions she still views as the entrenched establishment.
Ms. Dhillon, a gladiatorial Republican lawyer from California who has emerged as a Washington power player, has gone after more than 100 schools, extracting agreements, cash and personnel moves from big institutions over their diversity and antisemitism policies. In one instance, her pressure prompted the president of one high-profile school, the University of Virginia, to take early retirement.
“Harvard wished they never heard her name,” Mr. Trump said about Ms. Dhillon last year.
Harvard is apparently not alone. Ms. Dhillon has antagonized enemies and colleagues alike with a confrontational approach and a habit of beefing with co-workers that might hurt her chances of moving higher in the department, current and former department officials said.
Yet the issue that could most define Ms. Dhillon’s tenure looms just over the horizon: the division’s role in monitoring the administration of the midterm elections, as Republicans face the prospect of losing the House and perhaps the Senate and Mr. Trump reprises his falsehoods about election fraud to undermine unfavorable results.
Ms. Dhillon’s much-publicized deployment of election monitors during the 2026 primary season has alarmed some local Republicans. She has also filed a salvo of federal lawsuits to demand confidential Social Security and drivers’ license data from states.
Democratic officials have resisted, combating what they say is a dangerous intrusion into their right to conduct elections.
She has lost every single one. Her record is now 0 and 23.
Ms. Dhillon, in a statement, denied that she had been impelled by any motive other than fairly enforcing federal law, including Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bans discrimination by any recipient of federal funding. Her actions on higher education, she wrote, have been based on an evenhanded examination of admissions data, “not personal animus toward elite universities.”
Since taking over in April 2025, she has scrapped environmental justice settlements and shredded deals over policing reform reached with Minneapolis and Louisville after the George Floyd and Breonna Taylor killings.
Ms. Dhillon has also stepped back from the department’s recent role of investigating civil rights violations by law enforcement, declining to scrutinize the killings of two protesters, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, by homeland security officers in Minneapolis in January.
Not everything has changed in the division. Ms. Dhillon has moved ahead with more than 40 investigations of misconduct by law enforcement officials, including the recent prosecution of a former U.S. marshal for brutalizing an inmate. She has pursued cases involving sexual harassment by landlords and discrimination against non-Christians, and recently doubled down on a Biden-era suit over Louisiana’s illegal detention of inmates.
But her overall approach — articulated in an April 2025 memo ordering officials to pursue “the priorities of the president” — prompted a mass exodus of career workers that cut staffing levels by half or more and that has only recently stabilized, according to former officials.
“Harmeet is not just ignoring the reasons the division was created and the laws it is tasked with enforcing, she is using its enforcement authority against the very people whose rights the division was created to protect,” said Vanita Gupta, a former head of the division who served as associate attorney general during the Biden administration.
“She has corrupted its mission,” Ms. Gupta added.
Ms. Dhillon has articulated a different one: delivering a counterstroke against woke.
In an interview last fall, she asked herself a rhetorical question: What is the defining civil rights issue of our time?
“It’s not even in the Bill of Rights,” Ms. Dhillon explained. “It’s the fact that Americans feel like they have to lie every day to get through the day. They have to lie about pronouns. They have to lie about the person in the cubicle next to them being qualified if they aren’t. They have to pretend to laugh at and like certain types of jokes.”
A Hard-Charging Conservative
Ms. Dhillon is a striking figure in the Trump administration, a Sikh woman whose public displays of pride in her heritage have provoked attacks from white supremacists.
Her intellect is formidable, her personality vivid and paradoxical. It manifests in a restless social media feed that modulates between threats (investigating a cafe owner who would not serve a pro-Israel congressman), policy announcements (the decision to deploy 1,000 election monitors at polling places), Edenic photos (bees at dawn, dahlias, zinnias), and many, many, many images of her knitting projects.
A post to her 1.6 million followers in mid-August captured the split screen.
“It is a crime to knowingly allow noncitizens to vote in federal elections. We have notified all 50 states of these federal election laws,” she wrote, sharing a clip of a recent appearance on a podcast in which she wore a tangerine-hued pullover.
She then reposted it with the comment: “I knit that sweater! This summer — pure cashmere.”
Ms. Dhillon, whose husband died in 2024, seeks the tranquillity at home that she often eschews at work, living quietly among the liberals in her leafy Washington neighborhood. It works. Kind of. On one side of her fenced-in garden, a neighbor sometimes signals discreet dissent, posting protest signs that change with the news — like the green-and-gold George Mason University yard sign that sprung up when the school was targeted.
Work-life boundaries are not Ms. Dhillon’s thing anyway.
“You’re not supposed to look at the phone in bed, but I do,” Ms. Dhillon said at an event in Colorado in early August. “Before I’ve gotten to work, a half-dozen people are already at work implementing my messages.”
Ms. Dhillon was born in India and immigrated to the United States at the age of 2 when her father, a physician, moved to North Carolina. Her parents helped establish the state’s first Sikh temple.
After starting Dartmouth College at 16, she joined an established group of campus conservatives centered on The Dartmouth Review, whose alumni included Dinesh D’Souza and Laura Ingraham.
By 1988, Ms. Dhillon had become an editor and sued the college after three white staff members were suspended following a confrontation with a Black professor. A few months later, she published a satirical column comparing the school’s Jewish president to Hitler.
After being confirmed to lead the civil rights division, Ms. Dhillon perused the U.S. News & World Report rankings of top undergraduate, law school and medical school programs, dispatching demands for admissions data, including applicants’ gender, race and test scores.
She concluded that medical schools at U.C.L.A and Yale were discriminating against white and Asian applicants. (Each school expressed confidence in its admissions practices.) At least 15 other top medical schools are under investigation.
Ms. Dhillon’s decades running her law firm in the Bay Area, where she brought cases against Google and other tech giants, gave her a tactical insight: The bigger the target, the more motivated they are to reach a settlement to avoid hassle and heartburn.
