Democracy Now!

As the U.S. continues to deal with the fallout from the devastating opioid epidemic that has killed over 500,000 people in the country since 1999, we speak with Academy Award-winning filmmaker Alex Gibney, whose latest documentary, "The Crime of the Century," looks at the pharmaceutical industry's methods in promoting and selling the powerful drugs. "I realized that the big problem here was that we had been seeing it as a crisis, like a natural disaster, like a flood or a hurricane, rather than as a series of crimes," says Gibney. "You had these terrible incentives, where the incentive is not to cure the patient. The incentive is to just make as much money as possible." The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says U.S. drug overdose deaths skyrocketed to a record 93,000 last year — a nearly 30% increase. It is the largest one-year increase ever recorded, with overdoses rising in 48 of 50 states.

COVID Cases on the Rise Among Olympic Athletes Days Ahead of Tokyo Opening Ceremony, Boris Johnson Self-Isolates as U.K. Reopens; Mass Protests in France over COVID Measures, Delta Variant Spreads Across Africa, Latin America, Where Vaccines Are Sorely Lacking, Young Children at Risk as U.S. Cases Surge in Areas with Low Vaccination Rates, DOJ Set to Challenge U.S. Judge Ruling Declaring DACA Unlawful, Israeli Spyware Company's Software Targeted Phones of Journalists and Politicians Around the World, Death Toll in Western Europe Flash Floods Nears 200; 70 Major Wildfires Rage in Western U.S., Colombian Police Say Former Haitian Gov't Official Ordered Assassination of Jovenel Moïse, Israeli Forces Violently Evict Palestinian Worshipers from Al-Aqsa Mosque, Egyptian Rights Activist Esraa Abdel Fattah Freed from Prison, Abdul Latif Nasser Released from Guantánamo Bay After 19 Years Without Charge, Thousands of Families Displaced Amid Heightened Violence in Afghanistan, Award-Winning Photojournalist Danish Siddiqui Killed While Covering Afghan Conflict, Shooting Disrupts MLB Game in Washington, D.C., in Another Weekend of Gun Violence Across U.S., Illinois Bans Police from Lying to Minors During Interrogations, Rosebud Sioux Bury Remains of Indigenous Children Who Died in U.S. Gov't Schools, Workers at Kansas Frito-Lay Factory Strike Against Horrific Conditions, Civil Rights Pioneer Gloria Richardson, Who Fought for Desegregation, Economic Justice, Dies at 99

We look at the corporate profiteering off people who lost their homes and loved ones to recent fires in California, where wildfires continue to rage amid record temperatures. A major investigation by KQED and NPR's California Newsroom found a special trust set up to distribute $13.5 billion to survivors of wildfires caused by PG&E — the state's largest utility company — instead spent lavishly on its own administration while distributing almost nothing to the 70,000 fire victims, many of whom still live in trailers. Those who profited while the fire victims waited for help included Wall Street bankers and prestigious law firms. The investigation has prompted a bipartisan call from state lawmakers for the state attorney general to investigate. "A lot of fire survivors are looking at this situation and wondering: Why is this taking so long?" says Lily Jamali, a co-host for KQED's The California Report and the reporter behind the exposé. "They're getting really impatient, and they're very unhappy with the way this process has been run so far."

We speak with leading climate scientist Michael Mann about the catastrophic impact of the climate crisis around the world. He says he and other scientists predicted the extreme weather events now wreaking havoc. "We said that if we don't stop burning fossil fuels and elevating the levels of carbon pollution in the atmosphere and we continue to warm up the planet, we will see unprecedented heat waves and wildfires and floods and droughts and superstorms," says Mann. His new book is titled 
"The New Climate War: The Fight to Take Back Our Planet."

