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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 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 *..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........* *..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........* |
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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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) Salvadorans to Keep Deportation Protections for Now, Trump Officials Say
Temporary Protected Status for El Salvador was set to expire on Wednesday. The Trump administration said it would make an announcement about the program’s future at the “appropriate time.”
By Jazmine Ulloa and Madeleine Ngo, Sept. 9, 2026
Members of the National TPS Alliance hold a rally in front of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals courthouse in Pasadena, Calif., in June. Credit...Mark Abramson for The New York Times
The Trump administration said Wednesday morning that it would not move to cancel temporary humanitarian protections for more than 170,000 Salvadorans, for now, preserving their ability to live legally in the United States and shielding them from deportation.
Temporary Protected Status, or T.P.S., allows foreign nationals from troubled nations to live and work legally in the United States and was set to expire for El Salvador on Wednesday. But the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that an announcement regarding the Salvadorans’ status would come “at the appropriate time” and that until then, “Salvadoran individuals present in the U.S. under T.P.S. retain protection.”
The department did not provide more information on the timing of the announcement. The administration has at times waited several days after the program’s expiration to publicize its decision.
The move stands in stark contrast to how the Trump administration has treated the roughly 350,000 Haitians whose protections expired in July. Hundreds have been deported in recent weeks, and federal officials have targeted Haitian communities in the United States with an aggressive electronic ankle monitoring campaign. Administration officials and Homeland Security’s social media accounts have churned out celebratory videos of Haitians being put on deportation flights.
The administration’s push to remove those Haitians comes even as the State Department warns travelers not to visit Haiti for any reason because of crime and other threats. The department’s travel advisory for El Salvador, meanwhile, suggests exercising normal precautions.
The president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, has positioned himself as a willing White House ally central to the Trump administration’s efforts to accelerate deportations. In the spring of 2025, he helped detain more than 200 migrants deported from the United States to his country in a maximum-security prison. Experts have told The New York Times that Temporary Protected Status for Salvadorans earns Mr. Bukele political points at home, where remittances from U.S.-based family members are critical to the economy.
Still, many Salvadorans say they no longer feel safe staying with expired documentation as Immigration and Customs Enforcement sweeps across the country continue to entangle immigrants with and without legal residency.
In recent days, dozens of Latino evangelical leaders, T.P.S. holders and immigrant rights supporters have petitioned lawmakers in Washington calling for long-term protections. Some Salvadorans have begun packing, buying flights and preparing to self-deport.
“For families from El Salvador, it is a very difficult moment,” said José Palma, a Salvadoran T.P.S. holder and spokesman for the National TPS Alliance, an organization focused on defending the program. Many have lived in the United States for the past 25 years, he added, and many have established deep roots. They own cars, homes and mortgages. They have U.S.-born children in high school or heading off to college.
“We are seeing families struggling to stay stable,” he said, citing his own uncertain fate.
Agustín Quiles, who heads Mission Talk, an advocacy organization for Latino evangelicals that gathered this week in Washington, said the pastors in his network report that their members are afraid to go to school, work and church.
“There is a lot of pain, a lot of suffering,” Mr. Quiles said.
The Trump administration has already paused or terminated T.P.S. for 13 of the 17 countries once covered. The Supreme Court ruled in June that the administration could end the program for hundreds of thousands of Haitians and Syrians.
With less than two months before the midterm elections, aggressive immigration tactics have emerged as a thorny issue for Republicans. Images of people being rounded up at airports and from their cars have prompted pushback, even as members of President Trump’s base have called for more heavy-handed tactics.
El Salvador was the first country designated under the T.P.S. program after Congress created it with bipartisan support and President George H.W. Bush signed it into law in 1990. The status provides safe haven for people from foreign nations engulfed in armed conflict, natural disasters and crises, and the government can renew it up to 18 months at a time.
Critics, including Mr. Trump, say the program was intended to provide only short-term relief. Immigrant rights and refugee aid organizations counter that the status has become one of the few paths to safety within an outdated and overburdened U.S. immigration system that Congress has failed to overhaul.
Daysi González, 31, a Democratic political operative and partner with Solidarity Strategies, a progressive consulting firm, has lived in the United States since she arrived in California from her native El Salvador for Christmas in 2000. She and her family entered the country on tourist visas but applied for T.P.S. after their home country was hit by powerful earthquakes that winter. She ended up staying for decades.
Ms. González said she would have applied for longer-term residency if she had been able to, but the program does not provide a legal pathway to lawful permanent resident status.
Now, she has been posting videos on social media chronicling what could be her final days in the United States. On Tuesday, she was searching for flights and waiting to hear back from her employer on whether she could keep her job.
“Without confirmation that I can legally work, that I can renew my license — living here will just be too dangerous,” she said.
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2) Netanyahu’s Rivals Call Him ‘Unfit’ After Report He Was Warned Before Oct. 7 Attack
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he would sue the newspaper Haaretz after it reported that the Emirati president had warned him Hamas was planning a major operation against Israel.
By Ephrat Livni and Isabel Kershner, Published Sept. 8, 2026, Updated Sept. 9, 2026
Isabel Kershner reported from Jerusalem.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel at a news conference in Jerusalem on Tuesday. Credit...Ammar Awad/Reuters
Israeli opposition politicians said on Tuesday that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was “unfit” for office after a newspaper reported he had been warned that Hamas was planning a major operation weeks before the Oct. 7, 2023, attack but did not alert security officials.
The report in the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, which The New York Times could not confirm, said that Mr. Netanyahu had a 45-minute phone call with Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, the president of the United Arab Emirates, in late September 2023, and was told about a plan by Hamas to attack Israel and destabilize the region. Mr. Netanyahu’s office has denied the report.
Mr. Netanyahu was said to have been unfazed by the revelations, responding that Israel was prepared for any scenario, according to the report.
On Wednesday, he vowed to sue Haaretz for libel, calling the report “a wicked fabrication with clear political timing,” in a post on social media. He said security officials had found no record that he had spoken with Sheikh Mohamed between September 2023 and the Oct. 7 attack.
A day earlier, Mr. Netanyahu’s office similarly said that he had not been personally warned by the Emirati president. “No warning was given to the Prime Minister from the United Arab Emirates,” it said. “If there was any relevant information, it was passed through intelligence channels between the two countries.”
The Emirati foreign ministry said in a statement that it did not comment on “media stories or speculation regarding conversations between government leaders.” It added that the Emirati and Israeli governments had “open and direct lines of communication” and that “all relevant intelligence” was transmitted between them.
The report that Mr. Netanyahu may not have been responsive to warnings about the attacks landed at a particularly sensitive time for him and Israel. National elections are planned for late October, and Mr. Netanyahu’s chances of being re-elected are not assured.
The questions about what the Israeli prime minister had been told, by whom and when in the period leading to the Hamas-led assault have become hot-button election issues in a deeply polarized country.
Mr. Netanyahu has sought to present himself as the only politician positioned to ensure Israel’s security. And he has seemed to shift blame onto others for the Oct. 7 assault, the single deadliest day in Israel’s history, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 250 others taken hostage to Gaza.
Recently, Mr. Netanyahu asserted that Israeli security officials had chosen not to wake him up in the early hours of Oct. 7, despite worrying signs from Gaza, because they had feared he would respond aggressively and set off a war with Hamas.
“If they had woken me up, everything would have looked different,” he said in a campaign video clip last month.
But when Mr. Netanyahu’s office released a schedule of his actions immediately after he was awakened at 6:29 a.m. that day, when the Hamas assault began, it appeared that he had not ordered an immediate counterattack and that hours had passed before he spoke to the military chief of staff.
Ultimately, the Israeli military response in Gaza destroyed much of the enclave, led to widespread privation and displacement of Palestinians and killed more than 70,000 people, including tens of thousands of civilians, Gazan officials said.
Mr. Netanyahu’s political challengers have characterized his far-right government and its policies as risks to Israel’s future, pointing to the country’s international isolation since the war in Gaza and the increased chaos in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where violence by extremist settlers has become rampant.
These challengers cited the report on Tuesday as evidence that Mr. Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, had become a liability.
The leaders of four Israeli opposition political parties called in a joint statement on Tuesday for an independent commission to investigate the 2023 attack after the elections. “The public in Israel deserves to know what happened before, during and after the Oct. 7 massacre,” they wrote.
Many Israelis had long called for an independent commission to investigate official failures that might have led to the attack, but Mr. Netanyahu had resisted. When he finally agreed early this year to an investigating commission, he proposed a process that deviated from Israeli law for independent inquiries.
The opposition politicians cited a “series” of revelations about Mr. Netanyahu’s actions and what they described as failures to act leading up to the attacks that have undermined faith in his leadership and government, and his claims that he is the key to Israel’s security.
“Netanyahu and his partners in the Oct. 7 government are unfit to continue in office,” the opposition leaders wrote. “We will work in coordination and with the required responsibility to prevent them from leading to another disaster.”
Mr. Netanyahu is trailing in the polls, and his primary rival, Gadi Eisenkot, a former army chief of staff, leads him in polling when respondents are asked how much they trust each candidate on security matters. Mr. Eisenkot, who heads a relatively new party, has accused Mr. Netanyahu of prioritizing his political survival over the interests of Israel.
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3) Denver Sues to Block Armed ICE Agents at Voting Sites
The City of Denver and civil rights groups argued that sightings of ICE agents at polling places are having a chilling effect.
By Jazmine Ulloa, Sept. 10, 2026
The City of Denver, Latino civil rights organizations and government watch groups asked a federal judge on Thursday to block the Trump administration from allowing armed federal immigration agents to serve warrants at polling sites.
The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Washington, D.C., asserts that Markwayne Mullin, the homeland security secretary, and David Venturella, the acting head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, are allowing federal agents to enforce civil immigration laws at polling locations as a matter of policy. The plaintiffs argue that the practice violates federal laws protecting free and fair elections.
“The presence of federal force at the polls interferes with the smooth administration of elections at the local level,” the lawsuit states. “It disrupts voting and makes it more difficult for state and local election officials and law enforcement to do their jobs by making polling places spaces of confrontation.”
The Department of Homeland Security and ICE did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Speaking to reporters last week in New York, Mr. Mullin said that Democrats were fear-mongering and that ICE was not patrolling polling places. “The only reason why we would be at polling places is if there is a threat to that polling place,” he said, “or we’re serving a warrant.”
The groups that brought the suit argue such actions violate federal law, which bans military personnel or other “armed” agents from being “at any place where a general or special election is held, unless such force be necessary to repel armed enemies of the United States.”
Their case is the first lawsuit against the administration over such actions.
Civil rights and government watch groups say they have chronicled several encounters at polling sites nationwide since the spring that they said failed to meet that bar. In May, they allege, armed agents “swarmed” the parking lot of an active polling site in San Antonio to detain a person in plain view of voters until the county sheriff ordered them leave.
In June, ICE agents entered a polling site in Syracuse, N.Y., to interrogate an election volunteer over a social media post that she made five months earlier regarding the fatal ICE shooting of a woman in Minneapolis, according to the lawsuit.
The possibility of federal agents at the ballot box has intensified concerns of Election Day chaos in an already volatile campaign season. Ahead of the 2026 midterms in November, the Trump administration has sought to impose restrictions on mail voting, prompted a congressional redistricting race and escalated efforts to identify and deport noncitizens who registered to vote, even with no evidence of widespread voter fraud.
Fears that the Trump administration might send armed federal agents or troops to polling places or election offices have simmered among Democrats, voting rights groups and immigrant rights networks for months. Mr. Trump has long repeated unfounded assertions of electoral fraud and has called for Republican officials to “take over” elections in parts of the country.
