Democracy Now!

We speak with acclaimed scholar and activist Kimberle Crenshaw about her new book #SayHerName, which honors the stories of 177 Black women and girls killed by police between 1975 and 2022 whose deaths received little media coverage or other attention. We can't give these women back to their families, but we can make sure that they are not lost to history," Crenshaw tells Democracy Now! She also discusses the ongoing right-wing attack on Black knowledge," such as Florida's new education curriculum that claims slavery had personal benefit" for enslaved people, as well as the recent death of civil rights scholar Charles Ogletree.

A shocking story of wrongful arrest in Detroit has renewed scrutiny of how facial recognition software is being deployed by police departments, despite major flaws in the technology. Porcha Woodruff was arrested in February when police showed up at her house accusing her of robbery and carjacking. Woodruff, who was eight months pregnant at the time, insisted she had nothing to do with the crime, but police detained her for 11 hours, during which time she had contractions. She was eventually released on a $100,000 bond before prosecutors dropped the case a month later, admitting that her arrest was based in part on a false facial recognition match. Woodruff is the sixth known person to be falsely accused of a crime because of facial recognition, and all six victims have been Black. That's not an accident," says Dorothy Roberts, director of the University of Pennsylvania Program on Race, Science and Society, who says new technology often reflects societal biases when built atop flawed systems. Racism gets embedded into the technologies."

The family of Henrietta Lacks, a Black cancer patient whose cells were taken by Johns Hopkins University Hospital without her consent in 1951, has reached a deal over the unethical use of her cells with pharmaceutical company Thermo Fisher Scientific. Henrietta Lacks's family has denounced the racist medical system that allowed the biotech company to make billions in profit from the HeLa" cell line, which helped produce remedies for multiple diseases, including the first polio vaccine. Details of the settlement were not made public, but the plaintiffs celebrated the lawsuit's resolution last Tuesday, on Henrietta Lack's birthday. For more on the case and the history of medical racism in the United States, we speak with Dorothy Roberts, director of the University of Pennsylvania Program on Race, Science and Society. She is the author of several books, including Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-create Race in the Twenty-first Century. What happened to Henrietta Lacks didn't just happen to her. It's part of a long history of experimentation and exploitation of Black people in biomedical research," says Roberts.

We look at the fight for reproductive rights in the United States with Dorothy Roberts, director of the University of Pennsylvania Program on Race, Science and Society, who has long warned against the criminalization of pregnancy and has been hailed as a pioneer in the reproductive justice movement. A judge in Texas ruled Friday the state's abortion ban was too restrictive in cases of dangerous pregnancy complications, allowing doctors to perform abortions in such instances without risk of criminal prosecution, but the state's Attorney General's Office filed an immediate appeal and effectively blocked the order. This comes as Ohio voters head to the polls this week to vote on a ballot measure that could raise the threshold for changing the state's constitution to 60%, an effort fueled by right-wing activists to prevent a simple majority of voters from enshrining abortion rights later this year. We're in a battle in this nation on this question of being free or being compelled to give birth," says Roberts.

Nigerien Coup Leaders and Supporters Remain Defiant as ECOWAS Deadline to Restore Bazoum Passes, Attacks by Ukrainian and Russian Forces Intensify as World Leaders Meet in Jeddah for Peace Talks, Ukrainian Authorities Charge Peace Activist Yurii Sheliazhenko, Raid His Home, Russian Court Sentences Alexei Navalny to Another 19 Years in Prison, Ex-Pakistani PM Imran Khan Calls for Supporters to Keep Up Protests as He Receives 3-Year Sentence, Rahul Gandhi, Lawmaker Critical of Narendra Modi, Reinstated to Indian Parliament, Another Bloody Weekend in the West Bank as Israelis Kill at Least 5 Palestinians, Incl. Teenagers, Saudi Arabia, U.K. Issue Warnings to Citizens in Lebanon Amid Clashes in Palestinian Refugee Camp, At Least 16 Asylum Seekers Died at Sea in Recent Days en Route to Europe, Court Rules Lifetime Disenfranchisement of People with Felonies in Mississippi Is Unconstitutional, Texas Judge Rules Abortion Ban Is Too Restrictive; TX AG Blocks Order, Keeping Ban in Place for Now, Ohio Voters Cast Ballots in GOP Measure That Could Affect Abortion Rights , FDA Approves First-Ever Pill to Treat Postpartum Depression, Teenager Charged with Hate Crime in Brooklyn Murder of Black Dancer O'Shae Sibley, Charles Ogletree, Prominent Civil Rights Defender and Harvard Law Professor, Has Died at Age 70, Trump Faces Deadline in DOJ Protective Order Request as He Can't Stop Posting About His Indictments, A Black Mother Is Suing After She Was Wrongfully Arrested Due to Faulty Facial Recognition ID, Japanese Leaders Call for Global Nuclear Disarmament on the 78th Anniversary of Hiroshima Bombing

Last Wednesday, Nigerien military officers announced they had overthrown President Mohamed Bazoum, a close ally of the United States and France. ECOWAS, an economic bloc of West African countries, has threatened to take military action unless the coup is reversed by Sunday. But the leader of Niger's new military junta has vowed to defy any attempts to restore the former president to power, while Burkina Faso, Mali and Guinea - all, like Niger, former French colonies that have undergone military coups in the past three years - have warned against any foreign intervention in Niger. Meanwhile, Niger's new leaders have announced the country will end military cooperation with France, whose outsized presence in its former colony is a major source of resentment in the resource-rich but still poverty-stricken nation. We speak to Nick Turse, an investigative journalist and contributing writer for The Intercept. He recently revealed that one of the leaders of the coup in Niger, Brigadier General Moussa Salaou Barmou, was previously trained by the U.S. military, as were the leaders of nearly a dozen other coups in West Africa since 2008. We also speak to Olayinka Ajala, a senior lecturer in politics and international relations at Leeds Beckett University, who says Niger and its neighbors must tread carefully in order to avoid a very bloody" military conflict.

