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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We need as many people there as possible to carry our message - no more of our tax dollars for endless wars. Can we count you in? Sign up here:
https://www.codepink.org/novdc26
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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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 ‘Freedom Zone’ launches important human rights event October 30 Global Festival in Support of Russian Political Prisoners _________________________________________________________ THE LOCATIONS: Berlin, Munich, Warsaw, New York, Minnesota, Budva, Melbourne, Helsinki, Haifa, Amsterdam, Stockholm, Vilnius, São Paulo, Florianópolis, Batumi, Tbilisi, Belgrade, Riga, Paris, Yerevan, Milan, Vienna, London, Madrid THE AUDIENCE: Anyone concerned about political prisoners in Russia
Lectures, auctions, letter evenings, film screenings and other events will take place in more than 20 countries, including the US, Brazil and Australia, demonstrating worldwide solidarity with the prisoners of the Russian regime. Speakers in different cities will include such well-known opponents of the Putin regime as Daria Serenko, Mikhail Lobanov, Sasha and Nadezhda Skochilenko, Ivan Philippov, Alexey Ponomaryov and other prominent Russian exiles. Funds raised will go towards supporting political prisoners, covering the costs of legal representation, visits from loved ones and other needs. It is also possible to join the international campaign by making an online donation. This global festival will be a tangible expression of opposition to lawlessness in Russia and support for its victims. Let’s show that we stand shoulder to shoulder with those who have been unjustly convicted! ______________________________________________ ‘Freedom Zone’ was founded by Kseniia Kagarlitskaia, daughter of political prisoner Boris Kagarlitsky. Since 2024, the organisation has been holding charity events (festivals) abroad to raise funds for political prisoners in Russia, raising awareness of the unlawful persecution and inhumane prison conditions faced by people in the Russian Federation, as well as campaigning for the release of political prisoners. Website: https://freedom-zone.com/festival Contact: Kseniia Kagarlitskaiazona.svobody@gmail.com +38268347993 Telegram @pruesha ___________________________________________________________________ Donation link: https://buymeacoffee.com/zonasvobodk 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) This Haunted House Novel Bears the Scars of Palestinian History
In “Our Cut of Salt,” a young woman’s return to her ancestral home uncovers chilling secrets.
By Amal El-Mohtar, Oct. 31, 2026
Amal El-Mohtar is a Hugo Award-winning writer, the author of “The River Has Roots,” and the co-author, with Max Gladstone, of “This Is How You Lose the Time War.” Her debut collection is “Seasons of Glass and Iron: Stories.” She is the Book Review’s science fiction columnist.
Hauntings, structurally, require two things: the lie of a stable, settled history, and a deeper, unsettling truth emerging to trouble it. So I was especially curious about Deena Helm’s debut novel, “Our Cut of Salt,” billed as a Palestinian haunted house tale. What would it mean for a house to be haunted in the context of home demolitions, settler violence and genocide?
The dispossessed often haunt those who’ve dispossessed them. In that context, one would expect Palestinians, evicted or executed, to haunt the Israelis in their place. But in Helm’s book, the haunting is also confronted by its Palestinian protagonists. What does it look like for the dispossessed to narrate and be haunted by their own dispossession?
We’re introduced to three generations of the Sayadi family in 2002: Nuhad, who was forced from her home in 1948; her daughter, Haifa, who was born and raised in Chicago (and named after the city Nuhad fled); and Haifa’s daughter, Marina, who is in her 20s and decides to visit her recently deceased grandmother’s native city. “Palestinians exist in fragments,” Marina observes, and the book unfolds in a mosaic of them.
While Marina resents the fact that “the limits of ancestral history she’s been told end at the simple fact of being Palestinian,” we are given vivid details of Nuhad’s girlhood under British occupation in 1948. Her story is interleaved with Marina’s introduction to the realities of Palestinian life in 2002, marginalized and contingent and subject to a random distribution of Israeli violence and indulgence. Aided to her grandmother’s house by her grandmother’s childhood best friend, Rania, Marina follows a trail of bread crumbs into the family history her generation has been denied.
“Our Cut of Salt” opens with a question that becomes a refrain: “Why is the house in Haifa haunted?” Each repetition and shift in inflection opens a different door into the edifice of Helm’s project, which includes giving the house in Haifa its own voice and point of view. Furious, grieving, vengeful, it devours its settler inhabitants or drives them mad, keeping itself empty for the return of its original family.
So much of this book is profoundly moving, an earnest shout against the injustice of a century’s worth of nightmare history. It isn’t a spoiler to say that the house is haunted by the Nakba, the mass dispossession and displacement of over 750,000 Palestinians by Zionist forces around 1948, alternately mourned and celebrated as the establishment of the state of Israel. The house itself tells us: “The haunting — is caused by sickness … a sickness caused by 1948.” But this raises a question the book never addresses, one that effectively haunted my own reading: Why isn’t every house in Haifa haunted?
Helm gestures toward the question without quite answering it: “The entire city is haunted — not just that house. Everywhere Rania looks, there are ghosts.”
Rania’s own childhood home is the site of a terrible violation. In 1948, while Zionist paramilitary forces terrorized the streets, her family was locked out by the Jewish refugees they’d taken in. But Rania’s family remained in Haifa and their former home remains unhaunted. I was left wondering: Is Helm arguing that being haunted is a uniquely diasporic condition?
“Our Cut of Salt” is structured in such a way that uncovering one family’s secret trauma within a shared public one becomes the means to contend with the house’s violent spirit. Those disparate fragments of Palestinian existence are ultimately integrated into some kind of meaningful narrative whole.
But this left me dissatisfied; it’s too neat, too insufficient to the surrounding horrors of the present and the past. The novel’s great strength is in explicitly portraying the Palestinian experience of the Nakba, something that’s rarely depicted in fiction and often obscured in fact. If Palestinian perspectives on 1948 are emerging to unsettle the triumphal narratives surrounding Israel’s founding, one doesn’t want to see that truth warped into another reassuring lie.
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2) Iran Braces for More War, No Matter the Outcome of the U.S. and Israeli Elections
With Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu fighting to stay in power and President Trump facing a tough midterm, Iran’s leaders expect no major shift in policy.
By Yeganeh Torbati, Yeganeh Torbati is the Iran correspondent, Oct. 31, 2026
A campaign billboard last week in Tel Aviv showing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and President Trump. Jack Guez/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Little is clear about the power dynamics that will govern Israel and the United States in the coming months after pivotal elections in both countries. But Iran’s leaders are watching the contests closely, analysts said, and bracing for a renewed round of conflict whatever the outcome.
In Israel, this week’s national elections showed that neither Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right alliance nor the main opposition bloc, led by Gadi Eisenkot, the country’s former top military official, won enough votes to form a government. That has set the stage for weeks of uncertainty.
In the United States, Democrats appear to be in a strong position to take control of at least the House in the midterm elections next week. But the exact size of their win, and whether they secure a majority in the Senate, will determine if they can put a brake on President Trump’s policies, including the war with Iran.
Tehran expects more attacks whoever takes control in Israel or of Congress, and has shown little willingness to make concessions demanded by the Trump administration to seal a peace deal.
On Saturday, Mojtaba Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, said on social media that he had met with senior leaders of the armed forces and directed them to respond to any kind or level of threat with an immediate response in order to establish “maximum deterrence.” He also directed them to be prepared to target all types of U.S. and Israeli assets.
“They have been expecting a new round of war already for a few weeks, and they’ve been preparing accordingly,” Hamidreza Azizi, senior Iran analyst at the International Crisis Group, said of the Iranian government.
In Israel, Iran would welcome the removal of Mr. Netanyahu from power, said Mohammad Saleh Sedghian, director of the Arab Center for Iranian Studies in Tehran. The Israeli leader helped persuade Mr. Trump to attack Iran this year and sought to orchestrate new airstrikes on Iran ahead of the election. But Iranian leaders believe that changing prime ministers would probably have an impact only in the short term rather than leading to a fundamental shift in Israeli policy, Mr. Sedghian said.
“Iranian and Israeli policies toward each other have remained consistent regardless of which government has been in power in Israel since the 1980s,” he said. “Any changes would likely be temporary rather than strategic.”
Mr. Azizi said that there were several scenarios for how the Israeli election results could unfold but that “we should not expect a fundamental change in the hostility between Israel and Iran.”
Even if Mr. Eisenkot or another opposition leader takes power and shifts Israel back into deploying covert tactics against Iran rather than all-out war, Iran’s response could still be escalatory.
“The Islamic Republic’s strategic thinking has undergone a significant shift, involving, first and foremost, a greater willingness to take risks and a move away from its long-established policy of strategic patience,” Mr. Azizi said. “As a result, Iran could still respond to indirect Israeli operations through direct military action.”
When it comes to the United States, Iran’s leaders are keenly aware of how the costs of the war, including higher gasoline prices for Americans, have affected Mr. Trump’s popularity and the Republican Party’s prospects in the midterms. Their assessment appears to be that a deal with Iran would benefit Mr. Trump politically, giving Tehran leverage in any negotiations to end the war. Iran, on the other hand, has already borne enormous costs including worsening inflation, without its leaders changing their stance.
Mostafa Najafi, an analyst who is said to be close to Mr. Rezaei, wrote on social media on Wednesday that the Trump administration was pursuing a deal with Iran in the days leading up to the midterms as Republicans face a difficult fight to retain control of Congress.
“They want to leverage the agreement for the elections and insist that nuclear concessions also be part of the pre-election deal, which Tehran does not accept,” Mr. Najafi wrote. “If no agreement is reached in the next two days, the atmosphere will likely shift toward confrontation in the first week after the elections.”
Last week, Vice President JD Vance sent a letter to a top Iranian official to propose a new round of comprehensive peace talks, a senior U.S. official and an Iranian official with knowledge of the communication have said. Mr. Vance bypassed Iran’s elected government and President Masoud Pezeshkian and instead addressed the letter to Mohsen Rezaei, the top national security adviser and the former longtime commander of the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. The outreach to Mr. Rezaei reflected the Trump administration’s view that it needs to deal directly with an Iranian official with influence over hard-liners, who have opposed agreeing to a deal.
On Friday, a Qatari delegation arrived in Tehran for talks, Iran’s state news outlet reported. Qatar has been mediating discussions between Iran and the United States.
