Democracy Now!

We speak with Dr. Abdul El-Sayed after his victory in Michigan's primary race for U.S. Senate sent shockwaves through the Democratic Party. El-Sayed, a former public health official, ran a progressive campaign focused on affordability, Medicare for All, getting money out of politics, and opposing Israel's genocide in Gaza. He defeated Congressmember Haley Stevens, who was backed by tens of millions in outside spending including by AIPAC, the powerful pro-Israel lobby group.In an era where many of us can't afford basic things like groceries or rent or healthcare, the idea that your government is sending your tax dollars to buy bombs and tanks for foreign governments seems anathema," El-Sayed says. That money could be spent to fix your potholes, rebuild your kid's school."El-Sayed says his focus now is on beating Republican nominee Mike Rogers, whom he calls a bootlicker for Trumpism," and to present a positive vision for his party that can lead into the next Democratic presidential administration.

Composer and playwright Cesar Alvarez joins Democracy Now! to discuss their new musical, The Potluck. It tells the story of the 1979 Greensboro Massacre, when Klansmen and American Nazis opened fire on an antiracist demonstration in Greensboro, North Carolina, killing five members of the Communist Workers' Party. In 2020, the Greensboro City Council passed a resolution apologizing for the attack and the police department's complicity in the killings.Alvarez tells Democracy Now! the musical is an attempt to grapple with what it has meant to grow up in the aftermath of this state-sanctioned murder," as well their personal connection to the massacre. Alvarez's parents were part of the Communist Workers' Party, and Alvarez is named in honor of two of their slain comrades.

Kansas state Senator Cindy Holscher won Tuesday's primary race to become the Democratic nominee in the state's gubernatorial race, facing Republican Ty Masterson in November. Holscher clinched the nomination over fellow state lawmaker Ethan Corson, who was backed by the outgoing Democratic Kansas Governor Laura Kelly. Holscher's victory is seen as another resounding defeat for establishment Democrats in Kansas and nationwide. The fight over data centers became a defining issue in the Kansas race.We see [data centers] suck up the resources in terms of water. We see energy usage causing utility bills to skyrocket. So, certainly not things that you want to have happen during an affordability crisis," Holscher tells Democracy Now!Holscher also celebrates the defeat of a ballot measure to change how state Supreme Court justices are elected, which she calls a backdoor attempt" to attack abortion rights, voting access and public education.

Reproductive rights activists are alarmed over a pledge by acting Attorney General Todd Blanche to institute nationwide abortion restrictions. Blanche, whose confirmation for attorney general is currently before the Senate, made the remarks in a private call with anti-abortion activists that was later posted online. According to the audio recording, Blanche said the Trump administration is pursuing policies so that the Dobbs decision becomes permanent in every single state," referring to the 2022 Supreme Court ruling that ended the constitutional right to abortion and left the matter to individual states.Amy Littlefield, The Nation's abortion access correspondent, says the administration is likely to focus on limiting abortion pills delivered by mail, perhaps by invoking the 1873 Comstock Act, which banned the mailing of lewd" and indecent" materials through the mail. Littlefield calls it a zombie law from the Victorian era" that reflects the frustration of the anti-abortion movement's inability to reduce abortions despite victories at the Supreme Court.Abortion bans do not stop abortion. What they do is they kill and harm the people who need them," she says.Littlefield is the author of Killers of Roe: My Investigation Into the Mysterious Death of Abortion Rights.

Trump Signs New Executive Orders Restricting Birthright Citizenship, Sen. Murkowski to Vote Against Blanche as AG, Trump Denies Munition Shortages While Threatening Jail Time over Leaks, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan Sign Joint Defense Agreement, Two Top Mossad Officials Fired over Israel's Failed Plot to Topple Iranian Gov't, Houthis Kill at Least 30 Saudi-Backed Yemeni Forces, Israeli Killing of Lebanese Journalist Amal Khalil Was a War Crime: Human Rights Groups, Gaza Board of Peace Issues Construction Contract for Military Outpost in Gaza, Justin Pearson Wins Tenn. House Primary After Campaigning Against Data Centers, New Mexico Judge Orders Meta to Pay Additional $567M in Child Safety Lawsuit, Senate Homeland Security Committee Votes to Hold Fauci in Contempt of Congress, Trump Administration Moves to Dismantle Anti-Poverty Head Start Program, FCC Votes to Lift Limits on TV Station Ownership, Scholar Who Accused Israel of Genocide Wins $250K Settlement from Univ. of Minnesota

In Pakistan-administered Kashmir, a coalition of local politicians, activists and small-business leaders called the Joint Awami Action Committee (JAAC) has been leading mass protests over the soaring cost of living and the limits placed on political autonomy. In response, the Pakistani government banned the group under counterterrorism laws and ordered a communications blackout. Security forces have been accused of indiscriminately firing on nonviolent demonstrators, killing at least 40 people. For more, we speak to Kashmiri writer Mirza Waheed, who grew up in India-administered Kashmir, on the other side of the Line of Control."In the Pakistani-controlled region known locally as Azad Kashmir, the center of the JAAC protests, the discontent is not recent," explains Waheed. It's been simmering under the surface for a while, and now it's kind of burst out [in] the open." He traces the turmoil in the disputed territory to the 1947 Partition of the Indian subcontinent by the departing British colonialists. All these grievances about increasing prices, unemployment, healthcare, infrastructure, they have coalesced into a larger, broader critique of the political arrangement."

