Democracy Now!

Republican Who Voted to Impeach Trump Defeated in GOP Primary in South Carolina, Backers of Trump’s Election Lies Win GOP Primaries in Nevada, Republican Mayra Flores Wins Special House Election in Texas, Jan. 6 Committee Appears Divided on Its Role in Making Criminal Referrals to DOJ, “Are You Out of Your F—ing Mind”: White House Lawyer’s Message to John Eastman on Jan. 7, 2021, Pope Francis Says Russia’s Invasion May Have Been “Provoked”, U.S. Admits It Is Not Pushing Ukraine to Hold Talks to End War, Report: Biden Officials Are Privately Concerned Russian Sanctions Are Backfiring, Biden to Visit Saudi Arabia in July Despite Campaign Vow to Make Kingdom a “Pariah”, Biden Urges Oil Companies to Produce More Gas as Price Reach New High, Federal Reserve Prepared to Hike Interest Rates as S&P Slump Continues, At AFL-CIO Meeting, Biden Blames GOP for Blocking His Plan to Fight Inflation, European Court of Human Rights Blocks U.K. from Sending Asylum Seekers to Rwanda, Indigenous Leader Arrested in Ecuador Amid Nationwide Strike, Brazil: Second Suspect Arrested in Case of Missing Journalist & Indigenous Expert, Anti-Sweatshop Activist & Researcher Charlie Kernaghan, 74, Dies

Monday’s January 6 committee hearing ended with closing statements from January 6 committee vice chair, Republican Liz Cheney and Democrat Zoe Lofgren describing how the Trump administration raised over $250 million from his supporters, off of the lie that the 2020 election results were fraudulent, for an election defense fund that didn’t exist.

The House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack heard live testimony Monday from Al Schmidt, the sole Republican on the Philadelphia County Board of Elections in Pennsylvania, a key battleground state in the 2020 election. He described how he found no evidence of voter fraud in 2020, and said he and his family received death threats after Trump lashed out at him on Twitter for not halting the vote count due to false claims of fraud.

One of the key witnesses who testified live at Monday’s hearing of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol was former Fox News political editor Chris Stirewalt, who led the the Fox News decision to become the first network to call Arizona for Joe Biden on election night in November 2020. Fox fired Stirewalt months later. Answering questions from Congressmember Zoe Lofgren, Stirewalt said Trump’s chance of winning was virtually zero. His comments were supported by Trump’s former Attorney General William Barr. The committee also heard testimony from Trump’s former campaign manager Bill Stepien, who said he had contradicted false election victory claims by Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani, and was part of what he called “Team Normal.” Former Attorney General Barr told the committee about how he became “demoralized” after the 2020 election when he tried to counter allegations of voting fraud with then-President Trump.

We spend the hour featuring highlights from the second public hearing of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol. Main witnesses were ex-President Donald Trump’s former inner circle, including campaign manager Bill Stepien, Attorney General William Barr, campaign adviser Jason Miller and his own daughter Ivanka Trump, who all said Trump ignored them on election night in November 2020 when they argued against declaring victory. They described how Trump instead turned to his lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who they said was drunk when he urged Trump to claim he’d won and say the election was being stolen.

Barr Says Trump Was “Detached from Reality” in Pushing Election Fraud Claims, “The Big Lie Was the Big Ripoff”: Jan. 6 Panel Accuses Trump of Ripping Off Donors, Supporters of Trump Coup Are on Ballot in Nevada and Other States Today, Study: 338,000 Lives Would Have Been Saved During Pandemic If U.S. Had Universal Healthcare System, Study Finds Ivermectin Not Effective at Treating COVID-19, U.K. Faces Outcry over Plan to Deport Asylum Seekers to Rwanda, Ukraine Seeks More Heavy Arms as Russia Moves to Solidify Rule in Eastern Ukraine, India Demolishes Homes of Muslim Activists, Arrests Hundreds Following Protests, Israel Is Suspected in Poisoning Deaths of Two Iranian Scientists, Over 100 Million Put Under Heat Advisories Amid Record-Breaking Heat Wave in U.S., Record Flooding Forces Closure of Yellowstone National Park, Nobel Peace Laureate Malala Yousafzai Warns Girls Impacted Most from Climate Crisis, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine Signs Bill to Make It Easier for Teachers to Carry Guns, Supreme Court Makes It Harder for Jailed Immigrants to Challenge Their Detention, Police in Idaho Face Death Threats After Arresting White Supremacists Near Pride Event, Doctors Call on U.K. to Block Extradition of Julian Assange to U.S., Conflicting Reports Emerge from Brazil on Search for Missing Men