As a special congressional committee investigating the January 6 insurrection prepares to hold its first hearings later this month, we speak with author Michael Wolff, whose new book, "Landslide," provides fresh details about former President Donald Trump's efforts to undermine the 2020 election, how he spurred his supporters to attack the U.S. Capitol and why he still holds the reins in the party. "There's no question Donald Trump runs the Republican Party," Wolff says. "We have two realities here: the reality of Donald Trump in charge, and the other reality which is that everybody knows that there's something wrong with Donald Trump."

COVID-19 Cases Rise in Nearly Every U.S. State as Delta Variant Becomes Dominant, Surgeon General Calls on Social Media Giants to Stop Spread of Anti-Vaccine Misinformation, Coronavirus Infections Continue Exponential Rise in Southeast Asia and Africa, German Chancellor Confronted over Blocking Patent Waiver for COVID-19 Vaccines, WHO Warns 23 Million Children Missed Vaccinations in 2020 Due to Pandemic, 110 Dead, 1,300 Missing as Once-in-a-Century Flooding Hits Germany and Belgium, Smoke Blankets Much of North America as Western Wildfires Grow in Size, Research Shows Parts of Amazon Rainforest Now Emit More Greenhouse Gas Than They Absorb, U.S. Military Trained Colombian Soldiers Arrested for Assassinating Haitian President, Biden Brands Cuba a "Failed State" Without Acknowledging Role of U.S. Blockade in Crisis, South Africa Sends 25,000 Troops into Street After Days of Protests and Unrest, Dutch Crime Reporter Peter R. de Vries Dies One Week After He Was Shot on the Street, IRS Begins Child Tax Credit Rollout to 60 Million Families, Biden's ICE Nominee Says He Would Let Local Law Enforcement Continue to Collaborate with Agency, FBI Failed to Intervene in Abuse Claims Against Larry Nassar, Leading to 100+ More Sex Crimes, Capitol Police Arrest Black Caucus Chair Joyce Beatty and Others as They March to Defend Democracy

The COVID-19 pandemic has fueled a sharp increase in the number of people going hungry worldwide, along with conflict and the impacts of climate change. A new report on the state of food security and nutrition in the world found about one-tenth of the global population were undernourished last year, more than 2.5 billion people did not have access to sufficiently nutritious food, and one in five children now face stunted growth. Saskia de Pee, the World Food Programme's head of systems analysis for nutrition, describes how the impact is "going to be long-term."

We go to South Africa, where more than 70 are dead and at least 3,000 people have been arrested since demonstrations erupted after former President Jacob Zuma began his 15-month jail sentence for refusing to testify in a corruption probe. Protesters also expressed frustration with entrenched poverty and inequity as South Africa battles a devastating wave of COVID-19. "This was really a perfect storm that has built up," says Sithembile Mbete, a senior lecturer in political sciences at the University of Pretoria in Johannesburg. "The protests and the unrest has stopped being about former President Zuma and has become more about the socioeconomic conditions that people find themselves in and the problems of hunger."

As the United States continues to withdraw its forces from Afghanistan after 20 years of war and occupation, the Taliban say they now control most Afghan territory, surrounding major population centers and holding more than two-thirds of Afghanistan's border with Tajikistan. Former President George W. Bush made a rare criticism of U.S. policy, saying, "I'm afraid Afghan women and girls are going to suffer unspeakable harm." But a leading Afghan women's rights activist says the plight of women in the country has always served as a "very good excuse" for U.S. military goals, while conditions in the country have barely improved. "Unfortunately, they pushed us from the frying pan into the fire as they replaced the barbaric regime of the Taliban with the misogynist warlords," says Malalai Joya, who in 2005 became the youngest person ever elected to the Afghan Parliament. She says the decades of U.S. occupation have accomplished little for the people of Afghanistan. "No nation can donate liberation to another nation," she says.