On Saturday, Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister, said that the country’s diplomats were meeting with mediators in Doha, Qatar, Al Jazeera reported. Mr. Araghchi said Iran was reviewing proposals on its nuclear program, the report added, and he described the letter from Mr. Vance as “a positive step.”
The burst of recent diplomacy comes at a significant moment. Mr. Trump has been weighing whether to renew attacks on Iran, potentially after the midterms, and the United States and Israel have drawn up specific plans for new strikes, U.S. officials and other people briefed on the deliberations have said. But there are major obstacles that would need to be overcome for the United States and Iran to reach a final agreement.
“The two sides remain far apart on several critical issues, including the Strait of Hormuz, sanctions relief, oversight by the International Atomic Energy Agency and the scope of Iran’s nuclear commitments,” said Mehrzad Boroujerdi, an Iran expert at Missouri University of Science and Technology. “My sense is that Tehran will pursue a dual-track strategy, engaging in intermittent diplomatic negotiations while simultaneously preparing, to the best of its ability, for a possible resumption of hostilities.”
Mr. Najafi, in his social media post on Wednesday, said that Iran “insists on the fulfillment of its seven conditions” before agreeing to any interim deal. Iranian officials have referred frequently to the conditions in the past month without fully explaining what they are, and framed them as a prerequisite for new talks or the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, the critical shipping waterway on Iran’s southern coast.
Mr. Najafi said in a voice message to The New York Times that the conditions included lifting the U.S. naval blockade on Iran and sanctions on Iran’s oil sales; ending the war on all fronts, including in Lebanon, where Israel has been fighting with Hezbollah, the Iran-backed armed group; releasing frozen Iranian assets; and accepting Iran’s management of the Strait of Hormuz.
“Iran has put forth these to the American side as preconditions for the opening of the Strait of Hormuz,” Mr. Najafi said. “The American side must first fulfill these preconditions, and then the negotiations will enter the main phase.”
Mr. Najafi also expressed deep pessimism about the prospects of a lasting agreement between the two sides, saying that Iranian officials have no trust in American intentions or promises.
“Here, the messages exchanged with the United States are viewed with profound skepticism,” he said. “The issue of Iran-U.S. relations has become so complex that even if Iran were to agree to nuclear negotiations and make concessions, it is highly unlikely that this tangled web of conflict between the two nations will reach a meaningful resolution or result in a lasting agreement.”
Leily Nikounazar contributed reporting.
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3) Thousands Join Another Round of Protests in France
Early estimates suggest that the turnout will be lower than the previous two Saturdays, and the authorities again prepared a vast security response. Demonstrators and the police clashed in a few cities.
By Mark Landler and Ségolène Le Stradic, Reporting from Paris, Oct. 31, 2026
Thousands of protesters were on the streets in cities across France again on Saturday, a now-weekly expression of national grievance that has led to clashes between protesters and the police, and kept the country on edge.
Adding to those fears: Halloween, which also falls on Saturday. The French authorities, citing calls on social media for people to revolt that encouraged them to wear masks and costumes, warned that the risk of a new outbreak of violence was high.
Early estimates from the French interior ministry suggested that by midafternoon, crowds were smaller than at the same time on the previous two Saturdays. At 2 p.m., the ministry estimated that 15,000 people were taking part in 65 protests. The numbers were expected to grow as the day progressed. The ministry said it had arrested 27 people, compared with 217 by the same time last Saturday.
In Paris, the demonstration remained largely peaceful, even festive, by late afternoon. But protesters and the police have clashed in Marseille, Lyon, Toulouse, and Rennes. The huge demonstrations last Saturday did not descend into the lawlessness that had erupted the week before, in part because of a heavy security force, which is being marshaled again.
France’s interior minister, Laurent Nuñez, warned on Thursday that Saturday could be a “day with a very high risk to public order.” He promised to deploy 70,000 police officers, matching the numbers on Oct. 24. That operation helped keep a lid on outbreaks of arson and looting, although there were clashes as the police tried to disperse the crowds in the evening.
There is ample fuel for a repeat of those combustible scenes. Students, who are returning to school on Monday after a two-week break, were not mollified by the government’s initial response to their demands. The Education Ministry agreed to cap some class sizes, offer low-interest loans to rebuild school buildings and phase out an unpopular online college admissions platform.
The students vowed to go on protesting. Their two-month-old movement has grown to include university students, public workers and veterans of the “yellow vest” movement that convulsed France from 2018 to 2020.
While tensions could rise during the day, the authorities said they were most worried about trouble breaking out after nightfall.
“We are seeing numerous calls to gather coming from the far left, the radicalized extreme left, and from certain radicalized ‘yellow vests’ websites, which are urging people to attend rallies or public gatherings starting at 8 p.m. in many cities across France,” Mr. Nuñez said at a news conference.
Some of the messages were violent, Mr. Nuñez said, calling for “revolution” and “insurrection.” Those gatherings will be forbidden, and any attempt to gather in spite of the ban will lead to arrests, he said.
Demonstrators have been encouraged on social media to turn up wearing Halloween costumes. Mr. Nuñez warned it was a criminal offense to conceal one’s face during a demonstration in which public order is disrupted.
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4) Threats, Gaffes and Men’s Posteriors: Trump’s Talk Gets Wilder
A Times review of the president’s public speeches finds that he is more profane, more absolutist, longer-winded and less coherent than he was in 2016.
By Peter Baker and Dylan Freedman, Nov. 1, 2026
Peter Baker, the chief White House correspondent, and Dylan Freedman, the A.I. projects editor for The Times, conducted a review they previously produced in 2024.
Alex Kent/The New York Times
Peter Baker, the chief White House correspondent, and Dylan Freedman, the A.I. projects editor for The Times, conducted a review they previously produced in 2024.
As he opened his speech at a recent campaign rally in Greenville, N.C., President Trump told the story of the Willie Horton crime case that helped sink the presidential campaign of the Democrat Michael S. Dukakis in 1988.
And then, 30 minutes later, still speaking at the same rally to the same audience from the same lectern, Mr. Trump told the same Willie Horton story all over again, using some of the same language (and getting the facts wrong both times).
Mr. Trump, who last year became the oldest person ever inaugurated as president and turned 80 in June, has demonstrated physical stamina as he barnstorms the country in advance of midterm elections. But his performances on the road and at the White House this fall have produced many head-scratching moments that have revived questions about his age and stability.
He can be forgetful and repetitive. He is more long-winded, more profane and more absolutist than when he ran for president a decade ago. His rambling speeches seem even more garbled at times. He makes comments that leave people wondering what he is talking about or that sound like he is saying something he is not. And even for a president who has never fully observed the norms of the office, he seems more willing to say things no other president would say.
He declared that at an unfenced construction site “only a Hispanic could survive that fall.” He wants to ban immigrants from Norway “because I didn’t get the Nobel Prize.” He says “I don’t give a damn” if he is seen as caring more about oil company profits than struggling workers. He mispronounces the Strait of Hormuz as the “Hormone Strait.” He has told supporters to “cheat like hell” in the Nov. 3 elections. He says military leakers “should be shot.” And then there is his baffling fixation with admiring men’s posteriors.
Even Mr. Trump seems astonished at times by what comes out of his mouth — and by how much his supporters embrace him nonetheless. “I could say the stupidest things and you’d clap. ‘Oh, I love you so,’” he marveled at a recent rally in Clarksville, Tenn. “But we don’t say the stupidest things,” he quickly added. “We say things of common sense. We say things that make sense.”
For Mr. Trump, making sense often places second to having fun at rallies, and some outrageous remarks appear aimed at generating a laugh. His allies say too much is made of comments that are really just jokes. He has always been a provocative speaker, willing to outrage for the sake of outrage. Mr. Trump defends his stream-of-consciousness rambling as a “brilliant” speaking style that he calls “the weave.”
But the weave seems to be getting weavier. An A.I.-assisted New York Times review of Mr. Trump’s comments from speeches, rallies, social media, interviews and public meetings found significant changes since he began a run for president at age 69 in 2015, although not as much of a notable shift since 2024 when a similar review was conducted. Broadly speaking, the review concluded, Mr. Trump’s public communication is more vulgar, more uninhibited and less coherent than it was a decade ago.
“He’s saying so many stupid things, even for him, so many outrageous and aggressive things,” said former Representative Francis Rooney, a Republican from Florida. “This aggressive kind of attack language, that’s something I’ve never heard from a president.”
The White House denied that Mr. Trump has lost a step. Davis Ingle, a White House spokesman, hailed his “sharpness, unmatched energy, relentless work ethic and historic accessibility” and dismissed concerns about his provocative comments.
“The president doesn’t care about being politically correct, he cares about making America great again,” Mr. Ingle said. “The American people love how authentic, transparent and effective the president is.”
The ‘Freaking Genius’
Measuring the effects of age can be difficult without a medical exam, although that has not stopped many physicians, political commentators and everyday Americans from drawing conclusions about Mr. Trump based on what they see on television.
The Times review from 2015 through Thursday found that the president in his second term has used 19 percent more all-or-nothing words like “always,” “never,” “everything” and “totally” at rallies than he did a decade ago and 5 percent more than in 2024, a sign of black-and-white thinking that experts say often accompanies advancing age or cognitive decline. He is cruder than he used to be, using nearly 15 swear words per 10,000 words compared with 14 two years ago and six a decade ago, a change consistent with age-related disinhibition.
The review, relying on an A.I.-assisted metric, found that he makes rambling or confusing digressions in his rallies and speeches two and a half times as often in his second term as in the 2016 campaign, although roughly the same as in 2024. His vocabulary remains about the same, as does the reading level of his speaking, which hovers between fourth and fifth grade. (The average modern president speaks at an eighth-grade level.)
Mr. Trump’s public schedule is thinner, down to 1.3 events per weekday versus 2.1 in the first term. But he is posting online an average of 21 times a day, up from 13 a day in 2016 although down from 34 a day two years ago. The night owl president has posted messages between midnight and 5 a.m. on 30 percent of his nights in his second term and has had 240 bursts of 10 or more posts an hour.
The president’s doctor has said that Mr. Trump is mentally sharp. In a three-page summary released in May, Dr. Sean P. Barbabella, the White House physician, noted that Mr. Trump had scored 30 out of 30 on the Montreal Cognitive Assessment. “Cognitive and physical performance are excellent,” he wrote.