As the Summit of the Americas wrapped up in Los Angeles with President Biden announcing a plan to address migration in the Western Hemisphere that includes a series of so-called bold actions, we spend the hour with Democracy Now! co-host, professor, longtime journalist and author Juan González, who has just released the newly revised edition of his landmark 2000 book, “Harvest of Empire: A History of Latinos in America.” González’s best-seller has been expanded to include more contemporary Lantix history, such as U.S. immigration policy under Presidents Trump and Biden, the overpolicing of non-U.S. citizens and how it connects to a history of Western colonialism in the region. While European colonization caused Latin America to be “the incubator of the American empire,” the millennial immigration apparatus has become fixated on “kicking out Latin Americans, and no one is doing anything about it,” says González. He also examines the culture and history of Latinos and discusses the history of U.S. involvement and imperialism in countries like the Dominican Republic, where many of the immigrants here in New York City hail from, and the conditions of Guatemala’s Indigenous peoples under the brutal U.S.-backed government that drove many of them to leave their country and head north in search of safety.

Senators Reach Bipartisan Deal on Guns Without Ban on Assault Weapons, March for Our Lives: Protests Held in Hundreds of Cities Against Gun Violence, Amnesty Accuses Russia of Killing Hundreds of Civilians in Kharkiv, Russia Has Earned Nearly $100B in Fossil Fuel Exports Since War Began, SIPRI Warns Risk of Nuclear War Is Highest Since the Cold War, New Details Emerge of Ginni Thomas’s Support of Trump Coup, Bolivia: Jeanine Áñez Sentenced to 10 Years in Prison for 2019 Coup, Biden Unveils New Plan to Address Migration at Summit, Macron Fights to Keep Parliamentary Majority, Israel Bombs Damascus International Airport in Syria, Brazil: Two Bodies Found During Search for Dom Phillips & Bruno Pereira, China Begins Testing 5 Million in Beijing Following COVID Outbreak at Bar, FDA Announces Pfizer-BioNTech’s Vaccine Safe and Effective for Children Under 5, 31 Members of Neo-Nazi “Patriot Front” Arrested on Riot Charges in Idaho Near Pride Event, FDA Admits That Contaminated Formula May Have Killed Up to Nine Children, Larry Nassar Abuse Survivors Sue FBI for Delayed Action in Sexual Assault Allegations, Google to Pay $118 Million to Employees in Gender Discrimination Suit, Gen. John Allen, Subject of FBI Probe, Resigns as Brookings Institute President

The second witness who testified live in the first primetime hearing of the House select January 6 committee was Capitol Police officer Caroline Edwards, who suffered a traumatic brain injury as she tried to hold the line outside the Capitol with fellow officers. She was with officer Brian Sicknick, who she said appeared to have been sprayed in the face and was extremely pale. Sicknick died the next day. Sicknick’s fiancee sat behind Edwards as she testified. Edwards said the pro-Trump mob included Proud Boys leader Joseph Biggs, who is now facing federal seditious conspiracy charges. “What I saw was just a war scene. It was something like I’d seen out of the movies. I couldn’t believe my eyes. There were officers on the ground. You know, they were bleeding,” recalled Edwards. “I was slipping in people’s blood. … It was carnage. It was chaos.”

The white supremacist Proud Boys group and the far-right, anti-government Oath Keepers militia played an instrumental role in planning for a violent insurrection on the Capitol, according to the January 6 House committee, which aired new testimony from witnesses and the groups’ leaders in its first public hearing Thursday night. British filmmaker Nick Quested was embedded with the Proud Boys and shared his footage with the committee. As the first of two live witnesses, he said he was “confused” when “a couple of hundred of Proud Boys were marching toward the Capitol.”

The January 6 committee released new footage Thursday night showing a detailed timeline of the day of the insurrection. We feature the video they played that shows how Proud Boys and Oath Keepers marched from the National Mall — where Donald Trump delivered a speech pressuring Mike Pence to recertify the election results to deliver him a victory — to the Capitol Building to chants of “Hang Mike Pence,” before they violently pushed through police barriers and broke into the government building chanting “Nancy.”

Donald Trump “engaged in a massive effort to spread false and fraudulent information to convince huge portions of the U.S. population that fraud had stolen the election from him,” Congressmember Liz Cheney, vice chair of the House select committee investigating the January 6 attack, said during Thursday’s primetime hearing. “This was not true.” We air excerpts from her presentation, which included a new video of Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner dismissing concerns about the campaign to overturn the 2020 election as mere “whining.”