Is AI superintelligence inevitable? AI safety researcher David Krueger says it doesn't have to be. Krueger, an assistant professor at the University of Montreal and founder of the nonprofit Evitable, warns that we need to mitigate the risk of extinction" with regulation and moratoriums to halt the development of AI's computational power and complexity, which he says is progressing at a rate much faster than current levels of human supervision can manage. Public statements from AI companies that their models have circumvented test constraints and broken into other systems are what we should expect to happen with the way that we're building AI, with how little we understand it and how primitive our techniques are for controlling it," Krueger says. We just don't know how to build it safely. End of story."

The Pacific Northwest is facing its worst fire season in more than 30 years. Scientists say drought, extreme heat and climate change are making wildfire seasons longer, more frequent and more destructive across the western United States.The homes, the communities, they're just not simply prepared for fire," says Paul Hessburg, former senior research ecologist at the U.S. Forest Service and professor of fire and landscape ecology at the University of Washington. Hessburg walks us through the history of the region, from the controlled fires practiced by Indigenous peoples before European settlement to present-day ecologically unsound factors including accidental ignitions, dense forests, the wrong kinds of fuels on the ground [and] rapidly changing climate."

Trump Blasts Democratic Nominee for Senate Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche Pledges to Make Dobbs Permanent" Nationwide, Senate Votes to Confirm Dr. Erica Schwartz to Lead the CDC, New Mexico Sues the DOJ for Stonewalling" State Probe into Epstein, Federal Lawsuit Accuses Trump Admin of Targeting Children for Deportation, Authorities in Ceuta Looking to Transfer Unaccompanied Minors to Mainland Spain, NYT: CIA Secretly Established New Cuba Task Force, Iran and Oman Agree on Coordinates for Shipping Corridor Through the Strait of Hormuz, Israeli Prosecutors Indict Settler Yinon Levi over the Killing of Palestinian Activist Awdah Hathaleen, Israeli Military Conducts Targeted Strikes in Southern Lebanon, Head of Russian Drone Manufacturer Critically Injured in Car Bombing, Austria Breaks National Heat Record for Second Time in Two Days, Forecasts Suggest El Nino Could Drive Roughly 50 Million People into Acute Hunger by 2027, Fuego Volcano in Guatemala Expels Fresh Ash and Mud, Bangladesh's Former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Announces Plans to Return from Exile

In the wake of a third ICE death at the Delaney Hall ICE jail in Newark, New Jersey, we speak with Gabriela Soto, whose husband Martin was one of the leaders of the May hunger strike at the immigration jail. Martin was transferred to Elizabeth Detention Center, New Jersey's other ICE facility, during the hunger strike at Delaney. Gabriela is calling for the closure of both facilities.At first, I was fighting for my husband, but then I started to meet all of these people who are just innocent, and they are the people that make this country great," says Soto, who blames her recent miscarriage on the stress of her husband being detained. I am still grieving," she says. To me, this is an ICE murder, too."This comes as Edwin Lopez-Cornejo, a Salvadoran immigrant, died Saturday after being held for six weeks at Delaney Hall. He is the third immigrant to die at the ICE jail, which has been open since May 2025. Lopez-Cornejo's mother, Maria Cornejo, says her son took medicine to manage diabetes, seizures and his blood pressure, but had not received his medications regularly since being detained. ICE said in a statement that Lopez-Conejo experienced a medical emergency" on Saturday and was transported to University Hospital in Newark, but Maria Cornejo says her son died at Delaney Hall.More than 70 people inside the ICE jail have filed lawsuits alleging medical neglect. That neglect was one of the factors that led to the hunger strike. Individuals are not receiving the kind of healthcare that they in fact need, particularly for chronic health conditions, for pregnancies, for cancers," says Analilia Mejia, Democratic congressmember from New Jersey. Being undocumented should not be a death sentence."

Voters went to the polls in Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, Virginia and Washington state on Tuesday. We continue to look at the results of those primary elections, with The Nation's John Nichols calling it a very good night for insurgent candidacies and for outsiders," especially for candidates that campaigned around the fight against AI data centers.

Progressive candidate Abdul El-Sayed has been declared the winner of Michigan's closely watched Democratic Senate primary, narrowly beating out Congressmember Haley Stevens, according to the Associated Press and other news agencies. AIPAC and its affiliated groups spent as much as $46 million to help Stevens in what has become the most expensive Democratic Senate primary contest in U.S. history. El-Sayed will face former Republican Congressman Mike Rogers in November to fill the seat now held by Democratic Senator Gary Peters, who is retiring. If El-Sayed wins the general election, he would become the first Muslim senator in U.S. history. His key supporters included Senator Bernie Sanders, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the United Auto Workers.Dr. Abdul El-Sayed worked unbelievably hard in this race," says John Nichols, executive editor of The Nation, pointing out that El-Sayed campaigned in rural counties across Michigan. It was literally about physically going to the people early, and then again and again and again, and talking to them about issues."We also speak with Andy Levin, a former Democratic congressmember from Michigan who lost to Stevens in 2022 after AIPAC spent $4.3 million on her campaign. El-Sayed's rise represents a movement of Americans who are saying, 'Enough of politics as usual,'" says Levin. 'We're done with the parties as they are. We need some way more active effort for us to be able to have living wages and healthcare and education and childcare and retirement.'"