The Montreal assessment is a quick test to screen for Alzheimer’s disease or other cognitive impairment and includes basic questions like identifying a lion, camel and rhinoceros; drawing a clock; repeating words or numbers in order; and naming as many words as possible in one minute that start with the letter F. “Nobody can do this,” Mr. Trump insisted a couple weeks ago, adding: “But I can. You know why? Because I’m a freaking genius!”
Mr. Trump appears sensitive to the perception that he is slipping, bringing up his cognitive tests without being asked at a half-dozen recent rallies. In Chillicothe, Ohio, on Wednesday night, he called himself “a very high-IQ person,” offered an extended description of the tests and compared his brainpower to that of former Presidents Barack Obama and Joseph R. Biden Jr.
“Don’t forget I’m the only president to pass without exception — I passed three cognitive tests,” he said. “I’m the only president that agreed to take them. And they’re hard, you know? Obama couldn’t have passed it. Biden we don’t even talk about.”
‘I Don’t Give a Damn’
While Mr. Trump has been known to nod off during White House meetings, he draws energy from crowds when he is on the road. He speaks and speaks and speaks — twice as long as in 2016, according to the Times review, for an average of 85 minutes per rally compared with 42 minutes a decade ago.
He is profoundly and proudly undisciplined. He says things that are manifestly unhelpful to him. Even as many Americans are upset about the cost of filling their gas tank, he said in Perry, Ga., the other day that high oil prices were good because the fossil fuel industry was making hundreds of billions of dollars. Even as he said it, he acknowledged it would produce bad headlines. “I don’t give a damn,” he said. “I’m going to say it. We’re making a freaking fortune.”
He wanders from thought to thought, often without finishing a sentence, embedding one off-the-cuff story within another. In Pendleton, S.C., he started talking about transgender athletes, interrupted to tell a story about someone he met in Israel, referred to a poll without explaining its results and then riffed on climate change:
“You have a lot of records that are not exactly going to be shattered by women. They’re going to say, ‘Who the hell broke it?’ Or the swimmer who was a great swimmer, and then she looked to her left, she looked to her right, and she saw this massive human being next to her.
You’ve seen him — her on television. And she had to compete. And my wife said, ‘Please don’t tell those stories. They’re terrible stories to tell as president. Can you imagine George Washington telling these stories?’ No, because George Washington lived in sanity. He didn’t have men playing in women’s sports.
I promise you this. I didn’t know George Washington personally, but they did not have the mutilization of your children for transgender purposes. Do you think George ever had any of the things that we have to go through, Tim? I don’t think so.
Abraham Lincoln — I met a young man from Israel. I said, ‘Who’s your favorite president?’ He said, ‘Abraham Lincoln.’ I said, ‘Oh.’ I said, ‘That’s nice.’ We love Abraham Lincoln. But you’re going to see something later, because they have a poll — they took a poll recently. You’re going to see it. But I also declared a national emergency on energy and terminated the Green New Scam, one of the greatest hoaxes in the history of our country.”
‘He’s All Man’
Like many people in their ninth decade, he is prone to say things that seem inappropriate. His focus on the male anatomy, for instance, has become remarkably pronounced lately.
“I don’t do this with men very often,” Mr. Trump said at a rally with Senator Jon Husted, Republican of Ohio, on Oct. 12. “I started examining his body because I didn’t know he was a great athlete. And I looked and I watched up and down. I looked at his ass.”
Five days later, he repeated his appreciation of Mr. Husted’s backside. “I examined his ass,” Mr. Trump said at a rally in Kentucky. “I never did that with, no, I never did that with a man before.” Three days later in North Carolina, he praised Mr. Husted’s derrière again. “His ass is, it’s like a pile of muscle,” he said. In Chillicothe, he did it again: “I started by looking at his ass, and it was strong as hell.”
Mr. Husted is not the only object of Mr. Trump’s manly approval. Among the others:
Senator Tim Scott, Republican of South Carolina: “As much as I can fall in love with a man, which isn’t that much, I fall in love with him, and his name happens to be Tim Scott.”
The spouse of Senator Darline Graham, the other South Carolina Republican: “He’s a good-looking husband.”
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health and human services secretary: “He’s got the body of a 30-year-old.”
Representative Mike Collins, Republican of Georgia: “Mike Collins is a good-looking man. And he’s all man.”
In Michigan on Sunday, Mr. Trump made a point of praising a woman’s backside for a change. “I looked at one hell of a beautiful ass before — Nicki Minaj,” he told the crowd. “That’s hard to miss.”
Mr. Trump has always displayed fits of public anger in ways that other presidents have not. But he seems even more prone to pounce these days.
He snaps at reporters so often now that he barely waits for their questions before calling them “sick” and ordering, “Quiet!” When a reporter asked on Thursday if he was canceling a trip to Kansas because he was tired of traveling, Mr. Trump accosted his physical appearance. “You are disgusting! Put yourself in shape. You look like hell.”
His exhortations to supporters to vote have grown more vulgar and violent as well. “If you do that,” he said in Vandalia, Ohio, “we’re going to win and we’re going to win big. And we’re going to shove it up their ass, OK?”
He depicts himself as all-powerful. “I can do whatever I want,” he told reporters in the Oval Office recently. As if to prove it, he regularly tries to rename bodies of water after America or himself. He demanded that tech companies stop using the term artificial intelligence, preferring instead “super intelligence”; those that disobey, he wrote online, are “THE ENEMY!”
He has never been burdened with excessive self-awareness, but even so, some of his recent comments have been jarring. The man who dispenses disparaging nicknames like “Talafreako” for James Talarico and “Annie Trannie” for Dr. Annie Andrews insisted with a straight face the other day that “I don’t go around mocking people.”
Likewise, the commander in chief who recently threatened to “annihilate” Iran complained bitterly that he did not win the Nobel Peace Prize. Even so, one night last month he could not remember the name of the prize he covets. “Does anybody know the name of that peace prize?” he asked in Pendleton, then came up with another: “the Pulitzer Prize.”
When he summoned the name of the Nobel Prize last week in Port Huron, Mich., he declared that he would like to ban all immigrants from Norway, where the award committee is based, because he did not win. “I don’t want anybody from Norway,” he said. “Frankly, Norway sucks. Norway has become a shithouse country, actually.”
These days, even Mr. Trump seems aware that eyes are on him, watching and waiting. “I love the weave,” he told the midterm Republican convention in Dallas in September. “You know what the weave is? You talk about something, then you bring in a ballroom or you bring in an airplane or you bring in Air Force One. But you notice I always get right back to the same topic.”
And yet, he went on, “when someday, there’ll be a time when I do the weave is weave, weave. Someday, there’ll be a time when I don’t get back to the original subject, and then you can say he’s had it. OK? You can say then he’s had it.”
Methodology
The Times collected thousands of Mr. Trump’s speeches, interviews, social media posts and schedules using data from Roll Call’s Factba.se from 2015 through late October this year. To quantify Mr. Trump’s use of all-or-nothing language and swearwords, we measured basic word frequency statistics across Mr. Trump’s presidential terms and campaign periods. To identify confusing and rambling passages of text, we used the A.I. model Claude Opus 5.5 to score more than 6,500 passages of Mr. Trump’s speeches with detailed instructions based on our previous reporting analyzing Mr. Trump’s use of rambling and profane language. We counted a speech passage as incoherent if it scored at least a seven out of 10 with this rubric, which was informed by manual review of hundreds of passages and an evaluation to ensure a high bar of accuracy.
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5) Netanyahu’s Bid to Stay in Power Will Test His Political Savvy
After losing ground in Israel’s election, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu must draw on decades of political capital and reckon with old foes if he is to build a governing coalition.
By Isabel Kershner, Reporting from Jerusalem, Nov. 1, 2026
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel addressing supporters last week in Jerusalem after polls closed in a closely fought election. Chris McGrath/Getty Images
For Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, putting together a new governing coalition after Israel’s inconclusive election would be like assembling a jigsaw puzzle with ill-fitting pieces.
Mr. Netanyahu, Israel’s longest serving leader, lost ground, with his Likud party failing to hold nearly a sixth of its seats in the Parliament, and his hawkish coalition seeing its share decline even more. But to the surprise of some political observers, Likud still emerged as the largest party with 27 seats.
If Mr. Netanyahu manages to get the green light from Israel’s president to try to form a government — not a given at this point — he will need 61 seats to retain power.
To do so, he must find a way to expand his coalition of far-right nationalist and ultra-Orthodox Jewish parties, perhaps by luring at least eight defectors from an opposition bloc that has vowed to unseat him. Or he could try to create a national unity government with Gadi Eisenkot, Israel’s former military chief who heads the center-right Yashar, the largest party in the anti-Netanyahu alliance.
To achieve either goal, Mr. Netanyahu, 77, would have to draw on decades of parliamentary savvy and political capital. He would also have to overcome a legacy of grievances he has left over a career of political skirmishes and, critics say, betrayals.
From Division to Unity?
The prime minister’s bloc now controls five more seats than the main opposition bloc, a politically diverse alliance of Jewish parties led by Mr. Eisenkot. But if Mr. Eisenkot were to partner with two predominantly Arab parties, who also oppose Mr. Netanyahu, the coalition would muster a comfortable majority of 67 seats to take power.
Some Jewish parties in the opposition have so far ruled that out, but Mr. Eisenkot could still be the one with the first chance of forming a government.
Mr. Eisenkot has in the past cooperated with Mr. Netanyahu, in the days after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on Israel, joining his emergency war cabinet to help steer the conflict in Gaza. Mr. Eisenkot’s political partner at the time, Benny Gantz, another former military chief and opponent of Mr. Netanyahu, joined the war cabinet as well.
They both left the government eight months later, frustrated with what they said was Mr. Netanyahu’s failure to design an exit strategy for the war and a diplomatic plan for Gaza’s future.
Mr. Netanyahu did not take any responsibility for Israel’s failure to prevent the Oct. 7 attack, instead blaming his generals. Mr. Eisenkot, who lost a son in the fighting in Gaza, declared Mr. Netanyahu unworthy of remaining in office and founded Yashar to unseat the prime minister.
In earlier years, Mr. Netanyahu had adopted a different strategy, trying to bring centrist parties into his coalitions.
