Democracy Now!

Biden Pledges More Vaccine Donations as Poorer Nations Demand Patent Waivers for COVID-19 Shots, Alaska Hospitals, Overwhelmed by COVID-19, Begin Rationing Care, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis Taps Anti-Mask Vaccine Skeptic as Surgeon General, DHS Looks to Expand Immigrant Detention at Guantánamo as Humanitarian Crisis at Border Grows, Black Congressmembers Condemn Inhumane, Racist Treatment of Haitian Asylum Seekers, Over 300 Migrant Children Still Separated from Their Families, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro Calls for an End to Sanctions, Respect for International Law, Adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky Survives Assassination Attempt, WHO Slashes Recommended Limits for Air Pollution, Which Kills 7 Million People Per Year, Police Reform Legislation Collapses After Bipartisan Talks Fail to Reach Agreement, 12 Prisoners Have Died in New York City Jails in 2021, NYC Set to Pass New Laws Protecting App-Based Gig Workers After Push by Delivery Workers, Protesters in Namibia Condemn Proposed Deal with Germany over Genocide Reparations, California Expands Rights for Amazon Warehouse Workers

We look at a new Reuters special report examining corruption and the drug trade in Honduras, which human rights groups say are pushing tens of thousands of people to flee the Central American country for the United States. "People really describe feeling that their life has become unlivable in Honduras," Reuters correspondent Laura Gottesdiener says. This comes less than six months after a federal court in New York sentenced Tony Hernández, the brother of Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, to life in prison for drug trafficking and listed the president as a co-conspirator. We also speak with Adriana Beltrán, executive director of the Seattle International Foundation, who says the instability in Honduras today is directly linked to the U.S.-backed coup of 2009 that deposed President Manuel Zelaya. "To a large extent, the crisis that you continue to see in Honduras and its democracy has its roots in the coup," Beltrán says. "Honduras has been struggling to build representative democracy, to fight corruption and crime."

Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel has criticized the United States for intensifying its embargo at a time when Cuba is facing a surge in COVID-19 cases and deaths. "The Biden administration policy toward Cuba today has been the Trump administration policy toward Cuba," says Carlos Fernández de Cossío, director general for U.S. affairs in the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He says Cuba also rejects U.S. claims about "Havana syndrome," the name given to mysterious neurological symptoms some American diplomats and CIA officers say they have experienced in foreign postings, including in Cuba. "The U.S. government has no answer to explain what has happened," says Fernández de Cossío. We also speak with Fernández de Cossío about the U.S.'s "double standard" in its treatment of refugees, and the brutal tactics being used against Haitian asylum seekers along the border.

World Leaders Address Climate Crisis, Pandemic at UNGA as Guterres Warns World "On Edge of Abyss", House Dems Pass Bill to Avert Gov't Shutdown, Raise the Debt Limit, But Fate in Senate Is Precarious, Cori Bush and Elizabeth Warren Intro Eviction Ban Bill as Housing Activists Rally in D.C., J&J Says Second Dose of Vaccine Increases Efficacy to 94%, Chinese City of 10 Million Goes into Partial Shutdown After Single COVID Case Confirmed, Mexican Authorities Target Haitian Asylum Seekers Fleeing Dangerous Conditions in U.S., Immigrant Rights Activists Demand Dems and Biden Establish Pathway to Citizenship, At Least 8 Refugees Died at Sea Off Spanish Coast Since Sunday, La Palma Evacuates 1,000s as Volcano Lava Buries Homes, Threatens Environmental Disaster, Texas Continues Crackdown on Reproductive Rights, Restricting Use of Abortion-Inducing Meds, Bernie Sanders, Healthcare Activists Slam Big Pharma's Greed as Many Americans Die or Go Untreated, House Dems Unveil Legislation to Rein In Presidential Powers, Trump Campaign Allowed Lawyers to Spew False Election Fraud Claims, Charles Mills, Renowned Political Philosopher and Author of "The Racial Contract," Has Died

Tuesday marks 10 years since the state of Georgia executed Troy Anthony Davis for a crime many believe he did not commit. He was put to death despite major doubts about evidence used to convict him of killing Savannah police officer Mark MacPhail, including the recantation of seven of the nine non-police witnesses at his trial. As the world watched to see whether Davis's final appeal for a stay of execution would be granted by the U.S. Supreme Court, Democracy Now! was the only news outlet to continuously broadcast live from the prison grounds in Jackson, Georgia. We revisit parts of our six-hour special report, featuring interviews with Davis's supporters and family members who held an all-day vigil and those who witnessed his death by lethal injection, and speak with two people who were there when Davis was executed: Kimberly Davis, Troy Davis's sister and an anti-death penalty activist, and Ben Jealous, president of People for the American Way and former president of the NAACP. "We know that Troy Davis did make a mark on the world," says Kimberly Davis. "We want to continue to fight until we demolish the death penalty, one state at a time."