On Thursday, former President Donald Trump pleaded not guilty to trying to overturn the results of his 2020 election loss. Trump appeared before a magistrate judge in Washington's federal courthouse two days after he was indicted. A key part of the election interference charges Trump faces relates to a Civil War-era rights law that protects the right of citizens to have their vote counted. We speak with Carol Anderson, author of One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression Is Destroying Our Democracy and White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide, about Trump's attempt to wipe out the votes of Americans of color and the intimidation of Black voters and election workers. This is the kind of terror that is reminiscent of what happened during Reconstruction that led to the KKK Act that Trump is charged with," says Anderson. That kind of terror was the intimidation of Black people who were exercising the right to vote."

Trump Pleads Not Guilty to Charges He Plotted to Overturn 2020 Election, Third Trump Ally Charged over Alleged Plot to Tamper with Michigan Voting Machines, Amnesty Warns of Rampant" War Crimes Against Civilians in Sudan, Ukraine Says Sea Drones Damaged Russian Warship in Black Sea, Blinken Accuses Russia of Assaulting Global Food System with Attacks on Ukraine's Granaries, Greenpeace Activists Cover U.K. Prime Minister's Home with Anti-Oil Message, Tribunal Finds Mexico Guilty of Ecocide and Ethnocide over Mayan Rail Project, Appeals Court Allows Biden Administration to Continue Blocking Asylum Claims at U.S. Border, Minnesota Trooper Kills Black Father Ricky Cobb II During Traffic Stop, Mississippi Police Officers Plead Guilty to Civil Rights Violations in Torture of 2 Black Men, Louisiana Ex-Trooper Acquitted for Beating Black Motorist During Traffic Stop, Ron DeSantis Increases Violent Rhetoric on Campaign Trail, Texas A&M Reaches $1M Settlement with Black Professor Whose Tenure Offer Was Rescinded, They Could Not Beat People Power": Voters Reelect TN Dems Expelled by GOP for Gun Violence Protest

The American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado has sued the FBI, the Colorado Springs Police Department and local officers for illegally spying on local activist Jacqueline Jax" Armendariz Unzueta and the Chinook Center, a community organizing hub in Colorado Springs. This was one of the worst moments of my life," says Unzueta, who describes the investigation by law enforcement as incredibly invasive." The lawsuit accuses the agencies of unconstitutional and invasive search and seizure of the phones, computers, devices, and private chats of people and groups whose message the Colorado Springs Police Department dislikes." This comes after revelations the FBI had infiltrated the Chinook Center by sending an undercover police detective named April Rogers to volunteer at the center in 2020, first exposed by the investigative reporter Trevor Aaronson, who writes for The Intercept and created the Alphabet Boys podcast. For more than a year, she was undercover for the FBI," says Aaronson, who reports the officer, who used the name Chelsie, surveilled the Chinook Center and unsuccessfully attempted to entrap local activists in gun-running conspiracies. This was part of a broader FBI effort to infiltrate racial justice and left-wing groups in Colorado after the police killing of George Floyd.

After the Center for Countering Digital Hate reported that hate speech has soared on the website formerly known as Twitter, now rebranded as X," Elon Musk responded by filing a lawsuit against the center over the research, calling the group evil" and its CEO Imran Ahmed a rat." X accuses the watchdog group of unlawfully accessing data to falsely claim it had statistical support showing the platform is overwhelmed with harmful content." This comes as Musk has laid off about 80% of the workforce at X, including a large number of content moderators, and shut down its Trust and Safety Council. When there is hate and disinformation being algorithmically amplified into billions of timelines, it's perfectly right that people that oppose the spread, the production and distribution of hate seek to research it and seek to put that out into the public sphere," says Ahmed. While Musk calls himself a free speech absolutist," silencing critics is his go-to tactic to avoid accountability," says Nora Benavidez, senior counsel and director of Digital Justice and Civil Rights at Free Press.

A federal jury has sentenced to death the gunman who killed 11 worshipers at Pittsburgh's Tree of Life synagogue in the deadliest act of antisemitism in U.S. history. Robert Bowers was found guilty of federal hate crimes for the 2018 massacre. This is the first time federal prosecutors have successfully sought the death penalty under the Biden administration, which has imposed a moratorium on executions. We are joined by Cantor Michael Zoosman, co-founder of L'Chaim! Jews Against the Death Penalty. For 'never again' to have any meaning, it must also mean never again to state-sponsored murder of defenseless prisoners who are otherwise no longer a threat, safely behind bars," says Zoosman. This is a lesson that 21st century Judaism should share with the world."