“It was a mechanism that allowed him to shift the blame if he made moderate decisions that were unpopular with his constituency,” said Yohanan Plesner, president of the Israel Democracy Institute, a nonpartisan research group.
Many Israelis would like to see a unity government. Forming one with Mr. Eisenkot’s party and possibly others in the opposition could require Mr. Netanyahu to abandon his most contentious policies, such as his government’s plan to overhaul the judiciary.
Mr. Netanyahu formed his hawkish government four years ago when mainstream parties refused to sit in a coalition with him after he was indicted in 2019 on charges of corruption, which he has denied.
Some critics say that Mr. Netanyahu has moved too far to the right to see a way back. “Netanyahu is a secular, liberal democrat. At least he was originally,” Ben Caspit, a political commentator and biographer of Mr. Netanyahu, wrote on Thursday in Maariv, a Hebrew newspaper. He noted that the prime minister had “displayed ideological flexibility and pragmatism countless times in the past.”
“Might he in his old age be capable of re-embracing the values he was raised on?” he asked. “I don’t know and I find it hard to believe that is possible.”
A Question of Trust
Previous efforts by Mr. Netanyahu to work with centrists have not ended well for them.
In 2014, Mr. Netanyahu fired his centrist finance and justice ministers, then engineered the dissolution of Parliament and brought about early elections.
In 2020, Mr. Gantz, a centrist, entered a unity government in a power-sharing arrangement with Mr. Netanyahu to help battle the coronavirus pandemic. That government collapsed seven months later, after Mr. Netanyahu violated agreements he had made with Mr. Gantz as a condition for him joining the government.
Mr. Gantz and his party have since lost so much support that he dropped out of this election race shortly before the vote.
“I don’t know if Netanyahu can convince anyone to join him now because it’s political suicide,” said Gadi Wolfsfeld, a professor of political communication at Reichman University in Herzliya.
Shaky Histories
If Mr. Netanyahu is looking to pick off defectors from Mr. Eisenkot’s bloc, two right-leaning parties, Together and Yisrael Beitenu, would both seem good ideological fits.
But their respective leaders, Naftali Bennett and Avigdor Liberman, are former associates turned bitter foes, and their relationships with the prime minister have deteriorated.
Mr. Bennett worked as chief of staff to Mr. Netanyahu two decades ago, when the Likud leader was in the opposition. Mr. Liberman helped shepherd Mr. Netanyahu to his first victory in 1996 and became the director-general of the prime minister’s office.
Mr. Liberman had an ugly breakup with Mr. Netanyahu over a personal slight in the late 1990s and left Likud to set up his own party.
Mr. Liberman subsequently joined Netanyahu-led coalitions, but he quit or was fired from five governments. Mr. Liberman brought down the government in 2018, complaining of a soft policy toward Hamas, then refused to cooperate with Mr. Netanyahu after a string of inconclusive elections.
Positioning himself as a secularist, Mr. Liberman has vowed not to join coalitions that include Mr. Netanyahu’s ultra-Orthodox allies, or what Mr. Liberman calls “messianists.”
The day before the election, Mr. Liberman called on the attorney general to investigate Mr. Netanyahu on suspicion of treason, accusing him of trying to set off a new military confrontation with Iran to delay the elections.
Mr. Bennett became prime minister in 2021 at the head of a short-lived, anti-Netanyahu government that included parties across the political spectrum, including a conservative Arab Islamic party.
Mr. Netanyahu publicly expressed his low opinion of Mr. Bennett in a 2023 autobiography, “Bibi: My Story.” “Though he postured as right-wing, I gradually understood that this was an empty pose. He craved fame and power,” Mr. Netanyahu wrote of Mr. Bennett.
If Mr. Netanyahu is unable to build a governing coalition, political analysts say he is banking on nobody else being able to do so either. And in the meantime, Mr. Netanyahu remains the head of a caretaker government and may prefer to wait for another election.
“That would be a relatively good outcome for Netanyahu,” Mr. Plesner said. The opposition might have a harder time mobilizing supporters a second time around, he said, adding, “another election might be an opportunity for Netanyahu to improve his showing.”
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6) Identity Politics Have Entered a New Phase
Since Trump’s return, discussions of diversity have gone quiet. This year’s midterms have shown that Americans could be ready for something new.
By Jia Lynn Yang, Nov. 2, 2026
“…Trump easily notched his own ‘firsts,’ for those who are still counting. Kash Patel is the first person who is not white to serve as F.B.I. director. Susie Wiles is the first female White House chief of staff. Usha Vance is the first Asian American second lady.
“Returning to the Origin
“If the influence of identity politics is indeed waning, it is quite likely because enough Americans have concluded that representation alone cannot feed the family or raise wages. Without addressing economic equality, the project became easy to dismiss as a preoccupation of the upper classes. When the public no longer trusts elites, it doesn’t tend to care what the elite class looks like.”
Voters attend a Democratic rally in Michigan with speakers including former President Barack Obama and Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed. Nick Hagen for The New York Times
Not so long ago, Gina Hinojosa’s campaign to be the next governor of Texas would most likely have focused on her potential to make history. If she manages to defeat Gov. Greg Abbott this week after a surprisingly competitive campaign, she would become the first Latina to lead the state. She would also be the first woman elected governor since 1990.
And yet Hinojosa scarcely utters a word on race or gender — hers or anyone else’s — and insists she wants to steer clear of “culture wars.” Instead, she has risen in the polls with a disciplined message of economic populism.
“Is this going to be a Texas that is by and for the people?” Hinojosa said at a recent rally. “Or is this a billionaire’s world and we just live here? That is the one fight. It is the one fight of this election. It is the fight in America. And it is the fight for Texas.”
Whether or not Hinojosa wins, her campaign signifies a strong consensus in the Democratic Party this year: Race and gender are out. Class politics are back in.
This is a strategy born of defeat. President Trump reclaimed the White House two years ago largely by promoting himself as the stronger steward of the economy. For Democrats, one of the most humiliating aspects of this loss was that the president nearly doubled his support among Black voters between 2020 and 2024, and he nearly came even with Kamala Harris among Hispanic voters. Asian Americans also shifted right, and Trump’s support among women held even.
The return of Trump was the death knell for a presumption that had dominated American life since the 2010s — that identity was a stand-in for societal progress. Now, the very notion of identity politics is in retreat.
Corporations and universities speak of diversity in whispers, if at all, for fear of attacks from the White House. In 2024, 98 percent of companies in the S&P 500 disclosed the ethnic and racial makeup of their boards. Last year, that figure fell to 66 percent.
The Trump administration is attempting to undo an entire regime of civil rights protections, arguing that it divided the country and led to discrimination against white Americans. The White House has proposed ending questions in the census that ask for race, ethnicity or sexual orientation. “Dismantling the grievance industry, the oppressor-oppressed paradigm, identity politics, and other ideas that rend the national fabric is an essential cause,” Mike Gonzalez, a senior fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, wrote in City Journal.
Even as Trump has decried liberal identity politics, the result of his second term has been a de facto promotion of white identity. The government has censored mentions of slavery at historic sites while restoring the names of Confederates to Army bases. It has prioritized the entry of white Afrikaners as refugees while trying to cut legal immigration from much of Africa.
We are entering a strange interregnum on identity. While the right goes on the attack, there has been a sudden retrenchment in discussions of race and gender, with even Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York saying recently that “‘Woke 1’ was crazy.” But identity politics are not going away. In fact, they may be returning to their roots.
The Rise of Representation
Until recently, the importance of diversity seemed unassailable, at least in elite settings. Representation mattered, and counting was paramount. How many senators and Supreme Court justices are women? Did any Black, Latino or Asian Americans win Oscars this year? Does every expert panel at your A-list conference include at least one “person of color”?
This is not exactly what those who originated the term “identity politics” imagined. In 1977, a group of Black feminists called the Combahee River Collective declared in a statement that their race and gender were integral to their politics — not because they hoped to join the country’s highest achievers, but because their identity gave them a singular view of America from the bottom of its class hierarchy. Then, as now, Black women are more likely to be impoverished.
In this version of identity politics, the emphasis on race and gender would act as a corrective to an unequal society. It was all too easy for the feminist movement to focus on the interests of upper-class white women. If feminism included Black women, it would inevitably make bolder demands — a higher minimum wage or universal health care, for instance — that could improve the lives of all Americans.
“We needed to have a place of our own,” Barbara Smith, a member of the group, said in an interview from the book “How We Get Free.” “We needed to have a place where we could define our political priorities and act upon them. And that’s where identity politics come from.”
The country, however, was exhausted from years of bitterness over race and war. Cynicism about government, especially after Watergate, was running high. During the 1970s and 1980s, a new political culture from the right rose to power, in part by persuading many voters that their government was more devoted to minority groups than to them. Ronald Reagan warned of Americans who he said were bilking government programs — advancing the “welfare queen” stereotype — as conservatives laid the groundwork for cutting aid to the poor.
With any chance of resurrecting a New Deal-style program foundering, another project of the liberal left found favor: winning the right for individuals to live and work as they wished.
These goals focused on removing discrimination in workplaces and in colleges, aiming for a purer meritocracy. Women, Latinos, Black Americans, gay men and lesbians all would be welcomed into the circle of comfortable middle-class achievement. Of course, bias still existed. But compared with the 1960s, opportunities became more abundant, at least for the well-educated.
This moment marked a pivotal shift for the Democratic Party, whose base became both more diverse and more professional-class.
In the 1980s, the party also adopted a muted posture toward race. By refraining from sensitive subjects like affirmative action, Democrats hoped to win back white voters who were fleeing the party over its support for civil rights. The new strategy worked to some degree: Black leaders began winning elections in white-majority cities and states, achieving powerful milestones. In 1989, L. Douglas Wilder became the first African American to be elected governor, after winning in Virginia.
At the same time, the party retreated from championing public programs aimed at helping the poor and the working class. Instead, party leaders like Bill Clinton embraced fiscal austerity and free trade policies that tended to favor the wealthy.
Democratic support among Black Americans began to soften, according to Leah Wright Rigueur, a historian at Johns Hopkins University and author of “The Loneliness of the Black Republican.” The wealth gap between white and Black Americans stopped closing in the 1980s. Deindustrialization stripped towns across the country of well-paid union jobs.
A seminal event like Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign electrified Black voters. But such moments could also obscure a deeper discontent with the party itself, Rigueur said. “We’re distracted by the symbolism, which is important,” she said. “But we ignore Black voters’ very loud complaints about the relationship with the Democratic Party.”