1 Million Acres Burn in Western U.S. and Canada as Another Heat Wave Builds, Russia Deploys Military to Battle Siberian Wildfires Amid Record Heat, Global COVID-19 Cases Rise Again, Fueled by Surges in Southeast Asia and Africa, Anti-Vaccination Protesters March in France and Greece, U.S. Drug Overdose Deaths Rose by 30% in 2020 to Record High, Biden Selects Dr. Rahul Gupta, Who Oversaw West Virginia Response to Opioid Crisis, as "Drug Czar", Sen. Schumer Unveils Proposal to Decriminalize Marijuana at the Federal Level, Haitian Police Arrest More Suspects in Assassination of President Jovenel Moïse, Cuba Lifts Restrictions on Essential Goods Brought in by Travelers, Taliban Captures Key Border Crossing with Pakistan, Indigenous Children's Remains Returned to Families Amid Reckoning over Genocidal U.S. Gov't Schools, General Mark Milley Says Trump's Election Fraud Claims Felt Like "Reichstag Moment", Johnson & Johnson Recalls Sunscreens Containing Carcinogen, Family of Andrew Brown, Who Was Gunned Down by Police, Files Civil Rights Lawsuit, Jamaica Seeks Reparations for Slavery from Britain

After months of decline in COVID-19 cases in the United States due in part to widely available vaccines, the number of new cases per day is on the rise again. Pfizer representatives met with U.S. regulators and vaccine experts to seek emergency use authorization for a second booster dose of its vaccine, as health experts are continuing to highlight the growing gap in administered vaccinations between rich and low-income countries. "In the United States, we have access to multiple vaccines," says Dr. Abraar Karan, an internal medicine doctor and infectious disease fellow at Stanford University School of Medicine. "Many countries have not seen any vaccine at all." He also says it's too early to say whether a third vaccine dose is necessary, as Pfizer has insisted. "I hope the science is what guides this, not the financial aspects," he says.

We speak with two of the Texas Democratic lawmakers who fled to Washington, D.C., to block suppressive new voting laws in their home state and who are calling on Congress to quickly pass legislation protecting voting rights. Texas Republican Governor Greg Abbott threatened them with arrest the moment they return to their state and said he would keep them "in chamber" in order to pass the new voting bills, but the fugitive lawmakers say they intend to stay in Washington for as long as necessary. "We're staying out," says Jasmine Crockett, a Democrat representing Dallas in the Texas House. "We're not going to be bullied and intimidated by anybody, including the governor or our colleagues," adds Trey Martinez Fischer, who represents San Antonio. "We have a job to be the voice of our constituents."

We go to Havana, Cuba, to look at what is behind protests that brought thousands of people into the streets of Havana and other cities in rare anti-government protests denouncing the island's economic crisis during the COVID-19 pandemic. Cuba is facing its harshest phase of the pandemic with skyrocketing infections, and people are scrambling to cope amid shortages of medicine, food and other resources due to catastrophic U.S. sanctions. Thousands of others in Cuba led counterprotests in support of the Cuban Revolution and President Miguel Díaz-Canel. Cuban journalist Daniel Montero, a journalist with the independent news organization Belly of the Beast, says many people were demanding an end to communism on the island, but the protests were not entirely driven by ideology. "We just want more food. We just want medicine. We just want the basics," he says many protesters told him in interviews.

Biden Condemns Republican "Election Subversion" But Does Not Call for End to Filibuster, U.S. Starts Vaccinating ICE Prisoners; Calls Mount for Germany to Support Vaccine IP Waivers, More Suspects Sought in Moïse Assassination as Groups Call on U.S. to Welcome Haitian Asylum Seekers, 72 Killed Amid Growing Unrest in South Africa, Mourners Gather in Ramallah for Funeral of Human Rights Activist Suha Jarrar, U.N. Rapporteur Says Israeli Settlements Constitute War Crimes, Calls for International Action, More Unmarked Graves Found at Another Canadian School for First Nations Children, Reproductive Rights Groups Sue Texas over 6-Week Abortion Ban, Fracking Companies Pumped Toxic PFAS into the Ground After Obama's EPA Approved Its Use, Jailed Immigrants File Complaint over Abuse and Neglect at Bergen County ICE Facility, Senate Dems Reach $3.5 Trillion Budget Plan That Could Forgo GOP Support, Care Workers Demand Proper Compensation and Benefits in Infrastructure Legislation, Sunrise Mvt Activists Camp Out at Sen. Dianne Feinstein's Offices to Demand Climate Action