Trump to Be Arraigned on Charges over Jan. 6 and Efforts to Overturn 2020 Election, Federal Jury Unanimously Sentences Pittsburgh Synagogue Shooter to Death, Memphis Police Say Gunman Attempted Mass Shooting at Jewish School, Iran Orders Two-Day National Holiday as Temperatures Soar to 123F, Death Toll from China Floods Rises to 20 After Beijing Receives Heaviest Rains in 140+ Years, Scorching Temperatures Drive Deaths and Illnesses in Japan, South Korea, Unprecedented Winter Heat Wave Brings 100 Temperatures to Chile and Argentina, Nigerien Junta Leader Vows to Resist Any Attempts to Remove Coup Leaders as Foreign Exodus Continues, Tunisian President Replaces Prime Minister Amid Ongoing Political and Economic Crises, Brazilian Police Accused of Retribution in Killings of Dozens in Raids Targeting Gangs, Body Found in Rio Grande Floating Barrier Amid New Reports of Migrant Abuse, Fitch Downgrades U.S. Credit Rating in Wake of Partisan Debt Ceiling Fight, Pope Francis Meets with Survivors of Clergy Sexual Abuse in Portugal

Nearly a year and a half after Russia invaded Ukraine, we speak with defense and international affairs expert Rajan Menon about the state of the war and prospects for peace. The difficulty is that neither side, neither Ukraine nor Russia, feels that it is losing the war," says Menon, director of the Grand Strategy program at Defense Priorities and a senior research scholar at Columbia University's Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies. We are liable to see this war continue for several months, if not more than that." Menon is the author of several books, including Conflict in Ukraine: The Unwinding of the Post-Cold War Order, and recently visited Ukraine.

We unpack the explosive new criminal charges against Donald Trump for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, marking his third indictment in four months as he continues to campaign for reelection in 2024. The four-count indictment unveiled Tuesday by special counsel Jack Smith alleges Trump conspired to defraud the United States by preventing Congress from certifying Joe Biden's victory, pushing fraud claims he knew to be untrue, pressuring state and federal officials to alter the results, and inciting a violent assault on the Capitol. The most serious charge against Trump carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison, and he is set to appear in federal court later this week for his arraignment. Donald Trump tried to strip away, from all of us, our democracy and our individual rights to vote to protect himself and remain in power," says Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen. We also speak with former federal prosecutor Dennis Aftergut, who says this case could represent a turning point even among Republicans and reassert the rule of law. Presidents are not kings," says Aftergut.

Trump Indicted over His Efforts to Overturn the 2020 Election, Michigan Prosecutors Charge 2 Trump Allies for Tampering with Voting Machines in 2020, ACLU Sues FBI, Colorado Springs Police for Surveillance of Activists During 2020 Uprising, U.S. Judge OKs Trial for Lawsuit Brought by Abu Ghraib Torture Survivors, Burma's Military Junta Grants Partial Pardon to Aung San Suu Kyi, Delays Elections, Indigenous Groups in Argentina Protest Lithium Extraction on Their Land, Sweden Says It Will Not Alter Free Speech Laws After Burning of Qur'an Sparks Protests, Rep. Cori Bush Reintroduces Unhoused Bill of Rights, Migrants Sleep on NYC Streets as Advocates, Officials Call for Permanent Housing, Work Authorization, Gilgo Beach Serial Killer Suspect Appears in Court, New York Public Hospital Nurses Win Pay Parity with Private Hospital Employees, Yellow Trucking Co. to Shut Down, Costing 30,000 People Their Jobs, Henrietta Lacks's Family Settles with Biotech Co. That Made Billions Thanks to HeLa" Cell Line, Roberto Cintli Rodriguez, Chicano Writer, Professor and Activist, Has Died at 69

In an in-depth interview, we look at the life and legacy of the groundbreaking musician Sinead O'Connor, who converted to Islam and also started using the name Shuhada' Sadaqat in 2018. O'Connor died last week at the age of 56 and was known for her music as much as for her outspoken activism. In 1992, she performed Bob Marley's War" on Saturday Night Live, then proceeded to rip up a photo of Pope John Paul II on live TV to protest systemic child abuse in the Catholic Church, of which she was a survivor. The move provoked widespread uproar. O'Connor was also an ally to LGBTQ communities, an opponent of police brutality on some of her earliest records, a staunch supporter of Palestinian rights, and marched for abortion rights decades before it was legalized in Ireland. We are joined by Jamie Manson, president of advocacy group Catholics for Choice, and Allyson McCabe, music journalist and author of the recent book Why Sinead O'Connor Matters.

Democracy Now! co-host Juan Gonzalez remembers his longtime friend and comrade, Juan Ramos, a founder and leader of the Young Lords chapter in Philadelphia in the early 1970s who recently died after a long bout with Alzheimer's. It's really not possible to overestimate the influence that Juan Ramos had on the social and political and liberation struggles of the Puerto Rican, Latino community, but also all communities, in Philadelphia," shares Gonzalez. Ramos was a lifelong activist and became a founder and first president of the Puerto Rican Alliance, which led numerous battles to defend bilingual education, oppose police brutality, and which spearheaded a large squatters' movement in abandoned HUD-owned houses that eventually won titles to those homes for more than 150 Puerto Rican families. He also helped found the National Congress for Puerto Rican Rights in the 1980s, served in the administration of Mayor John Street and was himself elected to the Philadelphia City Council for one term, and became a union organizer and a deacon of a Catholic Church in his parish in the Northern Liberties section of Philadelphia.