We speak with California Democratic Congressmember Ro Khanna about border guards whipping Haitians, U.S. immigration policy, raising the refugee cap, investigating the full 20 years of the War in Afghanistan and bringing U.S. troops home from Iraq.

Democrats are still divided over President Biden's sweeping $3.5 trillion spending plan to expand the social safety net, increase taxes on the rich and corporations, improve worker rights and combat the climate crisis. Senate Democrats are hoping to use the budget reconciliation process to pass the bill, but this will only work if the entire Democratic caucus backs the deal, and conservative Democrats have balked at the price tag. Progressive Democrats in the House, meanwhile, say they won't vote for a separate $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill passed by the Senate unless the reconciliation bill is part of the package. "We want to pass the full agenda that President Biden has set forth," says Ro Khanna, a Democratic congressmember from California. "This is what President Biden campaigned on, and we need to deliver." Khanna also discusses U.S. immigration policy, raising the refugee cap, investigating the full 20 years of the War in Afghanistan and bringing U.S. troops home from Iraq.

U.S. Border Patrol Agents on Horseback Whip Haitian Asylum Seekers, Biden to Raise U.S. Cap on Refugee Admissions to 125,000 Per Year, Fears Grow of Coronavirus Superspreader Event at U.N. General Assembly, U.N. Leader Calls for Countries to Meet $100 Billion Climate Fund Commitments, Student Activists to Lead Global Climate Strike on Friday, U.S. COVID-19 Deaths Surpass Toll of 1918 Flu Pandemic, Wealthy Nations on Track to Waste 100 Million COVID-19 Vaccine Doses This Year, Sudan's Government Says It Thwarted a Coup Attempt by Bashir Loyalists, Justin Trudeau Reelected as Canada's Prime Minister But Doesn't Win Majority, Supreme Court to Hear Challenge to Roe v. Wade; Texas Doctor Sued for Performing Abortion, 10 Women and Girls Killed Each Day in Mexico, Warns Amnesty International, Prosecution Rests in R. Kelly Sex Trafficking Trial, Man Jailed for Parole Violation Becomes 11th Prisoner to Die at Rikers Jail This Year, "Hotel Rwanda" Dissident Paul Rusesabagina Sentenced to 25 Years on Terrorism Charges

More than a dozen civil society groups in India have written an open letter to Johnson & Johnson and the U.S. government, urging the pharmaceutical giant to cancel export of Indian-made COVID-19 vaccine doses to rich countries and instead focus on distributing them in the Global South. "The 600 million doses that Johnson & Johnson is manufacturing currently … in India should go where the vaccines are most needed, which is the Indian subcontinent, the African continent and the COVAX Facility," says public health activist Achal Prabhala, who co-authored the letter and is coordinator of the AccessIBSA project, which campaigns for access to medicines in India, Brazil and South Africa.

We look at the attack on reproductive rights in the United States, as the Department of Justice sues Texas over a new law that bans abortions after six weeks into a pregnancy. The law makes no exception for rape or incest and allows anyone in Texas to sue patients, medical workers or even a patient's family or friends who "aid and abet" an abortion. "What we see time and time again is when we ban abortion, it doesn't stop the need for people to access abortion," says Dr. Bhavik Kumar, a staff physician at Planned Parenthood Center for Choice in Houston, Texas.

Miami Herald Haiti and Caribbean correspondent Jacqueline Charles discusses new revelations about the assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse. In her piece, "Grenade-dropping drones, a paranoid president, guards who ran: Latest on Haiti assassination," she reports the night President Jovenel Moïse was shot "was actually the second time in a span of weeks that his life was in danger, according to testimony from one of the Colombians in custody, and one of the Haitian Americans."

Thousands of asylum seekers, primarily from Haiti, have sheltered in a makeshift camp at the U.S.-Mexico border under the Del Rio International Bridge, as the Biden administration has vowed to carry out mass deportations. On Sunday alone, the Biden administration said it sent three deportation flights to Haiti, with several more flights expected in the coming days. "For them to be deporting young children into Haiti right now, … it is unacceptable," says Guerline Jozef, co-founder and executive director of Haitian Bridge Alliance. We also speak with Jacqueline Charles, Haiti and Caribbean correspondent for the Miami Herald, who says reporters have had almost no access to the camp. "You cannot access this bridge, so we don't know what is happening," Charles says. "This is a huge issue, the lack of transparency around this."

