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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