Trump administration officials have said there is no plan to deploy armed agents or troops in the upcoming elections. But they have also not ruled out the possibility that armed agents could be present at polling locations or involved in elections.
In the lawsuit filed on Thursday, city and county officials in Denver said the area is home to a large immigrant population, making it a likely target for ICE operations during the midterm election.
The presence of armed officers could deter residents from casting votes or dropping off mail-in ballots and could fuel anxiety among election workers and volunteers, they said in the lawsuit. Election officials in Denver have already scheduled training for election workers on how to identify federal agents in plain clothes, document their presence and de-escalate interactions, according to the lawsuit.
In a statement, Mayor Mike Johnston of Denver, a Democrat who has sparred with the Trump administration over its mass deportation efforts, said his city would “fight tooth and nail” to prevent the stationing of ICE agents near polling sites.
“Our right to vote is powerful and enshrined in the U.S. Constitution and U.S. Code,” Paul López, the Denver clerk and recorder, said in a statement.
The groups involved in the lawsuit — Common Cause; the League of United Latin American Citizens, or LULAC; and UnidosUS — said recent ICE activity at polling locations was already chilling voter registration drives, canvassing efforts and civic participation in the electoral process. The organizations have also diverted funding, staff time and ad space away from standard voter mobilization efforts toward establishing rapid-response safety networks, “Vote Safe from ICE” educational materials and de-escalation training.
In a statement, Janet Murguía, the president and chief executive of UnidosUS, said sending officers into polling locations was “not immigration enforcement” but “voter suppression, plain and simple.”
Juan Proaño, the chief executive of LULAC, called the actions part of the administration’s “attempts to weaken the very institutions it is entrusted to protect.”
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4) D.O.J. Escalates Threats to States in Battle for Election Records
The department sent letters to at least 30 states demanding they retain election records, an outgrowth of President Trump’s baseless claims of widespread election fraud.
By Nick Corasaniti, Sept. 10, 2026
Workers at the Los Angeles County election center in November 2024. The Department of Justice sued about 30 states to force them to send unredacted voter lists in its efforts to find widespread fraud. Credit...Mark Abramson for The New York Times
The Department of Justice sent threatening letters to at least 30 top election officials across the country, expanding its efforts to gain access to private voter data and election records.
The letters warned states not to destroy any records related to the 2024 election, explaining that their chief election officials “are currently under investigation” and subject to “ongoing litigation.” The notices come amid a barrage of efforts by President Trump and his administration, which have been fruitless so far, to find evidence of widespread voter fraud.
It is not clear what the department is investigating, nor whether its probe is criminal or civil in nature. The letters do not cite any criminal statutes. Instead, they point to some of the same claims made previously as part of the administration’s ongoing effort to identify fraud in the nation’s elections, including machine anomalies and noncitizen voting. In court, the Justice Department has tried to force states to hand over unredacted voter lists, including personal information like driver's license numbers and partial Social Security numbers.
The Justice Department has sued 30 different states for this data. They’ve lost 23 of those cases and have won none. Decisions are pending in the rest.
Mr. Trump has falsely claimed for years that millions of noncitizens are illegally registered to vote or have actually cast ballots. Multiple studies have shown the practice is exceedingly rare.
Kiersten Pels, a spokeswoman for the Department of Justice, confirmed that the department sent the letters to “the states we are in active litigation against regarding their failure to provide the full” statewide registered voter list. Ms. Pels did not respond to questions about unspecified criminal investigations.
Calli Jones, a spokeswoman for the Arizona secretary of state’s office, said the office would comply with what the law requires, regardless of any requests from the Justice Department.
“Our office and our counties follow state document retention laws,” Ms. Jones said in an interview, “and to imply otherwise is an insult to the work that election administrators do in Arizona.”
While the states the Justice Department has sued are largely controlled by Democrats, a number of Republican states, including Kentucky, Idaho, West Virginia and Georgia, have also been targeted.
Officials in some of the states being sued, including Maine and Georgia, said they had not yet received a letter from the department.
The new letters come as election officials across the country have faced increasingly hostile rhetoric and threats from the upper echelons of the Trump administration.
Harmeet Dhillon, the head of the Justice Department’s civil rights division, sent letters in July to the top election official in all 50 states threatening criminal prosecution if noncitizens cast a ballot that was counted in the midterm elections. Later that month, Markwayne Mullin, the homeland security secretary, threatened election officials in a speech, saying they could face prison time if they did not comply with the Trump administration’s efforts to change election policies.
The Trump administration is also actively pleading with the Supreme Court to allow its plans to restrict mail-in voting before the midterms. The Department of Homeland Security is in the midst of a weekslong hunt for noncitizens among the nation’s registered voters despite an absence of evidence of widespread fraud.
Francisco Aguilar, the Democratic secretary of state of Nevada, said that the letters followed a pattern of threats coming from the administration.
“It’s the constant ‘flood the zone’ of harassment and intimidation and threats of legal action hoping we’d fold at some point,” Mr. Aguilar said.
He added, “We’re going to continue to follow the law and do what’s in the best interest of our voters.”
Officials are allowed to destroy voting records 22 months after each election. That date was Sept. 5; the department sent the letters a day prior.
Election officials are well versed in policies regarding document retention, explained David Becker, a former voting rights lawyer for the Justice Department, and such threatening letters are unnecessary. Mr. Becker said the Justice Department may be seeking to pressure the states for more information than is legally necessary.
Sending what is effectively a sternly worded reminder to states two months before an election “is completely meaningless,” Mr. Becker said. “There’s only two reasons to send that letter: Either the lawyers who send it don’t understand litigation obligations, or they’re hoping that states will misinterpret it and retain more than they’re legally required.”
Kellen Browning and Alan Feuer contributed reporting.
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5) Big Tech Fooled America Once. The Second Time’s Not Going So Well.
By Oren Cass, Sept. 10, 2026
Mr. Cass, a contributing Opinion writer, is the chief economist at American Compass, a conservative think tank.
Brandon Celi
The popular uprising against data centers has emerged so suddenly that politicians stumble over their own pitchforks racing to the front of the crowd. Where most industries would be launching into crisis P.R. mode, perhaps even engaging in some soul-searching, artificial intelligence companies seem determined to plow full steam ahead, building the future they want, even if they’re the only ones who want it.
The outrage over data centers can’t really be about environmental impact. These structures have always been water-sucking, power-draining, forest-clearing eyesores, yet the recent plunge in support for them is three times as deep as the one that nuclear power plants faced in the year after Three Mile Island. What has changed is people’s awareness of what’s going on inside: artificial intelligence. Less than a quarter of Americans expect A.I. to have a positive impact on K-12 education, arts and entertainment, how people do their jobs, the economy, personal relationships or happiness over the next 20 years.
Once known for our optimism and ambition in pursuit of new frontiers, Americans no longer trust that technological progress will make life better. Who can blame us? For the past two decades, Silicon Valley’s leaders have treated their fellow citizens like caged guinea pigs, bombarding us with inappropriate and culturally corrosive content, turning a blind eye to social dysfunction and outright addiction, flooding schools with technology that hooked young users but did little for education and then sheltering their own children from the products that they marketed to ours. The American people afforded the technologists wide latitude to pursue disruptive innovation, trusting that we would share in the resulting gains. We instead found ourselves exploited.
In some respects it is the A.I. industry’s misfortune to arrive now, when Silicon Valley is no longer entitled to the benefit of the doubt, but its leaders seem to be going out of their way to destroy any residual trust they might otherwise have built upon. Rather than take seriously the need to offer a positive vision for how the technology will benefit ordinary Americans — and then the need to make that vision a reality — the A.I. companies seem content to unleash wave after wave of products that cause obvious harm while delivering the message that this is all inevitable and you can get on board or get left behind.
In a noteworthy articulation of that mind-set last month, President Trump fumed on social media that “If we kill the Golden Goose, you will only have yourselves to blame” and that the only reason to oppose data centers is if you “want to end up being backwards and poor.”
That’s not going to work.
The industry and its political allies cannot hope to just brazen through, flattening whatever opposition they hit. The A.I. companies may seem all-powerful, but they need the nation’s support to transform both physical and economic landscapes in accordance with their plans. They are on a crash course with the populist fury already dominating American politics; a collision would be a disaster for all involved, disabling an industry that has enormous potential and degrading the country’s economic prospects and national security.
The disaster can still be avoided if San Francisco and Washington accept that rapid technological progress, especially in a democracy, can’t succeed without the public’s full belief that it will benefit. To some extent, the A.I. companies can correct course on their own, curtailing harmful uses of their models and building the kinds of real-world applications — for families navigating health crises, for contractors renovating houses — that will improve people’s lives.
Coders at these labs have sunk untold resources into creating the ideal coding interface. What would a purpose-built plumber’s interface look like? Could it prepare a daily schedule with tools and parts lists, keep customers up-to-date on expected arrival times, take incoming calls and schedule new appointments in open slots and then send out all the bills? Some set of A.I.-enabled devices and processes would surely allow a hotel maid to clean more rooms faster with less hassle and physical strain. But none of that will exist unless someone who understands the technology also takes the time to understand the job.
In most cases it will be in the companies’ economic interest to reduce the harms from their technology and prove the benefits. When it’s not, lawmakers should put up barriers that redirect them. Silicon Valley may have enjoyed the days of Mark Zuckerberg’s infamous directive to “move fast and break things,” but it turns out that we were the things being broken. We will not put up with that again.
A.I. was supposed to be different. OpenAI, at one time the leading research lab, made its debut in 2015 as a nonprofit organization with a mission “to advance digital intelligence in the way that is most likely to benefit humanity as a whole, unconstrained by a need to generate financial return.” In 2016, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, IBM and Amazon convened the “Partnership on Artificial Intelligence to Benefit People and Society.” That year, Satya Nadella, the chief executive of Microsoft, listed his top design principle for A.I.: It “must be designed to assist humanity.” In 2018, Google made “be socially beneficial” its own first A.I. principle.
That all changed in 2022 when Sam Altman, OpenAI’s chief executive, released the first public version of ChatGPT. He put an Instacart product manager in his late 20s in charge of it, and they began focusing not on lofty ideals but on how much time they could get people to spend on the platform. By 2025, OpenAI had largely restructured as a for-profit company. That year, it released a model update that internal testing had flagged as sycophantic but which was better at keeping users engaged.
Chatbots frequently give wrong answers and terrible advice, and in extreme cases encourage self-harm, but these artificial companions are now insinuating themselves into our work and families and leisure, even offering themselves as replacements for our social or romantic partners. Ever more A.I.-generated job applications are being processed ever faster by A.I. screeners. Teachers and students alike lament that the tools are undermining the foundations of the educational process; research is pointing strongly toward catastrophic declines in academic performance. Customer service encounters are becoming Kafkaesque adventures that leave us feeling powerless. All while A.I. slop is filling inboxes and social media feeds and A.I.-enabled scams seek relentlessly to trick us.
According to the A.I. visionaries, the next casualty will be your job. Dario Amodei, Anthropic’s chief executive, told Axios last year that 50 percent of entry-level white-collar jobs could vanish in one to five years, with unemployment rising to between 10 percent and 20 percent. Elon Musk has said “there will come a point where no job is needed.” Mr. Altman wrote that for “many kinds of labor,” wages “will fall toward zero” and warned that “if public policy doesn’t adapt accordingly, most people will end up worse off than they are today.”
The visionary’s typical idea of a solution, a universal basic income paid to the masses no longer able to support themselves, would consolidate yet more power in coastal castles and consign everyone else to serfdom. Mr. Altman promotes a future in which “A.I. produces most of the world’s basic goods and services” and taxes on the A.I. companies provide “opportunity to directly distribute ownership and wealth to citizens.” In his telling, “people will be freed up to spend more time with people they care about, care for people, appreciate art and nature or work toward social good.”
