Democracy Now!

Fifteen years ago this week, thousands of activists marched on the Financial District in New York City. They formed the Occupy Wall Street encampment in Zuccotti Park, launching a movement focused on economic inequality that spread across the nation and globe under the slogan, We are the 99%." Protesters would go on to sleep in Zuccotti Park for nearly two months before police raided the encampment.Occupy Wall Street changed the public's common sense about class and class struggle and inequality in this country," says Yotam Marom, who helped organize the Occupy protests in New York City. It's hard to see how you get a Bernie Sanders 2016 run without the public shifting its relationship to that story."Marom says Occupy participants were inspired by mass protests happening around the world at that time, including the Arab Spring and the anti-austerity movement in Spain known as the Indignados.Still, We got it wrong on a lot of things. We had a ton of internal conflict that really jeopardized the project," he says.Marom's new book is For Louder Days: Reaching Beyond a Politics of Powerlessness.

If we don't connect those dots between the struggles, we're never going to get anywhere," says Pulitzer Prize- and Grammy-winning multi-instrumentalist Rhiannon Giddens. That's what music is for. ... We have to make music with people from different backgrounds because then we have that conversation."Giddens has had a wide-spanning career, including her time with the Carolina Chocolate Drops, an old-time Black string band, and her work as a musical consultant on Ryan Coogler's landmark film Sinners. She won a Pulitzer Prize for music in 2023 for her opera Omar about Omar ibn Said, a Muslim scholar in Africa who was sold into slavery in the 1800s. Her new album, Hope Is the Thing with Feathers, comes out on Friday.

As world leaders prepare to head to New York for the United Nations General Assembly and Climate Week, Democracy Now! speaks with Amitabh Behar, executive director of Oxfam International. We live in a very different world from 1945," when the U.N. was formed, says Behar. You cannot continue with the veto power." And with Antonio Guterres soon stepping down, Behar stresses that the United Nations' next secretary-general must be a woman - a fundamental shift we need to make."He also argues that while the world is torn apart" by inequality, there are real possibilities of change." Behar cites the G20's International Panel on Inequality and movements across the world" aimed at changing regimes," including in Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh and India.

U.N. Fact-Finding Mission Finds Evidence U.S. Committed War Crimes in Iran, Iran Strikes More Ships in Strait of Hormuz as Trump Dismisses Soaring Gas Prices, Yemen's Humanitarian Crisis Grows as Houthis Battle Saudi-Backed Forces, Drop the Genocide 20": Progressives Target Biden Admin Officials Who Aided Israel's Assault on Gaza, Russia Bombs Civilian Sites as Ukraine Continues Drone Attacks on Russian Oil Facilities, Congress Approves New Sanctions on Russia and Iran, White House Withdraws Nomination of Lance Schroyer to Lead ICE, ICE Is Heavily Redacting Documents Needed to Prove Immigration Status, ICE Stops Tracking Data on Miscarriages of Women and Girls in Its Custody, ICE Agent Accused of Shooting a Man and Lying About It is Arrested in Minnesota, Trump Administration Accelerates Mass Deportation of Haitians After Ending Protected Status, Amnesty International Warns Third Country" Deportees in Equatorial Guinea Face Abuse and Torture, Hundreds of South Korean Auto Workers Swept Up in ICE Raid Sue Trump Administration, Photos Show Trump with Poster Reading Kennedy Center DEMOLISHED"

We speak with moral philosopher Susan Neiman, author of the new book Call It Evil: Understanding the Trump Era. Neiman argues that evil - far from being an outdated religious concept - is a vital way to understand how injustice works in the world. The Trump administration's abusive policies have been aided by a general reluctance to call them out as evil, part of how people are brainwashed ... by the idea that morality is for losers, suckers, fools," she says.People worry that it's polarizing, that it's demonizing, and by that worry, we leave the strongest weapons we have in the language in the hands of people who are least responsible in using them," says Neiman.

Amid growing concerns over food safety in the United States, President Donald Trump last month authorized the duty-free importation of 660 million pounds of cheap beef trimmings that will get mixed in with other cuts to make ground beef. Imported beef and pork were once labeled with their country of origin, but Congress voted in 2015 to end that requirement, so customers at the grocery store will have no way to identify this mystery meat," which is coming mostly from Brazil. President Trump's proclamation in August came just a day after he met in the White House with Joesley Batista, whose family controls the Brazilian company JBS, the largest beef producer in the world. JBS is notorious for food safety violations and admitted in 2017 to bribing thousands of Brazilian officials for favorable treatment.It smells like a pretty corrupt deal," says investigative journalist Eric Schlosser. He says Trump's move is basically screwing over American ranchers," and the imported beef is some of the meat most likely to be contaminated."Schlosser is author of the landmark book Fast Food Nation, published in 2001. He says that in the 25 years since then, the United States has developed two food systems." While affluent and well-educated people increasingly favor sustainable, organic foods and care deeply about how food is grown and consumed, working people and the poor are relegated to the fast-food industrial system" of cheap, mass-produced food of dubious safety.