Over the past year, she has investigated the University of California system, Arizona State University, George Mason, the City University of New York and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
In June 2025, pressure from Ms. Dhillon and her team forced James E. Ryan, the president of the University of Virginia, into early retirement over his reluctance to adopt Mr. Trump’s policies.
Ms. Dhillon’s toughness has, at times, caused turbulence. Last fall, Ms. Dhillon tried to drive a settlement with Cornell more stringent than anything the White House had imposed up to that point, according to lawyers on both sides of the talks.
That put her on a collision course with Donald F. McGahn II, Mr. Trump’s first-term White House counsel, who reached out to the man who occupied the job at the time, David Warrington. Mr. McGahn accused Ms. Dhillon of bullying an “ag school” — a reference to Cornell’s venerable agriculture and life science program, according to two people briefed on the interaction.
Mr. Warrington, a former partner at Ms. Dhillon’s law firm, convened a meeting with the two. In the end, Cornell escaped with a deal to provide anonymized admissions data to the government and pay a $30 million fine, the lowest amount of any university at that point.
An Outsider Even on the Inside
Ms. Dhillon’s rise owes much to her reputation as a fierce partisan fighter in California, where she waged legal and political war on mask mandates, coronavirus quarantines and state Democrats in scraps over elections and ballot access.
After Mr. Trump’s defeat in 2020, she embraced his doomed legal effort to reverse the results. Most of the lawsuits failed. But her pugnacity resonated. Her firm, the Dhillon Law Group, has collected more than $20 million since 2019 in legal services, fees and payments from Republican candidates and committees, according to campaign finance records.
Ms. Dhillon says she plans to aggressively root out voter fraud, particularly among undocumented immigrants, which is exceedingly rare. She has dispatched officials to monitor primary elections around the country, an effort even some Republicans have said was rushed and heavy handed.
“I feel very strongly about the federal government coming in and taking our guns,” Gov. Mark Gordon of Wyoming, a Republican, told state officials after monitors demanded, and were denied, access to voting machines. “And I don’t like the federal government coming in and taking our votes, either.”
Ms. Dhillon has not cast her efforts as a quest to uncover vast fraud, as many Trump allies have, but as basic due diligence, calling it “a core function of government” in her statement.
Most of these actions have been met with approval by her boss. And Ms. Dhillon has made little secret of her desire to move up the ladder in the department.
She has told people in her orbit she may quit if she is not promoted to deputy attorney general, a post vacated by Todd Blanche when he rose to be attorney general — and would only stay if she respects the alternative pick. She has enlisted Miriam Adelson, one of the Republican Party’s biggest financial donors, and Ms. Ingraham, the Fox News host, to speak with Mr. Trump on her behalf, they said.
Her prior effort to gain a promotion failed. It is an ill-kept secret that Ms. Dhillon disdains Stanley E. Woodward Jr., the associate attorney general, and was interested in replacing him as the department’s No. 3 official.
In April, when Mr. Trump fired Pam Bondi, Ms. Dhillon made it clear to she believed Mr. Woodward, whom she cast as an incompetent and overbearing bumbler, needed to go, according to six people familiar with the situation.
Mr. Trump initially appeared to be on board. Time passed. Mr. Woodward stayed put.
Her most bitter conflict has been with Leo Terrell, a former Fox News personality tapped by the White House to be an adviser on the antisemitism investigations overseen by her staff.
Mr. Terrell repeatedly complained to Ms. Bondi and other department leaders about Ms. Dhillon’s disrespectful treatment of him, at times forwarding testy email exchanges. Ms. Dhillon, for her part, told Ms. Bondi and others that Mr. Terrell was not qualified for his job, according to former officials.
The two clashed over negotiations with Columbia University, and have not been on speaking terms since early last summer, the former officials added.
Another big flashpoint was Fox News. In mid-2025, a top Dhillon aide warned Mr. Terrell he could be fired if he continued appearing on the network without permission, according to department policy. Mr. Terrell was jeopardizing court cases by talking about them on TV. Mr. Terrell accused Ms. Dhillon of punishing him because she was not getting enough airtime, a coveted commodity, on Fox.
Around that time, a career official working for Ms. Dhillon told Mr. Terrell’s most trusted aide she would have to transfer from his staff, according to people later briefed on the exchange.
The aide, alarmed, told Mr. Terrell. He complained to Mr. Trump. She stayed.
Not long after that, Mr. Terrell’s aide was again summoned, those people said, this time to answer a bizarre question, one with potentially dire consequences for her boss.
Had Mr. Terrell ever asked her to follow him into a bathroom to take notes?
No, she said, that never happened.
The department’s press office did not respond to requests for comment from Mr. Woodward and Mr. Terrell.
A spokeswoman for the department, Emily Covington, said Ms. Dhillon and her team had “secured historic results for the American people” and that their “record speaks for itself.”
Pursuing Harvard
In recent weeks, her division has accused the law school at Duke University and the medical school at George Washington University of discriminating against white and Asian applicants and opened a similar investigation into admissions at the College of William & Mary. (All schools have reiterated their commitment to following the law.)
In the meantime, the battle over Harvard grinds on.
A federal judge on Aug. 13 sided with Harvard in dismissing a lawsuit accusing the school of tolerating antisemitism, which the administration has appealed. A second, still pending, accuses the university of unlawfully withholding some admissions data from the government.
Ms. Dhillon is still pushing for a tougher bargain, publicly criticizing the university and warning the White House against taking a deal that might be seen as too weak, according to people familiar with the talks.
Mr. Trump, for his part, is growing impatient.
Ms. Dhillon was in the Oval Office for a September 2025 meeting when Mr. Trump put on speakerphone a call with Stephen A. Schwarzman, the billionaire chief executive of Blackstone Group, who was mediating negotiations. The president encouraged Ms. Dhillon to keep going hard after Harvard.