We look at the growing crisis in Niger, where the country's democratically elected president, Mohamed Bazoum, was overthrown last week by his own presidential guard. One of the coup's leaders, Brigadier General Moussa Salaou Barmou, was trained by the U.S., making the Nigerien coup the 11th in West Africa since 2008 to involve U.S.-trained military officers. The U.S. has approximately 1,000 troops in Niger, where it's also spent $100 million building a drone base in its ongoing war on terror." The Biden administration has so far refused to describe last week's event as a coup, because doing so would force Washington to cut security aid to Niger. While the reasons for the coup are still unclear, it is part of a worrying trend in the region, where countries that have oversized involvement of the military in political life ... are far more likely to have an ongoing pattern of military coups," according to Stephanie Savell, the co-director of the Costs of War Project at Brown University's Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs.

Russian Attack on Kryvyi Rih Kills 6 as Ukraine Steps Up Drone Attacks on Moscow, Burkina Faso and Mali Warn Against Foreign Intervention in Niger After Last Week's Coup, Two Killed as Protests Erupt over Senegal Government's Arrest of Opposition Leader, Death Toll Climbs as Fighting Continues Between Rival Palestinian Groups in Lebanon, Torrential Rains Trigger Deadly Floods in Northern China; U.S. Heat Wave Enters Third Month, U.K.'s Rishi Sunak to Authorize Over 100 New Oil and Gas Leases in North Sea, U.S. Prepares U.N. Security Council Resolution to Deploy Multinational Force to Haiti, Filmmaker K.K. Kean, Who Documented Haiti's History and Culture, Dies at 84, Biden Reverses Trump Plan to Move U.S. Space Command from Colorado to Alabama, At Least 4 Million Have Lost Medicaid Coverage Since Pandemic-Era Eligibility Rule Expired, Antony Blinken Rejects Australian Officials' Calls to End U.S. Pursuit of Julian Assange

Former New York gynecologist Robert Hadden has been sentenced to 20 years in federal prison for sexually assaulting patients over more than two decades while working as an OB-GYN at the Columbia University Medical Center starting in the late 1980s. Hadden's federal conviction relates to four survivors, and he has been accused of abusing at least 245 women under the guise of medical examinations. Lawyers representing survivors say Columbia had a long history of ignoring Hadden's behavior in order to protect its reputation instead of acting in the victims' interests, and Columbia University and NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital have paid out $236 million to settle claims by over 200 former patients of Hadden. For more, we speak with two survivors: Laurie Maldonado was a gynecology and obstetrics patient of Hadden's between 2003 and 2012 and gave testimony at his trial, and Marissa Hoechstetter was a patient from 2010 to 2012 and gave a victim impact statement.Every visit was an opportunity for him to commit abuse and assault," says Maldonado. Columbia very much knew about his behavior, and ultimately was thinking only about their own liability," adds Hoechstetter, who has continued to push for institutional accountability to inform patients of Hadden's guilt and put power into the hands of survivors through legislation. In response to advocacy from survivors, New York state passed the Adult Survivors Act, which was enacted last November and created a special one-year lookback window to allow sexual assault survivors to file a lawsuit, and lawyers are now filing another round of cases.

For the past 14 years, relatives of four men jailed on terrorism charges in Newburgh, New York, have accused the FBI of entrapment. On Thursday, a federal judge agreed and ordered the release of three of the men known as the Newburgh Four: David Williams, Onta Williams and Laguerre Payen. The men had been sentenced in 2010 to 25 years in prison for a government-orchestrated bombing plot of a New York synagogue. In a stunning decision, the judge accused the FBI of inventing a conspiracy. With the men set to be released within 90 days, we speak with lawyers Kathy Manley and Stephen F. Downs from the Coalition for Civil Freedoms about the monumental ruling, the legal issues with entrapment and what the ruling means for the many cases like this one. This was the government's standard operating procedure right after 9/11," says Downs. They were out there going to create as many terrorists as they could to show the public that they were on the job." The fourth man convicted, James Cromitie, is expected to seek compassionate release.

Suicide Bomb at Political Rally Kills at Least 54 in Pakistan, Russia Says It Downed Ukrainian Drones Over Moscow as Medvedev Warns of Nuclear War, AU Says Ceasefire Only Way to Ensure Flow of Grain After Putin Promises Deliveries to Africa, Sudanese Refugees in Chad Struggle Amid Extreme Heat and Water Scarcity, U.S. Local Leaders Call on Congress to Pass Extreme Heat Emergency Act, Youth Activist Confronts White House Press Secretary over Biden's Fossil Fuel Projects, Turkish Forest Defenders Brave Arrest to Save Land from Coal Mine Expansion, ECOWAS Threatens to Remove Niger's Coup Leaders by Force, Kenyan Government to Negotiate with Opposition Groups Following Nationwide Protests, At Least Five Killed as Rival Palestinian Groups Clash in Lebanon, Palestinian Rivals Fatah and Hamas Form Reconciliation Committee", Department of Justice Launches Civil Rights Probe of Memphis Police, Federal Court Blocks Arkansas Censorship Law Criminalizing Librarians and Booksellers

On what would have been Emmett Till's 82nd birthday, President Joe Biden designated a new national monument in Mississippi and Illinois honoring Emmett Till and his mother, Mamie Till-Mobley. Emmett Till was just 14 years old when a white mob abducted him from his great-uncle's home in Money, Mississippi, in 1955 before torturing and lynching him. His mother's decision to hold an open-casket funeral revealing his mutilated body shocked the country and served as a galvanizing moment in the civil rights movement. This comes amid efforts to suppress such history from being included in school textbooks, led by Florida governor and Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis. We speak with Emmett Till's cousin, Reverend Wheeler Parker Jr., who was Till's best friend and witnessed his abduction.