U.S. Declines to Join Saudi Attacks on Yemen After Secretly Meeting With Houthis, Trump on Iran: Hopefully We Are Towards the End of the War", Fed Raises Interest Rates for First Time Since 2023 as Iran War Drives Inflation, Oil Prices Dip Slightly From 4-Month Highs as Saudi Arabia Offers Additional Oil Shipments, Palestinian-American Journalist Naqaa Hamed Arrested by Israeli Authorities, Palestinians in Gaza Hold Funerals for People Killed in Building Collapse, Democratic Rep. Meeks Refuses to Clear Trump's $2.8 Billion Arms Sale to Israel, Interfaith Coalition Unveils 330-foot Memorial Shroud Bearing Names of Children Killed in Gaza, Palestinian Attorney Noura Erakat Arrested at Palm Beach Hearing on $1B Israel Bond Investment, OpenAI Discloses Six More Incidents of Concerning" Behavior by Misaligned"AI Agents, House OKs Ratepayer Protection Act to Shield Against Surging Electricity Costs from Data Centers, Pentagon Claims to Strike Vessel in the Eastern Pacific, Ex-Philippines President Duterte Appears at ICC to Face Charges Over War on Drugs" Killings, Toxic Haze Spreads Across Southeast Asia as Wildfires Rage in Indonesia, NYT: Trump Admin Guts Key Provision of the Endangered Species Act

Four years ago today, the Woman, Life, Freedom uprising erupted in Iran after the death in custody of Zhina Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman who had been arrested by Iran's morality police." Over the next three months, hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets protesting against Iran's discriminatory compulsory veiling laws.Amnesty International has released a new report concluding that the repressive measures used by Iranian authorities to crush the Woman, Life, Freedom protests in 2022 constitute crimes against humanity. Investigating the killings of 377 protesters and bystanders in 2022, Amnesty International's report calls for international criminal investigations into 87 Iranian officials.Crimes against humanity are system crimes. This means that they require resources, organization, structures, and state policy," says Raha Bahreini, a human rights lawyer and researcher on Iran for Amnesty International, which also recently condemned the U.S-Israeli war on Iran. We've been very clear that the suffering of victims of crimes against humanity must not be instrumentalized or weaponized by actors such as [the] U.S. and Israel," she adds.

A major new report by the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem titled The Elimination Project" accuses Israel of dramatically intensifying its attacks on every aspect of Palestinian life in the West Bank."For too long, Israel's policies in the West Bank have been treated or looked at as isolated events," says Ori Givati, director of international relations at B'Tselem. We actually find that there is one very coherent logic behind all of them, and this is the logic of elimination of Palestinian collective life in the West Bank." Givati says tactics against Palestinians intensified with Israel's 2022 election and again after October 7, 2023, adding that we are definitely seeing a lot of the mechanisms, the tools that were used and are used still ... in Gaza, being implemented in the West Bank."We also speak with Mohammad Sha'ban, a Palestinian farmer from Halhul in the Hebron area of the occupied West Bank who says 11 gates and seven settler outposts have been installed around Halhul since 2025. We cannot reach our lands. We cannot go outside Halhul. They open only one gate from 8 o'clock until 5 o'clock every day," says Sha'ban. Settlers attack farmers, beat farmers ... damaging our cars, also damaging our fields, uprooting our trees."

Congressional Democrats have opened an investigation after ProPublica revealed on Monday that a Russian oligarch close to Vladimir Putin bankrolled part of Donald Trump Jr.'s Bahamas wedding in May. ProPublica reports that Umar Kremlev paid hundreds of thousands of dollars on wedding expenses, including the rental of a private island. Just weeks before the wedding, Putin awarded Kremlev the Order of Friendship.Trump Jr. and his wife, Bettina Anderson, confirmed _ProPublica_'s findings in a social media post, specifying that Kremlev only paid for an afterparty.The most important thing to understand about Kremlev is the level of his connection with the Russian government. Right before the wedding ... he was reportedly traveling in China as part of Putin's delegation," says Joshua Kaplan, the ProPublica reporter who was part of the team that broke the story. He's spent a lot of money seemingly successfully cultivating a relationship with the son of the president, and we have no idea why."

U.S. House of Representatives Votes to End War on Iran for a Third Time, Saudi Arabia Claims It Destroyed a Houthi Drone South of Mecca, GOP Congressmember Massie Introduces Impeachment Articles Against Defense Secretary Hegseth, U.S. Acknowledges Space Force Has Deployed Weapons in Orbit, Trump Admin Approves $2.8 Billion Package Selling 2,000-Pound Bombs to Israel, Building in Gaza Housing 100 People Collapses, Killing At Least 20 People, UN Warns of Israel War Crimes as Hundreds of Bodies Recovered From Rubble in Gaza, Bernie Sanders and Steve Bannon Headline Pro-Human Assembly" Calling for AI Regulations, 5,000 Gallons of Diesel Spilled From a Data Center's Storage Tank in New Jersey, Trump's Board of Trustees Votes to Close Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Bloomberg: Trump Made Nearly 28,700 Stock Trades in 17 Months, More Than All of Congress, FBI Director Kash Patel Suggests He Might Send Federal Agents to Polling Places, Pennsylvania Health Officials Report a Fourth Measles Death, More Opening Acts Drop Out of Ed Sheeran's Tour Over Macklemore's Removal

Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor launch their new book, End Times Fascism: And the Fight for the Living World on Democracy Now! It examines how wealthy elites are preparing for the end of the world," even as they contribute to growing inequality, political instability and the climate crisis. The rise of modern-day fascism is not simply a rerun," explains Klein. We don't believe that history repeats on a loop. We believe that we're in something more like a sequel, where the logics of fascism, which are the logics of dehumanization, of othering, of racial supremacy and hierarchy, are now being applied in a time of global existential crisis." In response, says Taylor, the growing movement seeking to resist this fatalistic vision fundamentally needs to be grounded in a desire to stay here on Earth, to commit to this place."