The House committee investigating the January 6 insurrection held its first public hearing Thursday night, televised in primetime by all major networks except Fox News. We spend the hour featuring excerpts from the hearing, starting with Committee Chair Bennie Thompson’s opening statement, in which he argued January 6 was the “culmination of an attempted coup” by Donald Trump, comparing the insurrection to the ransacking of Washington, D.C., by British forces more than two centuries ago.

House Jan. 6 Committee Says Trump Was at Center of Attempted Coup, Michigan GOP Gubernatorial Candidate Ryan Kelley Arrested over Jan. 6 Riot, Maryland Gunman Who Killed 3 Arrested After Shootout with Police, Ukraine Asks Allies for Rapid Delivery of Heavy Weapons as Fight Rages in East, Blood Found in Boat Tied to Disappearance of Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira in Brazil, U.S. Secretary of State Dismisses Evidence Israel Killed Shireen Abu Akleh, U.S. Pentagon Chief Lloyd Austin Meets Chinese Counterpart , Iran Has Begun Removing Nuclear Site Surveillance Cameras, Warns U.N., Michigan Police Officer Charged with Murdering Patrick Lyoya, Justice Dept. to Probe Civil Rights Abuses by Louisiana State Police, Abbott Was Alerted to Formula Plant Problems in February 2021, Massachusetts to Allow Undocumented People to Apply for Driver’s Licenses , Uvalde Police Chief Defends Officers’ Actions Amid Delayed Response to School Massacre

The House committee investigating Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election and the deadly January 6 insurrection at the Capitol holds its first public hearing Thursday night in primetime, as five members of the far-right Proud Boys are indicted for seditious conspiracy. “These hearings will provide voters with a choice between those who will want to continue to defend free and fair elections and those who want to take away the will of the people,” says Kristen Doerer, managing editor of Right Wing Watch, who previews what to expect.

The House of Representatives on Wednesday approved new gun control measures, including raising the minimum age for the purchase of most semiautomatic rifles to 21 and banning high-capacity magazines. The new rules passed the House in a 223-204 vote, but are doomed in the Senate, where a bipartisan group is working on passing a much more limited set of reforms. The vote took place after a House committee heard harrowing testimony from people affected by recent gun violence, including an 11-year-old survivor of the Uvalde school massacre who watched her classmates get killed. “I grabbed a little blood, and I put it all over me’,” Miah Cerrillo told lawmakers in her testimony. “And then I grabbed my teacher’s phone and called 911.” We feature excerpts of Cerrillo’s testimony, along with the parents of 10-year-old victim Lexi Rubio and Dr. Roy Guerrero, Uvalde’s only pediatrician.

The United Nations is demanding an independent investigation into charges of rape and sexual assault committed by Russian soldiers in Ukraine since the start of the invasion. We speak with Pramila Patten, the U.N.’s special representative on sexual violence in conflict, who is just back from Ukraine and told the Security Council Monday about multiple shocking reports of rape and assault — all of which Russia has since denied. “We are dealing with a crime which is chronically underreported,” says Patten, who emphasized the need to establish safe spaces for victims to come forward and ensure no perpetrators be granted amnesty through a potential ceasefire or peace agreement. We also speak with Oksana Pokalchuk, executive director of Amnesty International Ukraine, whose organization is investigating the alleged war crimes.

House Approves Limited Gun Law Reforms, Mass Shooting Survivors Testify to Congress, Police Arrest Man for Allegedly Plotting to Kidnap or Kill Justice Brett Kavanaugh, House Jan. 6 Committee to Hold Primetime Public Hearing, Ukrainian Troops Hold Out in Severodonetsk Industrial Zone, Ukraine Brings Chernobyl Radiation Monitors Back Online, As Global Food Crisis Worsens, Russia and Turkey Discuss Grain Export Corridor, Sanctions Could Shrink Russian Economy by 15% This Year, Biden Admin Secures 10 Million Doses of Pediatric COVID-19 Vaccine, FDA Panel Recommends Emergency Use of Novavax COVID-19 Vaccine, Donald Trump, Ivanka and Don Jr. to Be Questioned Under Oath in New York Fraud Probe, Man Being Given Lethal Injection Has to Direct Execution Team on How to Find a Vein, Workers Attempt to Organize First-Ever Union at Trader Joe’s, Belgian King Voices “Deepest Regrets” for Atrocities in DRC, Does Not Apologize

British journalist Dom Phillips and Indigenous expert Bruno Pereira have still not been found, after being reported missing Sunday in one of Brazil’s most remote areas of the Amazon. The pair were traveling across the region to interview Indigenous leaders patrolling the area for illegal miners and fishers for Phillips’s upcoming book. “We know that they had been receiving threats. We know that there are other people who are being threatened in this territory,” says Ana Alfinito, Brazil legal adviser for Amazon Watch. Alfinito also explains how Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has systematically destroyed protections for Indigenous groups across the Amazon.