Pentagon Admits Drone Strike Killed Afghan Civilians as Victims' Families Demand Probe, Women and Girls Increasingly Left Out of Education, Public Life in Afghanistan After Taliban Takeover, Biden Admin Starts Deporting Haitian Asylum Seekers Without Due Process as Humanitarian Crisis Mounts, Senate Parliamentarian Says Dems Cannot Use Spending Bill to Create Pathway to Citizenship, FDA Panel Says Booster Shots Should Be Offered to People 65+ and High-Risk Patients, CA Firefighters Protect Trees with Foil Blankets as Wildfire Threatens Sequoia National Park, U.N. Warns Planet Headed Toward Catastrophic 2.7°C Warming, Biden Unveils Plan to Curb U.S. Emissions, But Climate Agenda Could Be Blocked by Manchin, Activists Demand JPMorgan Chase, Citibank and Bank of America Stop Investing in Fossil Fuels, France Recalls U.S. and Australia Ambassadors Amid Row over Trilateral Nuclear Pact, Russian Parliamentary Election Hands Victory to Putin as Critics Allege Voting Fraud, Canadians Vote in Snap Election Called by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Ex-Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika Dies at 84, Two Years After He Resigned Amid Protests, Tunisian Protesters Decry "Autocracy" of President Kais Saied, Who Suspended Parliament, Supporters of January 6 Insurrectionists Outnumbered by Police at Capitol Hill Rally, Nabisco Workers Approve New Contract, Ending Weeks-Long Strike, New York Gov. Hochul Signs "Less Is More Act" to End Jail Time for Nonviolent Parole Violations

On the 10th anniversary of Occupy Wall Street, we examine the legacy of the historic protests with three veterans of the movement: Nelini Stamp, now the director of strategy and partnerships at the Working Families Party; Jillian Johnson, a key organizer in Occupy Durham who now serves on the Durham City Council and is the city's mayor pro tempore; and writer and filmmaker Astra Tayor, an organizer with the Debt Collective. Occupy Wall Street "broke the spell" protecting the economic status quo and marked a major shift in protests against capitalism, Taylor says. "Occupy kind of inaugurated this social movement renaissance," she tells Democracy Now! "We've been in an age of defiant protest ever since Occupy Wall Street."

This week some of gymnastics' biggest stars shared scathing testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee about the FBI's failure to stop Larry Nassar, the USA Gymnastics doctor and serial sexual abuser. 

Lawyers say that after the FBI was first told of Nassar's crimes, he abused another 120 people before his 2016 arrest. We feature the testimony of Simone Biles, the four-time Olympic gold medalist, who is widely considered to be the greatest gymnast of all time, and speak with gymnast Rachael Denhollander, who was the first to publicly accuse Nassar of sexual abuse and says the case exposes a systemic failure to take sexual abuse seriously. "Something we need to be asking as we're watching this unfold is: What are we not seeing?" Denhollander says. "What happens to the survivors who don't have an army of 500 women? What happens to the survivors who don't have Olympians headlining their case and raising the profile of the gross negligence and corruption that's taking place in our system?" We also speak with Mark Alesia, who was an investigative reporter at The Indianapolis Star in 2016 and helped to break the story about Nassar's sexual abuse of gymnasts. "The FBI did not take the gymnasts' complaints seriously," Alesia says.

U.S. Resumes Deportation Flights to Haiti as 10,000 Haitian Asylum Seekers Cross Rio Grande, Haitian Prime Minister, Accused of Aiding President's Murder, Sacks Justice Minister, Federal Judge Bars Biden Administration's Use of Trump-Era Rule to Fast-Track Deportations, U.N. Warns Time Is Rapidly Running Out to Limit Global Heating to 1.5 Degrees Celsius, U.S. Reports 3,400 COVID Deaths in One Day; One-Quarter of ICU Beds Are At or Near Capacity, France, China Blast U.S.-U.K.-Australia Nuclear Partnership, Biden Calls for Corporations and Super Wealthy to Pay Fair Share of Taxes, Police Put Fence Around Capitol Ahead of Pro-Insurrection Rally, Ohio GOP Rep. Who Voted to Impeach Trump After Jan. 6 Resigns Amid Threats, U.S. Soccer to Offer Same Contract to Women's and Men's Teams After Years of Discriminatory Pay, West African Bloc Sanctions Military Coup Leaders in Guinea, 10,000s March Against Unemployment, Poverty in Argentina Amid Mounting Political Crisis

Thousands in El Salvador took to the streets Wednesday to protest President Nayib Bukele's growing consolidation of power and a new law making El Salvador the world's first country to recognize the highly volatile cryptocurrency bitcoin as legal tender. Protesters in El Salvador are also criticizing a recent court ruling that paves the way for Bukele to run for reelection in 2024. El Salvador's turn to bitcoin comes as a "surprise" to many, but has been pushed by Bukele as a way to lessen remittance fees, says Jorge Cuéllar, an assistant professor of Latin American, Latino and Caribbean studies at Dartmouth College. "There's no reason why bitcoin should be at the top of the government agenda in a moment of pandemic, of water stress, of food insecurity, of depressed wages," Cuéllar says. "People are very suspicious of this."