Supreme Court Blocks Trump's Order Restricting Mail-In Voting, Whistleblower Says Federal Agents Broke Laws in Trump-Ordered Search for Unlawful Voters", Trump Rejects Calls to Regulate A.I. as a "SICK Conspiracy" and "HOAX", Saudi Crown Prince MBS Meets CENTCOM Chief as Houthis Consolidate Control Over Red Sea Coast, Iran's IRGC Claims It Shot Down Two U.S. Drones Over the Strait of Hormuz, Yield on 10-Year U.S. Treasury Bonds Passes 5% as Mideast War Drives Up Oil Prices, Alligator Alcatraz' Locked Immigrants in Outdoor Metal Cages Dubbed Calming Areas', New York Leads Coalition Suing Trump Admin Over New Immigration Rule, ProPublica: Don Jr.'s Wedding Secretly Bankrolled by Russian Oligarch, Mitch McConnell Returns to the Senate Three Months After Medical Emergency, Turkish Authorities Detain At Least 162 People in Raids of Gay Bars and Homes of LGBTQ+ Activists, Judge Blocks Trump's Restrictions on Visas for International Students, Academics and Journalists, Mahmoud Khalil Files Civil Rights Lawsuit Against Columbia University, Ed Sheeran Removes Macklemore From U.S. Tour Over Palestine Advocacy

Yemen is at risk of spiraling back into all-out war as Houthi forces and Saudi Arabia exchange new strikes amid a fight over control of the key Bab el-Mandeb strait through which much of Saudi oil passes on its way to world markets. The Houthis, the Iran-allied force also known as Ansarallah, has seized Yemen's entire Red Sea coastline from the Saudi-backed Yemeni government. The United Nations says the latest escalation has displaced 86,000 people in Yemen as the U.S. war on Iran continues to wrack the Middle East and raise oil prices around the world.What's happening right now is essentially a break in the ceasefire between Ansarallah ... and Saudi Arabia," says Shireen Al-Adeimi, a Yemeni American associate professor at Michigan State University. This ceasefire has been in place since 2022, but it has not ended the war in Yemen."

Did Saudi Arabia play a role in the planning and execution of the September 11 attacks of 2001? That question was raised immediately after the attack, when 15 of the 19 hijackers were revealed to be Saudi citizens, and it has only grown louder in the 25 years since as more evidence emerged of the attackers' connections to Saudi figures inside the United States.We speak with ProPublica journalist Tim Golden, who reports that the FBI failed to fully investigate Omar al-Bayoumi, a Saudi intelligence asset who helped two of the hijackers as they arrived in California in early 2000. Key evidence, including a handwritten note by al-Bayoumi calculating an airplane's trajectory to a point on the horizon, was not fully disclosed to investigators.Al-Bayoumi was incredibly important, but this evidence ... sort of went missing for more than 20 years," says Golden. If the Saudi government is indirectly responsible, or even if this was some rogue cell of Saudis within the religious bureaucracy, we would hope that that should come out."

A quarter-century after the September 11 attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people in the United States, a group of victims' families is continuing a lawsuit against Saudi Arabia to hold the kingdom accountable for any role it played in the planning and execution of the plot. While the Saudi government has always denied advance knowledge of the 9/11 attacks, 15 of the 19 plane hijackers were Saudi citizens, including some with connections to Saudi officials and intelligence assets in the United States. Terry Strada, the national chair of 9/11 Families United, raised the issue during an official commemoration on Friday in New York while paying tribute to her husband Tom, who was killed in the World Trade Center. With Vice President JD Vance and all four living ex-presidents in the audience, Strada asked: How can it be 25 years and still we have no justice for the role that Saudi Arabia played in your murder?"Strada tells Democracy Now! that evidence has only grown that Saudi agents were directly involved with providing the support network" to carry out the 9/11 attacks, and that she hopes President Donald Trump will tell the Saudi government that they can no longer hide and that they need to confront the evidence and work things out with the families."

The film NAZA, which documents the Israeli military's use of secret AI-powered systems to deliberately and systematically target and massacre civilians in Gaza, won the Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival Saturday. The film was directed by Israeli journalist Yuval Abraham and filmmaker Rachel Szor, both of whom won an Oscar for the documentary No Other Land in 2025 along with Palestinian co-directors Basel Adra and Hamdan Ballal. NAZA was shot in secret on rooftops in Tel Aviv over three years and builds on testimony from Israeli military and intelligence sources who spoke on the condition their identities be concealed. The film's title refers to an acronym used by the Israeli military as a shorthand for civilian killings in Gaza.The film's reception in Venice, where it received a record-breaking 25-minute standing ovation, was met with angry backlash from Israel's government as Culture Minister Miki Zohar threatened to revoke Abraham and Szor's Israeli citizenship.

Anthropic's CEO Calls for the Development of Artificial Intelligence to Slowdown, Head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization Blocked From Attending Annual IAEA Meeting, Houthis Claim Drone and Missile Attack on Military Base in Southern Saudi Arabia, B'tselem: Israel Systematically Dismantling Palestinian Life in Occupied West Bank, Israeli Airstrike in Gaza Kills At Least Two People, Israeli Military Uses More Than 1,000 Tons of Explosives to Destroy Hezbollah Tunnels in Lebanon, Former U.S. CIA Director Petraeus Narrowly Escapes Russian Drone Strike at Train Station Near Poland-Ukraine Border, Ebola Cases in the Democratic Republic of Congo Tops 7,000, EPA Set to Repeal Carbon Pollution Standards for Coal and Gas Power Plants, Federal Judge Rules Trump Admin Broke the Law in Directing FEMA's Workforce be Cut in Half, NYT and Flatwater Free Press: Nebraska's GOP Governor Backs Trump's ICE Raids as his Hog Business Employs Undocumented Workers, Trump Demands Smithsonian Install a 30-Foot Colossal Statue of George Washington