The Biden administration has denied members of an Indigenous delegation from the Amazon rainforest entry at this week’s U.S.-hosted Summit of the Americas. Meanwhile, President Biden agreed to meet with Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who told Biden he would only attend the conference if he was guaranteed immunity from criticism on his systematic destruction of the Amazon rainforest, among other policies. We speak with one of the delegation’s members, Domingo Peas, an Achuar leader from Ecuador and territories coordinator for the Amazon Sacred Headwaters Initiative for the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of the Ecuadorian Amazon. “We cannot continue to destroy the forest and expect to survive. So we call on President Bolsonaro, we call on President Lasso, to act on behalf of future generations with courage, with their heart, and to stop expansion of disruptive economies, and to really embrace fully a new path forward that’s for the benefit of all life,” says Peas.

Top leaders from Mexico, Bolivia, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador are all absent from the ninth Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles. Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador announced he would boycott the conference after the U.S. said it would not invite Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua. We speak with historian Alejandro Velasco and Roberto Lovato, award-winning Salvadoran American journalist and author, who calls the conference ​​”a failure of hemispheric proportions and a global embarrassment for the United States and for the Biden administration.” Lovato calls the Biden administration’s condemnation of some countries as anti-democratic hypocritical and says the absence of so many Latin American countries represents a decline in U.S. hegemony.

Progressive San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin was ousted by voters Tuesday in a special recall election, after facing well-funded tough-on-crime attacks by the real estate industry. “He made enemies with very, very deep pockets,” says Lara Bazelon, professor at the University of San Francisco School of Law and chair of Boudin’s Innocence Commission, who describes the primary challenge as a “perfect storm” to take down Boudin. Bazelon also discusses the mayoral race in Los Angeles, where billionaire real estate developer Rick Caruso and Congressmember Karen Bass will head to a runoff in November after placing first and second in Tuesday’s primary. She says the two candidates will be competing for the Latinx voting bloc, which could ultimately determine the outcome of the election.

SF Voters Recall DA Chesa Boudin; L.A. Mayor’s Race Headed for Runoff, “My Mother’s Life Mattered”: Son of Buffalo Victim Pleads with Congress to Take Action, Matthew McConaughey: The Second Amendment Has Been Hijacked by “Deranged Individuals”, Gabby Giffords Speaks at Memorial for Gun Violence Victims at the National Mall, Arizona Police Officers Placed on Leave After Refusing to Help Drowning Man, North Carolina County to Pay Andrew Brown Jr.'s Family $3 Million over Police Killing, Millions at Risk of Starvation If Ukrainian Ports Don't Reopen, Latin American Leaders Boycott Summit of the Americas, State Dept. and Pentagon Failed to Count Civilians Killed by U.S. Weapons in Yemen, FBI Seizes Data from Retired Gen. John Allen in Qatar Lobbying Probe, Lebanon Arrests 64 Attempting to Sail to Europe, Federal Judge Rejects Louisiana’s Racially Gerrymandered Congressional Map, Louisiana Becomes 18th State to Enact Trans Student Athlete Ban, Yellen Warns Inflation Remains High; Fed Chair Aims to “Get Wages Down”, “Memphis 7” Starbucks Store Votes to Unionize

Criminal justice reporter Keri Blakinger speaks with us about her new memoir, out today, called “Corrections in Ink,” which details her path from aspiring professional figure skater to her two years spent in prison after she was arrested in her final semester of her senior year at Cornell University with six ounces of heroin. Blakinger says her relatively short jail sentence was a lucky case, which she attributes to progressive drug reform as well as her racial privilege. Blakinger went on to become an investigative journalist and now works at The Marshall Project, where she is the organization’s first formerly incarcerated reporter.

Police and bikers in Uvalde, Texas, are restricting a growing number of journalists from reporting on the aftermath of the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School that left 19 fourth graders and two teachers dead. “None of us can ever recall being treated in such a manner and our job impeded in such a manner,” says Nora Lopez, executive editor of San Antonio Express-News and president of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists. “Newsgathering is a constitutional right, so at some point this will cross into basically official oppression,” she says. Lopez also says residents are now afraid to speak with the press after one parent of two Robb Elementary students reported police had threatened to arrest her if she spoke with reporters about how she rushed the school to try to save her children.