Does anyone believe that’s how things would go?
What we can say for sure is it’s not what ordinary people — people who work for a living — want. In a forthcoming report on recent polling by American Compass, the think tank where I work, people said they would prefer a world in which they “must still work to support themselves and their families” but A.I. “improves the quality and productivity of jobs” over a vision like Mr. Altman’s by four to one.
If the industry had any better story to offer the public, its advertisements would surely carry that message. Instead, they indict more brutally than an outside observer could. An OpenAI Super Bowl ad pitched its vision to math whizzes who like chess and Linux and want to write software, an exceptionally small share of the population. Google filled N.B.A. playoff telecasts with the implausible example of a high schooler using Gemini to learn how to sink a game-winning shot. Seemingly at a loss, Anthropic released a surreal spot this summer that opens on short clips of a burning house, an open-pit mine in an impoverished country, rows of gravestones adorned with American flags, a street riot, a homeless man and on and on while voices ask such questions as “How do we really ensure that what we’re aiming to achieve really does benefit the majority of people?”
The American people are right to insist that companies commanding trillion-dollar valuations and purporting to restructure the economy and society should have some semblance of an answer to that question.
This is precisely the kind of problem that democratic capitalism is designed to fix. Through their elected representatives and at community meetings organized to block construction, the American people are beginning to use their leverage to demand that technological progress serve them, too. And with so many trillions of dollars at stake, the powers that be may finally have the incentive to go along.
As a first step, the A.I. companies need to stop experimenting on us. Their leaders cannot have it both ways, waxing poetic about the unprecedented power of the technology and the extraordinary future it portends, and then casually dumping it into the public square to see what happens. OpenAI engages in what it euphemizes as “iterative deployment,” meaning that it releases models whose risks and capabilities it does not fully understand so that it can learn from how people misuse them or what harms they cause out in the world. While the company frames this as a way to advance more gradually and carefully, in reality it seeks mass adoption of its products, benefiting from market share gains when they work and letting the rest of us pay the price when they don’t. Mr. Musk gleefully promoted xAI’s ability to generate and share deepfake pictures of real people without their clothes, cutting back only when outrage about exploitation of minors became overwhelming.
We countenance this in no other industry, and we shouldn’t here. Undoubtedly, it’s handy for the labs to use the public as guinea pigs. But the long-term cost will be high as a disenchanted public throws more and more obstacles in their way. And we should be skeptical of the claims that rapid commercialization is vital to the research agenda in the first place. OpenAI’s obsession with capturing eyeballs like a social media company was a key reason it fell behind Anthropic, which focused on developing productivity tools. Neither company needs us using its chatbots as therapists to continue improving its technology.
Is it naïve to imagine competing companies worth trillions of dollars slowing user growth on their own? Maybe not. Casual consumer adoption has never been where the economic value of the models lies, nor is it necessary to packaging the “intelligence” in useful products. The brand value in being the not-terrible A.I. company might be quite high. And the leading labs are already showing a willingness to contemplate research slowdowns under certain circumstances. But while they obsess about hypothetical risks of the advanced capabilities that might also lead to the greatest benefits, they take a damn-the-torpedoes attitude in the commercial space, where they are thus far accomplishing the least and causing the most harm. They can, and should, alter that balance.
Still, a firm legal shove does wonders to focus a board of directors’ attention. Lawmakers at both the state and federal levels should make the developers and deployers of A.I. strictly liable for harms that they cause. Where so-called agentic A.I. is acting autonomously, it should be treated as an agent of whoever provides and whoever controls it, leaving them liable just as employers are for their employees, including criminally liable if the agents commit crimes. The concept of an “attractive nuisance” should also apply: Giving minors access to a bot that will do their homework for them is no better than leaving heavy machinery lying around the yard.
Liability creates incentives, but we also need rules. The science fiction classic “Dune” offers a useful paradigm: “Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind.” Chatbots should not be allowed to adopt human personas, profess emotions or act as companions. Protecting consumers in that way wouldn’t keep the companies from building more advanced models, and it wouldn’t interfere with innovative uses in, say, drug discovery and cybersecurity. Nor would it hamper the United States in the competition with China for A.I. dominance. To the contrary, the People’s Republic is already placing limits on companion bots.
As for the threat these models pose to the job market, greater worker power is the strongest defense. So long as management alone gets to choose the tools it deploys, it will always prefer those that decrease or eliminate the need for actual human employees, with all their tiresome expectations of living wages and basic respect and so on, or that at least minimize their autonomy and keep them closely monitored. But if workers must also approve the use of these models, that equation would flip on its head. Management would have to find approaches that make workers’ jobs better; A.I. companies would have to develop tools that they could expect workers to approve.
The objection again will be that such constraints somehow slow innovation. In this instance, what they actually do is channel innovation away from sheer profit maximization toward the “socially beneficial” technology that was supposed to be the goal all along. They accelerate the kind of innovation that the nation wants.
The most transformative innovators take responsibility for making their breakthroughs useful. General Electric became a giant because Thomas Edison understood the need to build businesses that could generate electricity, transmit it and use it, both powering industries and illuminating homes. Alcoa figured out how to produce aluminum inexpensively, then collaborated with the auto and aerospace industries to realize the material’s benefits and also sold aluminum cookware door to door. IBM didn’t send out catalogs and wait for mainframe orders; it bundled its hardware with software, systems engineers, training and financing and then helped develop industry-defining applications, including the American Airlines reservation system.
Anthropic, Google and OpenAI have to do the same. Business strategists might tell these companies to stay focused on their core task, and financial analysts would surely advise investing only where the return in profit will be highest. Leading the way to a new technological era demands more.
Pressed on how their work will improve people’s lives, A.I. leaders tend to start with the promise of lifesaving cures to rare diseases. Those would be wonderful, but the typical person has no rare disease. To really change health care for the better, A.I. must also make it possible for doctors and nurses to spend more time treating patients instead of dealing with administrative work. It must manage health records more efficiently and eliminate the infuriating hassle of insurance paperwork. And it must help people run and interpret at-home diagnostic tests.
In the workplace, A.I. has begun proving itself as a productivity tool for knowledge workers, but many other workers encounter it only as a tool of surveillance. A.I. has the potential to revolutionize manufacturing, but that will require a level of partnership between technologists and machinists that neither group has experienced or knows how to pursue. It’s one thing to demonstrate in a lab that a flexible, self-training robot can improve efficiency on the factory floor. It’s another thing entirely to persuade owners of small machine-tool shops to take the risk and then help them with installation and working out the kinks. Without those latter steps, the gains never come. The A.I. companies, with their valuations in the trillions of dollars, will need to allocate a few billion toward going out into the world and showing small manufacturing businesses what their technology can do.
Recent research from Google indicates that builders, mechanics, repairmen and so on are successfully using A.I. to help diagnose problems and find fixes. But the benefits that they’re getting on their own resemble those of a souped-up search engine. In most sectors, frontline workers and small business owners rely on others to package and deploy technology for them. Most tradespeople can’t vibe-code their own custom apps; many don’t even have websites.
As for inevitable labor market disruptions, we need a three-layer approach.
First, whenever possible, the goal should be to make jobs better and more productive, not to make them disappear.
Second, where some classes of jobs are eliminated, employers should help existing employees make the transition into other kinds of jobs that are created in the process. Sometimes this will be in other areas of the company that need to grow as output expands, other times in entirely new positions to support new ways of doing business.
Third, where workers find themselves cut loose and in need of support, both public and private-sector programs should focus on getting them into new positions first, so that retraining can occur on the job with a new employer. Instead of promising blanket payments to all Americans as a substitute for having a job and playing a productive role in the economic life of the nation, A.I. companies serious about helping workers should establish large endowments to help people who need support during a transition and provide funding for the employers who then hire and train them.
The question will then remain: If A.I. is going to play the economic role and produce the level of output that its promoters claim, how can a share of the rewards be allocated to the common good? The answer is that a tax on this new form of economic activity should go toward shoring up the nation’s system of social insurance. The case for rapid expansion of data centers should not be “you’ll lose your job, but we’ll send you a check,” but rather “some of the value created by the computation in these buildings will fund Social Security and Medicare for every American retiree and provide a new family benefit for working households raising children.” Just as people rightly reject a universal basic income as a bribe to shut up and go away, they will recognize reinforcement of the nation’s intergenerational compact, into which all pay and from which all can benefit, as a worthy commitment to solidarity among citizens.
Five hundred years of human history have repeatedly shown that technological progress and economic growth proceed much faster if the public believes it will benefit. This idea was so important, and unfortunately so novel for the field of economics, that the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded last year’s Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for work that “emphasized the importance of society being open to new ideas and allowing change” and that explained “how creative destruction creates conflicts that must be managed in a constructive manner.”
One of the recipients, the economic historian Joel Mokyr, attributes the birth of modernity to “the emergence of a belief in the usefulness of progress.” When people fight against change that they do not think they will gain from, that resistance gets treated as a political rather than economic problem. But “the political battles over technology,” he argues, “have profound implications for economic history.” One of these is “that technological progress in a given society is by and large a temporary and vulnerable process.” We must not take for granted the social, political and economic conditions that produced such incredible improvements in the American way of life during the 20th century. To the contrary, they were hard-won, extraordinary and difficult to maintain.
No law of economics or nature guarantees that those conditions will persist. “Once bitten, twice shy,” Professor Mokyr warns. “When technology causes a great deal of social harm, it is not surprising that many intrusive techniques of our time, from genetically modified organisms to nuclear power, are regarded with great suspicion.”
Americans have been bitten, hard. The technology titans exerted so much control over the American economy in recent decades, drove so much of its growth and captured so much of the resulting wealth. All the while, they acted with appalling disregard for the well-being of ordinary Americans and often conveyed outright disdain for their way of life. When they needed large numbers of workers, the call from the design studio went not to their own nation’s heartland but to China. “We don’t have an obligation to solve America’s problems,” an Apple executive told The Times in 2012.
Now, suddenly, Silicon Valley needs the nation’s cooperation to proceed, and that assent is not forthcoming. Americans feel no obligation to solve the companies’ problems either. While the turnabout may be satisfying, the breakdown in social trust is a serious problem for all involved and threatens the nation’s future security and prosperity. The United States needs to lead the world not only in the development of A.I. models but also in the capacity to run them in the broadest possible set of contexts. If done right, the economic opportunity is enormous. Just the building and running of the data centers themselves, with production of their associated materials, energy and infrastructure, could help spur a renaissance in manufacturing, construction and resource extraction that would help revitalize struggling regions.
But forgive ordinary citizens their skepticism. They have heard such promises often over the past generation, and the people making them always seem to be the ones reaping the rewards. We are at the start of the reckoning for an era in which innovation was less often done for ordinary Americans and more often done to them. People are rightly asking: What, and who, is technological progress for? The A.I. labs need an answer, fast.
Retraining workers who have lost their jobs to new technology or to employers’ relocation to cheaper places has already been proven not to work. Look at the uncountable number of people in rural areas who now drive 50+ miles to low-paying jobs because work gives them dignity but barely pays enough to maintain their vehicles. Look at the Rust Belt, where “arts districts” are what is supposed to jumpstart property values. We know the promises are worth less than nothing.