We look at how post-9/11 policies and the so-called war on terror reshaped the country and the world with two Columbia faculty members who convened a two-day symposium on The Forever War and the First Amendment." The symposium brought together journalists, scholars, lawyers and activists to explore the legacy of the war on terror," specifically focused on the impact on democratic rights, including the freedoms of speech and the press.First Amendment freedoms were tested right away in the days and weeks after 9/11," says Jameel Jaffer, legal expert and director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. All of the surveillance authorities that were put in place after 9/11," says Jaffer, their use was initially justified by reference to foreign threats. And now, increasingly, we're seeing the Trump administration use these things to suppress domestic dissent."If you go back to that climate after 9/11 ... newsrooms institute[d] shifts, so they started making beats for covering national security," says Azmat Khan of the Columbia Journalism School, who won a Pulitzer Prize for exposing the massive civilian death toll from U.S.-led airstrikes in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan. Legacy news media in that time period was incredibly dependent on anonymous sources, sometimes unvetted intelligence, leaks to journalists that oftentimes came from an administration that was trying to lead the public to war."

Friday marks 25 years since the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and the crash of Flight 93 in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Around 3,000 people were killed that day, and nearly 10,000 more have died in the years since from 9/11-related illnesses connected to the collapse of the twin towers.In 2001, Democracy Now! was a radio show broadcasting from the attic of Downtown Community Television in Chinatown, just blocks away from ground zero. We were the closest national broadcast to the World Trade Center site. We were on the air when the second plane hit the south tower. Today, we reair a clip of that broadcast and hear Democracy Now! co-host Juan Gonzalez read the column he wrote for the New York Daily News in the hours after the attack, A Horror to Last a Lifetime."A catastrophe like that changes people forever," says Gonzalez.

Yemen's Houthis Seize Entire Red Sea Coastline, Consolidating Power Over Bab al-Mandab Strait, Oil Prices Surge Toward $110 a Barrel as More Ships Are Struck Near Strait of Hormuz, At GOP Midterm Convention, Trump Asks Supporters to Cheat Like Hell" to Win Election, Supreme Court Again Blocks Missouri from Using Gerrymandered Congressional Map in Midterms, Russia Bombs Shopping Malls and Gas Stations in Ukraine After Kyiv Orders Strikes Deep Inside Russia, Nepal Seeks $20 Million in Climate Compensation After Glacier's Collapse Triggers Deadly Floods, Study Warns Climate Feedback Loops Could Worsen Global Heating by 30%, September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows Holds Vigil Ahead of 25th Anniversary of Attacks, ICE Sends Somali Asylum Seeker to Guantanamo Bay Prison Camp, Maryland Officials Demand ICE Accountability After Agents Beat Protesters in Frederick Neighborhood, Civil Rights Groups Sue to Halt ICE Patrols at Voting Sites, Florida Bans Undocumented Immigrants from Public University Enrollment, Anthropic Threat Report Shows Bad Actors" Sought to Use AI to Build Weapons, New Documentary "NAZA" Reveals How Israel Uses AI-Powered Systems to Target Civilians in Gaza

As part of our weeklong coverage marking the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks and the launch of the United States' so-called war on terror, we take a look at the human, financial and environmental costs of U.S. military intervention around the world with Neta Crawford, co-founder of Brown University's Costs of War Project. Researchers at the Costs of War Project estimate that nearly a million people have been killed as a direct result of U.S. military violence in the Middle East since 2001. At least half are estimated to be civilians. An additional 3.8 million deaths can be attributed to the indirect effects of war, including injuries, famine and long-term health conditions. And the wars have also increased the U.S. debt, military footprint, greenhouse gas emissions, destruction and destabilization abroad and unchecked executive power at home. The consequences are all around us," says Crawford.

The 'war on terror' was always a construct to be waged, never quite to be ended." We discuss the origins and impacts of the global war on terror," launched by the U.S. government in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C., with Spencer Ackerman, author of Reign of Terror: How the 9/11 Era Destabilized America and Produced Trump. We saw, beginning at the very outset of the 'war on terror,' our leaders told us to understand 9/11 as an assault of a foreign civilization, one that had nothing to do with the consequences of American extractive and exploitative foreign policy in the Muslim world or its support for Israel."Ackerman says the war on terror" and its repercussions have extended past U.S. ground wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, to its current war on Iran, Israel's genocide of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank and the development of extensive surveillance architecture and state repression of Muslim minority groups around the world. A whole lot of regimes around the world, rising powers looking for their own advantage, saw what the United States was constructing and realized they wanted that for themselves," he says.

In the five years since the Taliban regained control of Afghanistan following the complete withdrawal of U.S. troops from the country, millions of Afghan refugees have been forced out of neighboring Iran and Pakistan, where they had been living and dumped at the border" without immediate access to food, water or shelter. At the same time, conditions for women and girls in Afghanistan continue to deteriorate, as basic rights to education, freedom of movement and access to services are increasingly curtailed under the Taliban's authoritarian rule. It's a crisis for humanity," says Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, speaking to Democracy Now! from Kabul. We're so overstretched and underfunded. ... We're too alone on the ground here in Afghanistan," explains Egeland, one of the few international aid workers continuing to support displaced people in the country. The reason we have to lay off female aid workers, female teachers, teaching primary school girls, is because of lack of funding. It's not because of the Taliban."Despite the outsized role it played in destabilizing the country, there has been zero funding" this year from the U.S. to humanitarian organizations operating in Afghanistan. Don't forget your promises when you went for the door abruptly five years ago," Egeland says, addressing the United States and other, largely European, countries that made up the U.S.-led NATO coalition in Afghanistan.