We speak with Texas Democratic state Senator Roland Gutierrez about how the police botched the response to the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, a small town that is part of Gutierrez’s congressional district. The shooting left 19 fourth graders and two teachers dead after the police waited over an hour before anyone confronted the gunman. Gutierrez says he can “get no answers” from the state’s Department of Public Safety about why the police waited or which officials were present in the school in response to the shooting. He is calling on Texas Governor Greg Abbott to hold a special legislative session to pass comprehensive gun safety measures in response to the massacre.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson survived a vote of no confidence held by members of his own Conservative Party on Monday. The 211-148 vote came just days after Johnson was booed by conservative royalists when he arrived at a service to honor the queen’s 70-year reign. We speak with Priya Gopal, English professor at the University of Cambridge, who says the vote signals a division within the country’s Conservatives and an opening for progressives. “This reflects a mood shift among voters who handed Johnson a huge majority at the last elections,” says Gopal. She also explains how Johnson may be forced to resign if he isn’t able to gain enough parliamentary support to pass legislation.

Ukraine Says Russia Has Killed or Wounded 40,000 Since Invasion, U.N. Official Warns of Rape and Sexual Violence Committed by Russian Forces in Ukraine, Mexico’s AMLO Skips Summit of the Americas After Biden Bans Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua, Caravan of Asylum Seekers Departs Southern Mexico for U.S. Border, U.K.'s Boris Johnson Narrowly Survives No-Confidence Vote by Conservative MPs, GOP's John Cornyn Says Senators Need More Time for Bipartisan Talks on Gun Violence, New York Governor Signs Package of Gun Control Bills, Proud Boys Leader Charged with Seditious Conspiracy over January 6 Capitol Riot, Jessica Cisneros Requests Recount in Texas Primary Runoff Against Rep. Henry Cuellar, Journalist Dom Phillips and Indigenous Expert Bruno Pereira Go Missing in Brazil’s Amazon

We speak with the chair of the California Reparations Task Force, which is the first in the United States and has just released a landmark report calling for “comprehensive reparations” for Black people harmed by a historical system of state-sanctioned oppression. While the state report is unprecedented, reparations are “first and foremost a federal responsibility,” says attorney Kamilah Moore.

The House committee investigating the deadly January 6 attack on the Capitol will hold its first public hearing on Thursday after 10 months of meeting in private. The hearing will be the first of eight and is expected to draw on roughly 1,000 depositions and interviews. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Will Bunch says the success of the hearings will hinge on whether the committee can convince the public that the January 6 attack “wasn’t just a one-off event” but rather “part of an ongoing threat to democracy.” Bunch also speaks about the Pennsylvania Senate race, which he says “is life or death for democracy,” as well as the mass shooting in Philadelphia on Saturday, which left three dead and 11 injured.

Russian missiles struck Ukraine’s capital of Kyiv for the first time in over a month on Sunday. This comes as Russian and Ukrainian forces continue to battle over control of the eastern city of Severodonetsk and Russian President Vladimir Putin is warning Western nations against supplying longer-range missile systems to Ukraine. “The longer this war goes on, the much more difficult it is to end it,” says Katrina vanden Heuvel, editorial director and publisher of The Nation magazine and columnist for The Washington Post. Vanden Heuvel says U.S. corporate media is responsible for what she calls a “one-sided debate” on Ukraine, which is greenlighting unprecedented spending on weapons over the importance of negotiations.

Putin Warns U.S. and NATO Against Sending Long-Range Missiles to Ukraine, Finland and Sweden Join NATO War Games in Baltic Sea, Mike Pence’s Chief of Staff Warned Secret Service of Threat Posed by Donald Trump, U.S. Mass Shootings Over the Weekend Leave 15 Dead and 60 Wounded, Buffalo-Area GOP Rep. Chris Jacobs Faces Backlash over Guns, Won’t Run for Reelection, Sen. Chris Murphy Optimistic About Bipartisan Talks on Gun Violence, “They Could Have Saved Many More Lives”: Uvalde Mother Blasts Police Response, 49 Killed, Hundreds Injured in Bangladesh Chemical Fire, At Least 50 Killed in Southwestern Nigeria as Gunmen Attack Catholic Church, North Korea Tests Missile After U.S. and South Korea Hold Naval War Games, Washington Post: U.S. Support Critical to Saudi Airstrikes in Yemen That Killed Civilians, Biden Excludes Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela from Summit of the Americas, Spanish Court Summons Mike Pompeo over CIA Plot to Kidnap or Kill Julian Assange, Gina Haspel Personally Observed Torture at Secret CIA Black Site, Psychologist Testifies, U.K. Conservatives to Hold Vote of No Confidence in Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Atmospheric CO2 Hits 420 Parts Per Million, 50% Higher Than Pre-Industrial Levels, Wisconsin Judge Found Bound and Murdered in Own Home, Ohio Legislature Bans Transgender Girls from Female-Only School Sports