“Harmeet’s not going to do a bullshit deal with you,” he told Mr. Schwarzman.
Since then, Ms. Dhillon has twice sued the school.
Stephanie Saul and Kristen Nichols contributed reporting.
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5) More Mail Ballots Are Arriving Late This Cycle, and They’re Getting Tossed
State officials say they worry about the Postal Service’s ability to deliver votes this fall. They are urging voters to mail their ballots early or use drop boxes so their votes count.
By Adam Sella and Nick Corasaniti, Aug. 31, 2026
Nearly twice as many mail ballots were rejected for arriving late in Michigan’s primaries this year when compared to 2024. Credit...Rebecca Cook/Reuters
The rate at which mail votes have been rejected for arriving late has ticked up in primaries this year and general elections last year in roughly a dozen states, prompting election officials to worry that the U.S. Postal Service is ill-equipped to deliver ballots in the fall midterms.
The states studied by The New York Times include some of the most critical battleground House and Senate seats where control of Congress will be determined, as well as key races for governor and secretary of state. The Times obtained data from California, Colorado, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Nebraska, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Utah, Virginia, Wisconsin and Washington.
In Wisconsin, which hosts an open race for governor, a competitive House election plus contests for both chambers of the state legislature, lateness accounted for about 5,000 rejected mail ballots in the spring primary this year, or 78 percent of all tossed ballots. During the last spring election, in 2023, the figure was roughly 2,300, or 47 percent of all tossed votes.
The increase is particularly striking when comparing primaries in 2024 and this year. In Michigan’s primary earlier this month, more than 10,000 mail ballots were rejected for arriving after the state’s deadline of 8 p.m. on Election Day. That is nearly double the number of ballots rejected in 2024. In Washington, the number of late-arriving mail ballots increased from about 16,000 to more than 20,000 in the same period.
The rise in rejected ballots comes at a time of immense upheaval at the Postal Service, where a budget crisis has prompted widespread complaints about delivery delays. The increase also comes as President Trump and his allies are trying to transform the 251-year-old agency into a central player in their quest to restrict mail voting and otherwise overhaul the nation’s elections.
Roughly two dozen states sued the government over the president’s executive order governing mail voting, which would require states to hand over voter information and would empower the Postal Service to block mail ballots from being sent or delivered in states that do not comply. The moves have especially alarmed Democrats, who fear the president could use the Postal Service to tip the scales of a midterm election that polls show currently favors their party. Mr. Trump has stated publicly that curtailing mail voting is good for Republicans.
A federal judge issued a ruling on Thursday blocking the Postal Service from proceeding after concluding that the agency’s plan appeared to overstep its legal mandate and could spark chaos by changing rules fewer than 70 days before an election. The administration is appealing.
Meanwhile, the uptick in rejection rates for mail ballots this year could fuel the partisan battle. The ballots that were tossed because they arrived too late represent a fraction of the overall mail ballot total — the Postal Service typically delivers more than 95 percent of mail ballots on time. But the agency has curtailed its services in the face of budget shortfalls in recent years, leading to slower mail delivery across the country.
Election officials say the rise in rejections, along with the general sentiment out of Washington, has prompted them to scramble to put safeguards in place to ensure that voters’ ballots are counted.
In Colorado, Jena Griswold, the Democratic secretary of state, has rapidly increased the number of drop boxes across the state — by 78 percent since 2018 — so voters can return their ballots without concerns of postal delays or interference.
“We did change the law last legislative session,” Ms. Griswold said in an interview. “Mail ballots are going out sooner, and drop boxes are going out sooner. That is in direct response to the uncertainty coming from D.C. and Trump’s attacks on our democracy.”
In a statement, The Postal Service countered claims that the agency has become unreliable by noting that over 95 percent of mail ballots have arrived on time in recent elections.
“There are any number of factors that may impact the timeliness of a returned ballot,” the statement said. “As such, our consistent message to voters who choose to vote by mail is to mail early.”
Following the 2020 election, when a deluge of voters opted to vote by mail during the coronavirus pandemic, the agency developed new procedures to prioritize on-time delivery for mail ballots. After a court case in 2021, the Postal Service agreed to maintain the new measures for all even-year federal elections through 2028.
William Hensley, a former election mail specialist at the Postal Service who helped establish the new procedures, said the fact that mail ballot delays were more prevalent in odd-year and primary elections suggested that the measures were effective. But he conceded that structural changes within the agency slowing service across the board were also affecting ballots.
As part of a 10-year-plan established in 2021 to shore up the Postal Service’s finances through structural changes, the agency set up regional distribution centers to process mail and increased the delivery standards for first-class mail, from three days to five.
The Postal Service further slowed down mail in 2024 when it implemented a centralized system that postmarks mail when it reaches regional centers, not when it first enters the mail stream. The delay has particularly affected mail voting, especially in states that rely on postmarks to determine if a ballot is valid.
These cost-cutting changes have so far struggled to make a substantial dent in the agency’s multibillion dollar deficit, but they have slowed the delivery of mail votes. Election officials are starting to notice.
In Wisconsin’s state Supreme Court election in April, several hundred ballots arrived a day late in Dane County, home to Madison, the state capital, according to Scott McDonell, the county clerk.
“That was highly unusual,” he said. “In the past, we would only see a handful.”
In a survey by the Wisconsin Elections Commission, two-thirds of clerks reported observing problems with mail delivery times in that election.
“The worst mail delivery day of the week is Tuesday (unfortunately for elections!) and our office jokingly but sadly refers to it as ‘no mail Tuesday,’” read one submission from a clerk in Waukesha County.
Mr. McDonell, who is a Democrat, says he now tells voters to use drop boxes, vote early in person or mail their ballots at least two weeks before Election Day.
In Washington, a universal mail-voting state, more voters are using drop boxes than trusting the Postal Service with their ballots, said Stuart Holmes, the state’s elections director.