Almost 25 years ago, just days after the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center, President George W. Bush addressed the nation, making the case for war against al-Qaeda, whose leader, Osama bin Laden, was based in Afghanistan. I sensed that something like this was not going to go unpunished," Afghan American New Yorker and women's rights activist Masuda Sultan told Democracy Now! at the time. Within a few weeks, the U.S. invasion began. Sultan would lose 19 members of her family when the U.S. military bombed their village outside of Kandahar. We revisit our coverage of the initial U.S. invasion, including our first interviews with Sultan in 2002, and speak to Sultan again today. She reflects on her experience, including working with Rita Lasar, the sister of a 9/11 victim, to advocate for acknowledgment and compensation for the families of Afghan civilians killed by the U.S. military.The United States war in Afghanistan lasted for nearly 20 years, the longest-ever active conflict in U.S. history. Now as the Taliban government - overthrown by the U.S. in 2001 and later reestablished following the end of U.S. military occupation in 2021 - tightens its patriarchal restrictions on women in Afghanistan, Sultan warns international actors not to repeat the [mistakes of the] 1990s, of turning our backs on the country. We need to engage with the Afghan people, support Afghan women and support civil society."

Trump Predicts Iran War and High Fuel Prices Will Last Until November, Houthis Seize Red Sea Port City Near Bab al-Mandab Strait, Investors Ditch U.S. Treasuries, Sending U.S. Bond Yields to Highest Levels Since 2007, Rubio Defends U.S. Strikes on Boats, Calls Victims Narco-Terrorists", Trump Pledges $5,000 Payment to All U.S. Adults If Republicans Win Midterm Elections, Democratic Sen. John Fetterman Tells GOP Midterm Political Convention He'll Work with Trump, Trump Administration Proposes Overhaul of 2030 Census, 200,000 Salvadorans in U.S. Face Uncertain Future as Temporary Protected Status Expires, The Guardian: ICE Obtains Judge's Approval to Force-Feed Cuban Detainee on Hunger Strike, Israeli Airstrike Flattens Home in Gaza, Killing Family of Four, Including Two Children, Palestinians Injured During Israeli Raids in Occupied West Bank, Israeli Steps Up Attacks on Lebanon and Faces Accusations of War Crimes" in Syria, Financial Records Reveal CUNY's Deep Investments in Weapons Firms Supplying Israel, Trump Falsely Claims That Firefighters Lifted Him Up and Carried Him Away on 9/11

The attacks on September 11, 2001, unleashed a wave of Islamophobia in the United States that resulted in widespread harassment and persecution of Muslim Americans. In addition to vigilante attacks targeting Muslims or those perceived to be Muslim, there was also state repression including police roundups, community surveillance, prosecutions on often flimsy terrorism charges and mass deportations. Meanwhile, the wars launched by the United States in the aftermath of 9/11 have killed close to 1 million people in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere, according to the Costs of War Project at Brown University.There were so many responses to 9/11. One was obviously fear and grief and shock, but another was rage. And so much of that rage was towards Muslims and those who looked like Muslims," says award-winning journalist Rozina Ali, author of Seasons of Fury: Four Families and the Rise of Islamophobia in America.We also speak with Fahd Ahmed, executive director of Desis Rising Up and Moving, or DRUM, a grassroots organization for South Asian and Indo-Caribbean immigrant workers and families in New York City. He says that much of the anti-Muslim retaliation came from law enforcement.In New York City and in New Jersey and across the country, ... we saw these massive roundups of mostly Muslim men or people that were perceived to be Muslim, and this included citizens, green card holders and undocumented people," says Ahmed. There was at least 1,200 men that were picked up this way."

Ahead of the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has unsealed more than 170,000 pages of records that offer new insights into how the city responded to the disaster. Some of the papers indicate that officials lied about the hazardous toxins that burned and remained near ground zero for months afterward, even as the government assured New Yorkers the air was safe to breathe and rushed to reopen Lower Manhattan for business. In addition to the nearly 3,000 people killed on 9/11, thousands more are believed to have died from illnesses related to the attacks, including from cancer, heart disease and respiratory conditions.The Bush administration, the Giuliani administration all denied that there was an impact from these toxins," says Benjamin Chevat, executive director of 9/11 Health Watch, which sued for the release of the records. He faults successive city governments for inaction, saying that instead of mitigating the harm, they mitigated the city's liability."

Canada, France and the U.K. Ban Trade with Israeli Settlements, Haaretz: Israeli Prime Minister Netayahu Failed to Heed Warning of October 7 Attacks, U.S. Forces Bomb Five Iranian Tankers as Iran Retaliates by Firing Missiles at U.S. Base in Jordan, Dueling Court Rulings on Missouri's Gerrymandered Voting Maps Pose Challenge to Midterm Elections Planning, Postal Service's Inspector General Says It Will Review Whistleblower Warning on Trump Admin's New Mail-In Voting Rule, Federal Appeals Court Blocks IRS from Sharing Taxpayer Data with ICE, U.N. Report: Sharp Rise in Wildfires and Heat Waves Undercutting Air Quality Worldwide, Federal Appeals Court Rules U.S. Constitution Does Not Guarantee Right to Clean Drinking Water, Reuters: Trump Admin Seeking Access to Venezuela's Minerals, Trump Proposes Renaming State of New Mexico as New America", Trump Gave Executive Assistant Natalie Harp and Two Other White House Aides $45,000 Each, HHS Publishes Pseudoscientific Study Linking Trans Rights Advocacy to Political Violence, Researcher Quits Anthropic, Warning Self-Improving AI Poses Existential Risk, Protesters March on Albania's Parliament to Oppose Kushner-Linked Luxury Resort Project

Bob Hennelly, general manager of WBAI Pacifica Radio in New York, broadcast live during the September 11 attacks in 2001 and has been covering developments ever since. He says officials rushed to reopen the city after the disaster, despite the health risks from toxic air and debris around ground zero. There was no Zoom back then," Hennelly says. People were ordered back to their desks in Lower Manhattan, which turned out to be a death sentence."