The award-winning documentary "Fly So Far" looks at the criminalization of abortion in El Salvador through the incredible story of Teodora Vásquez, a woman who in 2008 was sentenced to 30 years in prison after she had a stillbirth at nine months pregnant. Vásquez was released in 2018 after more than a decade behind bars. El Salvador has enforced a total ban on abortions since 1998, and dozens of people have been convicted and imprisoned after having miscarriages, stillbirths and other obstetric emergencies in the Central American country. The film highlights the stories of women convicted of aggravated homicide for having a miscarriage or an obstetric emergency, as well as the ongoing resistance of women and the LGBTQ+ community in El Salvador. Filmmaker Celina Escher, director of "Fly So Far," says women and girls in El Salvador face high rates of violence, rape and femicide, as well as hostility from the right-wing government. "Women have to live this violence every day," she says.

The Supreme Court is set to review a Mississippi law banning abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy that intends to challenge Roe v. Wade, raising concern for advocates about how reproductive rights can be preserved without the landmark ruling. "I think it's very, very likely that the court will either eradicate the right to choose abortion as we now know it completely or so undermine it to make it meaningless for most of American women," says Kathryn Kolbert, longtime public interest attorney who argued the case of Planned Parenthood v. Casey before the Supreme Court in 1992, which is credited with saving Roe v. Wade. She lays out her argument in a new book published today, "Controlling Women: What We Must Do Now to Save Reproductive Freedom." We also speak with co-author Julie Kay, a human rights attorney who argued for a human rights framework for abortion rights in Ireland before the European Court of Human Rights. "We're not just talking about privacy or even equality," Kay says of the fight for abortion access in the United States and beyond. "We're really looking at liberty, dignity and the ability to have full participation in all aspects of life."

We speak with one of the Texas Democrats who has fled the state to block the Republican-dominated Legislature from passing new voter restrictions in the battleground state, which already has some of the toughest voting rules in the country. Without the Democratic lawmakers, the Texas House won't have enough members present to reach a quorum. "Republicans have simply turned a deaf ear and a blind eye to the needs of the citizens of Texas," says Texas state Representative Jarvis Johnson. "We realized at that point there was no more negotiation that could be done, and we took the last tool in our toolbox." We also speak with Gilberto Hinojosa, chair of the Texas Democratic Party, who says the Texas legislation's aim is to "suppress the Hispanic, Mexican American and the African American vote."

Texas House Democrats Flee State to Stop GOP-Backed Voter Suppression Bills, Dozens Killed, 100+ Injured as Fire Tears Through COVID Ward in Iraq, Conflict, Climate Crisis and COVID-19 Cause Sixfold Rise in People Suffering Famine , WHO Blasts Calls for Extra Booster Shots While Billions Lack Vaccine Access, FDA Warns of Very Rare Guillain-Barré Cases Tied to Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 Vaccine, Suspects in Assassination of Haitian President Had Ties to U.S. Law Enforcement, Cuban President Calls for End to Blockade as Biden Voices Support for Cuban Protesters, 32 Killed Across South Africa in Protests That Erupted After Jailing of Former President , Press Freedom Groups Demand Release of Jailed Moroccan Journalist Soulaimane Raissouni, Protests Erupt in Tbilisi, Georgia, over Killing of Journalist by Homophobic Mob, Guatemalan Protesters Demand Resignation of President over Mishandling of Pandemic, Federal Judge Blasts "Fantastical" Claims of Voter Fraud by Pro-Trump Attorneys, 2,500 Chicago-Area Workers Win Tentative Contract, Ending 18-Day Strike

As the COVID-19 pandemic drags on, less than 0.1% of vaccine doses have been administered in low-income countries, according to data available at the end of March, with more than 86% of shots being administered in high- and upper-middle-income countries. "We are not protecting ourselves from the virus, and we frankly are setting up the virus and COVID for being around for generations," says New York Congressmember Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. She calls on the United States to use tools like the Defense Production Act to mobilize mass production of vaccines to export for free around the world.