Dr. Abdul El-Sayed Wins Michigan's Democratic Senate Primary, U.S. Military Reportedly Used Up 80% of Its Key Missile Interceptors in Iran War, National Guard to Continue Washington, D.C., Deployment Through 2029, Costing $1.4 Billion, GOP Congressmember Edwards Drops Reelection Bid After Sexual Harassment Allegations, Third immigrant Dies in Detention at Notorious ICE Jail Delaney Hall, Italy to Place All 27 of Its Major Cities Under the Country's Highest Heat Alert, Man Arrested on Suspicion of Arson in Connection to One of Three Blazes in the Washington Area, Justice Department Subpoenaed Freelance Reporter Matthew Cole, Federal Judge Grants DOJ Request to Dismiss Cases Against Oath Keepers Who Participated in the Jan. 6 Insurrection, Protesters Demand Gov't Action on Puerto Rico's Ongoing Water Crisis, Far-Right BJP Loses Major Local Election in the Indian State of Bihar, Russian Missile and Drone Strikes Kill 17 People in Ukraine, Jordan to Convene Emergency Meeting on Imminent" Israeli Takeover of Al-Aqsa Compound in Jerusalem, U.N. Human Rights Experts Send Letter to Mamdani and Hochul in Support of Home Health Aides

We look at the life and legacy of Dominican American historian, activist and prison abolitionist Dr. Johanna Fernandez, who died on July 30 after a long battle with cancer. She was 55 years old. As a professor of history at Baruch College and the CUNY Graduate Center, Fernandez was a leading scholar of the Young Lords, the radical 1960s civil rights organization founded in Chicago and New York and modeled on the Black Panthers. Fernandez also created the Latinx Freedom Movement Archive and Exhibition Project, alongside historian Felipe Hinojosa. The exhibition is currently on view at The Shed in New York City, as well as in Chicago and Los Angeles. Iterations will also be presented in Houston and Washington, D.C.Democracy Now! co-host Juan Gonzalez, who was a founding member of the Young Lords before his career in journalism, remembers Fernandez as a consummate historian," as well as a committed activist who devoted herself to advancing social justice. She was an amazing person with enormous energy and spirit, and we are all better people for having known her," he says.

More than 70 years after the kidnapping, torture and lynching of 14-year-old Emmett Till in Mississippi, a major new photography exhibit and companion book ask how the world would be different If Emmett Till Lived." The Black teenager's brutal murder, as well as his open-casket funeral that displayed his mutilated body, shocked the United States in 1955 and became a galvanizing moment in the civil rights movement. If Till had lived, he would be just over 85 years old today.Art really is one of the critical modes of creating an appeal to the moral imagination," says historian Sarah Elizabeth Lewis, the curator behind If Emmett Till Lived" and editor of the book.Lewis collaborated on the project with Till's surviving cousin, Reverend Wheeler Parker Jr., the last living witness to see Till alive. The exhibit opens at the Museum of Contemporary Photography at Columbia College Chicago on September 10.

Todd Blanche's nomination for attorney general cleared a major hurdle this week after two Republican senators who had raised concerns agreed to back him. Blanche gave written assurances that a $1.8 billion anti-weaponization fund" designed to pay Trump allies would not be resurrected, and that a settlement between Trump and the Internal Revenue Service only gave the president retroactive immunity from audits rather than perpetual protection. The Senate Judiciary Committee votes on Blanche's nomination Tuesday, with the full Senate expected to vote later in the week. Blanche, President Donald Trump's former personal attorney and acting attorney general since April, has been central in many of the administration's most controversial episodes, including prosecutions of Trump opponents and the botched rollout of files related to Jeffrey Epstein.If confirmed, Blanche would entrench a culture of corruption at the Justice Department, warns legal expert Norm Eisen. There have been a series of offenses against the rule of law, miscarriages of justice," he tells Democracy Now!Eisen is co-founder and executive chair of Democracy Defenders Fund. He previously served as White House special counsel for ethics and government reform in the Obama administration. The Justice Department recently dropped charges against his client, former Olympic athlete Davey Hearn, who had been accused of vandalizing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.