On the heels of Obama’s win, the 2010s marked a peak for representation politics. Every barrier suddenly seemed breakable — even the glass ceiling on the presidency. Hillary Clinton, running as the heir to Obama’s multiracial coalition, adopted the slogans “Stronger together” and “I’m with her,” unabashedly trumpeting diversity and identity.
But when white working-class voters delivered Trump to the White House, many blamed the loss on identity politics. Bernie Sanders blasted his rival for failing to address the needs of the working class. “It’s not good enough for someone to say, ‘I’m a woman! Vote for me!’” Sanders said. Mark Lilla, a Columbia University professor, wrote a widely read piece in The New York Times calling for “the end of identity liberalism.”
If anything, this sensibility was about to be supercharged.
In the aftermath of the 2020 killing of George Floyd, the Democratic Party and much of corporate America rushed to demonstrate moral urgency. Human resource offices educated their employees on race. President Joseph R. Biden Jr. fulfilled his promise to put a Black woman on the Supreme Court by nominating Ketanji Brown Jackson. Karine Jean-Pierre was the first Black female White House press secretary, and also the first openly gay person in that role.
These moments carried their own significance. But perhaps the more telling data point during Biden’s term was this: Between 2022 and 2025, the median net worth of Black households fell by 25 percent, while the fortunes of every other racial group improved.
By the time Kamala Harris hurriedly ran for president in 2024, the party was determined to avoid the mistakes of the Clinton campaign. Harris underplayed her race and gender. Still, some supporters fell into familiar formations, organizing Zoom fund-raising calls with names like “White Women: Answer the Call” and “White Dudes for Harris.”
In his second term, Trump easily notched his own “firsts,” for those who are still counting. Kash Patel is the first person who is not white to serve as F.B.I. director. Susie Wiles is the first female White House chief of staff. Usha Vance is the first Asian American second lady.
Returning to the Origin
If the influence of identity politics is indeed waning, it is quite likely because enough Americans have concluded that representation alone cannot feed the family or raise wages. Without addressing economic equality, the project became easy to dismiss as a preoccupation of the upper classes. When the public no longer trusts elites, it doesn’t tend to care what the elite class looks like.
Even as this year’s Democrats replace identity politics with economic politics, race itself is hardly receding as an issue.
Angie Nixon, a Florida Democratic candidate for the Senate, is a 42-year-old Black woman still paying off her student debt, who is running an unapologetically populist campaign focused on economics. But when Vice President JD Vance suggested that she does not “belong in America” because of her views, Nixon did not dodge the issue of race. “What’s frustrating at times is that we’re kind of used to it in the South — the disrespect, being Black people, the microaggressions, and the slights, the ‘Oh you speak so well’ or ‘You’re so articulate,’ the little slights here and there,” she said.
Nixon is the underdog in her race, but her working-class persona is resonating around the country. A recent Wall Street Journal analysis showed that Nixon had become more popular on TikTok than any of the party’s more established figures.
Figures like Nixon, win or lose, could presage a return to something closer to the original conception of identity politics — one that is focused on the working class, first and foremost, but without downplaying the often harsh realities of gender and race in America.
After all, identity politics can only fade so much when awareness of racism itself remains high. A Gallup survey last summer showed that the perception that Black Americans suffer from widespread discrimination is as high as it was six years ago. The country received an education from moments like the Floyd video that it has not forgotten. Trump’s unfettered mass deportation campaign appears to be causing a backlash from Latino voters.
And Trump himself continues to practice the oldest version of identity politics. In the final weeks of the midterms, he again called Somali immigrants “low-I.Q. people” and unleashed an extended Islamophobic rant against Abdul El-Sayed, a Senate candidate in Michigan who is Muslim.
For many reasons, we are not living in the post-racial moment that some Americans thought the Obama presidency heralded. But we seem much less invested in counting how many people in each group can push their way into the upper echelon. When millions of Americans are still waiting for someone to address their material needs, they are demanding far more than symbols.
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7) Identity Politics Have Entered a New Phase
Since Trump’s return, discussions of diversity have gone quiet. This year’s midterms have shown that Americans could be ready for something new.
By Jia Lynn Yang, Nov. 2, 2026
Not so long ago, Gina Hinojosa’s campaign to be the next governor of Texas would most likely have focused on her potential to make history. If she manages to defeat Gov. Greg Abbott this week after a surprisingly competitive campaign, she would become the first Latina to lead the state. She would also be the first woman elected governor since 1990.
And yet Hinojosa scarcely utters a word on race or gender — hers or anyone else’s — and insists she wants to steer clear of “culture wars.” Instead, she has risen in the polls with a disciplined message of economic populism.
“Is this going to be a Texas that is by and for the people?” Hinojosa said at a recent rally. “Or is this a billionaire’s world and we just live here? That is the one fight. It is the one fight of this election. It is the fight in America. And it is the fight for Texas.”
Whether or not Hinojosa wins, her campaign signifies a strong consensus in the Democratic Party this year: Race and gender are out. Class politics are back in.
This is a strategy born of defeat. President Trump reclaimed the White House two years ago largely by promoting himself as the stronger steward of the economy. For Democrats, one of the most humiliating aspects of this loss was that the president nearly doubled his support among Black voters between 2020 and 2024, and he nearly came even with Kamala Harris among Hispanic voters. Asian Americans also shifted right, and Trump’s support among women held even.
The return of Trump was the death knell for a presumption that had dominated American life since the 2010s — that identity was a stand-in for societal progress. Now, the very notion of identity politics is in retreat.
Corporations and universities speak of diversity in whispers, if at all, for fear of attacks from the White House. In 2024, 98 percent of companies in the S&P 500 disclosed the ethnic and racial makeup of their boards. Last year, that figure fell to 66 percent.
The Trump administration is attempting to undo an entire regime of civil rights protections, arguing that it divided the country and led to discrimination against white Americans. The White House has proposed ending questions in the census that ask for race, ethnicity or sexual orientation. “Dismantling the grievance industry, the oppressor-oppressed paradigm, identity politics, and other ideas that rend the national fabric is an essential cause,” Mike Gonzalez, a senior fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, wrote in City Journal.
Even as Trump has decried liberal identity politics, the result of his second term has been a de facto promotion of white identity. The government has censored mentions of slavery at historic sites while restoring the names of Confederates to Army bases. It has prioritized the entry of white Afrikaners as refugees while trying to cut legal immigration from much of Africa.
We are entering a strange interregnum on identity. While the right goes on the attack, there has been a sudden retrenchment in discussions of race and gender, with even Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York saying recently that “‘Woke 1’ was crazy.” But identity politics are not going away. In fact, they may be returning to their roots.
The Rise of Representation
Until recently, the importance of diversity seemed unassailable, at least in elite settings. Representation mattered, and counting was paramount. How many senators and Supreme Court justices are women? Did any Black, Latino or Asian Americans win Oscars this year? Does every expert panel at your A-list conference include at least one “person of color”?
This is not exactly what those who originated the term “identity politics” imagined. In 1977, a group of Black feminists called the Combahee River Collective declared in a statement that their race and gender were integral to their politics — not because they hoped to join the country’s highest achievers, but because their identity gave them a singular view of America from the bottom of its class hierarchy. Then, as now, Black women are more likely to be impoverished.
In this version of identity politics, the emphasis on race and gender would act as a corrective to an unequal society. It was all too easy for the feminist movement to focus on the interests of upper-class white women. If feminism included Black women, it would inevitably make bolder demands — a higher minimum wage or universal health care, for instance — that could improve the lives of all Americans.
“We needed to have a place of our own,” Barbara Smith, a member of the group, said in an interview from the book “How We Get Free.” “We needed to have a place where we could define our political priorities and act upon them. And that’s where identity politics come from.”
The country, however, was exhausted from years of bitterness over race and war. Cynicism about government, especially after Watergate, was running high. During the 1970s and 1980s, a new political culture from the right rose to power, in part by persuading many voters that their government was more devoted to minority groups than to them. Ronald Reagan warned of Americans who he said were bilking government programs — advancing the “welfare queen” stereotype — as conservatives laid the groundwork for cutting aid to the poor.
With any chance of resurrecting a New Deal-style program foundering, another project of the liberal left found favor: winning the right for individuals to live and work as they wished.
These goals focused on removing discrimination in workplaces and in colleges, aiming for a purer meritocracy. Women, Latinos, Black Americans, gay men and lesbians all would be welcomed into the circle of comfortable middle-class achievement. Of course, bias still existed. But compared with the 1960s, opportunities became more abundant, at least for the well-educated.
This moment marked a pivotal shift for the Democratic Party, whose base became both more diverse and more professional-class.
In the 1980s, the party also adopted a muted posture toward race. By refraining from sensitive subjects like affirmative action, Democrats hoped to win back white voters who were fleeing the party over its support for civil rights. The new strategy worked to some degree: Black leaders began winning elections in white-majority cities and states, achieving powerful milestones. In 1989, L. Douglas Wilder became the first African American to be elected governor, after winning in Virginia.
At the same time, the party retreated from championing public programs aimed at helping the poor and the working class. Instead, party leaders like Bill Clinton embraced fiscal austerity and free trade policies that tended to favor the wealthy.
Democratic support among Black Americans began to soften, according to Leah Wright Rigueur, a historian at Johns Hopkins University and author of “The Loneliness of the Black Republican.” The wealth gap between white and Black Americans stopped closing in the 1980s. Deindustrialization stripped towns across the country of well-paid union jobs.
A seminal event like Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign electrified Black voters. But such moments could also obscure a deeper discontent with the party itself, Rigueur said. “We’re distracted by the symbolism, which is important,” she said. “But we ignore Black voters’ very loud complaints about the relationship with the Democratic Party.”
On the heels of Obama’s win, the 2010s marked a peak for representation politics. Every barrier suddenly seemed breakable — even the glass ceiling on the presidency. Hillary Clinton, running as the heir to Obama’s multiracial coalition, adopted the slogans “Stronger together” and “I’m with her,” unabashedly trumpeting diversity and identity.
But when white working-class voters delivered Trump to the White House, many blamed the loss on identity politics. Bernie Sanders blasted his rival for failing to address the needs of the working class. “It’s not good enough for someone to say, ‘I’m a woman! Vote for me!’” Sanders said. Mark Lilla, a Columbia University professor, wrote a widely read piece in The New York Times calling for “the end of identity liberalism.”