As nearly half of Americans face heat advisories, President Biden announced new steps Thursday to provide relief, and Texas Congressmember Greg Casar held an eight-hour thirst strike Tuesday on the steps of the U.S. Capitol to highlight the need for a federal workplace heat standard, including mandatory water breaks for workers. This comes as Texas Governor Greg Abbott recently signed legislation overturning local rules for mandatory workplace water breaks. It is a slap in the face. It is dangerous. It will get people killed. But most of all, it's disrespectful to working people," says Casar. I'm outraged, but, unfortunately, not surprised." At least 2,000 workers in the United States die every year from heat exposure, and the risk is likely to increase as the planet continues to warm due to the climate crisis.

July is on pace to be the hottest month ever recorded, and the impact of the soaring temperatures is being felt across the globe in massive heat waves, wildfires, flooding and more. On Thursday, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the world has entered the era of global boiling," and President Joe Biden gave a major speech to unveil new measures to combat the crisis but resisted calls to declare a climate emergency. David Wallace-Wells, an opinion writer for The New York Times and a columnist for The New York Times Magazine, says the world is not moving quickly enough to phase out fossil fuels, and even some of the progress that has been made is easily erased by massive wildfires like those burning in Canada right now. We also speak with Dharna Noor, fossil fuels and climate reporter at The Guardian US, who wrote an expose on Project 2025," a right-wing plan to dismantle environmental policies and many regulatory protections if a Republican takes the White House in the next election. She calls the document's drafters a who's who of the far right."

Federal Prosecutors File More Charges Against Trump over Mishandling of Classified Documents, U.N. Leader Declares New Era of Global Boiling" Amid Hottest Month in Human History, Biden Pledges Protections Against Climate Change as 170 Million Across U.S. Face Heat Alerts, Supreme Court Will Allow Construction of Mountain Valley Pipeline to Resume, Nigerien Military Leaders Pledge Support for Coup Plotters Who Deposed President, Masalit Leader Says 10,000 Have Been Killed by Militias in Sudan's Darfur Region, After Pulling Out of Black Sea Grain Deal, Putin Pledges Free Grain to 6 African Nations, Senate Passes Record $886B Military Budget, Rejecting Sanders Amendment Cutting Pentagon Funding, El Salvador to Hold Mass Trials for Suspected Gang Members; Honduras to Build Island Prison, At Least 31 People Killed in Ecuador Prison Riot, For First Time, Gun Suicides Among Black Adolescents Surpasses Rate for White Teens, Houston to Eliminate Librarians in 28 Schools; Booksellers Sue over Texas Book Ban Bill

A shocking new investigation by Insider reveals patrol dogs in U.S. prisons have attacked at least 295 people since 2017, with Virginia setting dogs on prisoners more than any other state. These attacks can leave people with grievous physical and psychological scars, sometimes permanently disabling and disfiguring them. The report also finds ties between procedures in U.S. prisons and the abuses committed by U.S. troops at Abu Ghraib, where soldiers used attack dogs to terrify Iraqi detainees along with other forms of torture and humiliation. For more, we speak with journalist Hannah Beckler, an investigations editor at Insider, and Xavia Goodwyn, who says prison guards hurled racial slurs at him during a dog attack at Virginia's Red Onion State Prison in 2015. Everything just went mayhem," Goodwyn recalls.

An Ohio police officer filmed unleashing a police dog on an unarmed Black truck driver during a July 4 traffic stop has been fired. We speak with legal scholar Madalyn Wasilczuk, who has helped represent teenagers in Louisiana attacked by police dogs and who says that dogs do not receive the proper amount of scrutiny when used in policing. They're seen as these valorized K-9 cop heroes, and we don't focus so much on the real violence that they do," says Wasilczuk. Videos like this really highlight the problems." Wasilczuk explains that the use of police dogs in apprehension is part of a widespread pattern of racialized violence by police that dates back to slavery.

On Wednesday, a federal judge in Delaware halted a plea deal reached between Hunter Biden and federal prosecutors in which the president's son would avoid facing prosecution on a separate gun charge by pleading guilty to two misdemeanor tax charges. Trump-appointed Judge Maryellen Noreika said the deal lacked legal precedent, and identified several sections of the agreement that were interpreted differently by the prosecution and defense. A new plea deal could be reached within the next six weeks. This comes as Republicans have been intensifying their attacks on the Biden family in the lead-up to the 2024 presidential election. They're very much trying to move beyond Hunter Biden, which they understand they've beaten that issue to death, and trying to move to Joe Biden," says Ryan Grim, Washington bureau chief for The Intercept.