Do you blame Silicone Valley and the plutocrats that run that show or do you blame our version of Democracy? That is, the distorted U.S. version that cedes so much influence to our plutocrats and corporations who spend billions to rig our elections and our courts and buy off our politicians? Corporations are supposed to chase profits and the government is supposed to regulate them so their behavior doesn't cause excessive harm to the overall public. Which side of this balance is failing to pull its weight? Of course, the problem is that now that we've gotten so far out of balance, it is very difficult correct- the imbalance is self-perpetuating. Can the people bring about genuine campaign finance reform when the Supreme Court is stacked with justices hand picked by right-wing plutocrats?Let's at least try.
Sam Altman was sacked by his own board in late 2023 only to be reinstated. While the machinations were orchestrated by various players including Google, Elon Mush, Nvidia - all pretty much household names at this point associated with excess power, excess hubris, and feared by the population at large - one thing about Altman‘s removal is CLEAR: his own Board of Directors saw him as a threat. As it turns out they were right. We are about to be bulldozed once again into accepting a technological juggernaut which its own creator is readily admit they cannot control, but it’s ok America, because President Donald Trump says it is. One can only wonder what sweetheart deal has been given to our feckless leader, who, at 80, won’t really live long enough to enjoy his fortune, but the rest of us will have to suffer with his decisions for decades.
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6) The Iran War Is Pushing Global Coal Use to Record Highs
Five years after virtually every world leader agreed to “phase down” the burning of coal for climate reasons, the fuel is more widely used than ever.
By Brad Plumer, Reporting from Washington, Sept. 10, 2026
Coal barges in East Kalimantan, Indonesia, last month. Ahmad Mulia Panjaitan/Associated Press
The world is set to burn record amounts of coal this year, in large part because of the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, the International Energy Agency said on Thursday.
The agency projected that global coal consumption will increase 1.2 percent this year compared to last year, reaching an all-time high of 8.94 billion metric tons. A big reason is that many countries have struggled to procure enough oil and natural gas because of disruptions to shipping in the Strait of Hormuz. That has led places like Europe, China, Japan and Korea to burn more coal for electricity instead. While coal is highly polluting, it is also abundant and often cheap.
At the same time, a powerful global weather pattern known as El Niño is expected to drive up coal use this year in countries like Vietnam and India by increasing demand for air-conditioning and reducing output from hydropower dams, the agency said.
The increase in coal use is a major setback for efforts to address climate change. When burned for fuel, coal produces more air pollutants and more planet-warming greenhouse gases than any other energy source, including natural gas. Five years ago at an international climate conference in Glasgow, diplomats from nearly every country agreed to “phase down” global coal consumption to slow the rise in global temperatures.
Since that agreement, however, many countries have continued to burn even more coal to help meet rising demand for electricity. While nations are also installing solar panels and wind turbines at a rapid pace, renewable energy hasn’t been increasing fast enough to satisfy the growth in energy demand, which means fossil fuel use has continued to rise as well.
In recent years, the International Energy Agency had projected that global coal use would peak by 2030 and then decline. But the agency has repeatedly had to revise its projections as demand remains strong.
A major factor in this year’s leap in coal consumption has been the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran, which has led Iranian leaders to choke off shipping traffic in the Strait of Hormuz. Before fighting began, about one-fifth of the world’s trade in liquefied natural gas went through the strait — much of it imported by countries in Europe and Asia for use in electricity or industry.
To compensate for the loss in gas supplies, many countries are running their existing coal plants more often or finding other uses for coal, which is often widely available in domestic stockpiles all over the globe. China has been using more coal instead of oil to produce chemicals. In South Korea, coal use is expected to jump roughly 6 percent this year because of high domestic natural gas prices.
“Although virtually no coal shipments pass through the Strait of Hormuz,” the agency said, “disruptions associated with the war have nonetheless affected coal markets by driving up natural gas prices.”
One notable exception is the United States. Even though President Trump has promised to revive America’s long-declining coal industry, U.S. coal consumption is expected to fall roughly 7 percent this year after an unexpected jump last year.
The Trump administration has taken the extraordinary step of ordering several aging coal plants that had been headed for retirement to stay open and keep running. But that hasn’t been enough to halt an overall decline in coal demand. The United States has an abundance of cheap natural gas and has largely been insulated from disruptions in the global gas trade, and many utilities have opted to burn gas instead of coal. Solar and wind power have also been growing fast in the United States this year despite the administration’s hostility to renewables, further cutting into coal’s market share.
The agency said it was still unclear whether global coal demand would keep rising next year. It will depend on whether the conflict in the Middle East ends and flows of liquefied natural gas, or L.N.G., restart.
“If L.N.G. flows through the Strait rebound and natural gas prices decline back toward prewar levels, global coal demand could decrease in 2027, but if the Strait remains largely closed to L.N.G. shipments, coal demand could increase further,” the agency said.
The disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz have already pushed some countries to seek out alternatives to imported gas and oil to bolster domestic energy security. Some are accelerating plans to build more renewable energy or nuclear power. But those plans will take time, and coal could benefit in the interim.
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7) San Francisco Mayor to Declare Rent Emergency Amid A.I. Housing Frenzy
Mayor Daniel Lurie wants to combat evictions in the city, which has the nation’s highest rent increases.
By Heather Knight, Reporting from San Francisco, Sept. 10, 2026
Mayor Daniel Lurie of San Francisco on Thursday plans to declare a rent emergency and propose several actions to combat evictions as residents face a deepening housing crisis amid the A.I. boom.
Mr. Lurie’s emergency declaration will not allow him to bypass laws and regulations the way a disaster declaration might. But Mr. Lurie told The New York Times that it was a way to focus city leaders’ attention on the matter, similar to how he declared a fentanyl emergency on his first day in office in 2025.
Mr. Lurie said that he will throw his support behind several legislative actions that forestall evictions by an extra month, limit the size of allowable rent increases and increase funding for nonprofit lawyers working on eviction cases. He said in an interview that San Francisco cannot thrive without lower-earning residents.
“There are too many people who are asking if they can still afford to live here,” he said. “Our city is finally moving in the right direction, but we need to build a recovery that reaches everyone, including the working-class people who make San Francisco run.”
Mr. Lurie, an heir to the Levi Strauss clothing fortune, was elected two years ago on a promise to clean up a city that had been walloped by open-air fentanyl markets, car break-ins and burglaries. He has been credited with bringing vibrancy and optimism back to San Francisco.
But the renewal has coincided with a huge injection of tech wealth, and rents are spiking more than anywhere else in the country, according to the mayor’s office. In the past year alone, the median rent has soared more than 25 percent, and an average one-bedroom unit now tops more than $4,000 per month. (According to Apartment List, an online rental service, Oakland, Calif., had the second highest median rent increase at 15 percent, and Boise, Idaho, was third at 9 percent.)
San Francisco has long had high housing costs, but the current atmosphere has been unusually difficult for residents to navigate. The housing frenzy has become so extreme that some landlords and apartment owners have offered tens of thousands of dollars to encourage longtime residents to leave their rent-controlled apartments.
Landlords have initiated more than 2,400 evictions since January, according to the Eviction Defense Collaborative, a tenants rights group, putting the city on pace to see more renters cast out this year than during any year in the past decade.
Mr. Lurie, a moderate Democrat, has strong ties to the city’s business community and to tech titans, some of whom vouched for his turnaround efforts last year when President Trump considered sending federal agents to the city. But he has fewer ties with progressives and activists in the city who have raised alarms that the housing crisis could drive out lower- and middle-class residents for good.
That same worry has gripped large cities around the country, and some have responded in more dramatic fashion than others.
In New York City, Mayor Zohran Mamdani this year froze rents for one million residents in rent-stabilized apartments. Santa Fe, N.M., last year became the first city in the country to factor in rent prices when calculating its local minimum wage. Last month, Seattle banned rental “junk fees,” such as extra charges for pets or package deliveries, requiring one upfront price instead.
The most direct way for cities to rein in housing prices, though, is to build a lot more housing, said Alex Horowitz, who studies housing policy for the Pew Charitable Trusts. Cities such as Minneapolis, Nashville and Austin, Texas, that have made it easier and cheaper to build more units have kept rents down, he said.
San Francisco, however, has not. Decades of resistance to new housing has finally given way to some changes in zoning and permitting laws, but only 489 housing units, or about 10 per square mile, have been built in the entire city so far this year.
“There are cities that have tried to regulate their way out of the problem,” Mr. Horowitz said. “None of those cities have seen big affordability improvements.”
Oz Erickson, a local developer and a member of the San Francisco Apartment Association board of directors, disputed that there was a rent emergency in the city. He said that San Francisco’s rents were only climbing fast now because they fell so far in the early part of the pandemic.
He said that the cost of building one unit of affordable housing, which he pegged at $1.1 million, was the real crisis.
Mr. Lurie argues that both more construction and more rent regulations are needed. He has teamed up with elected members of the Board of Supervisors on legislation related to rent. Currently, landlords can evict tenants for any nonpayment of rent, but a new proposal from Supervisor Jackie Fielder would prevent evictions until tenants fall behind more than one month.
Another problem faced by long-term tenants is that they can suddenly see a monthly rent increase of hundreds, or even thousands, of dollars. That’s because landlords of rent-controlled buildings can raise rents by a small percentage each year or opt to lump those upticks into one big rent increase several years later. They can also pass on the cost of capital improvements to their buildings.
A new proposal, spearheaded by Supervisor Danny Sauter and backed by Mr. Lurie, would limit those combined increases to 10 percent in any given year.
Mr. Lurie is also proposing $3 million in additional city funding for lawyers to represent tenants facing eviction and increasing by 25 percent the mandatory payments by landlords to tenants they evict.
Mr. Lurie wants to use private donations and $1 million in city funds to pay for a campaign to educate tenants about their rights and to team up with City Attorney David Chiu to enforce city laws against more landlords who violate them.
Mr. Chiu said his office has long received tenant complaints about landlords ignoring mold, rodents and broken elevators. But recently, he said, there has been raft of complaints about landlords violating tenant protections such as raising rents more than they are allowed to under state law — potentially, he said, to force tenants to fall behind so they can evict them.
“There are unscrupulous property owners who are trying to take advantage of this moment,” Mr. Chiu said.
Ms. Fielder, who represents the city’s Mission District, said the rent crisis was important to her politically, as well as personally. She said in an interview that she pays $2,200 for a studio and recently received a notice from her landlord that she needed to move out by July so that the landlord’s family can move in.
She makes about $180,000 as a supervisor, but said she still found apartment hunting in the city “insane.” The pickings are either total scams or apartments that are out of her price range, she said.
“We haven’t seen this in a long time,” Ms. Fielder said. “And it’s scary.”
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8) Fashion’s Most Disgusting Product
By Dana Thomas, Sept. 10, 2026
Ms. Thomas is the author of “Fashionopolis: Why What We Wear Matters.”
Saratta Chuengsatiansup
On Thursday New York Fashion Week kicks off the spring-summer 2027 season, with brands presenting their latest offerings on runways and in showrooms. As part of a monthlong fashionpalooza, designers will then travel to London, Milan and Paris for more of the same, all to feed the $1.9 trillion industry that produces an estimated 100 billion garments and accessories a year. Rough estimates are that only about 80 billion of them actually sell.
What happens to the other 20 billion? Some wind up in outlets and on flash sale sites. Some get dumped in far-off places, like the once majestic Atacama Desert in Chile, where in 2021 Agence France-Press reported that 39,000 tons of unsold fast fashion apparel were dumped, creating dunes of clothes. Much of that unworn apparel, often with price tags still attached, is burned, the synthetic fabrics and dyes generating a toxic black smoke that drifts into local villages. A court case in Hong Kong revealed that Chanel had until a few years ago engaged in what the industry euphemistically calls “inventory management.” Burberry says it no longer destroys leftover products, but the company revealed in its 2018 annual report that it had incinerated or otherwise destroyed 28.6 million pounds’ worth of unsold clothes, accessories and perfume the previous fiscal year ($37 million), bringing its five-year total to about £100 million ($114 million).