If anything, this sensibility was about to be supercharged.
In the aftermath of the 2020 killing of George Floyd, the Democratic Party and much of corporate America rushed to demonstrate moral urgency. Human resource offices educated their employees on race. President Joseph R. Biden Jr. fulfilled his promise to put a Black woman on the Supreme Court by nominating Ketanji Brown Jackson. Karine Jean-Pierre was the first Black female White House press secretary, and also the first openly gay person in that role.
These moments carried their own significance. But perhaps the more telling data point during Biden’s term was this: Between 2022 and 2025, the median net worth of Black households fell by 25 percent, while the fortunes of every other racial group improved.
By the time Kamala Harris hurriedly ran for president in 2024, the party was determined to avoid the mistakes of the Clinton campaign. Harris underplayed her race and gender. Still, some supporters fell into familiar formations, organizing Zoom fund-raising calls with names like “White Women: Answer the Call” and “White Dudes for Harris.”
In his second term, Trump easily notched his own “firsts,” for those who are still counting. Kash Patel is the first person who is not white to serve as F.B.I. director. Susie Wiles is the first female White House chief of staff. Usha Vance is the first Asian American second lady.
Returning to the Origin
If the influence of identity politics is indeed waning, it is quite likely because enough Americans have concluded that representation alone cannot feed the family or raise wages. Without addressing economic equality, the project became easy to dismiss as a preoccupation of the upper classes. When the public no longer trusts elites, it doesn’t tend to care what the elite class looks like.
Even as this year’s Democrats replace identity politics with economic politics, race itself is hardly receding as an issue.
Angie Nixon, a Florida Democratic candidate for the Senate, is a 42-year-old Black woman still paying off her student debt, who is running an unapologetically populist campaign focused on economics. But when Vice President JD Vance suggested that she does not “belong in America” because of her views, Nixon did not dodge the issue of race. “What’s frustrating at times is that we’re kind of used to it in the South — the disrespect, being Black people, the microaggressions, and the slights, the ‘Oh you speak so well’ or ‘You’re so articulate,’ the little slights here and there,” she said.
Nixon is the underdog in her race, but her working-class persona is resonating around the country. A recent Wall Street Journal analysis showed that Nixon had become more popular on TikTok than any of the party’s more established figures.
Figures like Nixon, win or lose, could presage a return to something closer to the original conception of identity politics — one that is focused on the working class, first and foremost, but without downplaying the often harsh realities of gender and race in America.
After all, identity politics can only fade so much when awareness of racism itself remains high. A Gallup survey last summer showed that the perception that Black Americans suffer from widespread discrimination is as high as it was six years ago. The country received an education from moments like the Floyd video that it has not forgotten. Trump’s unfettered mass deportation campaign appears to be causing a backlash from Latino voters.
And Trump himself continues to practice the oldest version of identity politics. In the final weeks of the midterms, he again called Somali immigrants “low-I.Q. people” and unleashed an extended Islamophobic rant against Abdul El-Sayed, a Senate candidate in Michigan who is Muslim.
For many reasons, we are not living in the post-racial moment that some Americans thought the Obama presidency heralded. But we seem much less invested in counting how many people in each group can push their way into the upper echelon. When millions of Americans are still waiting for someone to address their material needs, they are demanding far more than symbols.
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8) King Charles Meets Both Joy and Criticism on Caribbean Tour
During the king’s visits to three former colonies, many people came out for celebratory parades and events. Others said the British state needed to atone for slavery’s toll.
By Michael D. Shear, Rachel Knowles-Scott, Elesha George and Denis Chabrol, Nov. 2, 2026
Michael Shear is traveling with King Charles III in Antigua and Barbuda, the Bahamas and Guyana, ahead of a meeting of the Commonwealth heads of government. Rachel Knowles-Scott reported from Long Island, the Bahamas; Elesha George from St. George, Antigua; and Denis Chabrol from Georgetown, Guyana.
King Charles III of Britain took part in a parade with the agriculture minister of the Bahamas, Jomo Campbell, center left, and the cultural minister, Leslia Miller-Brice, center right, during a cultural festival in Nassau, Bahamas, in October. Tim Aylen/Associated Press
Michael Shear is traveling with King Charles III in Antigua and Barbuda, the Bahamas and Guyana, ahead of a meeting of the Commonwealth heads of government. Rachel Knowles-Scott reported from Long Island, the Bahamas; Elesha George from St. George, Antigua; and Denis Chabrol from Georgetown, Guyana.
More than 100 residents of the South American nation of Guyana lined up outside an Indigenous cultural site on Friday, eager for a glimpse of King Charles III, the figurehead of a British state that ruled here until independence almost 60 years ago. Some brought their small children.
Standing nearby in the searing sun, about two dozen protesters waved signs demanding that Britain pay reparations and apologize for the millions of enslaved Africans who were trafficked across the Atlantic in the 1700s and 1800s. They chanted loudly: “Not our king!”
As Charles makes a seven-day visit to three of Britain’s former colonies, his country’s history of slavery — and what he and the British government should say or do about it — continues to divide opinion across the once-sprawling empire.
“They bought slaves, sold slaves and made money from slavery and then paid the slave owners millions of dollars and the slaves and their descendants got nothing,” said Elton Campbell, referring to British legislation passed in the 1830s that compensated slave owners for the freeing of slaves after the country outlawed the practice.
Mr. Campbell, a 76-year-old insurance agent in Guyana’s capital, added, “Let the king explain that to the nation and our Black people around the world.”
For the first time on Friday, Prime Minister Andy Burnham of Britain said the government was open to offering a formal apology for the country’s role in the slave trade, which he described as “brutal and barbaric.”
But he rejected demands to pay reparations to the descendants of slaves, writing in an opinion article: “I do not think that British people today can be held liable for historical wrongs, however heinous, that happened in a different age under different laws and in which they played no personal part.”
Mr. Burnham and the king are both scheduled to address leaders of the Commonwealth at a gathering in Antigua on Tuesday, though it is not clear what they will say. At the start of his Caribbean tour, Charles said that “it is only right that we should acknowledge the great suffering of the past, in these islands and beyond.”
In the Bahamas, where the king’s events included dancing in a carnival parade known as the Junkanoo, some residents warmly welcomed his role as their country’s official head of state.
“Whatever you feel about the royals personally, we are still members of the Commonwealth,” said Margaret Ramsingh, 52, referring to the voluntary organization of 56 nations, most of which were former British colonies.
“I understand what people are saying about reparations,” Ms. Ramsingh said in an interview last week, “but at some point in time we have to move forward.”
During his trip, the king has not tried to dodge the issue of what he has called a “dark stain” on Britain’s past. In Guyana on Friday, he visited the site of the Demerara Slave Rebellion of 1823, where colonial forces brutally crushed a rebellion by thousands of enslaved men and women, killing hundreds.
If Buckingham Palace officials had hoped that some of his seven-day trip could also be focused on issues like climate change and nature conservation — issues that have long been priorities for the king — they may have been disappointed by the persistent conversations about reparations.
Just hours before Charles met with Mohammed Ifraan Ali, the president of Guyana, on Thursday, Mr. Ali said in an interview that an apology for slavery would be “the next step” to be taken. Mia Mottley, the prime minister of Barbados, said Saturday that Mr. Burnham’s openness to an apology was welcomed. But she did not back away from demands for reparations.
“On reparations in particular, our views differ, and we will say so plainly and respectfully,” she wrote in a statement.
Interviews with residents of the Bahamas, Guyana and Antigua revealed an eagerness to discuss the topic of the British slave trade, the monarchy and the government’s role in making amends for Britain’s history.
Daren Matthew Ward, 51, an insurance manager in Antigua, said the king’s visit to the island was a positive thing and could help bring much-needed investment to the country. But he said the discussions about the legacy of slavery are important.
“Nobody present is, you know, guilty of or complicit in the crime that took place many years ago,” Mr. Ward said. “On our end, we’re saying there are certain historical disadvantages that are inherent in our societies as a result of what happened during the slave trade. And those injustices and imbalances need to be addressed in some way.”
Others in the country of just under 100,000 people were more blunt about what they expect from their monarch.
“At the end of the day, why are we trying to impress our former slave masters?” asked St. Claire Henry, 39, an IT technician in Antigua. “These are not people that genuinely cared for us. He acknowledged that grave things were done in the past. OK, acknowledge it. Say sorry, do something. Pay us something.”
At the king’s first stop in the Bahamas, the king delivered a speech at a youth rally, in front of bleachers filled with young schoolchildren cheering wildly for the monarch.
And at Parliament Square in Nassau, the streets were lined with more than 1,000 people, many of them holding their iPhones up high to snap a royal photo. The mood at the event was joyous and excited, with little evidence of protesters demanding an apology or reparations from the king.
But such carefully produced events rarely capture the full range of opinions, especially on sensitive topics like slavery.
Endal Adderley, 56, a retired secondary school principal on Long Island in the Bahamas, said it is the British government that should take responsibility for slavery.
“The Black people who were disenfranchised, who had lost all they had, even lost their names, their languages, they came over, they survived, they built communities, they built societies, they now are building nations,” Mr. Adderley said. “All they’re asking for is some justice and some economic reparations in cash or in kind, and I fully endorse that.”
He added: “In the Caribbean, I don’t see any reason for us to be bowing down to a king anymore.”
Joy Burrows, 70, is a part of the generation in the Bahamas that remembers a time when the Union Jack flew over the archipelago and schoolchildren sang “God Save the Queen.” She said she believes the Bahamas has moved on and there is no need to address what has already happened.
“I think that this is a part of history,” she said, “and we can’t change history or what has happened.”
Emiliano Rodríguez Mega contributed from Mexico City.
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9) N.Y.C. Schools Are Deeply Segregated. These Students Demand Change.
An effort to diversify the elite Hunter College High School comes amid a larger reckoning over continued segregation in the city’s public schools.