Military Officers Claim to Have Deposed Niger's President, World Leaders Condemn Apparent Coup in Niger, Human Rights Watch Documents Atrocities by Mali's U.S.-Backed Army and Wagner Group, U.S. to Hold Talks with Taliban Representatives, 14-Year-Old Palestinian Shot Dead in Qalqilya Is 37th Child Killed by Israeli Troops in 2023, Ghana Outlaws Capital Punishment, Chilean Teachers Hold One-Day Nationwide Strike, Fed Hikes Interest Rates Again Despite Rising Black Unemployment Rate, GOP Leader Mitch McConnell Freezes Mid-Sentence During News Conference, U.S. Judge Blocks Hunter Biden Plea Deal, Former Columbia OB-GYN Robert Hadden Sentenced to 20 Years for Sexually Assaulting Patients, Ohio Cop Who Sicced Dog on Unarmed Black Man Fired After Video Goes Public, Singer Sinead O'Connor, Shunned for Standing Up for the Rights of the Most Vulnerable, Dies at 56

We speak with civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump about two recent cases of anti-Black racism making headlines in the United States: Florida's new curriculum standards that teach students the benefits" of transatlantic slavery to enslaved people, and a set of lawsuits against Northwestern University accusing the school's athletic teams of widespread and institutionalized hazing, including physical, racial and sexual abuse. Crump is representing former Northwestern football players in one of the lawsuits. Republican presidential contender and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has doubled down on the Florida Board of Education's new rules that require educators to teach students that enslaved Black people developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit." Crump, who says he may sue the state over the changes, notes, It has the potential to cause serious psychological trauma to African American students, and we will not stand for it." Meanwhile, Crump has called the cases at Northwestern the beginning of the me too" movement for college sports.

This week, a witness to the assassination of Malcolm X in 1965 revealed for the first time that he overheard a New York police officer asking if Malcolm's assassin was with us." The eyewitness, Mustafa Hassan, spoke Tuesday alongside Malcolm X's daughter Ilyasah Shabazz and civil rights attorney Ben Crump at a press conference at the Malcolm X and Dr. Betty Shabazz Memorial and Educational Center. Democracy Now! spoke to Hassan at the press conference. He told us, My testimony would have changed the outcome of the trial. It would have pointed the finger of guilt at the establishment." We're also joined on the show by Ben Crump, who calls this latest revelation astonishing." .

North Korea fired two ballistic missiles into the sea Monday, hours after a second American nuclear-armed submarine arrived in South Korea. Meanwhile, peace activists are gathering in Washington, D.C., for a national mobilization to call on President Biden and Congress to officially end the Korean War, 70 years after the signing of the July 27, 1953, Korean Armistice that ended active military conflict. To discuss the renewed call for peace and the history of the dirtiest war of the 20th century," we're joined by two guests: Bruce Cumings, professor of history at the University of Chicago and the author of several books on Korea, and Christine Ahn of the organization Women Cross DMZ and the coordinator of the campaign Korea Peace Now! Ahn calls for the U.S. government to atone" for its role in the war by replacing the ceasefire with a peace agreement, not feeding into the peninsula's nuclear hostilities.

Atlantic Ocean Current at Risk of Collapse in Coming Years; Ocean Temps in Florida Surge to 101.1, Judge Blocks Biden Asylum Ban in Victory for Immigration Rights, Ex-Marine Trevor Reed Injured on Ukrainian Frontlines a Year After Release from Russian Prison, Russian Sociologist and Dissident Boris Kagarlitsky Facing Terrorism Charges, U.N. Operation Underway to Pump 1.1 Million Barrels of Oil from Decaying Tanker Near Yemen, Demonstrators Mark 2 Years Since Tunisian President Kais Saied Launched Power Grab, Cambodia Prime Minister Hun Sen Announces Transfer of Power to Son, Days After Winning Election, Modi Faces No-Confidence Vote Amid Mounting Horror of Ethnic Violence in India's Manipur State, Report: Mexican Military, Security Forces Complicit in Killing and Cover-Up of Ayotzinapa Students, Northwestern Student Athletes Sue over Abusive Hazing Practices, Teamsters Reach Tentative Deal with UPS One Week Ahead of Feared Strike, New Bill Seeks to Increase Min. Wage to $17/Hour; Sanders Slams $7.25 Starvation Wage", Rep. Greg Casar Goes on Water Strike to Demonstrate Need for Federal Heat Protections for Workers, Juan Ramos, Leader of Phila. Young Lords, Councilmember & Puerto Rican Rights Activist, Dies at 71

Kurdish peace activist Kani Xulam is in New York City after his solo 300-mile, 24-day walk from the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., to the United Nations headquarters. His arrival Monday coincided with the 100th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Lausanne, which partitioned Kurdistan into four parts - British Iraq, French Syria, Turkey and Iran - which left the Kurdish people without a recognized sovereign state. We have been struggling ever since to have a say," declares Xulam. Kurds have experienced decades of conflict, cultural genocide and a protracted struggle for independence.

Amid a widening crackdown on abortion access, 19 Republican attorneys general in states where abortion is illegal are demanding the right for local governments to access the private medical records of patients in order to see if they obtained abortions out of state. We speak to Tamarra Wieder, state director of Planned Parenthood Alliance Advocates in Louisville, Kentucky, where residents are crossing state lines to access abortion care due to the state's near-total abortion ban. Wieder says the act of seeking healthcare should not be turned against us," adding that this latest attack on reproductive rights, if it is carried out, would set a precedent of fear" that would chill care." She also discusses the Nebraska teenager who used abortion pills to terminate her pregnancy and was sentenced to 90 days in jail, and the Texas women who are suing to overturn the state's abortion ban, which put their lives in danger when they were unable to end their pregnancies, even when they were nonviable.