In her newsletter, Back Row, in 2022, Amy Odell quoted someone she described as a Saks marketing department employee who had worked in two different stores in the 2010s. The source said that retail staff members filled one to two dumpsters a day with unsold luxury products. Sometimes the employees were instructed to slash the items, presumably to ensure no one scavenged them. “I always wanted to bring them to a homeless shelter or Dress for Success,” Odell’s source said. “That was just absolutely wholly dismissed because there was no way a luxury brand was going to allow that to happen unless they decided to do it on their own terms.” (Ms. Odell reached out to Saks for comment at the time but did not receive a response.)
Fashion is one of the least regulated global businesses. Unlike the automobile, aviation or agricultural industries, fashion has remarkably few requirements to track, disclose or limit its environmental impact. That 100 billion figure I cited earlier is an estimate because no one knows exactly how many items the industry churns out; fashion companies don’t have to tell us. And because most production is outsourced to independent contractors, brands are not responsible for the wages or labor conditions of many of the people who make their clothes.
It’s time for American lawmakers to bring this free-for-all to an end. Overproduction is the obvious place to start. We need to know how much the industry is producing, and at what cost to the environment. Consumers should be able to buy clothes without contributing to the reckless degradation of the planet and the exploitation of their fellow humans. Fashion doesn’t need to be such an ugly business.
As I have witnessed in a decade of reporting on fashion’s impact on the environment and humanity, overproduction isn’t an accident or an occasional forecasting error. It’s built into the business model. Fast fashion and luxury brands alike need constant novelty to lure customers into stores more often. The Spanish fast fashion retailer Zara releases new items every week; next month, those offerings will include pieces by John Galliano, the British designer whose exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art was canceled shortly after it was announced. Fashion weeks feed the machine: more collections, more seasons, more reasons to buy. In 1980, the average American purchased 12 to 14 clothing items a year; by 2018, that number was 68.
One big reason is that in the age of globalization and offshoring, apparel and accessories have become extraordinarily inexpensive to manufacture. A majority of production is outsourced, primarily to developing nations where safety and labor oversight is weak and wages are at or below poverty level. Today only about 3 percent of the clothes sold in the United States are made domestically. Lower production costs mean lower retail prices, which is why a new T-shirt can cost as little as a few dollars. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, clothing accounted for 10.4 percent of the American household budget in the 1960s; today, consumers spend 2.5 percent of their budgets on apparel and related services such as dry cleaning, even though they buy five times as many items.
The same economics make excess inventory disposable. For brands, destroying or dumping items is cheaper and easier than storing, sorting, transporting, recycling or reselling them.
Some companies gesture toward reducing waste. You can deposit discards from any brand at H&M stores, and the company has partnered with organizations that sort the collected clothing for reuse or recycling. But such initiatives often seem to be more about buffing up a company’s public image than truly doing good. In 2023, the Dutch sustainability nonprofit Changing Markets Foundation stashed Apple AirTags inside 21 items that it donated to clothing chains across Europe or posted on resale sites to see where the clothes actually went. It determined that 16 of the items were destroyed, abandoned in warehouses or exported to Africa. Only five were reused or resold within Europe. Overall, according to data from the sustainable fashion nonprofit Textile Exchange, less than 1 percent of clothing is recycled into new fiber each year.
Meanwhile, fashion’s greenhouse gas emissions are rising, driven in part by the global production of polyester, an inexpensive petroleum-based synthetic that does not biodegrade. The industry’s annual greenhouse gas emissions have now reached an estimated gigaton — about the same as the entire climate footprint of Japan.
Governments are trying to rectify that by making brands financially responsible for the entire lives of their garments. In 2024 Gov. Gavin Newsom of California signed the Responsible Textile Recovery Act, a law that requires apparel and textile companies to pay for the collection and recycling of their products. Producers had to enroll in the state program by July 2026, and it must be fully operational by 2030. Congress should pass a similar law nationwide.
Also in 2024, the European Union introduced a sweeping new framework to make products more durable and recyclable, and introduced digital labeling that shows an item’s provenance and environmental footprint. The European Union has since adopted separate rules that hold producers financially responsible for the textile waste they generate. This summer, one piece of that framework went into effect in the 27-country bloc: Large companies are now prohibited from destroying unsold clothing, accessories and footwear. The goal is to curb overproduction, reduce waste and keep valuable materials in circulation longer.
France is going further. As of Sept. 1, ultra-fast-fashion companies such as Shein and Temu, which flood the market with enormous amounts of inexpensive clothes, have to pay a fee on every item they sell. The tax can reach $14 per item now and $23 by 2030, though it cannot exceed half the item’s pretax price. Refashion, a nonprofit organization that runs France’s textile producer responsibility program, will manage the collection of the new charges.
All of this is a good start. But each action targets only one part of a systemic problem. Governments should require all fashion brands to disclose publicly how much they produce, penalize them for what they fail to sell and hold them accountable for environmental and labor abuses throughout their supply chains. Only then will the new clothes coming down the runways each season be worth wanting.
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9) What Are We Doing to Our World of Wonder?
By Terry Tempest Williams, Sept. 11, 2026
Ms. Williams’s most recent book is “The Glorians: Visitations From the Holy Ordinary.” She wrote from Castle Valley, Utah.
Photo illustration by Anh Nguyen/The New York Times
Last month, a group of citizens young and old gathered in 100-degree heat in a Salt Lake City garage to make hats out of cardboard and papier-mâché of a small, charismatic water bird. With its bright red eyes and splash of golden feathers resembling lightning set against jet black, the eared grebe makes for a striking headpiece.
Forty miles away, on Great Salt Lake, soon around four million eared grebes will be fattening themselves on brine shrimp and flies before a long migration south. Grebes are known as “hell-divers” because they are fearless and capable of inflating and deflating themselves as hunters and disappearing from danger.
One danger they can’t escape is the rapid shrinking of Great Salt Lake, and their food source with it. Each eared grebe eats 30,000 brine shrimp a day in the fall. If Great Salt Lake disappears, the eared grebes disappear with it. Habitat matters. That’s why citizens and scientists with the Center for Biological Diversity will request protection for the bird under the Endangered Species Act this winter. The grebe is one of Utah’s local heroes, revered and grieved as it nears the quicksand of extinction.
The Endangered Species Act is one of the few environmental laws formidable enough to hold developers accountable for the destruction of habitat — be it diverting water from a lake for agriculture, drilling for oil or building dams and golf courses. The law can shut down or force amendments on any project or operation that threatens the well-being of an endangered species.
For decades, the law’s critics have tried and mostly failed to dismantle its power and integrity. But this year, the Trump administration found a legally binding way to defang it. On Sept. 14, the Endangered Species Act will be revised under a new rule that says habitat destruction no longer falls within the definition of what constitutes harm. In other words, the Departments of the Interior and Commerce have said any stress an animal or plant may face over the loss of its habitat is irrelevant to its well-being.
Officials have justified the change by claiming that environmentalists have “weaponized” the law and that in any case it has fallen short of its goal to help populations of endangered species recover. In truth, this complaint shows just how effective the act has been. The Endangered Species Act has a 99 percent success rate: Almost every imperiled species listed is still with us. A study by the Center for Biological Diversity showed that without the law, an estimated 291 species would have most likely become extinct. Among the species that have made impressive recoveries are bald eagles, peregrine falcons, American alligators, brown pelicans and gray and humpback whales.
Hundreds of thousands of Americans submitted public comments on the proposed rule, and 99 percent of them opposed it, arguing you cannot protect an endangered species without protecting the environment that allows it to flourish. Environmental groups, 20 states and the District of Columbia have filed lawsuits arguing habitat destruction is within the definition of harm — anything that disrupts animals’ food, shelter or breeding — intended by Congress when it passed the law in 1973.
Some 53 years later, it seems that America’s leaders no longer appreciate that we live in a world of wonder. Their actions suggest we have become not just a threatening species, but a lost species. What if 50 years from now, having plundered America the Beautiful and destroyed the habitat for the creatures around us, we are plagued by an inconsolable loneliness because so many species have left us?
The act of protecting a tiny black bird that weighs roughly a pound reminds us that we are not the only species that lives and grieves on this planet. We are a companion species to grebes and all other forms of life on Earth.
We need the natural world — alive with birdsong, clear-running creeks and breathing forests. Octopodes camouflaged in tide pools will forever delight the child who reaches out to touch their flesh and is surprised by a swirl of purple ink, signaling the octopus has vanished. The rolling bugle of sandhill cranes at dusk on the tundra is the perfection of 2.5 million years of evolution. We live in an enchanted world if we can humble ourselves long enough to see it and slow down enough to feel it.
Those of us who find ourselves rapt in the soul of wildness recognize the Endangered Species Act as an act of reparation, a recognition of the harm humans have inflicted on other species and the landscapes they inhabit.
Where I live, Great Salt Lake is showing us in her retreat that we are intrinsically bound to winds and water. The diversion of water from entering the lake, especially for agriculture as it is currently practiced, could leave three million of us inhaling clouds of toxic dust from the exposed lake bed. Millions of shorebirds and waterfowl such as the eared grebe will be hovering above, looking for a place to land. Together, we will be among the displaced with nowhere to go.
Attaining threatened status for the eared grebe will not be easy with President Trump’s rule change. The process to get any threatened or endangered species on the federal list is always an act of faith, alongside science, long and arduous. It requires a comprehensive scientific review, and evidence that the species’ survival is imperiled.
Some Utah lawmakers call us foolish for making bird hats and puppets. Other lawmakers see 1,000 square miles of exposed lake bed, salt-encrusted and cracked, as “new land” around which to build data centers, detention centers and a national repository for nuclear waste. But there will be a tremendous cost in continuing to choose this form of economic gain over ecological health.
In the fall of 2022, Great Salt Lake was at its lowest recorded water level. Brine shrimp were suffering in high salinity, their population in danger of collapsing. Two months later, when I was walking with friends on the shores, we encountered hundreds of dead eared grebes, slapped down by a storm. The birds were thin and gaunt — they most likely had become too weak from lack of food to weather the blizzard. I bent down and placed my hand on a particular grebe’s stone still body — her vibrant red eye half-open — the streak of gold feathers still shimmering. I asked for forgiveness.
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10) Blast Shakes Southern Lebanon as Israel Destroys Underground Hezbollah Base
The complex sat below Ali al-Taher ridge, a strategic hilltop that overlooks the region and that has seen intense fighting.
By Abdi Latif Dahir and Hwaida Saad, Reporting from Beirut, Lebanon, Sept. 11, 2026
The top of the Ali al-Taher ridge, in southern Lebanon, on Friday. Lebanese and Israeli officials say Hezbollah established a major installation beneath the ridge. Hussein Malla/Associated Press
A huge explosion sent shock waves across southern Lebanon overnight, as the Israeli military said it had destroyed an underground Hezbollah base in a strategically significant area of Israel’s conflict with the Iran-backed militia.
The blast lit up the sky with a sudden orange flash and tore through the Ali al-Taher ridge, a commanding hilltop about six miles from the border between Israel and Lebanon that Israeli forces captured earlier this month.
Lebanese and Israeli officials have said Hezbollah, a Lebanese militia supported by Iran, established a major underground installation beneath the ridge. Israel says the complex had for years served as a command center for planning and launching attacks against it. The ridge overlooks much of southeastern Lebanon, including Nabatieh, one of the country’s largest cities.
“The explosion caused massive sounds in Nabatieh,” Abbas Fakhereddine, the city’s mayor, said. “We felt the buildings shake.”