Iran and Oman Close In on Deal to Reopen Strait of Hormuz, Oil Companies Report Soaring Profits Amid U.S. War on Iran, Mass Funeral Held for 112 Palestinians in Gaza, Blanche on Track to Be Confirmed as Next Attorney General, Trump Blasts Pirro After She Dismissed Charges Against Individuals Accused of Vandalizing Reflecting Pool, Russia and Ukraine Exchange Drone Strikes, Killing Civilians, Europe Battles Record-Breaking Heat Wave and Wildfires, Sudanese Army Drone Attack Kills 35 People in Darfur, Michigan Reports First Two Deaths Tied to Cyclosporiasis Outbreak, Dr. Abdul El-Sayed Faces Off Against Haley Stevens in Michigan's Democratic Senate Primary, Religious Leaders and Activists Arrested While Protesting Trump's Attacks on Voting Rights, 25 Democratic-Led States File Lawsuit Against Trump Admin over Tariffs, ICE Detainee 41-Year-Old Edwin Lopez-Cornejo Dies at Delaney Hall, Guardian: At Least 10 Hunger-Striking ICE Detainees Subject to Involuntary Medical Procedures, Federal Judge Blocks New York Law Barring Federal Immigration Agents from Wearing Masks, Family of Haitian Asylum Seeker Who Died of Hypothermia Expected to Sue ICE, Federal Workers Sue the Trump Admin over Policy Ending Gender-Affirming Care Coverage, Home Care Workers Continue Hunger Strike to Pressure New York City Council to Pass Ban on 24-Hour Shifts

We speak to Dave Zirin, author and sports editor at The Nation, about his new book, The People's Historian: The Outsized Life of Howard Zinn, chronicling the life and activism of the legendary historian Howard Zinn, author of A People's History of the United States. For Zinn, says Zirin, being an academic was always secondary to being in the streets and making history, not just studying history."

One year ago, an Israeli settler shot and killed the Palestinian activist Awdah Hathaleen in the occupied West Bank. Hathaleen, an English teacher and father of three young children, played a key role in the production of the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land, which follows Palestinians in the community of Masafer Yatta as they struggle to stay on their land amid violent attacks by Israeli settlers. A new report from the Palestinian human rights organization Al-Haq looks closely at the circumstances of his death and the culpability of his killer, Yinon Levi, who has yet to face any legal consequences for Hathaleen's death. Since October 7, 2023, about 1,100 Palestinians have been killed by Israelis in the West Bank, says Al-Haq's Tahseen Elayyan. None of these [deaths have] been held accountable by the Israeli legal system, which tells us a lot. It tells us that the Israeli occupying forces and the Israeli government are involved in these crimes, and this reflects a state policy ... that aims at entrenching Israel's settler-colonial project in the occupied Palestinian territory."

An estimated 60,000 people from Morocco crossed into the Spanish enclave of Ceuta, on the African side of the Strait of Gibraltar, in an unprecedented mass movement last week. At least 72 people died during the attempt. The sudden influx of migrants overwhelmed the city's residents, leading to a humanitarian crisis while border police deployed water cannons, tear gas and warning shots to deter people from crossing. According to Spain's Interior Ministry, nearly all of the migrants returned to Morocco just a day later.Miriyam Aouragh, an anthropologist and the daughter of Moroccan immigrants to Europe, says the driving factors for the mass movement are a combination of shifting entry policies to Spain and increasing economic inequality in Morocco that has given a sort of empowering incentive to people to try to go to Spain" via Ceuta. The city, which is surrounded by Morocco along a five-mile-long border, dates back to the Phoenician era and has been under Portuguese or Spanish control since 1415. The Moroccan government claims that Ceuta is occupied and colonized territory, while Spain considers it an integral part of the Spanish state.

U.S. to Hold Off on Attacking Iran as Negotiations over Iran's Nuclear Program Continue, Israeli Strikes Kill at Least 25 Palestinians in Gaza Over the Weekend, Acting Attorney General Blanche Formally Terminates Trump's So-Called Anti-Weaponization Fund, U.S. Experiencing Largest Measles Outbreak in 30 Years, Capital One Says It Closed the Trump Organization's Bank Accounts After an Internal Probe, Truth Social Launches New Service for Paid Users to Get Alerts on Trump's Posts, Trump Admin Drops Case Against U.S. Olympian Accused of Vandalizing Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, Migrants Return to Morocco from the Spanish Enclave of Ceuta, Wildfires Rage in Greece as Heat Wave Grips Europe, Electricity Grid Collapses in Cuba, Causing Nationwide Blackout, 29-year-old Prisciliano Trejo Ricano Dies in ICE Custody in Georgia, Key Witness in ICE Fatal Shooting of Mexican Father Lorenzo Salgado Araujo Speaks Out, GOP Senator Moreno Calls on His Ex-Son-in-Law Congressmember Miller to Step Down, GOP Senate Candidate Collins Facing Scrutiny over Son-in-Law's Ties to White Nationalists, Dominican American Scholar, Historian and Prison Abolitionist Dr. Johanna Fernandez Dies at 55

During Thursday's segment about the risks of artificial intelligence, we shared a quote from author Naomi Klein that we later discovered was AI-generated. Klein has written about the proliferation of the fake quote on her Substack and joins Democracy Now! to discuss the growing difficulty of verifying online information.These companies are creating digital doppelgangers of us, trying to monetize our identities," says Klein. One wonders how we're ever going to get out of this house of mirrors unless companies are forced to label AI-generated work."