We speak with two Israeli journalists in Tel Aviv after lawmakers in Israel passed a highly contested bill Monday weakening the power of the Supreme Court by preventing it from blocking government decisions it deems unreasonable. The bill is part of a broader set of judicial reforms pushed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that has sparked months of unprecedented protests, which continued last night. Journalist Haggai Matar says that while the Supreme Court is not an ally to Palestinians," its rare rulings in favor of Palestinians are a driving factor in the right wing's overhaul, as well as decisions meant to curb public corruption. Palestinian leaders have criticized both Netanyahu's government for pushing the judicial reform, as well as the massive protest movement for not speaking up for Palestinian rights as Israel continues its deadly crackdown in the West Bank. It's time for the U.S. to show Israel there are consequences for apartheid and anti-democratic legislation, says Gideon Levy, columnist for Haaretz. What kind of democracy can exist in an apartheid state?" he asks.

Study Finds Human Activity Responsible for Record July Heat Waves, Climate Activist Greta Thunberg Arrested Again at Swedish Oil Terminal Protest, Wildfires Fueled by Extreme Heat Kill at Least 34 in Algeria, Asylum Seekers Trapped on Tunisia-Libya Border Appeal to U.N. for Rescue, Department of Justice Sues Texas over Rio Grande Barrier, Mass Protests Continue in Israel as Lawmakers Vote to Radically Limit Judiciary's Power, Sudanese Army Warns Kenya Against Sending Peacekeepers, Ukrainian Drones Strike Russian Arms Depot in Crimea, Buildings in Moscow, Russia Bombs Grain Hangar in Southern Ukraine After Withdrawal from Black Sea Grain Deal, Guatemalan Police Raid Offices of Progressive Opposition Party Ahead of August Runoff Vote, Capitol Rioter Filmed Beating Police Officer Sentenced to 52 Months in Prison, U.S. Designates National Monuments to Emmett Till and His Mother in Illinois and Mississippi

The movie Oppenheimer about J. Robert Oppenheimer - the father of the atomic bomb" - focuses on Oppenheimer's conflicted feelings about the weapons of mass destruction he helped unleash on the world, and how officials ignored those concerns after World War II as the Cold War started an arms race. Journalist Greg Mitchell says that while the film is well made and worth seeing, the omissions are quite serious." He says there is little mention of the dangers of radiation and no focus on the impact of the bomb on its victims in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The film also does not question the necessity of using the bomb in the first place, upholding the official narrative ... that has held sway since 1945," says Mitchell. Mitchell is a documentary filmmaker and the author of numerous books, including The Beginning or the End: How Hollywood - and America - Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. He was editor of Nuclear Times magazine from 1982 to 1986 and has written about this new film for Mother Jones and on his Substack, and in an opinion piece for the Los Angeles Times headlined 'Oppenheimer' is here. Is Hollywood still afraid of the truth about the atomic bomb?"

In a landmark $13 million settlement, New York City has agreed to pay 1,300 people attacked by police while protesting the Minnesota police murder of George Floyd in 2020. Sow v. City of New York yielded the largest total payout to protesters in a class-action suit in U.S. history, totaling about $10,000 per person. The suit focused on how police violated protesters' civil and constitutional rights by making mass arrests and using excessive force that included improper use of pepper spray and using a tactic called kettling to trap and arrest protesters before a curfew went into effect. The case used a video analysis tool developed by SITU Research that can quickly analyze massive amounts of police body-camera video, aerial footage and social media videos. The settlement is historic and incredibly important," says civil rights attorney and co-counsel for the plaintiffs Gideon Oliver. It's also in some ways only as important as what we make it mean." We also speak with Dara Pluchino, a social worker and plaintiff in the case, who describes her experience being kettled. Once the curfew hit, then that is when chaos occurred and violence occurred."

As a record-breaking heat wave continues in Arizona, reporters with The Intercept say they have observed U.S. Border Patrol holding about 50 migrants inside a chain-link pen in the Sonoran Desert, at the Ajo Border Patrol Station. This comes as the group Humane Borders reports the bodies of at least 13 people were found over the past month in the Sonoran Desert where many migrants cross. You really can't overstate how deadly this ecosystem is," says reporter Ryan Devereaux, who describes the well-funded border agencies' lack of support for border crossers. Roland Gutierrez, Democratic state senator running against Ted Cruz for Senate, says, We need to revamp the whole system."

The U.S. Justice Department is threatening to sue the state of Texas after Republican Governor Greg Abbott installed barrels wrapped in razor wire in the Rio Grande in an attempt to block migrants from crossing the river. This comes just after a whistleblower state trooper at the Texas Department of Public Safety recently protested the state's inhumane policies in a letter to superiors. What's happening at the border in Texas right now is criminal," says Democratic Texas Senator Roland Gutierrez. There's state crimes, there's federal crimes, and there's international crimes."