As lawmakers return to Washington, D.C., following a two-week recess, we speak with Democratic Congressmember Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez about efforts to pass major infrastructure funding that could address child care, climate change, education and poverty. President Joe Biden has already struck a $1 trillion infrastructure agreement with a centrist group of lawmakers concentrated on roads, bridges and highways, but a fight is brewing over a larger package that Democrats want to pass in the Senate using the budget reconciliation process, which can pass with just 50 votes and avoid a filibuster. "The Progressive Caucus is rather united in the fact that we will not support bipartisan legislation without a reconciliation bill, and one that takes bold and large action on climate, drawing down carbon emissions, but also job creation and increasing equity and resilience for impacted communities, particularly frontline communities," says Ocasio-Cortez, who represents New York's 14th Congressional District. "That's where we've drawn a strong line."

The winner of the New York City Democratic primary election for mayor, Eric Adams, focused on what he called his more conservative plans to address an increase in gun violence, and is set to meet with President Biden today at the White House. "The way that we counter these increases in incidents [of crime] is through economic opportunity and community investment in communities where these surges are happening," responds New York Democratic Congressmember Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. "The message should not be that we should continue to overpolice and oversurveil people in order to create reductions in crime and increase public safety."

After the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse at his home in Port-au-Prince, Haiti's interim government says it has asked the United Nations and the United States to send troops to help secure key infrastructure. The U.S. has so far declined, but has sent an inter-agency team from the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI. Democratic Congressmember Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says the situation in Haiti is "extraordinarily delicate and extremely fragile," and that the U.S. should not send troops to the country. "Our role should be in supporting a peaceful transition and democratic process for selecting a new leader," she says.

Political turmoil continues in Haiti following the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse, with multiple people claiming leadership of the country and gangs unleashing a new wave of violence in the streets. Haitian police say they have arrested a key figure in the assassination, 63-year-old Christian Emmanuel Sanon, a Haitian-born doctor based in Florida who arrived in Haiti in June with "political objectives." Sanon is one of three Haitian Americans now arrested in the attack, along with 18 Colombians. Five Colombians are still at large, and three were reportedly killed. The United States, meanwhile, has sent Homeland Security and FBI officials to Haiti to aid in the investigation but has so far declined a request to send military forces to the country. "We are in an extraconstitutional situation," says Magali Comeau Denis, a former Haitian minister of culture and communication who acts as coordinator for the Commission to Find a Haitian Solution, a civil society group to resolve the ongoing political crisis. She says none of the people claiming authority in the country right now has any legitimacy, and that political actors and civil society groups need to come together to create a broad consensus on how to move forward. "There is no other legal answer to that situation of exception."

Police Arrest Man Who Planned to Assume Haitian Presidency as More U.S. Ties Emerge, COVID Cases on the Rise in 42 U.S. States; CDC Urges Schools to Reopen in Fall, Thousands Take to Streets of Cuba to Protest Economic Crisis, Pandemic, Top U.S. Military General Leaves Post in Afghanistan as Withdrawal Nears End, Ethiopian Elections Deliver Win for Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, Racist Trolls Attack England Soccer Team's Black Players After Loss to Italy in Euro 2020, G20 Members Back 15% Global Minimum Tax; Critics Say Greater Change Is Needed, Biden Signs Order to Combat Monopolies, Low Wages, Biden Fires Trump-Era Social Security Head with Anti-Union, Anti-Benefits Agenda, ACLU Says Trump Admin Began Family Separations in 2017, Months Before "Zero Tolerance" Policy, 62-Year-Old Hervis Earl Rogers Faces 40 Years in Prison for "Illegal Voting" in Texas, Charlottesville, Virginia, Removes Racist Statues After Protracted Legal Battle, Surfside Condo Collapse Death Toll Rises to 90, Branson Beats Bezos in Billionaire Space Race, California on Pace for Worst-Ever Wildfire Season as 300,000 Acres Burn in Western U.S., Records Fall in Las Vegas and Palm Springs as Western U.S. Suffers Latest Heat Wave