As the debate over booster vaccine shots heats up in the United States, global health leaders have issued an urgent call for global vaccine equity. The WHO reports vaccination rates on the African continent fall far below its target for 70% of the population of all countries to be vaccinated by mid-2022. "The science is not completely behind the need for booster shots yet," says Zane Dangor, special adviser to the foreign minister of South Africa, who has called on the U.S. to come up with a proposal for allowing other countries to manufacture vaccines. "This is an emergency that affects all of us because variants are coming from areas where there are large numbers of unvaccinated people," adds infectious disease specialist Dr. Joia Mukherjee.

Violence in Afghanistan's countryside has reportedly dropped after the Taliban takeover and the withdrawal of U.S. troops, but the country continues to face an ongoing humanitarian and economic crisis, with millions of children at risk of starvation. Joining us from Kabul, New Yorker reporter Anand Gopal says he was shocked by the "sheer level of violence" Afghan women outside the cities have experienced in the last two decades of war. "The level of human loss was really extraordinary," Gopal says. "I think we've grossly undercounted the number of civilians who died in this war."

1 in 500 U.S. Residents Have Died of COVID-19; FDA Scientists Skeptical of Vaccine Boosters, Pope Calls Out Anti-Vaccine Sentiment in Catholic Church, USA Gymnasts to Senate: FBI Failed to Investigate Reports of Larry Nassar's Sexual Abuse, Survivor Recounts Walking in on R. Kelly Sexually Assaulting Aaliyah When She Was Just 13 or 14, Chinese Court Rejects Landmark #MeToo Case, But Survivor Vows to Appeal, ICC to Open Full Probe into Rodrigo Duterte's Deadly War on Drugs in Philippines , Brazil's Top Court Delays Ruling on Case That Could Reshape Indigenous Sovereignty , U.S., U.K. and Australia Form New Coalition to Counter China's Power, New Book Says Gen. Milley Took Covert Measures to Prevent Trump from Starting War, Launching Nukes, DOJ to Ban Chokeholds During Arrests and "No-Knock" Warrants , Philadelphia to Pay $2 Million to Black Mother Attacked by Police After Being Yanked from Car

Apple has released an emergency software update to fix a security flaw in its iPhones and other products researchers found was being exploited by the Israeli-based NSO Group to infect the devices with its Pegasus spyware. The security exploit exposes “widespread abuse that we have associated with NSO Group and other companies like it,” says Ronald Deibert, director of the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab, which discovered the security flaw. “This is … the most important crisis around global civil society right now.” Over 1.65 billion Apple products in use around the globe have been vulnerable to the spyware since at least March.

Following the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, advocates are calling for lawmakers to establish a pathway for legal residency for as many as 2,000 immigrant responders and cleanup workers at ground zero. An estimated 6,000 undocumented immigrants took part in the recovery efforts after 9/11, but many didn’t seek medical help or went uncounted for their symptoms because they feared deportation. Undocumented workers exposed themselves to toxins and “sacrificed their lives” to assist with the cleanup, and, 20 years later, still lack recognition and medical aid, says Rosa Maria Bramble Caballero, a licensed clinical social worker who has helped immigrant 9/11 workers for 15 years. A path to citizenship would “not only acknowledge their work, but also help them have other options of other types of work,” Caballero says. “We have not really honored them as we should.”

We speak with reporter Matthieu Aikins about how his investigation for The New York Times found an August 29 U.S. drone strike, which the Pentagon claimed targeted a facilitator with the militant group ISIS-K, actually killed 10 Afghan civilians, including seven children and Zemari Ahmadi, an Afghan engineer who had worked since 2006 for an American aid group. A review of video evidence by the Times shows Zemari loading canisters of water at the charity’s office, after the Pentagon claimed surveillance video showed Zemari loading what they thought were explosives into a car at an unknown compound earlier in the day. “We put together evidence that showed that what the military interpreted as a series of suspicious moves from the sky was, according to his co-workers and colleagues and video evidence, just an ordinary day for this aid worker," says Aikins.

Californians overwhelmingly rejected a Republican-led recall effort against Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom on Tuesday that cost close to $300 million in taxpayer funds. The failed recall was seen as a battle against the far right and a referendum on several key issues ahead of the 2022 midterms, including the pandemic, immigrant rights, the climate crisis and the related unhoused crisis. California voters cast their ballots in the recall because “as attention started being focused nationally on this election, people started realizing what was at stake,” says Sasha Abramsky, “Left Coast” correspondent for The Nation. “There was this real risk that California could sort of almost accidentally stumble into a far-right governorship,” Abramsky says.