U.S. boat strikes across the Caribbean and eastern Pacific have killed at least 221 people since September, while the Trump administration has provided no evidence linking the vessels or their passengers to drug trafficking. Ecuadorian prosecutor Alexandra Bravo was fatally shot on June 14 by a hitman in the city of Manta. Bravo had been investigating U.S. strikes on three Ecuadorian boats in which 36 passengers survived, many of them recounting alleged torture by American gunmen in U.S. military uniforms aboard a U.S.-flagged patrol ship.The allegations of U.S. boat strikes and torture Bravo was investigating are a reflection of the growing U.S.-backed military dictatorship in Ecuador," says Camila Lourdes Galarza, an investigative journalist and labor organizer based in Quito. Lourdes Galarza says that during Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa's reelection last year, former Blackwater mercenaries patrolled voting sites at gunpoint.The Trump administration has deepened U.S. security cooperation with Ecuador as a response to the surge in violence in [Ecuador], particularly to the growth of organized crime groups," adds Juanita Goebertus, director of the Americas division at Human Rights Watch. None of the two governments have provided transparency about the nature of their security cooperation."

Democrats are calling for an ethics investigation into Republican Congressmember Max Miller of Ohio, who is facing allegations of domestic abuse as he runs for reelection. Miller's ex-wife Emily Moreno, daughter of Ohio Republican Senator Bernie Moreno, claims that Miller burned her by throwing hot water at her, held a gun to her head and fractured their 2-year-old daughter's collarbone. Miller is also accused of abuse by former Trump White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham, who was in a relationship with Miller prior to his marriage to Moreno.Mother Jones obtained around 2,000 pages of court filings and police reports pertaining to Miller, which include allegations dating back to high school. There is an established pattern of multiple women claiming that they were abused by Congressman Max Miller," says Abby Vesoulis, national politics reporter for Mother Jones.

President Trump said Thursday he may temporarily withdraw his nomination of Todd Blanche for attorney general after two Republican senators, John Cornyn of Texas and Thom Tillis of North Carolina, said they would not vote to advance Blanche's nomination until they received written assurances that he would limit some of the terms in the controversial deal reached between the Department of Justice and President Trump to settle his personal lawsuit against the IRS.Blanche, currently acting attorney general, is refusing to make a clear commitment that American tax dollars aren't going to go to the rioters of January 6th," says Democratic Congressmember Ro Khanna. He's refusing to make a clear commitment that Trump's family could still be held liable for violating financial laws."Khanna also speaks about his ongoing efforts to bring justice for survivors of Jeffrey Epstein's sexual abuse, about which he says Blanche has been the biggest obstacle to justice," his recent trip to the occupied West Bank where he was detained by armed Israeli settlers and more.

Trump Claims Hamas Has Agreed to Complete Disarmament" in Gaza, But Major Questions Remain, Senate Votes Down Iran War Powers Resolution After Fetterman Votes with GOP Majority, Saudi Arabia Forms New Military Alliance After Red Sea Attacks, Iran Clams Drone Attack on Egypt May Have Been False Flag, Oil Giants Report Huge Profits Due to Rising Gas Prices from Iran War, Trump May Temporarily Withdraw Blanche Nomination to Be AG, Climate Change Has Sparked Major Intensification" of Fires in Europe: Report, 34 Die as Thousands of Migrants Crossed from Morocco to Spanish Enclave of Ceuta, Trump Thanks Morocco's King for Naming Highway in Occupied Western Sahara After Him, U.S Displays Wildly Inaccurate Map of Africa, Misplacing Nigeria & Other Nations, Outrage Grows over FIFA Plan to Sell Stake in World Cup to Kushner-Linked Private Equity Firm, Father of Georgia School Shooter Sentenced to 15 Years in Prison, U.K. Police Arrest 117 at Protest Outside Palestine Action Court Hearing, Sen. Schumer Disrupted at D.C. Event over His Support of Israel

The Haitian community is bracing for mass deportations after the Supreme Court last month sided with the Trump administration to end TPS, or Temporary Protected Status, for over 300,000 Haitians as well as thousands of Syrians who fled violence in their home countries. According to an internal government document, the plans to round up and deport Haitian immigrants could start this week. President Trump has long expressed animus toward Haitians in the United States. During the 2024 presidential campaign, he amplified false claims that Haitians in Springfield, Ohio, were eating cats and dogs. The fear is so huge in our community," says Viles Dorsainvil, co-founder and executive director of the Haitian Support Center in Springfield, Ohio. Due to the risk of violence in Haiti, the U.S. government is warning American citizens not to travel to the country. For many Haitian immigrants who fled to the U.S. for safety, they do not have a country to go back to."

A coalition of social justice organizations is celebrating a recent decision by Citizens Bank to divest from private prison companies that operate immigration jails for the federal government. The financial institution has faced significant pressure from protesters for providing more than $2.5 billion in financing to CoreCivic and the GEO Group, which work directly with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. While the bank denied that activist pressure affected its decision, the De-ICE Citizens Bank Coalition counted it as a victory.It was absolutely thanks to the incredible work of the activists," says Jake Ephros, a Democratic Socialist member of Jersey City Council, who helped push the municipality to pull over $200 million in city funds from the bank.We also speak with Rev. John Edgerton, senior minister of Old South Church in Boston and a board member of the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization. He credits a broad movement" with the victory. The pressure became too much for Citizens to bear, and they had to do the right thing."