The Biden administration this week canceled almost $6 billion in student loan debt for borrowers who attended the now-defunct network of for-profit schools known as Corinthian Colleges, which defrauded thousands of students before being shut down in 2015. We speak to two activists from the Debt Collective, a group working to end the student loan crisis, about the ongoing fight for full federal student debt cancellation. Pamela Hunt was a former Corinthian College student who accumulated hundreds of thousands of dollars in student debt and was one of the original 15 students who refused to pay their loans. “It’s a very monumental win,” she says, adding that her crushing debt prevented her from becoming a homeowner and contributed to the stress of her cancer diagnosis. “If student debt is illegitimate, why not cancel all of it?” says Braxton Brewington, press secretary of the Debt Collective.

We speak to San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin, who was elected in 2019 after promising to end cash bail, curb mass incarceration and address police misconduct. He now faces a recall campaign, with opponents blaming rising crime rates on his policies, even though sources like the San Francisco Chronicle report that crime rates have returned to pre-pandemic levels. Boudin says the recall campaign is spearheaded by wealthy donors, the real estate industry and Republicans who desire a conservative DA who will not hold police and other powerful actors accountable. Opponents who attack Boudin’s social justice reform without any of their own proposals “are a scourge to democracy,” says Boudin. “We don’t need to jail our way out of poverty or other social programs.”

As President Biden calls on Congress to enact new gun control measures, we go to Buffalo to speak with Cariol Horne, a racial justice advocate and former Buffalo police officer. She says the nation must address white supremacy, as well as gun control, following last month’s massacre in Buffalo, when a white supremacist attacked a grocery story, fatally shooting 10 people, all of whom were Black. “He victimized everyone in that community, even the people who arrived on the scene after it happened and watched the carnage that he left behind,” says Horne. “This is racist terrorism. We have to call it what it is.” Horne also talks about how she was fired from the Buffalo police force for stopping a white officer from choking a Black man who was handcuffed.

In Primetime Address, Biden Asks Congress to Pass Gun Control Laws, Three Killed and Two Wounded in Mass Shootings in Iowa and Wisconsin, House Committee Advances Package of Gun Controls, Ohio GOP Approves Bill to Arm Educators After One Day of Gun Training, Zelensky Says Russia Controls One-Fifth of Ukrainian Territory, Biden to Visit Saudi Arabia, Will Ask Mohammed bin Salman to Pump More Oil, Yemen’s Houthis Extend Ceasefire with Saudi-Led Coalition, Israel Kills Four Palestinians in 48 Hours, Including 17-Year-Old Odeh Sadaka, Funerals Held for Haitians Who Died in Mexico While Waiting for U.S. to Hear Asylum Claims, House Select Committee to Hold Primetime Public Hearing on Jan. 6 Insurrection, Journalist Ricardo Ávila, Who Covered Social Movements, Murdered in Honduras, “Massive Human Rights Violations”: Amnesty Says 18 Killed in Crackdown on El Salvador Gangs, Activist Sultana Khaya Arrives in Spain After 500+ Days of House Arrest in Western Sahara

In a devastating new report, Oxfam says one person is likely dying from hunger every 48 seconds in drought-ravaged Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia. We speak with Shannon Scribner, director of humanitarian work at Oxfam America, about how the hunger crisis has worsened since an earlier report was released 10 years ago. She says climate change and the recent war in Ukraine have worsened already dire conditions in East Africa. Researchers have been warning for years that drought and famine would be on the horizon, says Scribner. “We really need a system that is more responsive to those early warnings.”

As U.S. lawmakers struggle to reach a consensus on legislation to curb gun violence in the wake of mass shootings, the U.S. also remains the largest international supplier of arms, funneling billions in military weaponry into wars in Ukraine and Yemen. Until there is a serious curtailment of U.S. militarism, it will continue to prioritize U.S. lives over lives abroad, says Norman Solomon, national director of RootsAction and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy, whose new piece is headlined, “How About Some Gun Control at the Pentagon?” International arms control advocate Rebecca Peters describes U.S. efforts to block weapons control efforts at the United Nations and adds that New Zealand’s swift action on gun control following the Christchurch mosque killings in 2019 should give the U.S. impetus to do the same.