By Matthew Haag, Nov. 2, 2026
“In recent months, students with HCHS4Equity have strategized over weekend Zoom calls, consulted education activists and experts, and rallied alumni, parents, fellow students and teachers behind a petition demanding immediate and systemic change. They plan to deliver a letter with their demands to school leaders on Monday. Their core concern is an admissions policy that has left Hunter predominantly Asian, white and wealthy. Entry for most students hinges on a three-hour exam taken in the sixth grade, for which many applicants prepare with months of private tutoring, parents and students say. The remaining seats go to children from Hunter College Elementary School, which admits kindergartners based on a $375 IQ test.”
Students with the group HCHS4Equity, which is leading the diversity push at Hunter, plan to send a letter with their demands to school leaders on Monday. Lexi Parra/The New York Times
Even in a city whose school system is among the most segregated in the United States, Hunter College High School stands out.
Black and Latino students make up 61 percent of public schoolchildren in New York City. At Hunter, a prestigious and highly selective school in Manhattan that includes grades seven to 12, their share is 16 percent. Roughly the same proportion comes from low-income families, the lowest representation in any of the city’s more than 400 public high schools.
Despite years of efforts, schools in New York have made little progress toward reflecting the economic and racial composition of one of the most diverse cities in the world. Change has been especially halting at Hunter, which is often overlooked in the debate over stark admissions disparities at the city’s elite high schools.
But now, amid renewed dialogue in the city about what Mayor Zohran Mamdani and the schools chancellor, Kamar Samuels, can and should do about integration in public schools, students at Hunter are taking matters into their own hands.
“It doesn’t really make sense that we’re living in this world of New York City and the students that we see around us every day aren’t of the demographic makeup,” said Kassidy Khuu, 17, a senior and a member of the student group leading the effort, HCHS4Equity. “There’s a real social problem and social mishap when students who are from these underrepresented groups go to a place where there’s barely any people who look like them.”
In recent months, students with HCHS4Equity have strategized over weekend Zoom calls, consulted education activists and experts, and rallied alumni, parents, fellow students and teachers behind a petition demanding immediate and systemic change. They plan to deliver a letter with their demands to school leaders on Monday.
Their core concern is an admissions policy that has left Hunter predominantly Asian, white and wealthy. Entry for most students hinges on a three-hour exam taken in the sixth grade, for which many applicants prepare with months of private tutoring, parents and students say. The remaining seats go to children from Hunter College Elementary School, which admits kindergartners based on a $375 IQ test.
Housed in a former armory on the Upper East Side, Hunter attracts driven students who routinely go on to top universities. Among its nearly 1,300 students, many come from affluent families who choose Hunter over top private academies, parents say, and fuel a parent-teacher association that raises roughly $1 million a year.
In interviews, Black and Latino students described their experience at Hunter as academically rewarding but isolating. None said they had encountered overt racism. But several recalled feeling singled out, particularly during lessons on slavery or discussions of Richard Wright’s memoir, “Black Boy,” about growing up in the Jim Crow South.
Nnamdi Umelo-James, 16, a junior from the Bronx, said he was sometimes the only Black student in his classroom. Of the 210 students in his class last year, eight were Black, according to school records.
After its founding in 1869, Hunter remained almost exclusively white for decades — among both students and faculty members. A century later, a city board ordered the high school to change its admissions so that its student body reflected the racial and socioeconomic diversity of the city’s children. In 1974, boys were admitted to the school, which previously was only for girls, but the diversity goal has never been achieved.
Large urban school districts across the country have grappled for years with selective schools that diverge sharply from the communities they serve. Attempts to overhaul high-stakes admissions policies have encountered fierce pushback from opponents who argue that any change will water down academic standards.
Barred by the Supreme Court from using race in integration plans, school leaders in Boston, Chicago and other districts have turned to socioeconomic factors as a race-neutral alternative to boost diversity. After admission changes in Boston, Black enrollment at the acclaimed Boston Latin School doubled.
Such approaches are coming under legal scrutiny. The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case challenging a diversity plan at some selective middle schools in Montgomery County, Md., which plaintiffs argue discriminates against Asian Americans.
Lisa Siegmann, the director of Hunter College Campus Schools, which encompasses both the high school and the elementary school, said that the high school had tried in recent years to diversify the student body, incorporating socioeconomic factors into some admission decisions. The changes have not been widely publicized, nor mentioned on the school’s admissions website.
For candidates not admitted in the initial rounds of offers, Ms. Siegmann said, Hunter now factors in the “economic need index” of an applicant’s school — a city Department of Education formula measuring the poverty and homelessness levels of the students, as well as their eligibility for public assistance.
She said the index was a “significant factor” in those admissions decisions. In their letter, the Hunter students demand that the index be used for a larger share of applicants.
Ms. Siegmann pointed to signs that the student body was shifting: The proportion of students from low-income families had nearly quadrupled over the past decade. But she cautioned that it was too early to credit the school’s initiatives alone, noting that more families of enrolled students had also recently qualified for financial assistance to cover some school-related costs.
“We are pushing at the edges, and I know incremental change is not sexy,” said Ms. Siegmann, adding that Hunter had also hired more teachers of color in recent years. “If there was a magic wand to wave to make it happen, people would have waved it before.”
Home to the nation’s largest school system, New York City essentially has a two-tier educational system. A cluster of coveted, highly selective schools serves mostly Asian and white students. The remaining schools are largely filled with Black and Latino students, many with shrinking enrollments and fewer course offerings.
Mr. Samuels and Mr. Mamdani have both vowed to make school integration a top priority. Past city leaders have made similar promises, only for their plans to stall after resistance and other obstacles.
One hurdle is the state’s 1971 Hecht-Calandra Act, which dictates the entrance criteria at some of the city’s specialized schools, including the prestigious Stuyvesant High School. Only three Black students were offered seats in Stuyvesant’s freshman class this year. Still, about 50 percent of its students come from low-income families.
The students behind HCHS4Equity argue that Hunter administrators could overhaul the school’s admissions policy with relative ease, noting that it operates outside the city’s Department of Education. The school is run by Hunter College, a branch of the City University of New York.
“It is really a political-will problem at Hunter,” said Paul Sonn, whose daughter graduated from Hunter in 2024.
Mr. Sonn and others have called on Hunter to reserve a percentage of seats for students from low-income families, as some other selective schools do. Bard High School Early College in Manhattan, for instance, sets aside 50 percent of its seats.
But Ms. Siegmann called a set-aside policy a nonstarter, saying that the concept had been “a point of very strong contention” among alumni, parents and school leaders. “We haven’t made progress,” she said.
Another major hurdle is the entrance exam: It is open only to students who score in the top 10 percent on fifth-grade standardized tests. In that qualifying pool, about 30 percent are Black and Latino, according to 2019 and 2020 testing records obtained by The New York Times.
“It’s just a great shame,” said Andy McCord, a parent of a Hunter graduate who started a free tutoring program for the entrance exam for students from the Bronx and Upper Manhattan.
The HCHS4Equity students at Hunter, who are also starting a tutoring program, are just the latest students at the school to demand diversity changes. In 2020, a group delivered a letter with similar demands and more than 2,000 signatures to school leaders. A decade earlier, a senior named Justin Hudson criticized the school’s lack of diversity in a graduation speech that drew a standing ovation.
In his class of 2010, six students were Black. Last year’s senior class had five.
“Not to be a cynic,” Mr. Hudson said in a recent interview, “but I can’t say that I’m that surprised.”
Jennifer Jenkins and Sheelagh McNeill contributed research.
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10) Accused of Voter Fraud, They Ended Up in Shackles
The Trump administration’s campaign to identify and charge immigrants in connection with voting violations has led to fears of being jailed, or deported.
By Livia Albeck-Ripka and Jacey Fortin, Nov. 2, 2026
Livia Albeck-Ripka reported from Los Angeles and Jacey Fortin reported from New York.
The Trump administration has intensified pressure on states to identify noncitizens who are voting. Election officials say the government’s system is flawed. Isadora Kosofsky for The New York Times
It was before dawn when Amandeep Kaur turned herself in to federal authorities in downtown Los Angeles last Monday. Wrapped in a tasseled shawl, she paced and shivered as she waited outside the courthouse.
At 6:30 a.m., two plainclothes agents rounded the corner, served Ms. Kaur her arrest warrant and walked her to an unmarked vehicle, where they lightly searched her. She would be fingerprinted and taken into custody before appearing in front of a judge that afternoon.
Ms. Kaur, a 30-year-old from India, lives with her two young children, her husband and her in-laws in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif. She speaks little English and is a legal permanent resident of the United States.
The government says in court documents that Ms. Kaur registered to vote in 2022, voted in the 2024 election — unlawfully, they say, because she is not a U.S. citizen — and then made false statements about that history on her naturalization application.
As of Friday, she was among more than 220 people across 28 states charged in connection with voting violations during President Trump’s second term — part of the administration’s far-reaching, monthslong effort to find, arrest and publicize instances of voter fraud.
In the process, people like Ms. Kaur have been caught up in a disorienting and often demeaning experience: Taken by federal agents from their homes, or ordered to turn themselves in. Portrayed as criminals by the country many of them are trying to become citizens of, with their names and faces circulating online. Forced to appear before judges, in some cases in shackles. Some people have been kept in custody for days. At least one man remains in a Texas jail.
Election officials in California and other states have condemned the government’s crackdown, saying its system for identifying suspected violators is severely flawed, based on incomplete information, and has been rife with mistakes, including targeting people who are citizens.
The backdrop to the latest round of charges is the fierce midterm battle in which Democrats are in position to retake the House and possibly the Senate. Mr. Trump has repeatedly made unsubstantiated claims that Democrats have stolen past elections by allowing immigrants to vote illegally. He has called for national measures to prevent fraud that include voter identification, proof of citizenship and restrictions on mail balloting.
State audits and studies have repeatedly found that noncitizen voting is extremely rare, and there have been no instances in which their votes are known to have swayed an election.
The New York Times spent more than a week contacting people whom the administration charged in connection with violating election law. In interviews, some of the defendants and their family members cited language barriers, confusion about the voting process and unexpectedly receiving ballots in the mail as reasons for mistakenly registering or casting a vote.
Others denied the allegations completely. They said they were shocked when the authorities contacted them or showed up at their doors.
The Homeland Security Department did not respond to a request for comment. Nor did the Justice Department. It has described the arrests as part of a coordinated effort “to combat and root out fraud in U.S. elections and protect electoral integrity.”
Trent McCotter, the acting deputy attorney general, has said that “every illegal vote cancels out the vote of a lawful American citizen.”