Gov. Gavin Newsom Claims Victory in Right-Wing Recall Effort, Biden Calls for Vaccinating 70% of World in One Year as WHO Slams Ongoing Vaccine Inequity, Gov't Pandemic Assistance Led to Drop in U.S. Poverty Rates in 2020, Biden Warns Extreme Weather Is Killing More Americans, Costing Billions Each Year, Haitian Prime Minister Fires Prosecutor After He Seeks to Charge Henry in Killing of Jovenel Moïse, South and North Korea Both Fire Ballistic Missiles as Tensions Mount on Peninsula, DOJ Charges 3 Ex-Military and Intelligence Officers over UAE Hacking Activities, DOJ Seeks to Block Texas's Near-Total Abortion Ban, Senate Dems Introduce "Freedom to Vote" Act After Making Concessions on Election Protections, "A Humanitarian Crisis": New York Officials Call Out Horrific Conditions at Rikers

Tension is rising between Canadian police and activists who have been staging a months-long anti-logging resistance in Vancouver Island's ancient forests. The protest has been underway for two years, led by environmental and First Nations activists, and is considered to be Canada's largest act of civil disobedience ever. Canadian authorities have arrested nearly 1,000 people at Fairy Creek in British Columbia, and the protests show no sign of slowing down. "We have a long history of asserting ourselves as coastal people, where our inherent right is not only based in our relationship to our communities but is based on our relationship and our legal systems and with the land," says Kati George-Jim, a Coast Salish and Nuu-chah-nulth woman who joined the blockade in September 2020 and has been arrested numerous times. "The police have no jurisdiction, and industry don't have jurisdiction, on stolen land," she says. We also speak with lawyer Noah Ross, who says police have used excessive violence to break up protests. "There's been many, many instances where people of color have been specifically targeted," says Ross.

According to the Costs of War Project, the wars launched by the United States following 9/11 have killed an estimated 929,000 people in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen and elsewhere. The true death toll may never be known, but the vast majority of the victims have been Muslim. "Racism is baked into the security logic of the national security state in the U.S., as well as in terms of how it operates abroad," says Islamophobia scholar Deepa Kumar, a professor of media studies at Rutgers University. "The war on terror was sold to the American public using Orientalist and racist ideas that these societies are backward." Kumar is the author of "Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire: 20 Years After 9/11," an updated version of her 2012 book that examined how the war on terror ushered in a new era of anti-Muslim racism.

Donors Pledge $1.2B in Aid to Afghanistan as U.N. Warns of Looming Humanitarian Catastrophe, Secretary of State Blinken Defends U.S. Withdrawal from Afghanistan, 1 Million Public School Students Return to New York City Classrooms Despite COVID-19 Surge, Departing FDA Scientists Blast Biden's Plan for COVID-19 Vaccine Boosters, Pressure Mounts on Germany to Support COVID-19 Patent Waiver as WTO Panel Meets, Public Citizen: Biden Could Share Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine Recipe with the World, Hurricane Nicholas Brings Storm Surge and Heavy Rain to Gulf Coast, Biden Calls for Urgent Action on Climate Crisis After Touring Western Wildfire Destruction, "Tax the Rich": Progressives Say House Democrats' Tax Plan Falls Short, Israel Bombs Gaza Strip for Third Consecutive Night Amid Palestinian Rocket Fire, U.S. to Withhold 10% of $1.3 Billion in Military Aid to Egypt, Citing Human Rights, White Supremacist with Bayonet and Machete Arrested Near DNC Headquarters, Apple to Patch Software Flaw That Left 1.65 Billion Devices Vulnerable to "Zero-Click" Spyware, Left-Leaning Coalition Wins Landslide Election in Norway After Climate-Focused Campaign

On the 50th anniversary of the Attica prison uprising, we look at the cover-up that began immediately after New York state police stormed the prison and opened fire, killing 29 inmates and 10 hostages. David Rothenberg, a member of the Attica Observers Committee brought into Attica to help negotiate a peaceful resolution, says the prison was "an institution that only knew how to run by punishment," laying the groundwork for the uprising. "The event itself is almost a microscopic view of the failure of our criminal justice system and our prison system," says Rothenberg. We also speak with filmmaker Michael Hull, director of the new HBO Max documentary "Betrayal at Attica," about how the film includes never-before-seen evidence from the archive of Attica Brothers defense attorney Elizabeth Fink, including deposition interviews from the 1974 civil suit she successfully led on their behalf against the state of New York. "The state police conducted the retaking of the prison. They also conducted the investigation of themselves. So they started destroying and obfuscating evidence on September 13, 1971," says Hull.

On the 50th anniversary of the Attica prison uprising, the deadliest prison uprising in U.S. history, we speak with Tyrone Larkins, a formerly incarcerated survivor, who was shot three times in the brutal crackdown of September 13, 1971. He describes Attica as "the roughest place that I've ever seen in my life," as he recalls what led to the rebellion on September 9, 1971, when prisoners overpowered guards and took over much of Attica prison in upstate New York to protest conditions. At the time, prisoners spent most of their time in their cells and got one shower per week. Larkins lays out how tense negotiations with politicized prisoners followed, and says the rebellion was on its way to being resolved through diplomacy when Governor Nelson Rockefeller ordered state police to storm the facility. Police opened fire, killing 29 inmates and 10 hostages.