“The Postal Service, these are great people, hard-working people,” Mr. Holmes said about the state’s local postal employees. “But their operation has become unreliable.”
In Washington’s primary earlier this year, 75 percent of rejected mail ballots were tossed because they arrived too late.
Ricky Hatch, a Republican election official in Utah, a state that relies almost exclusively on mail voting, said he had noticed a nationwide increase of election officials encouraging voters to mail their ballots early because of Postal Service slowdowns.
“We’ve definitely morphed over time from going from ‘Hey, get your ballot in before the deadline’ to ‘Mail your ballot at least a week early, if you want to have it counted,’” Mr. Hatch said.
Now, he added, the advice is even more cautious: “Better yet, use a drop box.”
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6) The World’s Coral Reefs Are Running Out of Time to Recover, Research Finds
Rising sea temperatures mean reefs don’t have enough time to bounce back between intense heat waves, a new report warns.
By Quinn Glabicki, Aug. 31, 2026
Bleaching corals at Looe Key Reef off Florida in 2023. Credit...Jason Gulley for The New York Times
Coral reefs around the world, struggling as climate change drives more frequent and more intense marine heat waves, are running out of time for recovery, according to a sweeping new report on the state of the world’s corals published on Monday.
The comprehensive global assessment builds on decades of research and coral monitoring, and highlights the devastating effects of warming on one of Earth’s most delicate and diverse ecosystems.
It found that the world’s coral reefs had declined by 9.5 percent in the period from 2020 to 2024, compared with 1980 to 2009. The largest single-year coral decline on record, which affected 87 percent of reefs worldwide, occurred in 2024.
But perhaps the most alarming finding is that reefs, which protect coastlines from storms and support at least a quarter of marine life at some point in their life cycles, now have a much narrower window for recovery.
Historically, global coral bleaching events have happened roughly once per decade. But since 2010, they’ve occurred every four to six years, according to the report.
Bleaching occurs when corals become so stressed that they lose the symbiotic algae they need to survive. Bleached corals can recover, but they need time to do so. If the water surrounding them is too hot for too long, they die.
The findings are “dire and serious,” said Manuel Gonzalez-Rivero, a researcher at the Australian Institute of Marine Science and the report’s lead author. Corals, he said, are no longer experiencing the natural ebb and flow of stress and recovery.
“Coral reefs take quite a long time to recover,” he said. “We’re talking about decades to actually regain back what they lost.”
The report, issued by the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network, a worldwide organization of scientists and conservationists, comes as the world’s oceans warm to record levels, absorbing heat trapped in the atmosphere by greenhouse gases. Global average sea surface temperature last week reached a record 21.1 degrees Celsius, or about 70 Fahrenheit, breaking a record set in 2024, according to the Copernicus Climate Change Service, the European Union’s climate monitoring organization.
Some scientists say the state of coral reefs worldwide might actually be worse than the report suggests.
The full effect of the last and most intense global bleaching event, which began in 2023 and concluded in 2025, was not captured in the findings, which are based on data collected through 2024, said Carlos Duarte, a marine scientist who directs the Coral Research and Development Accelerator Platform, a global initiative focused on saving reefs.
He pointed to reefs in Western Australia that bleached for the first time last year, recent “major mortality” among Red Sea corals with little evidence of recovery, and reefs in the Caribbean that have lost about 90 percent of their genetic diversity.
This year’s brewing El Niño is “very likely” to cause yet another global bleaching event next year, Dr. Duarte said. Long term, he predicted, along with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, that the planet will lose 70 percent to 90 percent of its coral cover if long-term global warming reaches 1.5 degrees Celsius, and up to 99 percent if average global temperatures climb two degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels.
“The situation is far more disturbing than the report portrays,” said Dr. Duarte, who was not involved in the assessment.
Terry Hughes, a former director of coral reef studies at James Cook University in Australia, and who also was not involved in the Monday report, cautioned that coral cover measurements did not take into consideration underlying reef biodiversity.
“Coral cover could stay the same or even increase while biodiversity tanks,” he said. “So, the more complicated message is that the mix of coral species is changing globally, and the more vulnerable ones have been winnowed out for several decades.”
Some corals, for example, recover quickly but are more sensitive to heat. “It’s kind of like replacing a forest with grass,” Dr. Hughes said. “It comes roaring back quickly, but it’s flammable” and more susceptible to the next heat wave.
Local solutions, including reducing water pollution and protecting coastal ecosystems, can help coral reefs, but reducing planet-warming emissions is crucial, Dr. Hughes said.
“It really depends on how much more greenhouse gases go into the atmosphere and the amount of warming that causes,” he said.
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7) Decades After Tupac’s Murder, a Talkative Gang Member Is Convicted
Duane Keith Davis, 63, was found guilty of first-degree murder after he went on an interview tour discussing his role in the 1996 drive-by shooting.
By Julia Jacobs and Anusha Bayya, Aug. 31, 2026
A jury in Las Vegas on Monday found a man guilty of orchestrating the 1996 murder of Tupac Shakur, delivering a conviction nearly 30 years after one of hip-hop’s most notorious killings.
Duane Keith Davis, 63, was accused of obtaining the gun used in the shooting and pursuing Mr. Shakur during a gang war that had become entangled with a feud between East Coast and West Coast hip-hop labels.
After about three hours of deliberations, the 12 jurors announced they had found Mr. Davis guilty of first-degree murder. Members of Mr. Shakur’s family who were seated in the courtroom embraced and passed around tissues to wipe away tears.
Straight-faced but agitated after the verdict, Mr. Davis addressed the judge to promise he would appeal. He is scheduled to receive his sentence — up to life in prison — on Oct. 13.