The explosion generated ground waves that were likened to an earthquake measuring 4.2 on the Richter scale, Lebanon’s National News Agency reported, citing the country’s National Center for Geophysics. Videos shared on social media showed the explosion lighting up the night late Thursday.
Mr. Fakhereddine said that he woke up on Friday to see “part of the hill totally barren and trees disappeared.”
The Israeli destruction of the underground base at the ridge fueled concerns among residents about a deepening Israeli military presence and an expansion of military operations in southern Lebanon. Israel has in recent days and weeks carried out strikes and widespread demolitions of buildings and civilian infrastructure across southern Lebanon, according to local officials and human rights groups.
On Friday, the country’s national news agency reported renewed Israeli airstrikes and artillery shelling in several areas in the south, including at the Ali al-Taher ridge. It was not immediately clear what had prompted the renewed activity.
The Israeli military said in a statement on Thursday that it had located dozens of rockets, missiles, drones, machine guns and explosive devices inside the underground base. The complex also included a Hezbollah command center, weapons storage rooms and living quarters, the military said.
On Friday, Hezbollah officials disputed the significance of the ridge and accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel of exaggerating the importance of the operation for political gain before elections next month.
A Hezbollah media official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters, downplayed the site’s importance to the group and rejected claims that the facility contained advanced missiles or significant military infrastructure.
Under a U.S.-brokered cease-fire agreement reached in June, Israel is expected to gradually pull its forces back from areas it occupies in southern Lebanon, with the Lebanese armed forces deploying there to establish security and enable displaced residents to return. That arrangement is closely linked to the Lebanese government’s efforts to disarm Hezbollah, a process that is likely to prove difficult, given the government’s limited ability to control the powerful militia.
On Friday, Lebanon’s General Directorate of State Security said in a statement it was resuming government patrols and re-establishing checkpoints in Nabatieh, in coordination with other security agencies and the Lebanese army, to protect the city and strengthen public confidence and safety.
Some residents of southern Lebanon, along with political and security observers, have expressed anger that Hezbollah did not hand over the ridge to the Lebanese army and security services, arguing that the group had allowed a strategic position to be lost to Israel rather than place it under Lebanese state control.
Moustafa Bayram, a former labor minister aligned with Hezbollah, said Israel’s decision to destroy the site was “an attempt to terrorize us and escalate the war.”
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11) A.I. Could Possibly End Humanity. How Are Humans Supposed to Process That?
The technology is far from the only existential risk our species faces. But weighing such cosmic fears can become a mind-bending exercise.
By William J. Broad and Cade Metz, Published Sept. 10, 2026, Updated Sept. 11, 2026
Andrew Harnik/Associated Press
It could launch a bioweapon attack, or a global drone war. It could set off a nuclear bomb. Or it could destroy human society more gradually, by hoarding all the world’s economic resources and depriving us of food, housing or medicine.
These are the sorts of dark thoughts that now swirl around artificial intelligence, a technology that has already proved to be a great advance in human achievement — but that, some fear, also has the potential to snuff out humanity entirely.
Such anxieties made global headlines this week when an Anthropic researcher quit the industry, citing fears that his lab and others like it were building supersmart machines that humans would be unable to control.
The potential threats posed by A.I. are understandably scary. But the modern world teems with a multitude of existential risks. Humans also face the prospect of doom from killer asteroids, pandemics, thermonuclear war, climate change, giant blobs of incandescent material shot from the sun, ecological collapse and the onset of a sudden ice age.
The problem, scientists and public policy experts say, is not so much these threats, of which A.I. is merely the latest, but the innate human difficulty of putting them into perspective.
“We tolerate risks that we’re used to but fear the new ones,” said James K. Hammitt, the director of the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis.
We drive in cars more often than we fly in planes, he said, so “airlines are perceived as dangerous compared to motor vehicles, when they’re really not.”
Artificial intelligence, he noted, “is obviously not understood and not under our perceived control, so it generates huge social concern.”
Among the tech executives and researchers building A.I. systems, there has always been a contingent that has warned of A.I.’s potential to destroy humanity.
In the short term, some say, artificial intelligence could help unskilled but malicious people create viruses or toxic substances capable of causing widespread disease and death. Just on Thursday, Anthropic said it had foiled several efforts by scientists who were conducting research that potentially could lead to the development of biological weapons.
In the longer term, those warning of A.I.’s potential dangers argue that tech companies could give A.I. systems greater autonomy, connect them to the internet and even tie them into vital infrastructure, including power grids, stock markets and military weapons. Once they are connected to this infrastructure, they argue, A.I. systems could cause problems in unexpected ways.
Today, when A.I. systems go rogue, companies like OpenAI can just shut them off. But some experts worry that future systems will resist efforts to shut them down.
For now, these are hypothetical concerns.
“We are very far away,” said Oren Etzioni, a professor at the University of Washington and the founding chief executive of the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence. “If I had to worry about either an A.I. escaping the lab and killing millions of people and a virus escaping and killing millions, it is no contest. The worry is the virus.”
As it turns out, even anthrax has a reasonable chance at doing in humanity.
Anthrax has been around since ancient times, but more recently it has been a favorite of rogue nations developing biological weapons programs.
Scientists have long known that a single gallon of anthrax, if suitably distributed, could end human life on earth. But that hasn’t happened, even though North Korea and other belligerent states (including Iran) have long been suspected of harboring the lethal germ.
What often gets lost in the frenzied panics of modern life is that, at least with intentional threats, plain old deterrence can save the day. State actors are reluctant to unleash anthrax on an enemy because they will face retaliation — turning a strike into a suicide — thus creating an incentive for restraint.
The Harvard Center, founded in 1989, seeks to put these numerous doom scenarios in perspective, especially the undeterrable ones, such as environmental risks and major threats to human health. It seeks to apply decision science, economics and risk assessment to assess and improve policymaking.
Similarly, NASA relies on supercomputers in its Asteroid Threat Assessment Project. Overall, the space agency puts the risk this century of an asteroid impact that would endanger human existence at essentially zero. And it calculates that earthlings can (in all likelihood) breathe a sigh of relief for at least 1,000 years to come.
And how do knowledgeable scientists assess the risk of a global pandemic that would wipe out most human life?
They peg the threat as low, if not zero. Toby Ord, a researcher at Oxford University, in his 2020 book “The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity,” put the 100-year risk of an existential catastrophe from a pandemic at one in 30, or roughly a 3 percent chance.
What makes the doomsayers of the tech industry different from, say, an airline scientist assessing crash risks, is that many A.I. executives and researchers held such dire beliefs even before the technology began to show its power. They believe that existential risk is a serious problem in part because they have always believed it.
“I was there when this subculture developed,” said Zack Korman, a founder of the A.I. security company Embroidery. He was referring to his time at the University of Oxford, when it was a hotbed of the “effective altruism” movement, in which many of these fears of A.I. existential risk first incubated. Too many thinkers on the subject today, Mr. Korman said, “interpret all events in light of this story that has been told for more than a decade.”
Many of the world’s top researchers, though, do not share such beliefs. They say the fears are wildly overblown. And scientists outside Silicon Valley tend to hold a very different view about the threat of A.I.
“The discussion has a frame, and it is a very particular frame. That is the frame that was there before deep learning took off, and it has stayed there,” Branton DeMoss, an A.I. researcher at Oxford, said, referring to the rise of neural networks. “And I don’t agree with it.”
In a recent blog post, Dr. Ord summarized the world’s different risks as moving up and down — a climate catastrophe down, a nuclear disaster up. His judgment on pandemics and A.I. is mixed: lots of changes, but no clear direction in the overall risks.
Experts note that catastrophic and existential risks can also be mitigated with sound plans and early warning systems. Faced with a clear and present danger (like an asteroid on a collision path with the planet), humanity might well unite behind a common enemy, pushing squabbles into the background.
Dr. Ord hopes a day will come to pass for what he calls existential security.
“It is a hypothetical future state of the world where existential risk is low and kept low,” he wrote in his post. Not only would humanity extinguish the current fires, Dr. Ord wrote, but “put in place the mechanisms to ensure fire no longer poses a substantive threat.”
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12) Despite Pledges From Musk, Child Sexual Abuse Material Persists on X
Reviews by the Canadian Center for Child Protection and The New York Times found that explicit images of children remain on the social media site owned by Elon Musk.
By Kate Conger and Michael H. Keller, Sept. 11, 2026
Kate Conger reported from San Francisco and Michael H. Keller from New York.
Elon Musk bought X, which was then known as Twitter, in 2022 and vowed to remove child sexual abuse material from the site, calling it “Priority #1.” Credit...Andres Kudacki for The New York Times
Elon Musk has long vowed to remove child sexual abuse material on his social media platform, X. But some of the content continues to appear.
A review by the Canadian Center for Child Protection found that the site’s own artificial intelligence chatbot, Grok, responded to requests from users by creating dozens of sexualized and sometimes sexually explicit photos of children, including victims previously known to law enforcement, at the beginning of the year. The images included children in sexualized poses with partially exposed genitals, in states of undress and with fluid on their faces.
A separate analysis by The New York Times found that during the first half of the year, users on X posted child sexual abuse material previously flagged by authorities, including some of the most egregious content that the site attempts to block using automated filters.
The findings came to light through spot checks of X, rather than a review of comprehensive data, to which the platform restricts access. Combined, the two analyses offer a window into a social media site still dealing with illegal content that can create real-world harm.
“This is wildly unacceptable that known child sexual abuse material is appearing” that should be automatically taken down, said Lloyd Richardson, the technology director at the Canadian center. “You don’t see this behavior with any other big social media company.”
X continues to use automated filters to block content from being uploaded, in addition to proprietary technology it has to help detect such material, the company said in a statement.
“We take seriously our responsibility to protect minors,” the statement said. “X has zero tolerance for child sexual abuse material, including A.I.-generated child sexual abuse material.”
The company blocks users who post or engage with exploitative material and reports them to authorities, X said in its statement, including 780,000 users in the past month alone. The company has reported 1.3 million images to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children this year, leading to 543 arrests, the statement said.
In 2022, Mr. Musk bought X, then known as Twitter, and vowed to remove child sexual abuse material from the site, calling it “Priority #1.” In January, he said users who asked Grok to create images of child sexual abuse would face the same consequences as users who shared non-A.I.-generated abuse material, which could include a ban.
Other major social media platforms also struggle to eradicate child abuse imagery, particularly newly created images that law enforcement has not previously identified. Like X, other platforms, including Facebook and Google, also rely on lists of previously identified images compiled by child safety groups to automatically detect those images and prevent them from being publicly posted.
Mr. Musk merged X with xAI last year. His rocket company, SpaceX, then acquired xAI in February, creating a megacompany worth about $1.5 trillion.
In December and January, Grok’s X account produced millions of images of people with their clothing removed in response to prompts from users. After a public outcry, X said it would halt the account from producing those images.
Later, the Canadian center found 65 instances in which Grok created sexualized or exploitative images of children before X halted the bot. During that time frame, users also prompted the chatbot to edit clothed photos of known victims of childhood sexual abuse and depict them in lingerie or bikinis.
Imran Ahmed, the chief executive of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, an organization that studies online abuse and hate speech, said the findings were “one of the biggest corporate failures of my lifetime.” His organization gave access to more than four million links to Grok-generated images compiled for researchers for the Canadian center’s review.
In a regulatory filing in May, SpaceX said Grok’s ability to generate sexual content posed a risk to investors. In recent months, xAI has sued several Grok users who created child sexual abuse material with the chatbot, saying they misused the technology. The company faces several lawsuits claiming that Grok generated explicit images of minors.