We speak with Sara Nelson, the international president of the Association of Flight Attendants, about how flight attendants were affected by the 9/11 attacks. Nelson was working in Chicago that day, but she lost five of her friends, who were fellow flight attendants, in the attacks. My handbook is in the 9/11 Memorial Museum, that gave us the exact wrong training for that day. We were told to keep everyone calm, appease the hijackers."Eighty-one billion dollars was given back by workers in the wake of 9/11, including transferring the cost of healthcare to us, destroying retiree healthcare, destroying pensions. And we're still trying to fight to get that back," adds Nelson.

Twenty-five years after the 9/11 attacks, many New York City residents are still grappling with complicated health conditions related to exposure to the toxic air and debris around ground zero.We were digging through the pile and using rakes to spread out all the debris to look for anyone's remains," says retired New York City firefighter Brenda Berkman. We were working alongside really heavy equipment, as time went on, that picked up big loads of debris and dumped it, creating a cloud. This went on for 10 months. And at first, there was no proper decontamination at all."EMS personnel were told, 'Oh, you couldn't be getting sick. You're not a firefighter. So don't worry. Just go back to work,'" says retired New York City EMT Marianne Pizzitola. Moving into the years right after, ... we started to find consistent diagnoses at our retiree meetings."Author and public health advocate Lila Nordstrom recounts how students at her school, Stuyvesant High School, located just three blocks away from ground zero, were also misled by officials after the attacks.

Twenty-five years after September 11, 2001, more people are believed to have died from cancer, respiratory and other illnesses due to exposure to the airborne toxins than the nearly 3,000 people killed in the attacks on the World Trade Center. In the weeks and months that followed 9/11, former New York City Mayors Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg, as well as other city and federal officials, reassured residents and workers it was safe to return to the area surrounding ground zero, concealing the dangers of lingering toxins in the air after the collapse of the twin towers.Democracy Now! co-host Juan Gonzalez reads from his book, Fallout, in which he extensively reported on the toxic nightmare around ground zero. No one could guarantee the air around Ground Zero was safe because no one had ever confronted a disaster of such proportions," Gonzalez wrote in Fallout.

Houthi Forces from Yemen Strike Saudi Cities and Energy Sites, Injuring Over 70 People, U.S. Gov't Investigators Administer Polygraph Exams to 50 People on the Military's Joint Staff, Israeli Strikes Kill 11 People in Southern Lebanon, Israel Carries Out Deadly Strikes on the Gaza Strip, Killing Two Children, Palestinian Teenager Shot Dead in the Occupied West Bank, Russia and Ukraine Trade Strikes Following Three-Day Pause on Hostilities, Far-Right Party Posts Strongest Showing in a German Election Since the Nazi Era, UNGA Adopts Map Showing Africa's True Size; U.S. Votes Against It, Trump Administration Removes References Critical of Confederate Memorial in Arlington Cemetery, Trump Administration Again Asks Supreme Court to Allow Limits on Mail Ballots, Records Show City Health Officials Misled New Yorkers on Air Quality After 9/11 Attacks

A special broadcast: Highlights from Democracy Now!'s 30th anniversary celebration at the historic Riverside Church, featuring Angela Davis, Patti Smith, Mosab Abu Toha, Michael Stipe, Hurray for the Riff Raff, Amy Goodman, Juan Gonzalez, Nermeen Shaikh and a surprise appearance by Bruce Springsteen.

A new documentary titled Top of the World tells the story of Windows on the World, the legendary restaurant atop the World Trade Center, through the eyes of its former employees. Windows on the World served guests for 25 years, until the morning of September 11, 2001, when it was destroyed in the attacks on the World Trade Center. Seventy-nine workers and 91 diners were killed.We're joined by Top of the World's co-directors, Julie Cohen and Betsy West, and by Sekou Siby, a former line cook at Windows on the World. Siby, who immigrated to the United States from the Ivory Coast in 1996, was originally scheduled to work on the morning of September 11, but a co-worker asked him to switch shifts. He didn't make it," says Siby, who later became an organizer and longtime leader at the Restaurant Opportunities Center (ROC), an advocacy group founded by Windows on the World workers to support each other in the aftermath of the attack.The extraordinary immigrant workforce of Windows [of the World] and what they collectively created is just a reminder of the contributions of immigrant New Yorkers to the restaurant world and to the culture of the city," says Cohen. We want people to remember not just the tragedy, but the real beauty and the specific stories of what was lost on that day."Top of the World premieres on CNN Monday, September 7, 2026.

We go to Danbury, Connecticut, where residents held a mass demonstration this week to protest recent immigration arrests and to support the city's immigrant community. Danbury, like many other communities across the United States, has been the target of a spike in immigration enforcement under the Trump administration, including local reports of ICE arresting parents at school bus stops.We really have been describing it as the administration terrorizing our city, because that is what it felt like. The streets were empty. Kids stayed home from practice. Kids stayed home from school," says Juliana Soares, the lead organizer for Danbury Unites for Immigrants. Masked agents often would shut down the street to just abduct people. ... They just do a gross display of force and intimidation in a grocery store parking lot, where they're just walking around, kind of hunting their next target."