In a three-week trial, prosecutors depicted Mr. Davis as a shot caller for a group of Crips from Compton, Calif., who were out for revenge on the night of Sept. 7, 1996, when they happened to encounter Mr. Shakur in a black BMW stopped at a traffic light. Mr. Shakur, who was 25 and in the prime of his career, was shot four times and died at a hospital days later.
A socially conscious poet who was on his way to becoming a cultural icon, Mr. Shakur became only more popular as he was increasingly associated with violence and gang culture. His death turned him into a hip-hop martyr, joined only six months later by Christopher Wallace, the rapper known as the Notorious B.I.G., a onetime friend who turned into a bitter rival.
After Mr. Wallace was gunned down in Los Angeles in March 1997, the shootings became twin tragedies that had never led to a conviction, until now.
For years, the Shakur case had languished as important evidence, including the murder weapon, remained missing and key witnesses — including Mr. Shakur’s label boss, Marion Knight, known as Suge — refused to cooperate. The standstill turned the case into fodder for true-crime enthusiasts and conspiracy theorists.
Then, in 2008, Mr. Davis began speaking to the police in an effort to avoid drug charges that could have put him in prison for life. Law enforcement considered him untouchable because he had shared the information under an agreement that he could not be charged based on it.
But prosecutors changed their calculation once Mr. Davis began repeatedly addressing the shooting publicly — in podcasts, a documentary and a 2019 memoir.
“I’m one of the only living eyewitnesses to Tupac’s killing,” read the introduction to the memoir, “Compton Street Legend.”
Under the mistaken belief that he was fully immune from prosecution, Mr. Davis effectively handed prosecutors the evidence they needed to bring a case.
After he was indicted on a charge of murder in 2023, Mr. Davis, who is known by the nickname Keffe D, asserted that the statements in his memoir and in interviews were fictional stories invented to turn a profit on the hip-hop media circuit.
“Mr. Davis is attempting to escape responsibility for a crime everybody knows he committed — even him,” Marc DiGiacomo, a prosecutor in the case, said in court on Monday, “and he admits to it seven or eight times over the course of 30 years.”
Throughout the trial, Michael Sanft, Mr. Davis’s lawyer, argued that the prosecution’s case was based on presumptions rather than hard facts, and that it was absurd to rely on Mr. Davis’s own statements, which were riddled with inaccuracies and inconsistencies.
“What facts do they have to even put Keffe D in a car in Las Vegas on Sept. 7, 1996? What facts?” he said at the trial.
The two weeks of testimony at Clark County District Court chronicled a story that had long been told in books, podcasts and true-crime specials, but never at a murder trial.
Prosecutors painted a picture of simmering gang tensions in Compton between local sets of Bloods and Crips, the temperature increasing by their entanglement with the bicoastal rap beef of the 1990s.
The Bloods were aligned with Mr. Shakur and Mr. Knight’s Los Angeles-based Death Row Records, prosecutors said, while the Crips were hired to provide security when New York’s Bad Boy Records, run by Sean Combs, traveled out west.
In 1996, two gang skirmishes sent hostilities boiling over.
There was a brawl over a Death Row chain between young Crips and Bloods at a Southern California mall. Then, in September, both sides converged in Las Vegas for a Mike Tyson prizefight. After the fight, Orlando Anderson, a member of the Crips who had been present at the mall, received a beating by a group of men that sent him to a hospital.
Among the assailants, identified to jurors on hotel security footage at the MGM Grand, were Mr. Shakur and Mr. Knight.
According to Mr. Davis’s account to the police and in interviews, he obtained a .40-caliber Glock from an associate and set out with a group of Crips to find Mr. Shakur and his boss. “Them jumping on my nephew gave us the ultimate green light,” his memoir read.
Driving around Las Vegas in a white Cadillac, the group spotted Mr. Shakur on the road, visible in the passenger’s seat of a black BMW driven by Mr. Knight.
In an interview with law enforcement in 2009, Mr. Davis described how his associate behind the wheel made a U-turn to pull up alongside Mr. Shakur and Mr. Knight’s vehicle.
A woman in a car nearby, Ingrid Stokes, testified that a hail of gunfire erupted. “All hell broke loose,” she told jurors.
The BMW was riddled with bullet holes, the tarmac glinting with spent cartridge cases. Mr. Knight had been grazed in the head; Mr. Shakur, in far worse condition, was loaded into an ambulance.
Garry Dale, a former police officer who rode with Mr. Shakur on the way to the hospital, testified that he had asked him to divulge the names of the assailants but that Mr. Shakur had brushed him off.
“We’ll take care of it,” Mr. Shakur replied, according to Mr. Dale.
Word soon spread in Compton that Mr. Anderson had been the person to open fire in retaliation for the beating at the MGM Grand, but other accounts suggest it was Deandrae Smith, who had been sitting next to him in the back seat. Mr. Davis is the only person still alive who was said to have been in the white Cadillac.
Although Mr. Davis did not testify, the prosecution centered its case on his own words, played for the jury through audio of interviews with police officers, documentary filmmakers and YouTube personalities.
Prosecutors acknowledged that his statements could be inconsistent, and they did not embrace everything as true. His repeated allegation that Mr. Combs had offered him $1 million to kill Mr. Shakur and Mr. Knight, which the music mogul has vehemently denied, was left on the far periphery of the case.
In total, the jury heard more than eight hours of Mr. Davis’s voice, according to prosecutors.
“I didn’t tell nobody, nothing, that we killed Tupac,” Mr. Davis said in 2009, when he was speaking to the police.
He added: “I was gonna keep this secret.”
Jonathan Abrams contributed reporting.
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8) How the Pentagon Is Getting Into the Venezuelan Oil Business Under Trump
The Defense Department’s Office of Strategic Capital, founded by the Biden administration to give loans to bolster the U.S. defense industry, is helping lead President Trump’s oil deal.
By Edward Wong, Rebecca F. Elliott and Anatoly Kurmanaev, Published Aug. 31, 2026, Updated Sept. 1, 2026
Edward Wong reported from Washington, Rebecca F. Elliott from New York and Anatoly Kurmanaev from Skopje, North Macedonia.