U.S. Marks 20th Anniversary of 9/11 Attacks, FBI Releases First Declassified Document on Saudi Links to 9/11 Hijackers, George W. Bush Compares "Violent Extremists at Home" to 9/11 Attackers , Capitol Police Want to Reinstall Fencing Ahead of Far-Right "Justice for J6" Rally , Taliban Government Orders Segregated Schools and Dress Codes for Women, No Evidence of Bomb in Vehicle Hit by U.S. Drone Strike That Killed 10 Afghan Civilians, Appeals Court Sides with Florida Gov. DeSantis, Reinstates Ban on Mask Mandates, Lebanon Announces New Government Headed by Former Prime Minister, Wildfires Rage in Spain and California as Monsoon Floods Kill 17 in Pakistan, Global Witness: Record Number of Environmental Activists Killed in 2020, 4,000 Indigenous Women Take to Streets of Brazil Ahead of High Court Ruling on Tribal Sovereignty, U.S. Army Was Training Guinean Soldiers When They Launched Military Coup, Fighting in Burma Kills 20 as U.N. Weighs Whether to Recognize Junta or National Unity Government, Iran and U.N. Atomic Watchdog Reach Deal to Resume Monitoring of Nuclear Sites, North Korea Tests "Strategic" Long-Range Cruise Missiles, Biden Campaigns with Newsom in California on Last Day of Recall Vote, Chileans Commemorate Sep. 11, 1973, Coup That Overthrew Allende and Imposed Brutal Dictatorship

On the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, we revisit a conversation we hosted in January of 2002 between Masuda Sultan, an Afghan American woman who lost 19 members of her family in a U.S. air raid, and Rita Lasar, a New Yorker who lost her brother in the World Trade Center attack. Lasar would become an active member of September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows. Masuda later wrote the memoir, "My War at Home."

Twenty years ago, Rep. Barbara Lee was the only member of Congress to vote against war in the immediate aftermath of the devastating 9/11 attacks that killed about 3,000 people. "Let us not become the evil that we deplore," she urged her colleagues in a dramatic address on the House floor. The final vote in the House was 420-1. This week, as the U.S. marks the 20th anniversary of 9/11, Rep. Lee spoke with Democracy Now!'s Amy Goodman about her fateful vote in 2001 and how her worst fears about "forever wars" came true. "All it said was the president can use force forever, as long as that nation, individual or organization was connected to 9/11. I mean, it was just a total abdication of our responsibilities as members of Congress," Rep. Lee says.

Biden Orders Vaccine Mandates for Federal Workers and Large Employers, International Flights Resume from Kabul Airport; Taliban Torture Journalists Covering Protests, Syrian Army Enters Daraa, Birthplace of Uprising Against Assad a Decade Ago, Biden Admin Extends TPS for 400,000 People Through 2022, Whistleblower Details Abuse of Migrant Children at Fort Bliss Base in Texas, SCOTUS Stays Execution of Texas Death Row Prisoner, DOJ Sues Texas over Unconstitutional Abortion Ban , Biden Withdraws Gun Control Advocate as ATF Nominee, Names Ally to Big Polluters for Key Energy Post, EPA Seeks Permanent Block on Pebble Mine Project in Alaska's Bristol Bay , Harvard Divests from Fossil Fuels After Years-Long Student Campaign , Nabisco Workers in 5 States Continue Strike, as Buffalo Starbucks Workers Fight to Unionize

In his new book, Yale historian Samuel Moyn explores whether the push to make U.S. wars more "humane" by banning torture and limiting civilian casualties has helped fuel more military interventions around the world. He looks in detail at the role of President Obama in expanding the use of drones even as he received the Nobel Peace Prize. "What happened after 2001 is that, in the midst of an extremely brutal war on terror, a new kind of war emerged. … It was important to Americans to see their wars fought more humanely," says Moyn. "Even though this represents a kind of progress, it also helped Americans sustain war and helped make the war on terror endless." Moyn's new book is "Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War."

As this week marks the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., we look at a new five-part documentary series on Netflix about the attacks and the response from the United States, both at home and abroad. "Turning Point: 9/11 and the War on Terror" features a wide range of interviews with survivors of the attacks, U.S. officials, former CIA members and veterans, as well as soldiers in the Afghanistan National Army, Taliban commanders, and Afghan officials, warlords and civilians. "What we really wanted to do was tell the story not just of what happened that day, but how we got there and where our response to those attacks took us as a country," says director Brian Knappenberger. We also speak with co-executive producer Mohammed Ali Naqvi, an award-winning Pakistani filmmaker, who says the film was an attempt to go "beyond the binary narrative of good versus evil."