30,000 Flee Rhodes as Greece Battles Dozens of Wildfires; Italy Hit by Ice Storms After Record Heat, Monsoon Brings Deadly Floods, Landslides in India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Triggers Dengue Outbreak, Nova Scotia Inundated with 3 Months' Worth of Rain; Washington Wildfire Tops 52,000 Acres, Right Underperforms Expectations in Spain Election; Separatist Parties Emerge as Kingmakers, Hun Sen Retains Cambodian Leadership, Likely to Hand Power to Son, After Suppressing Opposition, Israel Passes Contentious Judicial Reform as Protesters Say They Won't Back Down, Israeli Forces Kill Two More Palestinian Teenagers in Occupied West Bank, 44-Year-Old Prisoner's Death at Rikers Is Seventh So Far This Year, Body-Camera Video Shows Ohio Police Officer Unleashing Police Dog on Black Driver, Video Shows L.A. Sheriff's Deputy Brutally Beating Trans Man, Trump's Trial for Mishandling Classified Documents Set for May 2024, Biden Says 7 Silicon Valley Giants Have Committed to AI Safety and Transparency, 8,000+ Authors Demand End to AI's Use of Their Works Without Consent

In an in-depth interview about her work, we speak with Isabel Allende, one of the world's most celebrated novelists, author of 26 books that have sold more than 77 million copies and have been translated into 42 languages. Her books include The House of the Spirits, Paula and Daughter of Fortune, and her latest novel is The Wind Knows My Name, which looks at the trauma of child-family separation, from Nazi Germany to the U.S.-Mexico border, and those on the frontlines helping migrant children. That idea of separating the kids is extremely cruel, but it keeps happening," Allende tells Democracy Now! The Chilean American author says the miracle of literature" is being able to instill compassion in readers who may otherwise see the stories of refugees as abstract numbers. It brings people close. By telling the story of one child, you can somehow connect with the reader and create that sense of empathy that is so often lacking."

A damning new investigation by journalists Maria Hinojosa and Zeba Warsi examines how immigration officials have failed to properly address complaints of sexual abuse from people held in detention centers. The report from Futuro Investigates and Latino USA details how women in jails run by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, have been sexually abused, often in a medical setting when they are at their most vulnerable. It comes more than a decade after Hinojosa's report for PBS Frontline about sexual abuse in ICE detention. But allegations of abuse have continued. If you complain, you are going to be threatened," says Hinojosa, who notes there is still constant coercion" in detention, despite earlier claims of reform.

Russia Targets Ukrainian Grain Supplies; Ukraine Starts Deploying U.S.-Supplied Cluster Bombs, Nebraska Teen Who Used Abortion Pill Gets Sentenced to 90 Days in Jail, Women Suing Texas over Abortion Ban Share Harrowing Personal Accounts, Florida's New Black History Standards Say Slavery Had Personal Benefit", Florida Rights Groups Sue over Law Cracking Down on Immigrant Communities, Florida Rights Group Sue for Illegal Intimidation of People with Felonies Seeking to Vote, GA to Purge Nearly 200,000 Voters; AL Legislature Ignores SCOTUS Redistricting Order, Alabama Executes James Barber as It Resumes Lethal Injections, Video of Mob Sexually Assaulting Manipur Women Sets Off Protests Across India, 1,200-Barrel Oil Spill Coats Ecuadorian Coastline, Lawyers Warn NYPD Still Abusing Protesters After $13M Settlement for Violence in 2020 BLM Uprising, Senate Panel Passes Legislation to Impose Code of Ethics for SCOTUS with Zero GOP Support, IATSE Averts Strike That Threatened to Grind Broadway to a Halt

We speak with first-grade teacher Melissa Tempel, who was fired last week for a viral tweet in which she criticized the Waukesha, Wisconsin, board of education's decision to ban her students from singing Rainbowland" during a school concert earlier this year. The hit song about inclusivity by Miley Cyrus and Dolly Parton includes the lyrics We are rainbows, me and you / Every color, every hue / Let's shine on through." The school district said Tempel's firing was not about the song but about the way she protested the decision. Tempel says the Waukesha school district's so-called controversial content policy, which bans discussions about race, LGBTQ identity and other speech considered political, is disturbing" and dangerous."

As world leaders from the United States to France welcome Prime Minister Narendra Modi, we look at press freedom in India under the leader of the Hindu nationalist party BJP. One of India's last bastions of free media, NDTV, has been taken over by Indian billionaire Gautam Adani, believed to have close ties to Modi. NDTV's former executive editor and longtime anchor Ravish Kumar, one of India's most prominent TV journalists who has reported critically on Modi's Hindu nationalist policies, is the subject of Vinay Shukla's film While We Watched, which is being released this week in theaters in the United States. We speak to Kumar and Shukla about the anti-opposition, anti-minorities, anti-Muslim" state of media in India, where dissent is suppressed and pro-Modi nationalism is the de facto rule. No sober society can afford to have a kind of rogue media, which is so weaponized," says Kumar.

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Multiple reports are reinvestigating the neo-Nazi fighters and militias involved in the war both in Russia and Ukraine. You have neo-Nazis on both sides of this conflict," says Ukrainian American journalist Lev Golinkin, a longtime reporter on the far right in Ukraine and Russia who is critical of the Western media's normalization of groups like the Azov Battalion. We are sending a very dangerous message that if you're the right type of neo-Nazis, we will not only work with you, we will celebrate you," Golinkin notes.We also speak with national security reporter Ben Makuch, whose investigations reveal the networks connecting Ukrainian and Russian militias and American neo-Nazis. An anti-Putin Russian militia that carried out attacks inside Russia in May was led by a neo-Nazi who has maintained links with American neo-Nazis. In a new piece, Makuch also shares the story of an American military veteran wanted for murder who is now fighting for ultranationalist groups in Ukraine. We know there has been secretive pipelines and networks," says Makuch. That still exists."