The Times conducted its own scan for child sexual abuse material on X by writing an automated computer program that searched for related terms without displaying the images, which are illegal to view. Links to the images were sent to a Microsoft service that checked whether they were included on lists of known abusive material compiled by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and other child safety groups. Matches were verified by analysts at the Canadian Center for Child Protection.
The Times found more than 75 images between January and June. The program The Times wrote reported the images to the authorities. The images were removed, but some had been viewed hundreds of times.
When tech platforms find abusive imagery, they are required to remove it and report it to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which serves as a clearinghouse for law enforcement. X continues to send reports of abusive imagery to the U.S. center, but it is unclear whether those reports included the imagery found by The Times.
One explicit photo The Times’s automated program found on X, which has been known to authorities for at least seven years, showed a young girl with fluid on her face being raped orally. The post of the photo, which advertised the sale of similar illegal content, was publicly available for over an hour in March and received 16 likes and nine reposts from other users before The Times found and reported it.
The person depicted in the image, now an adult, said in an interview that she believed X profited from her abuse and further victimized her by not stopping the image from being shared.
“They’re getting benefits from my abuse, and it just feels like it’s never going to stop,” the woman said of X. She spoke on the condition of anonymity because she has been stalked by people who viewed images of her abuse online. “I get angry that I’m still having to go through this decades later, and that there doesn’t seem to be real-life consequences for people.”
The level of abuse depicted in the images found by The Times was severe. The U.S. national center’s database includes the most egregious examples of childhood abuse and sexual torture.
The U.S. national center shares digital fingerprints with major technology companies so they can scan and remove the imagery. The center’s list is used by Google and Meta, among others. About a third of the images found by The Times were from that list.
The expectation is that companies are using the national center’s list “in any and every way possible to identify, remove and report child sexual abuse material,” said John Shehan, an executive at the U.S. national center. “How are you not using this tool in a proper way?”
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13) How Trump Is Wielding Power to Stifle Speech
President Trump has harnessed agencies across the government to curtail press freedoms, a sweeping campaign that free speech advocates say will have lasting effects.
By Jim Rutenberg and Maggie Haberman, Sept. 12, 2026
Jim Rutenberg writes about the intersection of media and politics. Maggie Haberman covers the White House.
"There is a long record of U.S. presidents taking steps to curtail speech. President Woodrow Wilson imposed strict censorship and forced dissenting publishers out of business during World War I. Richard M. Nixon kept an enemies list, and his aides threatened F.C.C. action against broadcasters. More recently, the George W. Bush White House expanded government secrecy and the Obama administration went after the sources of journalists through leak investigations."
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/12/us/politics/trump-free-speech.html
President Trump brought a libel suit against the author of “TrumpNation.” Credit...Tony Cenicola/The New York Times
The Justice Department has sent F.B.I. agents to reporters’ homes to serve subpoenas and, in at least one case, flashed a warrant to seize devices. The Pentagon has fired the editor and publisher of its traditionally independent newspaper, Stars and Stripes, and blocked access to other journalists who refused to sign pledges that would limit their reporting.
Regulatory agencies are using their powers to pressure media organizations over their content. The administration has stripped funding from public television and radio. Angry over stories he does not like, President Trump has sued major news organizations and the White House has taken control of the previously independent press pool that tracks the president, deciding which outlets can participate.
Almost 20 months into Mr. Trump’s second term, his long-running media clashes have grown into a sweeping campaign to control speech in America that stands out for applying so many levers, so fast, all at once.
Driven by personal pique, fury over leaks and a determination to shape the political narrative to his advantage, Mr. Trump is deploying the might of the federal government and filing personal lawsuits — targeting not just journalists and liberal critics, but also comedians and talk show hosts, and the corporate entities behind them.
To the president and his allies, he is simply demanding accountability for what he casts as biased, unfair and sometimes inaccurate coverage and criticism — an effort that has been welcomed by longtime conservative press critics like those at the Media Research Center.
Aides noted that the White House has this year expanded who gets invited to cover events, such as the off-the-record presidential lunch with network anchors that precedes the annual State of the Union address.
In a statement, White House Communications Director Steven Cheung said that “biased reporting from the media is a disservice to the American people,” adding: “We utilize every tool available to ensure that accurate reporting is provided to the public and the stain of those who knowingly peddle false information is held accountable.”
Free speech advocates say the president’s intent is apparent: to punish, intimidate and silence dissenters.
“There’s not a week that goes by where they’re not taking a new step to curtail press freedom in the country,” said Clayton Weimers, the executive director of the North America division of Reporters Without Borders. “We have measured a substantial diminishment of press freedoms.”
When challenged in court, the president and the administration have frequently lost, confronted with strongly worded rulings from judges affirming First Amendment rights.
Still, even the path to legal victory can have severe financial and reputational costs for those he views as adversaries, which have included The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and the BBC. And each time the president assails what has long been considered protected speech, media analysts say, he is eroding norms and undercutting the role of an independent press.
Reporters Without Borders maintains an index that tracks press freedom in 180 countries, clocking governmental threats, subpoenas and the vindictive use of regulations against journalists. The United States now ranks at its lowest since the organization started the index in 2002 — 64th, just above Panama and just below Botswana. The trend is the same at similar indexes kept by the Freedom of the Press Foundation and the V-Dem Institute of Sweden.
There is a long record of U.S. presidents taking steps to curtail speech. President Woodrow Wilson imposed strict censorship and forced dissenting publishers out of business during World War I. Richard M. Nixon kept an enemies list, and his aides threatened F.C.C. action against broadcasters. More recently, the George W. Bush White House expanded government secrecy and the Obama administration went after the sources of journalists through leak investigations.
Mr. Trump had inveighed against the Biden administration for what he and his supporters portrayed as draconian pressure on social media companies to censor disfavored content often at their expense, promising at his second inauguration to “stop all government censorship.”
Now his administration is breaking new ground in stifling dissent with personal lawsuits and novel uses of executive power, longtime First Amendment lawyers say, with implications that extend far beyond Mr. Trump’s presidency.
“We live in a different world under this administration because the threats are so grave,” said Floyd Abrams, who has worked on free speech cases for 60 years. “It’s one thing to say there’s an extraordinarily powerful First Amendment, but unless and until courts rule on these matters, the threat is very real.”
Harnessing Government Power
Long before he took office, Mr. Trump was well known for his media feuds. As a developer and reality TV star, he was quick to threaten defamation suits against those who challenged his assertions about his business successes and his wealth.
Mr. Trump has been candid about his aim: to inflict pain, even if it was fleeting. After bringing a failed libel suit against the former Times reporter Timothy L. O’Brien, whose book “TrumpNation” estimated Mr. Trump to be worth far less than he claimed, the president gloated about forcing the publisher to spend money. “I did it to make his life miserable, which I’m happy about,” he said.
In his first term, the president branded journalists as “fake news” and crudely attacked reporters, especially women.
In his second term, Mr. Trump is now imprinting his pugilistic approach across the machinery of the federal government. Those who once might have checked him have been replaced by loyalists who often use their power to fulfill Mr. Trump’s desire to punish perceived enemies.
Soon after his inauguration, the White House banned The Associated Press from the Oval Office and Air Force One, ostensibly because the wire service would not call the Gulf of Mexico by Mr. Trump’s preferred name, the Gulf of America. Another reason for the ban: The A.P. would not give the Trump team rights to its photo of Mr. Trump, bloodied with a raised fist, after he was shot in Butler, Pa., in 2024. At a private lunch with Mr. Trump and network anchors last year, White House aides tied the A.P. ban to the denial of the rights to the photo, according to two people briefed on the event.
Mr. Trump’s team is unapologetic about its goal of achieving firmer control over the national information environment — what Mr. Cheung, the communications director, has dubbed in a social media post, “Full Spectrum Dominance.”
Brendan Carr, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission and one of the most aggressive supporters of Mr. Trump’s efforts, has said that the president is “reshaping the media landscape.”
Citing the big broadcast networks, Mr. Carr told an interviewer for CNBC last year that “for years government officials just allowed those entities, with executives sitting in Hollywood and New York, to dictate the political narrative.” Mr. Trump, he added, has “fundamentally changed the game.”
One of the Trump administration’s strategies appeared to take root in a dispute between Elon Musk and the liberal press watchdog group Media Matters for America.
In 2023, Mr. Musk was furious about a Media Matters article that showed pro-Nazi posts were running on his social media platform X alongside promotional posts from major consumer brands, contributing to an advertiser exodus from the site.
A longtime Trump adviser, Stephen Miller, took to X to pointedly note that Republican state attorneys general had the power to consider civil and criminal fraud charges against the group. In short order, Mr. Musk sued Media Matters for allegedly manipulating the X algorithm to produce its results, the Texas attorney general’s office opened an investigation into deceptive trade practices and the Missouri attorney general followed with its own inquiry.
Media Matters won court injunctions blocking the Texas and Missouri investigations. But soon after Mr. Trump took office again, the Federal Trade Commission, newly headed by the conservative lawyer Andrew Ferguson, began its own investigation, demanding internal documents related to Media Matters’ methodology for evaluating media sources and its finances.
The investigation was part of a broader F.T.C. inquiry into whether several groups that work to identify online disinformation were colluding with advertising firms to direct money away from disfavored outlets. Conservatives saw the issue as central to what some labeled a “censorship industrial complex.”
A federal judge in Washington ultimately determined that the F.T.C.’s investigation of Media Matters presented “a straightforward First Amendment violation.”
But the fight was costly for Media Matters. In addition to paying legal fees, the group said it had self-censored articles to avoid further scrutiny from the agency. (It is still defending itself against Mr. Musk’s suit.)
The F.T.C. also investigated NewsGuard, a site that rates the reliability of online information. It is avowedly nonpartisan in its approach; Fox News, for instance, rates above MS NOW.
In court papers, NewsGuard said it drew attention in part because it had given a low rating to the conservative site Newsmax, which is run by an ally of Mr. Trump’s, Chris Ruddy. Mr. Ruddy had complained that ad agencies were relying on NewsGuard ratings to withhold money from right-leaning outlets like his.
The F.T.C. took another tack that NewsGuard said affected it directly, related to the merger of two of the country’s largest advertising holding companies, Omnicom and Interpublic Group. The F.T.C. entered into a consent decree with the newly joined company barring it from broadly using ratings like those published by NewsGuard to withhold ad spending from certain sites, among other things. (It could still follow individual clients’ requests to do so.)
In a lawsuit filed in February, NewsGuard said the provision effectively placed it on a blacklist, immediately causing it to lose business.
The F.T.C. ultimately dropped its investigations into both NewsGuard and Media Matters, saying it had achieved its goal of defending free speech through agreements with ad firms. It said it was fulfilling its mission of protecting consumers from anticompetitive behavior that “distorted the marketplace of ideas,” as Mr. Ferguson put it.
Dan Schneider, vice president for free speech at the conservative watchdog group Media Research Center, described the actions by the F.T.C. and the F.C.C. as a correction against abuses under the past two Democratic presidents. “Please, let’s not forget history and rewrite everything that went on before,” Mr. Schneider said.
But Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, a Democratic F.T.C. commissioner fired by Mr. Trump last year, said in an interview that the agency’s actions were “a perversion of the F.T.C.’s authorities in order to punish the speech of perceived enemies and reward perceived allies.”
‘Deeply Un-American’
Much of the administration’s action has been led by Mr. Carr. The longtime F.C.C. lawyer is known to frequent the president’s golf clubs when Mr. Trump is there on weekends and often speaks to the president directly about his grievances with news outlets, according to people briefed on their conversations.