President Trump said his defense secretary and secretary of state reached an agreement with the Venezuelan government on securing billions of barrels of oil reserves “through a partnership with private business.” Credit...Adriana Loureiro Fernandez for The New York Times
As the U.S. government faced shortcomings in the country’s weapons manufacturing, the Pentagon set up a new office that would make investments to help boost defense industrial production.
That effort, which began in 2022 during the Biden administration, is now taking a sharp turn with the Pentagon’s involvement in an oil production deal between the United States and Venezuela that President Trump announced on Friday.
The Pentagon’s little-known Office of Strategic Capital, which reports to the deputy defense secretary, is the leading U.S. government entity in forming a partnership with a private oil producer whose founder, Alejandro Betancourt López, is a powerful and polarizing figure in international commerce.
Mr. Trump said Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, and Marco Rubio, the secretary of state and White House national security adviser, reached the agreement with the Venezuelan government on securing billions of barrels of oil reserves “through a partnership with private business.”
The deal would give the Pentagon the option to take up to a 35 percent stake in the parent company of Mr. Betancourt’s firm, North American Blue Energy Partners. This would come in the form of a financial instrument known as a warrant, plus preferential access to much of the oil that the company produces.
Warrants would give the government the right to buy shares in the oil company at a predetermined price. The value of warrants, which can be bought and sold, fluctuates based on the value of the company that issued them.
In this case, the warrants would be what are known as penny warrants, according to two people familiar with the deal, meaning they could be converted into shares for very little money, often just 1 cent.
Typically, companies issue warrants in exchange for something of value. During the coronavirus pandemic, for example, the federal government bailed out U.S. airlines with more than $50 billion in grants and loans to help the companies pay employees and cover other costs. In return, the Treasury Department received warrants from roughly a dozen airlines, most of which it later sold to private investors.
In this case, the deal would come “all at zero cost to the United States,” the White House said in a statement on Monday night. The federal government’s partnership and seal of approval could make it easier for the company to raise money from private investors and also shield it from legal scrutiny or political upheaval in Venezuela.
In a statement, Mr. Betancourt said the deal would unleash Venezuela’s potential “to the great benefit of both Venezuelans and Americans.”
The deal has come under intense criticism from some Democratic lawmakers. On Monday, Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in a statement that “President Trump’s effort to turn the U.S. military into an investor in Venezuelan oil is a blatant abuse of power and taxpayer dollars.”
Mr. Reed added that he was demanding a full accounting of the legal authority for this move and the complete financial terms.
During the Biden administration, the Office of Strategic Capital made loans to private companies to bolster strategic industrial production in the United States, and asked for repayment of the loans with interest at below-market federal rates. In the Trump administration, the office has typically asked companies to give it warrants as well as repay the loans.
The office falls under Stephen A. Feinberg, the deputy secretary of defense. Mr. Feinberg, a billionaire businessman and political appointee under Mr. Trump, has been tasked with trying to help rejuvenate the U.S. defense industrial base. Mr. Feinberg approves the office’s deals.
The office was founded under the previous defense secretary, Lloyd J. Austin III. At that time, in 2022, U.S. officials were concerned about the fact that critical items for certain weapons systems were made in China. They were also grappling with weaknesses in arms production exposed by Russia’s war against Ukraine and global supply chain problems exposed by the pandemic.
Those issues have become even more acute, given the drawdown of U.S. weapons stockpiles during the war against Iran that Mr. Trump and Israel started six months ago.
The office’s initial $1 billion loan authority has ballooned to $200 billion, largely because of a boost from Mr. Trump’s major domestic policy legislation that Congress passed in July 2025.
The director of the office is now David Lorch, who worked at Cerberus Capital Management, the private equity firm co-founded by Mr. Feinberg. In November, the month Mr. Lorch started his job, the office announced a loan of $620 million to Vulcan Elements and one of $80 million to ReElement Technologies to increase domestic magnet production and “significantly bolster U.S. critical minerals supply chains.” The office said it would get warrants from those companies.
That kind of financing would help the United States decrease its dependency on Chinese manufacturing. But Vulcan Elements has financial ties to the president’s oldest son, Donald Trump Jr., which prompted Democratic senators to criticize the arrangement. Peter Navarro, a White House aide and friend of the younger Mr. Trump, requested the financing, ProPublica reported.
By July, the other company, ReElement Technologies, a rare earths firm, had withdrawn from the loan process because it was struggling to meet federal due diligence standards, Reuters reported.
On Saturday, the chief Pentagon spokesman, Sean Parnell, said in a statement that the office “does not take equity stakes in private companies.” The White House’s statement on Monday about the deal contradicts Mr. Parnell’s assertion.
In addition to receiving warrants, the federal government would be guaranteed 20 percent of the oil that Mr. Betancourt’s company produces “at production cost,” according to the White House, meaning at a favorable price. The State Department would also have right of first refusal to buy the remaining 80 percent of the company’s output.
That would put the State Department in an unusual role since it is oil companies and other traders who typically buy and sell oil. Any decision to buy oil to refill U.S. government stockpiles would require authorization, including from Congress, and typically be handled by the Energy Department.
In any case, it would most likely take years for new projects in Venezuela to generate meaningful amounts of oil.
The White House also said that the U.S. government would have veto power over the appointment of any board member to Mr. Betancourt’s company, and the majority of board members would have to be U.S. citizens.
Most of the “incremental” fields that would now be overseen by Mr. Betancourt’s company were controlled or operated by Russian or Chinese firms or by businesspeople close to Venezuela’s previous leaders, the White House said.
Mr. Betancourt, the U.S. government’s partner, received no-bid oil contracts in Venezuela many years ago. He has been under investigation in Spain and Switzerland on accusations of money laundering and tax fraud. He usually lives in Britain and was barred from foreign travel by the British government while he was in that country because of an extradition agreement with Switzerland, where prosecutors had issued an arrest warrant.