Ms. Kaur’s husband, Kulwinder Ghotra, said that his wife, who speaks Punjabi, began receiving voter information in the mail after taking a driving test at the Department of Motor Vehicles. Believing she was eligible, he said, she voted in 2024.
“She was confused,” said Mr. Ghotra, 38. “She said there was no translation there at the voting center.”
Ms. Kaur was eventually charged with making false statements on her naturalization application — a felony that carries a maximum sentence of up to five years in federal prison, a fine, or both, and which can result in deportation. She declined to be interviewed about her case while it is pending.
Mr. Ghotra now fears that his wife could be deported. The couple has two children, ages 3 and 5.
Last week, a judge ruled that Ms. Kaur could return home in advance of her hearing this month. A translator relayed this to Ms. Kaur in Punjabi.
She was escorted from the courtroom in shackles and handcuffs.
“I Was Used”
Early on Oct. 19, federal agents banged on the door of Omar Alexander Muñoz, a 72-year-old from Belize, at his home in Commerce, Calif. They threatened to break down the door, Mr. Muñoz said in an interview.
He said the agents pulled his arms behind his back to handcuff him, injuring his shoulder and his neck, both of which he said he had recently had surgery on.
Several police cars, as well as members of the media, were stationed outside his home during the arrest, Mr. Muñoz said.
“They were positioned in a way, waiting,” he said of the reporters. “I was used to make a show of voter fraud.”
The Justice Department, the did not respond to questions about whether or not agents had notified the news media in advance of the arrest, or whether they had used excessive force.
Voting rights experts have called arrests of individuals like Mr. Muñoz performative stunts intended to bolster the government’s legal effort to disqualify California voters.
“This is to serve a political purpose, and that political purpose is to support the civil suit, as well as to support Donald Trump’s claims of a big problem of noncitizen voters,” said Richard Hasen, a law professor and election law expert at the University of California, Los Angeles.
“My first reaction was: These are the best cases they have?” Mr. Hasen said. “Like this guy, Omar Muñoz, like, he’s the perp? Please.”
A legal permanent resident of the United States for more than five decades, Mr. Munoz was charged with illegally registering to vote and making false statements on his citizenship application.
He maintains his innocence. In an interview with CBS News, he said he believed someone else may have used his name.
Agreeing, but Not Understanding
Though President Trump has made a particular example of California, charges of voter fraud have been made across more than two dozen states, including Florida, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Texas.
Khalwinder Singh Bhengura, of Arlington, Texas, is originally from India and became a permanent legal resident in 2022.
Mr. Bhengura, 70, who speaks Punjabi, had been living in Texas with his wife, according to his brother-in-law Jay Chima. But he had an old habit of nodding along to things he did not understand in order to seem agreeable, Mr. Chima said, and “his English skills are nil.”
In September, Mr. Bhengura was charged with making false statements while registering to vote, and with casting a ballot unlawfully in 2024. He took his case to trial and pleaded not guilty; his lawyers argued that there was not enough evidence to prove that he had voted. They also worried about his ability to comprehend a fast-moving trial.
On Tuesday, a jury found Mr. Bhengura guilty of making false statements of citizenship in order to register to vote, and of voting by an alien in a federal election.
After the verdict was read, Mr. Bhengura was jailed. He remains in custody.
Nicole Knox, a lawyer for Mr. Bhengura, said she found the jailing appalling, and that she worried about what it could mean for other immigrants.
“It creates basically a blank check for further indictments of similarly situated people with innocent intent,” she said.
Jamil Ahmad, 51, of Philadelphia, came to the U.S. from Pakistan about a decade ago and claimed asylum. He is now a United States citizen. But in November 2024, he still had his green card. At the time, he said in an interview, get-out-the-vote campaigners were contacting him by mail, by phone and in person, encouraging him to register.
Mr. Ahmad reasoned that if were not allowed to cast a ballot, then the government would not let him. And he considered it his duty to vote, he said. He helped his wife, Nighat Jamil, a 47-year-old permanent legal resident, to register alongside him.
“I was thinking that, if I’m eligible, then they will accept the form,” he said. “If I’m not eligible, they will send me the form back.”
What came in the mail was not a rejection, but a ballot. Mr. Ahmad voted for President Trump. Ms. Jamil, whose English skills are more limited than her husband’s, said that she trusted him to fill out her ballot.
In September, Mr. Ahmad was charged with voting as an alien in a federal election. The authorities came to his house to question him, he said, which spiked his stress levels. But after a couple of weeks, Mr. Ahmad thought it made sense to take responsibility for what had happened.
“When I read all the things,” he said, “now I understand that this is a crime.”
He pleaded guilty last month and is scheduled to be sentenced in January.
Ms. Jamil was also charged with the same voting misdemeanor. She has a court hearing scheduled for this month and is nervous, she said, because she is not a citizen and could be at risk of deportation.
That makes Mr. Ahmad feel sick with guilt, and concerned for his four children.
“I’m just worried,” he said. “How I can look after them if they deport my wife?”
Kirsten Noyes and Seamus Hughes contributed research. Sameen Amin contributed translation.
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11) Can You Afford to Watch TV?
The streaming era has provided viewers a lot of great things to watch. But it comes at a price.
By James Poniewozik, Nov. 2, 2026
James Poniewozik is the chief television critic for The New York Times. He spent much of the ’80s adjusting the cable box to tune in the scrambled signal for HBO, which his parents didn’t pay for.
Jon Hamm in “American Hostage,” a timely drama on MGM+. The series is good, but is it worth $7.99 per month? Steven Ackerman/MGM+
A little over a month ago, “American Hostage” premiered. The series, about a real-life armed standoff at an Indiana mortgage office in 1977, is one of those out-of-nowhere surprises I love to discover as a TV critic. It has committed performances from Jon Hamm and Giovanni Ribisi and eerily timely things to say about the frustrations of the powerless with the powerful.
You should watch it if you can. Which you probably can’t, unless you reach into your wallet, one more time.
See, “American Hostage” is on MGM+. What is MGM+? Good question! It’s a streaming service, descended from the premium channel Epix. (What is Epix? No time for that!) More saliently, it is $7.99 a month. That is, it’s $7.99 on top of the endlessly scrolling list of subscriptions you probably already have.
(Note: With many of the plans I discuss here, there are multiple pricing options — monthly or annual, with or without ads, bundled this way and that way. You may want a calculator.)
TV critics are not traditionally in the habit of considering price when they decide what to cover. This isn’t restaurant criticism. But lately TV consumption has begun to feel like high-end dining, with no limit of upcharges and price hikes and caviar supplements sending the tab to the heavens.
This is frustrating for consumers in inflationary times. But it’s also not great for the art, or at least for the experience and conversation around it. It creates yet another division of haves, choosing from a vast menu in media’s first class, and have-nots, missing out in steerage. It turns a medium that was once universal, if frustrating, into one that is increasingly inaccessible, if often excellent. “American Hostage” is good. But is it $7.99-a-month good? Is any show?
Once, TV was free — well, save for the investment in a set and an antenna and your precious time watching ads. Everyone had access to the same air and the same shows. I was born in the rabbit-ears era of TV, and I will not romanticize it as having been better. But like so many aspects of life “improved” by technology, it was less complicated.
This changed with the popularization of cable. “The Sopranos” helped turn HBO from an occasional domestic luxury (or motel-room amenity) into a cultural must-have. Increasingly, the TV worth watching and talking about was something you had to pay for. And then pay a little more. Cable channels proliferated, and the cable bundle — smushing together the channels you watched with the many you didn’t — got fatter and fatter.
Oversqueezed media consumers wished it could be different. If only you could pick and choose which platforms you subscribed to! Somewhere on Wall Street, a finger curled on a monkey’s paw, and the streaming business was born.
Now, if you had an internet connection (another fee, unless your neighbor’s Wi-Fi password hygiene was lax), you could choose your services à la carte: Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, Peacock. Disney+, Paramount+, AMC+. YouTube TV and YouTube Premium. Dropout, for comedy. Shudder, for horror. Crunchyroll, for anime. Want to follow pro sports? You may want a second job.
I am familiar with all of these because my work requires that I be able to watch anything that runs anywhere. Someday when I retire, dismantling my monthly media commitments will resemble unwinding the assets of a bankrupt Fortune 500 corporation.
At the same time, I am writing for people who are weighing another subscription against gas and groceries. And we all exist in an economy that is increasingly built around subscriptions for damn near everything, as discussed in a recent episode of “Last Week Tonight With John Oliver.” (HBO Max, starting at $10.99/month with ads.)
Sure, $7.99 is cheaper than a matinee movie ticket where I live, let alone a Broadway show or concert. But is it worth it for you? How would I know? As a critic, I know what is worthwhile, and the streaming era has created more spaces for the worthwhile to flourish.
The best of the art form is now scattered across a lot of walled gardens whose walls get a little higher every year. At this point, the rate of announcements you receive for streaming price increases — which are outstripping inflation — rivals the texts from candidates asking for donations. (PBS, despite its funding challenges, looks like a better deal every day.)
So the medium that used to be a pop-culture lingua franca becomes a Tower of Babel. The stories you experience and the references you get are determined by the purchase decisions you’ve made. A terrific show — say, last year’s “Hal & Harper” on Mubi — can languish on an obscure service, its audience curtailed before it even premieres.
And a population already fragmented by tastes, demographics and subcultures becomes further subdivided by economics. You can go rogue and share streaming passwords. You can create a system of reminders to drop various platforms. Or you can just give up, pick a service or two, and pray the algorithm gives you something good.
What’s good this year? There’s the new “East of Eden” on Netflix ($8.99 a month with ads, $19.99 without, $26.99 in 4K). There’s my favorite new series of the year, “Widow’s Bay” on Apple TV ($14.99 a month ad-free — or “free,” I guess, if you buy qualifying Apple products every three months for eternity). There’s a great new installment of FX’s “The Lowdown,” which streams on Hulu ($12.49 with ads, or part of an array of bundles as lengthy as the instructions for a tax return).
There’s also “Cupertino,” a new legal drama about the tech industry that I enjoyed more the longer it went on — and which blessedly airs on CBS, one of those old broadcast networks whose signal still flies magically through the air and can be gathered by an antenna.
Don’t have an antenna? There are plenty of streaming services with a “live TV” feature. It’ll cost you.
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