Artificial intelligence tools are quickly advancing in sophistication and capabilities, raising alarm among researchers and industry figures who say the technology needs to be more tightly regulated. This comes as OpenAI, maker of ChatGPT, recently disclosed that one of its experimental AI agents went rogue and secretly hacked into the infrastructure of several other companies in what was supposed to be a controlled test. Over 1,100 scientists and senior employees at top AI firms have called on the U.S. government to back international efforts to deliberately pace" the development of the world's most advanced AI systems.What we're talking about now are AI systems that also have goals on their own that they can actively go out and pursue in the world," says AI researcher Max Tegmark, a physics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Tegmark says OpenAI's rogue agent is a canary in the coal mine" of where the technology is headed as Silicon Valley leaders seek to replace humans."

U.S. Strikes IRGC Targets Inside Iran, Killing 3 People on Qeshm Island, Antiwar Rally in NYC Organized by Iranian Diaspora, Demonstrators in Libya Storm Energy Complex in Anti-Gov't Protests, U.N.: Israeli Settler Violence in the Occupied West Bank Hits All-Time High, Israel Continues to Move Its So-Called Yellow Line of Control in Gaza, Drop Site News: Trump's Former Campaign Manager Working to Influence How AI Chatbots Talk About Gaza, Russia Launches Missile and Drone Attack on Ukraine, Killing 8 People, U.N. Warns of Growing Hunger Crisis in Eastern Congo Amid Ebola Outbreak, Pakistani Authorities Accused of Killing 30 People in Pakistan-Administered Kashmir, Federal Reserve Votes to Maintain the Current Interest Rate at Around 3.6%, GOP Senator Cornyn and Tillis Threaten to Withhold Support for Blanche to Be Attorney General, U.S. Senate Unanimously Passes Bill Opposing Pardon for Ghislaine Maxwell, Trump Asks SCOTUS to Overturn $83.3 Million Jury Award Against Him for Defaming E. Jean Carroll, GOP Congressmember Miller Faces Allegations of Domestic Abuse from Ex-Wife, Fauci Invokes Fifth Amendment More Than 100 Times During Senate Hearing

We go to New Delhi for an update on India's youth-led, anti-government Cockroach" movement. After weeks of street protests against Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan and the ruling BJP party, Pradhan tendered his resignation on Saturday. Now, however, protest leaders are accusing right-wing Prime Minister Narendra Modi of reneging on his promise to not take punitive action against demonstrators. Because this government and its policy is, and has always been, that of vengeance, ... we are witnessing a massive crackdown on student activists across the country," says Neha Bora, a doctoral student at Jawaharlal Nehru University and the national president of the All India Students Association. Bora spent 23 days on hunger strike during the protests.Indian writer and artist Shuddhabrata Sengupta points out that the movement is not the first major Gen Z"-led protest in the country. Six years ago, India's streets exploded in protest of the Citizenship Amendment Act, which purported to provide asylum seekers from religious minority groups a path to citizenship, but excluded Muslims, who face severe levels of persecution under the BJP's Hindu nationalist government. There's clearly a restlessness for change and an unwillingness to accept the lies and the slander that the regime produces on a daily and a nightly basis," says Sengupta.

The United States is facing a number of major disease outbreaks, from foodborne cyclosporiasis to vaccine-preventable measles. We speak to the former chief medical officer at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Debra Houry. She resigned from her post one year ago in protest over political interference at the agency and the leadership of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an anti-vaccine activist who has overseen the slashing of billions of dollars in public health funding during the second Trump administration.The U.S. is really at a tipping point, when you look at measles, whooping cough, all these vaccine-preventable diseases, as well, and the secretary is responsible for this," says Houry. Public health matters. When it works, you often don't know, because you're saving lives. But when you take it away, we see those consequences today."

We speak to Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territory, about Israel's continued impunity from international law. Despite an International Criminal Court warrant out for his arrest, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently visited the White House to meet with President Donald Trump. While the United States is not a member state to the ICC, It doesn't mean that they have to extend protection to a fugitive from international law," says Albanese, who joins widespread international calls for Netanyahu's arrest. The United States is actively contributing to make the international criminal law architecture that it has been building, from the Nuremberg trials up until now, crumble on our head."Albanese also comments on settler- and soldier-led pogroms" in the occupied West Bank and calls out the complicity of the governments of Greece, Italy and France, which, despite being party to the ICC, authorized Netanyahu's travel through their airspaces. It looks small in the context of a genocide, but every action matters, as every crime matters and will be accounted for," she says.