Lebanon is days away from a "social explosion," according to the country's prime minister, amid what the World Bank has described as one of the worst economic depressions in modern history. The country's currency has lost more than 90% of its value, unemployment has skyrocketed, and fuel prices have soared. Most homes and businesses, and even hospitals, only have power for a few hours each day, and pharmacies are running low on medicine. The U.N. has warned over three-quarters of households in Lebanon do not have enough food or money to buy food. Lebanon is also facing a massive political crisis following the devastating explosion at the Port of Beirut last August, which killed over 200 people, injured 7,000 and left more than a quarter-million Beirut residents unhoused. Nisreen Salti, an economics professor at the American University of Beirut, says "the entire system crumbled" in Lebanon due to decades of structural inequality. "The business and political class that benefited from the system was able to plunder the economy for 20-odd years," Salti says. We also speak with Middle East scholar Ziad Abu-Rish of Bard College. He says the economic crisis and the port explosion, for which there have been no major prosecutions, both reveal the impunity with which the country's elites operate. "Part of the problem is the total lack of accountability," Abu-Rish says.

The government of the southern African nation of Eswatini, which was known as Swaziland up until 2018, is brutally cracking down on the largest anti-government protests in the country since it became independent from Britain 53 years ago. Eswatini, bordered by Mozambique and South Africa, is currently facing an economic crisis with a shortage of gas, food and other resources. More than half of Eswatini's citizens live in poverty, while King Mswati III is known for his lavish lifestyle, including owning expensive cars. Amnesty International reports at least 20 protesters have been killed by state security forces, and dozens of others tortured, detained or abducted. We speak with a women's rights activist in Manzini, Eswatini, who asked for her face and voice to be obscured due to safety concerns. She says the situation is especially dire for women. "Their situation is very bad," the activist says. "We've been facing the scourge of gender-based violence, but this situation will exacerbate."

As President Joe Biden met with civil rights groups this week to discuss how to fight voter suppression efforts, Texas lawmakers followed other battleground states controlled by Republicans with a new push to overhaul the state's election laws. New restrictions would include a ban on drive-thru voting and 24-hour or late-night voting options, and election officials could be penalized for sending out unsolicited absentee applications. The measures would also impose stringent signature-matching requirements and increase the power of partisan poll observers, which can result in intimidation. "This would make it the worst voter suppression bill in the country," says Cliff Albright, co-founder and executive director of Black Voters Matter, who urges Democrats across the United States to take part in walkouts and other maneuvers to impede voter suppression bills. "What we need right now, along with civil disobedience on the streets, is legislative disobedience," Albright says.

"I Will Not Send Another Generation of Americans to War": Biden Steps Up Afghanistan Pullout, Haiti Arrests Colombian Ex-Soldiers and Two U.S. Citizens for Assassination of President Moïse, Africa Suffers Worst Week Since Start of COVID-19 Pandemic , White House Coronavirus Task Force Warns of Surging Cases in Low-Vaccination Areas , Pfizer Tweaking Vaccine to Target Delta Coronavirus Variant, Will Seek Authorization for Third Shot, Texas GOP Unveils Sweeping Voter Suppression Measures in Special Legislative Session, 15 States Drop Case Against Purdue Pharma's Bankruptcy Plan in Landmark Opioids Case, White House Vows to Step Up Pressure on Russia After Cyberattacks, Dozens Killed in Factory Fire in Bangladesh, 3 Suspects Arrested in Homophobic Killing That Spurred Massive Protests in Spain, European Lawmakers Suspend Hungary's Funding over Its Attacks on LGBTQ Rights, Israel Continues Demolition of Palestinian Homes in Occupied West Bank, El Salvador Expels Mexican Journalist Daniel Lizárraga Amid Crackdown on Dissent, Pacific Northwest Heat Wave "Impossible Without Human-Caused Climate Change", Gov. Newsom Asks Californians to Reduce Water Use Amid Record Heat and Drought, 14-Year-Old Zaila Avant-garde Is the First African American Scripps Spelling Bee Champion