However, Mr. Rubio wanted to get Mr. Betancourt to Venezuela to work on oil deals and production, and the State Department in recent months pressed the Swiss and British governments to ease up on him, said a person with knowledge of that effort.
“Mr. Betancourt has never been charged with a crime in any jurisdiction,” Sara Chouraqui, general counsel for North American Blue Energy Partners, said in a statement on Saturday.
Kate Kelly contributed reporting.
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9) Military Officers Can’t Look Away From This Any Longer
By Frank Kendall, Sept. 1, 2026
Mr. Kendall was the secretary of the Air Force in the Biden administration.
Illustration by Sam Whitney/The New York Times
I attended a military retirement ceremony last month at which Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was the presiding officer and featured speaker. It was eerily, even alarmingly normal. In a large room full of current and retired senior military officers, everyone was playing the same game of “Let’s pretend everything is fine.”
Denial is one of the two approaches the nation’s senior military leaders seem to have taken to cope with Donald Trump’s presidency. When they aren’t ignoring how abnormal things have become, they turn to the other approach, claiming that they have no responsibility for the actions the armed forces have been ordered to take because those orders were “policy” choices outside the scope of their duties. This is a cop-out, and it is putting our democracy at risk.
General Caine has even advocated this strategy. In a recent speech to graduates at the National Defense University, he talked about the need for “perfect beautiful clarity” on the distinction between two questions: Can we do something? and Should we do something? The “can” question was a military matter, he explained. The “should” is “at the policy level, and we don’t do that,” he said.
The message is that a senior officer’s only professional obligation is to tell the president and the secretary of defense whether the military can do whatever civilian leadership asks it to do; that a senior military leader has no duty to say whether the military should do the things the president wants, and that it would be wrong to try.
It isn’t that simple.
The Trump administration is committing acts that military officers should consider outrageous and unacceptable. The military has conducted extrajudicial executions of alleged drug dealers at sea and of a country’s head of state, along with several of his family members. The administration has kidnapped another head of state. And the president started a war without even consulting Congress, much less obtaining congressional authorization. In an indication of what may be still to come, the president has put National Guard troops on the streets of Democratic-governed cities without local leaders’ request or consent.
Many lower-level officers I have spoken with are privately appalled but afraid to challenge what they are seeing. The collective hope seems to be that if they can all just go on as if nothing unusual is occurring, that this time will pass and nothing bad will happen to them — no loss of position, no demotion or forced retirement, no loss of reputation, no removal from a promotion list by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
But all officers take an oath to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic.” This demands that they think about what the military should or should not do and advise the president and the secretary of defense on the policy choices they make. It also means that there are some lines that they cannot cross, even if ordered to do so by the commander in chief. The country’s top military leaders serve at the very nexus of the application of military force and policy; that role requires them to be more than mere military technocrats.
As secretary of the Air Force, I recommended many officers for four-star positions. These jobs require the character and courage to do one’s duty and behave honorably whatever the personal consequences. I have been asked by some retired officers if it is fair to expect a senior military leader to stand up to or refuse to accept an immoral, unethical or illegal order from the president or the secretary of defense — particularly when a senior leader gets supposedly independent guidance from a government lawyer to accept the order.
But fairness is irrelevant. It also isn’t fair to send some people into combat and not others, yet the responsibility comes with the job, and no one is forced to accept these positions.
At the start of his second term, Mr. Trump removed one of the finest officers I have ever known, Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., as chairman of the Joint Chiefs. I always thought well of General Caine, but he lacks the experience and stature that General Brown had. Mr. Trump and Mr. Hegseth do not want candid, sound and independent advice from senior military leaders, including General Caine. They want personal loyalty and compliance with their orders.
To ensure this result, the president and secretary of defense replaced senior military lawyers with loyalists who seem willing to support legal justifications for the things the executive wants to do, however frivolous or flawed. For the most part, Mr. Trump seems to be getting what he wants from his lawyers and from his generals.
Our senior military leaders, including General Caine, might face even tougher tests from here. Although General Caine has indicated that there are no plans for the use of troops in the midterm elections, Mr. Trump has refused to rule out the possibility. No pretense of normality, no artificial distinction between policy and military matters, and no lawyer’s justification can relieve our senior military leaders from their oath, the burdens of their conscience, or of the judgment of the men and women they lead, the American people and history. From all of these, there is no place to hide.
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10) We Know How to Help America’s Poorest Kids. Don’t Throw That Away.
By Zayn Siddique, Sept. 1, 2026
Mr. Siddique was the principal deputy director of the White House Domestic Policy Council from 2022 to 2023.
"At a time when children under 5 are the poorest age group in America, we cannot think small about children’s opportunity. We also know more than the Johnson administration’s team did in 1965. Researchers have documented how toxic stress in a child’s early years reshapes brain architecture and how supportive relationships can buffer the damage. Children in poverty need what children with means are far more likely to receive — medical attention, emotional support and individualized care."
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/01/opinion/head-start-education-funding.html
Rebecca Blackwell/Associated Press
In 1965, as part of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty, the federal government asked experts a novel question: What does a poor child in America need to start kindergarten on equal footing with their better-off peers?
The answer was, essentially, a whole lot. Early learning classes, physical checkups, mental health services, nutrition support and disability services, all provided in partnership with families and communities because poverty affects every part of a young child’s life. That answer became the basis of the federal Head Start program. For 60 years it has stood as the U.S. government’s clearest statement about what we owe our poorest children.
In August, the Trump administration proposed replacing many of Head Start’s federal standards with state child-care licensing minimums. An analysis from Arizona State University’s Children’s Equity Project found that in the vast majority of states, this change would weaken requirements for Head Start teacher qualifications, class sizes, health screenings and family services. The administration calls this deregulation. What the administration is actually doing is hollowing out the only place in federal law where the government spells out what a poor child deserves.