Friday marks the 100th day of the Russian war in Ukraine, and the United States warns the war could continue for many more months. We speak with Anatol Lieven, senior fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. His latest piece for The Atlantic argues that the U.S. is right to support Ukraine in its fight against Russia; however, without a clear strategy for peace and ending the war, the U.S. is at risk of repeating the mistakes made during the Cold War, when “containment of the Soviet Union in Europe was turned into a global crusade against communism.”

Five Dead in Mass Shooting in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Buffalo Grocery Shooting Suspect Indicted for Domestic Terrorism and Murder, Uvalde Incident Commander Ordered Border Patrol Not to Enter Classroom During Massacre, Gov. Abbott Refuses to Convene Legislative Session on Gun Violence, McConnell Won’t Cite Guns as Key Source of Uvalde Massacre, Russia Captures Most of Severodonetsk, Last Major City Held by Ukraine in Luhansk, U.S. to Send Another $700 Million in Military Aid to Ukraine, Ghufran Harun Warasneh Is Second Palestinian Journalist Killed by Israeli Forces in 2022, House Democrats Urge Blinken to Halt Expulsion of Palestinians, WHO Warns of Undetected Monkeypox Spread as Confirmed Cases Top 550, U.S. Coronavirus Czar Warns of Unnecessary Deaths Without New COVID Funding, Biden Says He Was Unaware of Baby Formula Crisis Until April, Justice Department Criminal Probe into Fake 2020 Electors Focuses on Trump’s Lawyers, GOP Operative Outlines Plan to Block Vote Counts at Democratic-Majority Precincts, Biden Administration Cancels $5.8 Billion in Corinthian Colleges Student Loan Debt, Florida Abortion Providers File Suit to Block 15-Week Ban, Jury Awards Millions to Johnny Depp for Defamation After Ex-Wife Amber Heard Describes Abuse, Protests Erupt After Video Shows Brazilian Police Gassing Man to Death

Civil rights groups are challenging a series of racist U.S. Supreme Court rulings that have been used for over a century to legally justify discrimination against people in Puerto Rico and other U.S.-occupied territories. The rulings are known as the Insular Cases and have allowed the federal government to deny Puerto Ricans living on the island voting rights, access to public social programs like Medicaid and food stamps, and other equal protections guaranteed to those residing on the mainland. The renewed effort to overturn the Insular Cases comes after the Supreme Court sided with the Biden administration to continue denying Supplemental Security Income benefits to seniors and people with disabilities living in Puerto Rico. We speak with Lía Fiol-Matta, senior counsel for LatinoJustice PRLDEF, which is helping to lead the new campaign, and with Democracy Now! co-host Juan González, who has long reported on this issue. “The Insular Cases established a doctrine that has no constitutional basis,” says Fiol-Matta.

Calls are growing for the Pentagon to acknowledge that a U.S. drone strike on March 29, 2018, in Yemen mistakenly struck civilians. Adel Al Manthari was the only survivor of the drone strike, which killed his four cousins as they were driving a car across the village of Al Uqla. The Pentagon refuses to admit the men were civilians and it made a mistake. Now supporters are demanding the U.S. pay for the devastating injuries Al Manthari sustained and fund the surgery he urgently needs. “He’s effectively fighting for his quality of life and his dignity and to survive,” says Aisha Dennis, project manager on extrajudicial executions for the rights group Reprieve. “It’s a scandal that the Pentagon can completely dodge responsibility,” says Kathy Kelly, peace activist and a coordinator of the Ban Killer Drones campaign, which is fundraising for Al Manthari’s medical care.

In the aftermath of the mass shootings in Uvalde and Buffalo, demand for gun control at the state and federal level is mounting. We speak with Frank Smyth, longtime investigative journalist who has been covering the National Rifle Association, about the gun lobby’s grip on U.S. lawmakers. He says the Democratic strategy to “find common ground” with conservatives is failing, as the growing gun rights movement refuses to do the same, and discusses how the NRA’s history of hypocrisy and corruption has weakened the formal, centralized power of the group. “The NRA is imploding … but the ideology that they have cooked at the same time they are waning is stronger than ever,” says Smyth.