Tyson Foods, the United States' largest meatpacking and processing company, shuttered a beef processing facility in Joslin, Illinois, last month, laying off more than 2,500 primarily immigrant workers virtually overnight." Although Tyson Foods CEO and President Donnie King made over $34 million last year, nearly 800 times more than the median Tyson worker, the company cites a historic 75-year low in the U.S. cattle herd as a primary reason for the closure.We speak to Caitlyn Clark, director of the group Essential Workers for Democracy, which is working to institute democratic reforms within the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW), a labor union that represents more than a million workers across the United States. These workers include the former Tyson plant meatpackers, who worked in some of the most dangerous jobs in America" while making billions of dollars in profit for Tyson." Clark ascribes the U.S. cattle shortage to climate change-induced drought in the American West, rising prices for diesel and fertilizer amid the U.S. war on Iran and years of corporate consolidation that has driven down profits for cattle ranchers.Since they were suddenly laid off, former Joslin plant workers have been protesting outside the shuttered plant, calling on Tyson to extend their severance pay, and calling on Illinois Governor JB Pritzker to intervene to help keep the plant open," Clark tells us. We need to take on the bosses and be serious about the level of inequality and exploitation that working people are facing today," she adds. Working people need more, they deserve more, and they're ready to fight for it. It's time that our union leadership catch up."

A federal judge has ruled that the Trump administration violated the constitutional rights of international students in seeking to deport them for their pro-Palestinian activism and criticism of Israel. The ruling is the result of a lawsuit filed by The Stanford Daily, the student newspaper at Stanford University, which claimed that some of its writers on student visas declined to report on topics related to Israel and Palestine, or requested their published articles be removed from the paper's website, for fear of deportation.What we were hearing from the noncitizens in our newsroom and from noncitizens across campus - current students, former students, alumni - was that they were genuinely frightened because of what they saw in the headlines, what they saw happen to Rumeysa Ozturk," says George Porteous, editor-in-chief of The Stanford Daily. Rumeysa Ozturk is the former Tufts University graduate student arrested and detained by ICE after co-authoring an op-ed encouraging Tufts to divest from Israel in her university's student newspaper.The chill is the point," adds Will Creeley, legal director at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, or FIRE, the organization that represented The Stanford Daily in court. That's a First Amendment violation every day of the week. It's flatly un-American."

As U.S. Conflict wIth Iran Enters 7th Month, Vance Declares, I Wouldn't Call This a War", Israel's National Security Minister Outlines Plan to Expel All Palestinians from Gaza Strip, 33 Democrats Join GOP Lawmakers to Pass Bill Stripping Funds from Schools That Boycott Israel, Missouri Supreme Court Blocks GOP's Gerrymandered Congressional Map, Federal Judge Warns Mail-In Voting Restrictions Would Lead to Major Disenfranchisement", DOJ Says States Must Report Undocumented Immigrants or Lose Funds for Needy Families, U.S. Sends Third Deportation Flight to Cap-Haitien Despite Rampant Insecurity in Haiti, Chinese National Is 57th to Die in Custody of ICE or Border Patrol Under Trump's Second Term, 76-Year-Old Green Card Holder with Cancer Freed After Two Months in ICE Jail, DOJ Indicts ICE Officer Who Shot Immigrant in Minneapolis, But Blocks More Serious Charges, Survivors Pulled from Flooded Tunnel in Nepal as Death Toll from Glacier's Collapse Nears 1,300, U.N. Warns the World Will Overshoot" 1.5C Limit to Global Heating, U.N. Warns Supersized" El Nino Will Persist into 2027, Fueling Extreme Weather and Food Insecurity

As part of our ongoing series on artificial intelligence, we speak with researcher Shreya Johri, who says AI has the power to revolutionize the field of medicine, particularly in diagnosing patients. Johri is a postdoctoral fellow at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and completed her Ph.D. at Harvard Medical School in 2025. She discusses ways that new technology is improving patient care, but she says AI must be treated like an additional tool and not be given control over patient care. Doctors have to be responsible, have to take the responsibility of this, until we are more confident we have frameworks developed that can deploy these AI models in a more responsible way," she says.

Ahead of the November midterm elections, Republican officials in the third most populous county of Texas have voted to slash the number of polling sites by nearly one-third. Tarrant County, which includes Fort Worth, will have just 224 polling sites for 1.3 million voters. The change was approved in a party-line vote Tuesday, with all three of the county's Republican commissioners voting in favor and the two Democrats opposing it. Civil rights groups including the ACLU and NAACP warn the changes will disproportionately affect voters of color.The eyes of the nation are on Tarrant County," says Roderick Miles Jr., a Democratic Tarrant County commissioner, who calls the voting restriction a modern-day poll tax."

An anonymous federal whistleblower has warned that the Trump administration's new system for handling mail ballots through the U.S. Postal Service is untested, fatally flawed and likely to lead to a catastrophic failure" if it's implemented ahead of November's midterm elections. This follows President Trump's executive order in March directing his administration to create federal lists of citizens and to refuse delivery of mail-in ballots to people not on those lists. The legality of Trump's executive order is being challenged.The new hurdles raised by the executive order for mail ballots and the rushed software system built to administer them create this potential for grave, catastrophic failure," says David Kligerman from Whistleblower Aid, the organization representing the whistleblower.

Feminist icon Gloria Steinem has died at the age of 92. According to her Instagram page, she died Wednesday at her home in New York City, surrounded by some of the many who loved her." Steinem was a tireless advocate for the social, economic and political advancement of women. Steinem co-founded Ms. magazine, the first major publication to be owned, run and written by women. She also helped found the National Women's Political Caucus with a group of women including Shirley Chisholm, Betty Friedan and Fannie Lou Hamer. Before becoming a feminist icon, she served as director of the Independent Research Service, a nonprofit educational foundation secretly funded by the CIA. In 2013, she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama. She spoke with Democracy Now! at the historic Women's March in Washington, D.C., on January 21, 2017. We play an excerpt.