WHO Calls for Halt to COVID Booster Shots in 2021, Says Vaccines Should Go to Poorer Countries, COVAX Cuts 2021 Vaccine Forecast; Australia Joins Call for Waiver on Vaccine Patents, Los Angeles Schools Poised to Require Vaccinations for Students 12 and Older , Afghanistan Evacuations Continue as Taliban Reestablishes Ministry of "Virtue and Vice", Main Suspect in 2015 Paris Attacks Tells Court He Was a Soldier for the Islamic State, Human Rights Campaign President Fired in Latest Fallout from Cuomo Sexual Harassment Probe, Virginia Removes Statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee, 17 Patients Die as Floods Hit Mexican Hospital; Record Drought Worsens Brazil's Energy Crisis, Super Typhoon Chanthu Hurtles Toward Philippines and Southeast China, Ida's Death Toll Hits 82 as Hundreds of Thousands Remain Without Power in South, Biden Admin Aims to Boost U.S. Solar Output to 45% of All Energy Use by 2050, Indigenous Activists Lead Months-Long Campaign to Protect Vancouver Island's Ancient Forests

Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz says global vaccine inequity endangers everyone on the planet, including those in rich countries, and says the best way to solve the problem is to drastically increase production of COVID-19 vaccines. "As long as the disease is festering someplace in the world, there are going to be mutations," Stiglitz says. "So it's in our own self-interest that we get the disease controlled everywhere."

As unemployment benefits for millions of U.S. workers expired on Labor Day, with many states suffering the worst surge of the pandemic, economist Joseph Stiglitz says it's "disturbing" federal aid was allowed to lapse. "This is going to feed into the problems posed by the Delta variant." Stiglitz also talks about whether Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell should stay in the job, saying he has done a "reasonable job" during the pandemic but has a tendency "to side with Wall Street and engage in deregulation."

Oil and gas investigative journalist Antonia Juhasz says the extent of damage done after Hurricane Ida from the fossil fuel and petrochemical industry from leaks, spills, flaring, ruptures and chemical releases in the Gulf Coast could be among the worst of such events ever recorded. As half a million electricity customers continue to suffer without power, Juhasz also reports New Orleans faces excessively high durations and frequencies of power outages that mostly hit neighborhoods which are majority people of color and low income.

As part of our ongoing coverage of the aftermath of Hurricane Ida, one of the strongest storms to ever hit the United States, we go to St. James Parish, Louisiana, to speak with Sharon Lavigne, the 2021 Goldman Environmental Prize winner, who lives in the heart of Louisiana's "Cancer Alley," home to more than 150 petrochemical facilities. She is now documenting oil spills in the aftermath of Hurricane Ida even as her home was badly damaged.

As the Taliban announces a new acting government in Kabul led by hard-liners from its previous stint in power and fight against U.S. occupation, Danish Afghan journalist Nagieb Khaja says the composition has been a "surprising outcome" as many observers expected the group to strike a more conciliatory tone. "It's really been disappointing for the people who have been looking for a glimpse of hope," Khaja says. This comes as protests grow nationwide, and aid organizations are warning of a looming humanitarian crisis.

Taliban Announces Acting Gov't as Protests Take Place Across Afghanistan, 75% of U.S. Adults Partially Vaccinated; Quarter of New Cases Are Children Amid Delta Surge, New Zealand Eases Restrictions; Cuba Rolls Out Vaccines for Children as Young as 2, Pro- and Anti-Bolsonaro Protesters Rally on Brazil's Independence Day, Gov. Abbott Claims He Will "Eliminate Rapists" as He Signs Voter Restriction Bill into Law, Biden Warns of Existential Threat of Climate Change as He Visits NY and NJ in Ida's Wake, Global Coalition Calls on U.N. to Postpone November Climate Talks Amid Pandemic, Vaccine Inequity, Mexico's Top Court Decriminalizes Abortion, 7.0 Earthquake Rattles Acapulco, Killing at Least One Person, Bitcoin Crashes as El Salvador Adopts Cryptocurrency as Legal Tender, Amnesty Report Finds Syrian Refugees Were Raped, Tortured After Returning Home, 9/11 Suspects Return to Court After Pandemic Delay, But Trial Won't Start Until at Least 2022

As we look at the public health crisis that followed the September 11, 2001, attacks in New York City, we speak with Lila Nordstrom, a student in 2001 at Stuyvesant High School, which neighbors ground zero and was reopened while the site was still burning and releasing toxic smoke and dust. "Our school wasn't just next to the World Trade Center site, but we were also in the center of the clean-up operations," says Nordstrom. "There were not any safety precautions being taken to protect us as we walked to and from school. The building that we were attending school in smelled like smoke 24 hours a day for the entire length of time." Nordstrom is one of the voices in the new PBS documentary "9/11's Unsettled Dust" and author of a new book titled "Some Kids Left Behind: A Survivor's Fight for Health Care in the Wake of 9/11."