France and Spain Race to Contain Wildfires Amid Heat Wave, Death Toll Rises to 18 People in Japan Earthquake, Uganda Declares End to the Latest Outbreak of Ebola, Netanyahu and Zelensky Attend Sen. Graham's Funeral in Washington, Senate Votes to Confirm Jay Clayton as Director of National Intelligence, U.S.-Iran Negotiations Stall as Iran Attacks U.S. Base in Jordan, U.S. Walks Out of UNSC Meeting During French Ambassador's Remarks, Human Rights Groups Say Iranian Authorities Hanged Two Anti-Gov't Protesters, Israeli Jets Strike Mosque in Gaza City, Killing One Person and Wounding Dozens, Palestinians Released from Israeli Prisons Show Signs of Torture, Israeli Activists Protesting Settler Violence in the Occupied West Bank Clash with Police, Federal Judge Orders Release of Key Witness in ICE's Fatal Shooting of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, Wired: Longtime DHS Officials Resigns over Trump's War on Immigrants", WSJ: Trump Pressuring RFK Jr. to Slash Childhood Vaccination Recommendations, Right-Wing Leader Keiko Fujimori Sworn In as President of Peru

A man drove a minivan into a crowd of people near Berlin's Pride celebrations on Saturday, killing one person and injuring 29 others. Authorities shot and killed the man during an operation on Sunday. The alleged suspect was identified as Abdul Ballout, a 21-year-old German citizen. According to authorities, Ballout tried to join the Islamic State in 2025 and was released from prison in May after being jailed for preparing an attack.The far right here in Germany is, of course, waiting for an attack like this one to use it in order to highlight that the foreigners are the problem," says Alfonso Pantisano, LGBTQ affairs commissioner for the Berlin state government. By doing so, they completely forget and avoid to look at how much queerphobia there is in this country in all various levels of structures."

A prominent Colombian activist left the United States after he was arrested by immigration agents and detained for over a month in an ICE jail. Franklin Humberto Coral Garrido, known as Beto Coral, was a frequent online critic of far-right President-elect Abelardo de la Espriella, a Trump ally, in the run-up to Colombia's election.In a memo obtained by The New York Times in June, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio pushed for Coral's deportation and accused the activist of undermining U.S. foreign policy and interfering in Colombia's democratic process by supporting current Colombian leftist President Gustavo Petro and attacking de la Espriella.Coral arrived in the United States in 2015 on a tourist visa and had a pending asylum application.The treatment I received was inhumane," says Coral of his time in ICE custody. He says that while in detention, he was beaten, denied food and water, and kept in solitary confinement.The problem that Marco Rubio and the Trump administration has," explains Elizabeth Shaw, one of Coral's attorneys, is that Coral's opinion is against what they are in support of."

The Republican-led House Ways and Means Committee subpoenaed BreakThrough News last week, demanding the independent online news outlet hand over internal communications and financial records. BreakThrough News says it's being targeted over its coverage of U.S. mass deportations, ICE abuses, Cuba and Palestine solidarity and U.S. foreign policy.They're attempting to criminalize dissent and an independent press," says BreakThrough News journalist Rania Khalek, comparing it to the McCarthy-era campaign against left-wing groups. Everybody who cares about a free press and cares about free speech should be alarmed about an attack like this."

As the Trump administration threatens to intensify its global campaign to crush radical left terrorism," we look at a new 100-page report issued by the State Department last week accusing the Cuban government of waging a sustained campaign of subversion against the United States." The report claims Cuba has backed a number of groups in the United States, including the National Lawyers Guild, Pastors for Peace, the National Network on Cuba and the feminist antiwar organization CodePink.CodePink co-founder Medea Benjamin calls the State Department's report an incredible piece of garbage" for attempting to link U.S. peace movements to Cuba and for paint[ing] this picture of a tiny island nation that is trying to overthrow the United States."

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Israeli settlers torched two mosques over the weekend in a new wave of violence targeting Palestinian towns and villages across the occupied West Bank. Meanwhile, Israeli military forces on Saturday detained over 70 Palestinians in raids across the occupied territory. This follows the killing of at least four Palestinians in the village of Tal on Friday, when Israeli settlers and soldiers opened fire on residents attempting to protect their homes; two Israelis were also killed.Palestinian journalist Mariam Barghouti says the Israeli army and Israeli settlers should not be seen as separate" as they carry out a familiar pattern of collective punishment." She also stresses that anti-Palestinian violence in the occupied West Bank cannot be divorced from Israeli repression in Jerusalem and its genocide in Gaza.This is a colonial regime that is engaging in crimes against humanity," says Barghouti. How those crimes look may differ, but in the end they serve the same purpose, and that is ethnically cleansing Palestinians in order to build this Greater Israel in the region."

We speak with Democratic Congressmember Jim McGovern of Massachusetts, a longtime critic of U.S. foreign policy, in a wide-ranging conversation about Iran, Cuba, ending military funding for Israel and more. Last week, McGovern joined the entire Democratic caucus and four Republicans to pass a resolution calling on President Trump to withdraw U.S. forces from hostilities against Iran.It's just like Iraq," says McGovern. We're getting involved in a quagmire here, an endless war."