Uvalde School Police Chief Refuses to Cooperate with State Investigation, Sworn In as City Councilmember, Uvalde Shooting: 911 Dispatch Audio Reveals Police Were Alerted to Children’s Calls for Help, U.S. to Send Longer-Range Rockets to Ukraine, Russia Cuts Off Some Natural Gas Supplies to Europe, Senegalese President Criticizes Russia Sanctions for Worsening Food Crisis, U.N. Warns of “Exponential Rise” in Civilian Killings, Abuses in Mali, Rebel Group Kills 27 in Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sri Lanka Battles Food, Fuel and Medical Supply Shortages as Economic Crisis Worsens, Justice Dept. Subpoenas Former Trump Adviser Peter Navarro, Missouri Investigates Kansas City Police Shooting of Pregnant Black Woman Leonna Hale, Minneapolis to Pay $600K to Photojournalist Who Was Shot in Eye by Police, Jury Acquits Ex-Clinton Lawyer for Lying to FBI in Trump-Russia Probe, 11 Die, 20 Missing in Rare May Hurricane in Mexico, HHS Launches Office of Environmental Justice, WHO Warns Tobacco Is Poisoning the Planet

Colombia’s highly anticipated presidential elections on Sunday resulted in victory for two anti-establishment candidates: leftist Gustavo Petro and Trump-like right-wing millionaire Rodolfo Hernández. The two will face off in a runoff election on June 19, the outcome of which will determine whether Colombia addresses worsening inequality under Petro or ushers in a new era of populist conservatism under Hernández. Both options seem to answer to previous years’ mass uprisings in the country that protested the corruption within the state leadership. “What is going on in Colombia is a popular uprising now being expressed through the electoral process against the status quo,” says Colombian activist Manuel Rozental. “People want to vote against the establishment because there are very few and very small avenues to act politically otherwise.”

The incompetence of the local police response to the mass shooting at Robb Elementary has drawn attention to the inadequacy of police for stopping gun violence. We speak with Brandon Wolf, a survivor of the 2016 massacre at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, where police took three hours to respond after an emergency call, and 13 people may have bled to death during that time. “We have to be honest about stopping gun violence before it erupts in the halls of our school, instead of waiting to assess whether or not police officers responded in the right way once it’s over,” says Wolf, who is now a gun control and LGBTQ rights advocate.

Democratic Texas state Senator Roland Gutierrez, who represents the town of Uvalde, has been meeting with family members of victims from last week’s mass shooting and interrupted a press conference by Republican Governor Greg Abbott last week to demand a special session of the state Legislature to address gun violence. “The failure begins with Greg Abbott, who’s undergone seven or eight mass shootings in his tenure, and he’s done nothing but give greater access to militarized weapons,” says Gutierrez. “We have to take militarized weapons off the street, and if we’re not going to do that, maybe that’s a federal issue.”

Uvalde Police Waited Over an Hour to Confront Shooter as Students Begged for Help, Texas State Senator Confronts Gov. Greg Abbott: “We Have to Do Something”, Canada to Freeze Purchases and Transfers of Handguns, Thousands Protest Outside NRA Convention as Trump Calls for More Guns in Schools, French Journalist Among the Dead as Russian Forces Press into Severodonetsk, EU Pledges to Gradually Ban Most Russian Oil Imports, with Hungary Exempted, Iran Seizes Greek Oil Tankers After Greece Confiscates Iranian Oil, Flooding and Landslides Kill at Least 91 in Brazil, Agatha Hits Mexico as Eastern Pacific’s Strongest-Ever May Hurricane, “Earth Is Already Too Hot and Unsafe”: Vanuatu Declares Climate Emergency, Colombia’s Gustavo Petro to Face Rodolfo Hernández in Presidential Runoff, China Eases COVID Restrictions in Shanghai and Beijing, 20-Year-Old Emanuel Sullivan Becomes 22nd Rikers Island Prisoner to Die Since 2021, Starbucks Labor Organizers Win 100th Unionized Store

Alabama has become the first U.S. state to make it a felony to provide gender-affirming medical care to trans youth. The Alabama law is the latest in a series of escalating conservative attacks on LGBTQ people in the United States. “This is all happening in the same context that we’re seeing the criminalization of abortion care, that we’re continuing to see the massive suppression of votes across the country,” says ACLU attorney Chase Strangio, deputy director for trans justice with the organization’s LGBTQ & HIV Project. “All of these things are interconnected and creating chaos and fear among individuals, families and communities.”

During a recent meeting of the House Judiciary Committee, Democratic Congressmember Lucy McBath of Georgia shared her personal story about accessing reproductive care after experiencing a stillbirth. In doing so, she pointed out how anti-abortion politicians and legislators fail to see the medical necessity of abortion in instances such as hers. “We can be the nation that rolls back the clock, that rolls back the rights of women, and that strips them of their very liberty, or we can be the nation of choice, the nation where every woman can make her own choice,” says McBath.