He has bent the F.C.C. to the president’s will, investigating the major broadcast networks by reviving largely dormant rules, like those against so-called news distortion — meant to punish the deliberate staging or distortion of a news event. Mr. Carr has also pursued networks for their diversity, equity and inclusion practices, inquiring whether they violate federal law and agency regulations, a tactic the administration has used to significant effect against universities and law firms.
Early on, Mr. Carr extracted extraordinary concessions from Skydance, the company run by the studio executive David Ellison, the son of the billionaire Trump ally Larry Ellison, as it sought to purchase Paramount, the parent company of CBS. To secure F.C.C. approval for the merger, Skydance agreed to end CBS’s diversity policies and appoint a monitor for news bias. (Mr. Trump has since shown a rooting interest in the Ellisons’ attempt to buy Warner Bros. Discovery, which owns CNN.)
Critics, among them F.C.C. chairs from past Republican administrations, have said Mr. Carr is exceeding his authority. Mr. Carr says he is simply following the law by requiring broadcasters to serve the public interest in ways that he says his predecessors had failed to do.
Mr. Trump is clearly pleased with Mr. Carr’s effort to solve the so-called fake news problem, as he put it in a speech in April at a private White House event ahead of the celebrations for America’s 250th anniversary.
“He’s keeping these crooked networks honest,” Mr. Trump said as he spotted Mr. Carr in the crowd, describing his appointee as “the most powerful man in the world.”
After Mr. Trump recently called for punishment of the NBC host Kristen Welker for reporting he did not like, and suggested F.C.C. action against the airing of “fake polls,” Mr. Carr responded by saying the agency was considering “a lot of actions,” including on “fake polls.”
No network has borne the brunt of the president’s ire as much as the Disney-owned ABC network.
Mr. Trump’s animus against ABC grew in 2024, when he sued over the anchor George Stephanopoulos’s characterization of the verdict in the defamation case brought by E. Jean Carroll, who accused Mr. Trump of sexual abuse. ABC settled the suit for $15 million.
In the president’s second term, his anger has increased as the ABC late-night comic Jimmy Kimmel has made him the regular butt of jokes.
Last year, the F.C.C. opened an investigation into the network’s diversity and inclusion hiring policies and revived a conservative group’s complaint over ABC’s 2024 presidential debate.
Early this year, the agency sought to require its talk show “The View” to follow so-called equal-time rules for political candidates, even though the F.C.C. previously agreed that the show qualified for an exemption.
In April, after Mr. Trump and the first lady demanded ABC fire Mr. Kimmel over a joke he made about her being an “expectant widow,” the F.C.C. started an early review of the federal licenses that ABC stations need to operate, years before they are set to expire.
The agency had never brought such a mass challenge to a major network’s station licenses. It said it was doing so because ABC was deficient in its responses to the diversity and inclusion inquiry.
ABC is now fighting the agency’s actions, which it called “deeply un-American.”
The network has asked a federal court to intervene immediately, arguing that Mr. Carr was effectively using the agency’s enforcement process to wage a “retaliatory campaign” that is already negatively affecting its programming decisions.
Out of fear of retaliation, ABC decided to carry live online a prime-time speech that Mr. Trump gave on election security, which it would not have otherwise done, and avoided certain bookings and video clips on “The View,” the network said in court papers.
It also reported onerous F.C.C. demands for documents, including staff communications from inside “The View” and internal ABC News editorial policies.
“It’s unprecedented to seek these records because they are part of the editorial decision-making,” Anna Gomez, the lone Democratic F.C.C. commissioner, said in an interview. “It’s all a strategy, and tools, to intimidate broadcasters into submission.”
Mr. Carr has called ABC’s suit meritless. This month, the F.C.C. moved to get the case dismissed, arguing ABC was simply trying to short-circuit an agency investigation while exaggerating harms to its speech rights.
Trevor Timm, the executive director of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, a nonprofit group that tracks press freedom violations in the United States, said that the administration’s moves “have certainly risen to the level where they’re kind of off the charts.”
Government efforts to subpoena journalists and chill their reporting through threats are at the highest level since the foundation started tracking incidents in 2017.
And as a private citizen, Mr. Trump has filed lawsuits against a wide range of targets including the Guardian newspaper, the journalist Bob Woodward and the Pulitzer Prize board — legal battles often financed by his donor-funded political action committee.
Many of the moves have also drawn stern rebukes and concern from judges.
That was the case after the F.B.I. served a search warrant in January at the home of a Washington Post reporter and seized several of her devices, as part of an investigation into a contractor’s handling of classified material. In February, Judge William B. Porter chastised the government and forbade officials from immediately reviewing the reporter’s materials, saying to do otherwise would be “the equivalent of leaving the government’s fox in charge of The Washington Post’s henhouse.”
While weighing a suit Mr. Trump has personally brought against The Des Moines Register for a poll it published showing him behind in Iowa in 2024, a judge worried that allowing the suit to proceed could have “a massive, chilling effect.”
After a judge harshly questioned government lawyers in July over subpoenas for phone records and testimony from Times journalists who reported on the security capabilities of the new Qatari-donated Air Force One jet, the Justice Department withdrew the subpoenas.
At the time, David McCraw, the paper’s top newsroom lawyer, called the outcome, “an important affirmation of our country’s commitment to a free press,” but added in a statement that the subpoenas “should never have been issued in the first place.”
In siding with The Times in a challenge to restrictions for reporters at the Pentagon, Judge Paul Friedman of U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia wrote in March, “Those who drafted the First Amendment believed that the nation’s security requires a free press and an informed people and that such security is endangered by governmental suppression of political speech.”
After The Times initially prevailed in court, Pentagon officials sidestepped the ruling to again limit the access of journalists to the building. The Times sued again. This time, an appellate panel allowed a key new restriction to stand, at least temporarily — reporters must have escorts inside the Pentagon where they once roamed freely.
The rule remains in place while the legal fight presses on.
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14) Alabama Is Set to Execute a Murderer. The Jury Wanted Him to Live.
Jeffery Lee’s case has grappled with questions in Alabama about emerging execution methods and an abandoned sentencing practice that sent him and others to death row.
By Rick Rojas, Reporting from Atlanta, Sept. 12, 2026
A jury in Alabama heard harrowing testimony about a bungled pawnshop robbery in 1998 that quickly turned to bloodshed: Jeffery Lee, 21, charged in with a sawed-off shotgun and opened fire. The store’s owner, hit in the chest and arm, and his ex-wife, who was shot point-blank in the face, were killed. A clerk was wounded; she played dead until Mr. Lee fled.
Jurors voted unanimously to convict him. But when it came to deciding whether Mr. Lee should be put to death, most of the panel opted instead to sentence him to life in prison without parole.
And yet, nearly three decades later, Mr. Lee is on death row, his execution just days away.
Mr. Lee’s case is a relic of an era when judges had the power to override a jury’s sentencing decision, a practice forbidden in Alabama since 2017. He is one of more than two dozen inmates whose death sentences came from judges, not juries.
“We’re still here,” said Mr. Lee, now 49, speaking by phone from death row in Atmore, Ala. “The guys are still here fighting for their lives.”
I have reported on Mr. Lee’s case since the spring, when his legal team succeeded in raising doubts about the constitutionality of nitrogen gas as an execution method. Alabama was ready to put Mr. Lee to death using the gas in June, and had already moved him to the death chamber, when the U.S. Supreme Court intervened.
Mr. Lee agreed to an interview this month after the state rescheduled his execution for Sept. 17, this time using lethal injection.
His case has tangled with some of the most fraught questions hanging over capital punishment in Alabama. In the interview, he discussed how such a sprawling and philosophical debate in society — about the morality of the death penalty and the constitutional boundaries of cruel and unusual punishment — had such direct implications on his fate.
Now that he faces a grim countdown, Mr. Lee talked about what distracted him (blasting worship music) and brought some comfort (Bible verses like Psalm 91). He also focused his frustration on how his sentence was reached, saying that his crimes merited a severe punishment, but that it should be the punishment the jury agreed to.
“I’m not free — that’s punishment,” Mr. Lee said. “And that’s something I’ve been living with for the past 26 years. No way, not one day has been easy.”
Officials in Alabama — which has long had the highest number of death sentences per capita in the country — have resolved to push ahead with executions, even as they wrestle with the legacy of old flawed policies and as limited access to lethal injection drugs has prompted a search for new methods.
And in Mr. Lee’s case, those officials have defended the death sentence as just. “There is absolutely no question as to his guilt,” Steve Marshall, Alabama’s Republican attorney general, said in a statement. “Anything short of carrying out the sentence imposed by the court falls short of justice for the victims, and that is not what victims of this state deserve.”
Still, prominent legal and political figures in Alabama — including some Republicans who are generally supportive of the death penalty — have demanded clemency for Mr. Lee.
Alabama had been the last state to allow judges to override a jury’s sentencing decision before it changed the law with overwhelming bipartisan support in 2017. At some points, one-fifth of the inmates on death row had been sent there using judicial override. Legislative efforts to apply the change retroactively have failed, creating what critics regard as an alarming imbalance.
“When a state concludes that a sentencing practice was unjust — unjust enough to abolish by statute — it ought to reckon with the sentences that practice produced,” Drayton Nabers Jr., a former chief justice of the State Supreme Court and a Republican, wrote in an essay published in June in newspapers across the state.
During the sentencing phase of Mr. Lee’s trial in 2000, his family members testified about his struggles with substance abuse starting from a young age, which precipitated erratic and troubling behavior.
The victim’s relatives and others described the anguish unleashed in Dallas County, a rural and impoverished stretch west of Montgomery, part of a region known as Alabama’s Black Belt primarily for its rich soil.
Helen King, the clerk and surviving victim, shared the torment that had endured long after she called for help. “I still can’t sleep at night, I slap at my kids for no reason,” Ms. King said during the sentencing hearing. “It turned my life upside down.”
Efforts this week to reach Ms. King and relatives of Jimmy Ellis, the store owner, and Elaine Thompson, his ex-wife, were unsuccessful.
Mr. Lee was originally sentenced to die by electrocution, long the state’s primary method before lethal injection supplanted it in 2002. In 2018, as major pharmaceutical companies restricted the sale of the drugs used in lethal injections, Alabama legalized nitrogen hypoxia. The state paused executions for three months in 2022 after botched lethal injection attempts.
Mr. Lee agreed to be executed by nitrogen hypoxia, in which a person breathes pure nitrogen through a mask. Supporters of the method had presented it as efficient and potentially painless.
“We were led to believe that it would be something constitutional, something that wouldn’t involve suffering,” Mr. Lee said of why he chose nitrogen gas.
But after Alabama put the method in place in 2024, witnesses described seeing inmates writhing and gasping for air for 10 minutes or longer.
In a legal challenge to nitrogen hypoxia, Mr. Lee suggested being put to death by a firing squad would be quicker and less cruel. A federal judge agreed. Four .30-caliber bullets aimed at his heart, the judge wrote, “significantly reduces a substantial risk of severe pain.”
Alabama officials countered that the state did not have the legislative approval or the protocol prepared for a firing squad, much less “five expert marksmen willing and able to serve as executioners.”
Mr. Lee’s legal team contends that his agreement to be executed using nitrogen gas included language that prevented him from being put to death by lethal injection. The same federal judge rejected that argument in July.
Since June, Mr. Lee said, he has been caught between relief, as the day he believed could be his last turned out not to be, and dread, as he realizes a last-minute intervention is less likely this time around. He tries not to think about it.
Instead, Mr. Lee, who trained as a minister in prison, said he was leaning once again on the faith that had carried him throughout his time on death row.
“When I stop and choose to focus on what’s going on, I get stuck there,” he said. “I choose each and every day to wake up and not be fearful and afraid.”
Susan C. Beachy contributed research.
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