France and Spain are battling catastrophic wildfires that have forced more than 350,000 people to evacuate their homes. The fires began in the southwest of France on Wednesday before spreading to Spain, where they have consumed more than 120,000 acres in what is now the most destructive fire in Spain's recent history. Meanwhile, a new heat wave is expected to hit Europe this week, with temperatures soaring above 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit).Professor Angel Luis Lara, who fled his home west of Madrid, says he considers his family very lucky" because they managed to escape to safety. He says the wildfires are not just about extreme weather, but also decades of neoliberal policies" that have diminished public services and the ability to respond to natural disasters.We also speak with journalist John Vaillant, author of Fire Weather, who says the climate crisis has created conditions that lead to destructive megafires" like those in Europe, North America and beyond. These conditions have been slowly building and worsening for decades, basically vindicating, unfortunately, the warnings of climate scientists and firefighters," says Vaillant.

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Filmmaker Juan Carlos Davila's new film for PBS, Farmers of the Sea, documents climate change's threats to the fishing industry and food security in Vieques, Puerto Rico. For islands in the Caribbean, explains Davila, we are situated geographically in one of the frontlines of climate change. [We're] not only facing stronger hurricanes now, [but] we could face food shortages, especially the islands that depend so much on the food that comes from the sea."

After failing to overturn birthright citizenship at the Supreme Court, Republican legislators are turning to new tactics to disenfranchise people born on U.S. soil. Their latest targets are those born to noncitizen or permanent resident parents in U.S. territories like Puerto Rico, where the Supreme Court has said citizenship is granted by statute and full constitutional protections do not apply. The proposed End Birthright Citizenship for the Territories Act" would create a subclass of people who can be discriminated against" and disregarded as human beings" in the U.S. territories, says Puerto Rican legal scholar Efren Rivera Ramos, who joins Democracy Now! from Puerto Rico's capital city, San Juan. While the bill's sponsor, Republican Congressmember Morgan Griffith of Virginia, says he's focused only on so-called birth tourism, Rivera Ramos says the language of the law is less clear.The quasi-colonial status of Puerto Rico is also being highlighted by the 10th anniversary of PROMESA, the Obama-era legislation that created a U.S.-appointed fiscal control board to manage the island's finances and restructure debt. In practice, PROMESA has been a failure," says Rivera Ramos, asserting the anti-democratic structure has imposed austerity measures and done little to address corruption, waste and inefficiency that plague the economy.

A youth-led protest movement in India is demanding an end to the country's status quo. Sparked by the leak of national exam questions, tens of thousands of young people have taken to the streets. They are protesting under the banner of the Cockroach Janta (People's) Party - a new party named to reflect the words of India's chief justice, who compared unemployed youth to cockroaches and parasites. The movement has only swelled in response to a violent crackdown on protesters. Although the protesters' initial demands were for the resignation of the country's education minister, everything has shifted to directly attacking [Prime Minister Narendra] Modi," says Indian writer Arundhati Roy, who joins us from New Delhi, the physical center of a movement that first found exponential success online. The erosion of democratic principles under Modi's right-wing Bharatiya Janata (Indian People's) Party is being contested on a large scale for the first time, says Roy. It's really a generation whose parents and grandparents wore those Modi masks and chanted 'Modi, Modi, Modi,' and got him into power. It is their children now who are saying the emperor has no clothes."

The status of a newly signed U.S.-Saudi nuclear deal is in question after President Trump made the surprise announcement that the deal is off unless Saudi Arabia normalizes relations with Israel. The deal paves the way for Saudi civil nuclear development, although critics warn that it could lead to the proliferation of nuclear weapons in the politically volatile Middle East.Saudi Arabia has long maintained that it would not officially recognize Israel by joining the Abraham Accords, the U.S.-negotiated diplomatic deal between Israel and a number of Arab states, until there is a pathway toward the creation of a Palestinian state. The Abraham Accords provision indicates that Israel is calling the shots again," when it comes to U.S. policy in the Middle East, notes Daniel Levy of the U.S./Middle East Project. Levy says it is unlikely that Saudi Arabia will agree to Trump's new conditions, at a cost to U.S. business interests, which stand to profit handily from the sale of nuclear energy technology to the oil-rich kingdom.

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Israeli American Holocaust scholar Omer Bartov says Israel's assault on Gaza predicts the future of genocide," with the perpetrator not only enjoying impunity for crimes against humanity but also profiting from the death and destruction. He says Israeli leaders will almost certainly escape accountability because international allies, including the United States and many European states, have failed to uphold international law.The denial of what Israel has done is ubiquitous because there is no [accountability] mechanism that kicks into place," he says. If you don't bring people to account, you're sliding back into what the international community tried to prevent after 1945."

Palestinian activist Mohsen Mahdawi, whose arrest by masked and hooded ICE agents when he arrived for his naturalization interview to become a U.S. citizen made national headlines last year, is facing a new deportation threat after a three-judge panel overturned a lower court ruling that had freed him from ICE custody. Mahdawi was involved in pro-Palestine protests at Columbia University, where he was a student, demanding an end to Israel's genocide in Gaza. He says he is being targeted solely for his advocacy.Enough is enough," Mahdawi says. Palestinian people deserve to have safety, freedom and equal rights between the river and the sea, and this government is trying to silence me."That is just textbook censorship, and the First Amendment doesn't allow it," adds ACLU attorney Nathan Freed Wessler, a member of Mahdawi's legal team.