The recent debate over Head Start has focused on whether federal programs have too much red tape and whether states could better spend those dollars by tailoring programs for their own needs. Those questions miss the point of Head Start’s federal floor, which is to ensure that all children living below the poverty line receive the same basic services, no matter where they live. No other federal program for children makes promises that specific and, without them, what remains is just another source of funding, not any real standards.
I started my career as a community organizer in New York City public housing, where Head Start was often the first institution that treated all of a family’s needs as connected. A child could get a vision screening in the same building as a parent learning about nutrition or a social worker helping with a housing application. Later, working on domestic policy in the White House, I led the team developing Head Start policy in the Biden administration. As an organizer and from the West Wing, I have seen Head Start works because it makes specific and exacting demands, not in spite of them.
The Trump administration says it wants to loosen the existing federal standards for Head Start to serve more children with the same dollars. Having worked on the Head Start rules, I know firsthand how difficult it is to maintain high standards when there aren’t enough qualified educators and budgets are tight.
When we saw Head Start programs were struggling to retain staff members who could earn better wages elsewhere, we knew raising salaries would require a delicate balancing act. After careful analysis, we settled on a plan that would phase in wage increases and exempt small programs that were under the most strain. We applied that same rigor when we started taking into account family housing costs for Head Start eligibility and when we put in place new lead-testing requirements. Ensuring the program kept up with the evolving challenges faced by poor families took hard work, but it was well worth doing. We never considered sacrificing the quality of services children received.
The proposed rollback does none of that work. It’s simply another attempt to render Head Start a dead letter; previously, Mr. Trump had contemplated eliminating Head Start funding in line with Project 2025’s recommendations. State licensing programs like those this rule change would adopt for Head Start do important work, but their aim is different. Many focus on child safety, while Head Start is instead asks what children in poverty need to thrive. A program that no longer requires health screenings, mental health support or structured family engagement abandons Head Start’s ambition that no American child should be, as President Johnson put it, “condemned to failure by the accident of his birth.”
Multiple recent studies have found children who attended Head Start showed lasting gains in high school graduation and employment rates and reduced rates of adult poverty. The high standards the program sets are working — and they remain legally required. When Congress last reauthorized Head Start in 2007, it included a provision that all but forbids the government from reducing quality precisely to prevent the unaccountable wholesale rollback the Trump administration is now attempting.
At a time when children under 5 are the poorest age group in America, we cannot think small about children’s opportunity. We also know more than the Johnson administration’s team did in 1965. Researchers have documented how toxic stress in a child’s early years reshapes brain architecture and how supportive relationships can buffer the damage. Children in poverty need what children with means are far more likely to receive — medical attention, emotional support and individualized care.
Head Start has been this country’s best attempt to make real the American dream. It is an institution that does not just serve children in poverty but declares what they are worth. The Trump administration’s proposal walks away from this. We should not let that happen. The nearly one million children the program serves depend on it.
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11) Israeli Operation in Gaza Kills 4, Palestinian Officials Say
Israel’s defense minister said the operation resulted in the capture of a senior Hamas member. Hamas said Israel sent covert operatives into Gaza City.
By Aaron Boxerman and Abu Bakr Bashir, Sept. 1, 2026
The site of an Israeli strike in Gaza City on Tuesday. Credit...Ebrahim Hajjaj/Reuters
The Israeli defense minister said Tuesday that Israel had captured a senior Hamas figure in Gaza, in an operation that local officials said had killed at least four people in the enclave and wounded several others.
The minister, Israel Katz, described the operation in a statement but many of the details — including the identity of the detained Hamas member — remained unclear on Tuesday afternoon.
The Hamas-run government in Gaza said in a statement that Israel had sent covert operatives into Gaza City but that they were subsequently discovered, leading Israeli forces to bombard the area so as to enable their escape.
Israel’s military did not respond to questions about Hamas’s account of events. It said in a statement that it had “struck several targets” in Gaza in order to “remove threat to the security forces.”
Mohammad Abu Aisha, a Palestinian living in Gaza City, described in an interview hearing gunfire and seeing a car that had been struck. Mohammad Abu Salmiya, the director of nearby Al Shifa hospital, said casualties had been brought to his facility.
Ismail Thawabteh, a spokesman for the Hamas-run government, said it was not clear whether Israeli forces had carried out the raid themselves or had worked with members of Israeli-backed Palestinian militias inside Gaza. The Israeli military declined to comment further.
Over 10 months after the Trump administration helped broker a truce in Gaza, Israel has continued to bombard the enclave on a near-daily basis. Mediators had hoped the cease-fire would lead to an end to the two-year war between Israel and Hamas, but the situation resembles war more closely than peace.
According to health officials in Gaza, more than 1,300 people have been killed in Israeli attacks since the cease-fire, which secured the release of the last hostages held by Hamas since the October 2023 attack on Israel that started the war. The officials’ tally does not say how many were combatants.
As part of the cease-fire, the Israeli military withdrew to an agreed-upon line inside Gaza but still controls more than half of the territory. That Israeli-controlled area was devastated during the war and, while most Palestinian residents were displaced, many of those who remain are affiliated with a handful of Gazan militias opposed to Hamas and backed by Israel.
Most of Gaza’s two million Palestinian residents are otherwise crowded into a small area along the coast, where Hamas remains entrenched. Aid officials say that while food is now more readily available than during the war — when many Gazans faced extreme hunger — most people are still living in squalid tent camps or half-destroyed homes.
In late July, President Trump announced a deal with Hamas that would see the group give up its weapons, a key Israeli precondition for allowing large-scale reconstruction in Gaza. Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, swiftly rejected the deal, saying it would not be effective in disarming Hamas.
Saher Alghorra contributed reporting.
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