Iran's Red Crescent Asks ICC to Investigate U.S. Strike on Wedding That Killed Four, Widow of Airman Who Died Supporting U.S. Attacks on Iran Says She Was Denied Benefits, USS Abraham Lincoln Docks in Thailand After Unprecedented Wartime Deployment, Trump Nominates Hung Cao as Navy Secretary as GOP Lawmakers Call for Pete Hegseth's Ouster, Israeli Soldiers Fatally Shoot Two Palestinian Teens in Occupied West Bank, Israeli Defense Minister Seeks Trump's Support for Plans to Expel Palestinians from Gaza, Death Toll from Nepal Floods Tops 1,200 People, Former Venezuelan President Maduro and His Wife Ask Judge to Dismiss Drug Trafficking Charges, Chevron Pledges to Invest $7 Billion in Venezuela as U.S. Energy Secretary Touts Oil and Gas Deal, Rep. Greg Casar Blasts OpenAI for Withholding Info About Rogue AI Agent Hack, Trump Admin Sides with OpenAI in Legal Fight with New York Times and Other Newspapers, New York City Adopts AI Moratorium for K-8 Students, Workers Remove Giant Statue Blue" from Kennedy Center Grounds

Demonstrators gathered outside Madison Square Garden in New York City on Saturday to protest against the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, a far-right Indian paramilitary Hindu nationalist organization with close ties to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The leader of the RSS, Mohan Bhagwat, was holding a rally inside the arena to launch a global speaking tour marking the 100th anniversary of the RSS.The RSS's explicitly stated mission, its purpose, is to create a Hindu Rashtra, a Hindu nation - to take the India that is a secular and inclusive democracy and transform it into a country that is just for Hindus, where Muslims, Christians, Sikhs and other minorities are basically erased," says Sunita Viswanath, co-founder of Hindus for Human Rights Action. "RSS affiliates, these Hindu right-wing organizations, exist in growing numbers in the diaspora, especially in America."In 1939, [Madison Square Garden] hosted a Nazi rally with swastikas hung from the banners around a portrait of George Washington. They said they wouldn't do something like that again, and yet here they were hosting Mohan Bhagwat, spouting a similar fascist ideology," says Brad Lander, a Democratic nominee for Congress from New York City, who joined Saturday's protest.

A year ago today, the United States bombed a small boat in the Caribbean, killing nine people on board. Two survivors clung to the wreckage for 45 minutes, reportedly waving for help, before a second double-tap" strike killed them, too. President Trump posted a video of the first attack on social media, announcing that 11 terrorists had been killed in a military operation that would be called Operation Southern Spear." The second video, showing the killing of the survivors, has never been released. The bombings have continued for a year, killing at least 227 people in nearly 70 separate strikes. The Pentagon often accuses the boats it targets of narcotrafficking.In a new documentary, the investigative team at Al Jazeera's Fault Lines traveled to St. Lucia and Colombia to speak with two families who believe their loved ones, both fishermen, were killed at sea by U.S. airstrikes. They describe it as a war. They describe these people as enemy combatants that are attacking America," says Josh Rushing, a senior correspondent for Fault Lines who worked on the documentary. In reality, it's unclear, really, if the U.S. government knows who they're killing ... They've never named anyone in any of the strikes."We had the 'war on drugs,' the 'war on terror.' This is kind of the worst of both," says Rushing.

We speak to Richard Wolff, a prominent Marxist economist, about the economic fallout from the war on Iran, which recently reached the six-month mark. Because it's only been going on for a few months, the impact on the prices we pay is about to unload itself," says Wolff.The U.S. national debt, which recently topped $40 trillion, is one of the many signs of an economy and of an empire that is now in decline," says Wolff. There is an enormous increase in defense spending, or now war spending, that is scheduled, and no comparable increase in revenue."Wolff also discusses how a global selloff of U.S. government bonds means increasing borrowing costs for everyday consumers.

U.S. Launches Wave of Attacks in Iran, Killing 11 People, German Officials Accuse Russia of an Attempted Drone Attack at Leipzig/Halle Airport Last Month, World Food Programme Announces It Will Halve Its Food Assistance in the Occupied West Bank, Israeli Court Brings Criminal Charges Against a Dozen Guards Accused of Beating Palestinian Prisoners, Ebola Outbreak Death Toll Tops 3,000 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Whistleblower Warns USPS Mail Voting System Headed for Catastrophic Failure" Ahead of Midterms, Federal Immigration Agents Arrest 50,000 People in August, 20-Year-Old Haitian Immigrant Dies by Suicide After Being Outfitted with an Ankle Monitor, Activist Ya'akub Vijandre Wins Right to Challenge ICE Detention After Nearly 1 Year Behind Bars, Mississippi Police Chief Fired over Racist Text Messages, House Censures GOP Rep. Chuck Edwards over Sexual Harassment Claims, 80-Year-Old Sen. Ed Markey Defeats Primary Challenger Who Raised Concerns over His Age

Juan Carlos Davila reports from Puerto Rico as the island grapples with a severe water crisis. A record-breaking drought has led to severe shortages and a system of water rationing that residents say could have been prevented by better infrastructure maintenance. Climate scientists have warned for years that changing weather conditions in the Caribbean are likely to exacerbate existing infrastructure failings, but rather than address the root cause of the water shortage, explains Davila, a pattern of government inaction and failed public services is used to justify increasing privatization.Puerto Rico's water woes come 10 years after the United States passed the bankruptcy law PROMESA to restructure the U.S. territory's debt, installing an unelected board colloquially known as La Junta" that continues to hold sweeping authority to determine fiscal and public policy. This water crisis taking place right now in Puerto Rico, also La Junta bears some responsibility on it," says Puerto Rican investigative reporter Luis Valentin. It did not reduce the debt, and [so] pretty much crowds out resources that could be used for infrastructure work."