As we look at "9/11's Unsettled Dust" and the massive environmental and public health crisis that followed the 9/11 attacks in New York City 20 years ago this week, we speak with Joe Zadroga, father of New York police officer James Zadroga, who died of a respiratory illness after assisting in rescue efforts at ground zero. He says government officials spent years denying his son's symptoms were related to ground zero rescue efforts. "We spent five years trying to get Jimmy help," says Zadroga. "Everyone refused to help us." Congressmember Carolyn Maloney said she faced extreme pressure to change the name of the James Zadroga Health and Compensation Act, which provides billions in healthcare for them.

As this week marks the 20th anniversary of the September 11 attacks, we look at an enraging new documentary, "9/11's Unsettled Dust," on the impact of the toxic, cancer-causing smoke and dust that hung over ground zero and how the Environmental Protection Agency put Wall Street's interests before public health and told people the air was safe to breathe. One of the key figures in the film is Democracy Now! co-host Juan González, who was among the first to expose the public health and environmental crisis at ground zero in a series of reports for the New York Daily News. He says the intense backlash from the mayor's office and federal officials "cowed" the newspaper, but he has no regrets. "My only mistake was believing that it would take 20 years for people to get sick," González says. "It took about five years for the deaths and the severe illnesses to really become apparent." Director Lisa Katzman says she made the film because she was a resident of Lower Manhattan who saw the attack and its aftermath up close and wanted "to address the lack of accountability" from city and federal officials. "The same people that were always touting 'Never forget! Never forget!' and constantly reminding us of the heroism of these responders were unwilling to do anything to actually help them," notes Katzman.

Jobless Benefits for Millions Expire on Labor Day After Congress and White House Fail to Act, Over 1,000 U.S. Schools Cancel In-Person Classes Due to COVID-19, Taliban Defeat Last Pocket of Resistance, Step Up Attacks on Afghan Women, 90% of Afghanistan's 2,300 Healthcare Centers May Soon Be Forced to Close, Warns WHO, Millions in Ethiopia's Tigray Are on Brink of Famine, Warns World Food Programme, Guinean Army Colonel Deposes President Alpha Condé in Military Coup, Millions Rally for Brazil's Far-Right President, Raising Fears of Trump-Like Insurrection, Mexico Breaks Up Caravan of Asylum Seekers; U.S. Deports Refugees to Guatemala City, Hundreds of Thousands Lack Electricity More Than a Week After Hurricane Ida, Weather Disasters Struck Counties Home to One in Three U.S. Residents This Summer, Rep. Ilhan Omar Leads "The Squad" in Protests Against Enbridge Line 3 Pipeline, Hundreds of Detroit-Area Families Urged to Evacuate Homes Near Gasoline Spill, Ex-Marine Sniper Who Fought in Iraq and Afghanistan Kills Four in Their Florida Home, Michael K. Williams, Who Starred in HBO's "The Wire," Dies of Apparent Drug Overdose, Composer Mikis Theodorakis, Who Survived Torture and Exile by Greek Dictatorship, Dies at 96, Mexico City to Replace Columbus Monument with Statue of Indigenous Woman

In an extended conversation with Spencer Ackerman, the Pulitzer Prize-winning national security reporter, he examines the connection he sees between the rise of right-wing extremism in the United States and the so-called war on terror, which he writes about in his new book, "Reign of Terror: How the 9/11 Era Destabilized America and Produced Trump." He begins his book with Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh visiting the far-right paramilitary compound in Elohim City, Oklahoma, before what was then called the worst terror attack in U.S. history.

We speak to the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Spencer Ackerman about how the U.S. could have ended the War in Afghanistan two decades ago, when the Taliban offered to surrender and hand over Osama bin Laden. "It was the Bush administration, the United States, that said such a deal was unacceptable — not to the Afghans, but unacceptable to the United States, that now took it on itself, as it has so often throughout its history in so many parts of the world, to tell Afghans the way their country was about to be," Ackerman says.

We look at the crisis in Afghanistan with Bilal Sarwary, an Afghan journalist who was based in Kabul and reported on Afghanistan for 20 years before he fled with his family after the Taliban seized power. We first spoke to Bilal on August 18, three days after the Taliban seized control of Afghanistan after the U.S.-backed Afghan President Ashraf Ghani fled the country. At the time, Bilal was hoping to stay in Afghanistan, but just days later he and his family boarded a flight to Doha. He posted a message on Twitter reading, "The day I leave my country, my city, my Kabul. A massacre of my dreams and aspirations. A tragic day in my life." On August 25, a week after our first interview, Bilal joined us again, this time from Doha. He spoke about his decision to leave Afghanistan.