We look at growing opposition to the Palestinian Authority after the killing of a prominent activist, Nizar Banat, a vocal critic of the ruling body who died in PA custody after security forces violently arrested him at his home. Banat's killing has sparked protests calling for President Mahmoud Abbas to step down. "The Palestinian Authority now is acting like a police state without the state," says Palestinian writer Mariam Barghouti. "The Palestinian Authority has often collaborated with Israel at the expense of Palestinians."

Taliban fighters are escalating their offensive across much of Afghanistan, attacking major cities and seizing more territory as the U.S. military withdrawal from the country nears completion after nearly 20 years of war. The Taliban now reportedly control a third of all 421 districts and district centers in Afghanistan. Taliban representatives met with the Afghan government in Iran for high-level peace talks and said in a joint statement that "war is not the solution" to the country's problems. We go to Kabul to speak with reporter Ali Latifi, who says Afghan security forces are arming local groups across the country to oppose the Taliban. "They're really putting a lot of weight behind these uprising movements," says Latifi. "It's really a big gamble at this moment." We also speak with Sima Samar, longtime Afghan women's and human rights defender who previously served as the country's minister of women's affairs, who says the U.S. should have waited until a firm ceasefire was in place between warring factions before removing troops. "The withdrawal was not in the right time," she says. "Afghanistan should not be abandoned."

The interim prime minister of Haiti has declared a state of siege and imposed martial law following the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse, who died in an armed attack on his home. The first lady of Haiti was injured in the attack and airlifted to a hospital in Miami, where she is reportedly in stable but critical condition. Haitian authorities say police have killed four suspects and detained two others, but the individuals have not been identified. No evidence linking them to the assassination has been made public. It is unclear who is now in charge of Haiti, which was already facing a political, security and economic crisis prior to the assassination of the president. Haitians are "in mourning," whether they supported Moïse or not, says Guerline Jozef, co-founder and executive director of Haitian Bridge Alliance. "Today the streets of Haiti are empty because people are trying to make sense of what just happened." She calls on the Biden administration to stop deporting Haitians and to allow more people who fled to the U.S. to apply for temporary protected status.

Haiti Declares "State of Siege" After Assassination of President Jovenel Moïse, Japan Declares Virus Emergency Through Tokyo Olympics as Global COVID-19 Deaths Pass 4 Million, North America Recorded Hottest June on Record Amid Worsening Climate Crisis, Line 3 Pipeline Foes Say Enbridge Spilled Drilling Chemicals in Minnesota River, U.S. Soldiers and Diplomats Come Under Fire in Iraq and Syria, Human Rights Commission Calls for Demilitarization of Colombia's Police, Unhoused Atlanta Residents Form Union, Occupy City Hall Pressing Demands , Dozens of States Sue Google for Creating App Store Monopoly , Trump Sues Big Tech CEOs; D.C. Court Suspends Giuliani's Law License, Surfside Search-and-Rescue Mission Ends with Dozens Still Missing, Darnella Frazier's Uncle Killed by Officer Pursuing Suspect in High-Speed Chase , NY Governor Declares Gun Violence Emergency, U.S. Says Assange Would Be Kept Out of Supermax Prison as U.K. Court Reopens Door to Extradition

After months of controversy, acclaimed journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones has announced that she will join the faculty at Howard University, one of the country's most prestigious historically Black universities, instead of joining the faculty at her alma mater, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she went to graduate school. The decision by Hannah-Jones comes after her tenure was initially denied by the UNC board of trustees in May, when it was unanimously approved by the faculty. The board typically rubber-stamps tenure for professors who have won such approval from their peers, and it reversed the decision after protests from alumni, faculty and students. Hannah-Jones has been a target of right-wing vitriol since she spearheaded the award-winning 1619 Project for The New York Times, which sought to reevaluate the role of slavery in the founding of the United States. Joe Killian, investigative reporter for NC Policy Watch whom Nikole Hannah-Jones credits with breaking the story about the "discrimination I faced in the UNC tenure debacle," says the tenure fight is a "microcosm" of the wider ideological divisions in the United States. He notes that the Chapel Hill board of trustees is filled with political appointees whose interests do not align with those of the student body. "The board at Chapel Hill is stacked with white men, stacked with people who are conservative, and it doesn't look anything like the university itself," Killian says.

The next mayor of New York City will likely be the Brooklyn borough president and former police officer Eric Adams, according to a newly released tally in the Democratic primary race which accounts for most absentee ballots. Adams would be the city's second Black mayor and ran to the right of his party, promising to tackle crime. Democracy Now! co-host Juan González has covered Adams for three decades and says Adams captured the votes of people concerned about an increase in gun violence and crime, which González suspects stems from police "standing down" in response to the movement to defund them.

Haiti is reeling from a new crisis after President Jovenel Moïse was assassinated in an attack on his home in the outskirts of Port-au-Prince early Wednesday. In a statement, Haitian Prime Minister Claude Joseph said "a group of unidentified individuals" attacked the private residence of the president, killing him and injuring the first lady. Moïse, who had led Haiti since 2017, was accused of orchestrating a coup to stay in power beyond February 7, when his term officially ended. For months Haitians have staged large protests against Moïse demanding he leave office, but Moïse clung to power with support from the Biden administration, which backed his claims that his term should end next year. Dahoud Andre, a longtime Haitian community activist and member of the Committee to Mobilize Against Dictatorship in Haiti, says rumors are flying about who could be behind the killing. "As of now, we have no clue where this assassination came from," Andre says, adding that "the Haitian people loathed Jovenel Moïse" and describing him as a "tool" of the United States. We also speak with Kim Ives, editor of Haiti Liberté, who says the assailants appear to have been well resourced in their attack. "Clearly this was a fairly sophisticated operation," Ives says.

Haitian President Jovenel Moïse Assassinated, Eric Adams Set to Become New York City's Next Mayor After Clinching Primary, Nikole Hannah-Jones Rejects Tenure at UNC, Heads to Howard University with Ta-Nehisi Coates, Biden Admin Extends Temporary Protected Status for Yemenis, Pentagon Cancels $10 Billion Cloud Computing Contract with Microsoft, White House Quietly Hosts Brother of Mohammed bin Salman, Lebanon on Brink of Economic Collapse as People Face Hunger, Poverty and Political Uncertainty, Far-Right Israeli Gov't Fails to Renew Apartheid "Citizenship Law", Iran Hosts Intra-Afghan Talks Amid Taliban Advances, U.S. Withdrawal, 84-Year-Old Indian Priest and Activist Dies in Police Custody, Indigenous Land Defender Assassinated in Chiapas, Colombian Special Tribunal Accuses Soldiers of Killing 120 Civilians as Part of Drugs War, 140 Children Taken by Gunmen as Nigeria's Kidnapping Crisis Mounts, Dutch Reporter Peter R. de Vries in Critical Condition After Being Shot on the Street, EU Bans Common Single-Use Consumer Plastics, Heat Wave May Have Killed 1 Billion Shellfish, Other Sea Creatures on Canadian Coast

An international human rights commission has arrived in Colombia to investigate the right-wing government's brutal crackdown on protesters after a general strike was called in April. More than 80 people have died since the protests began, with many killed by police and paramilitary forces. We go to Bogotá to speak with Mario Murillo, an award-winning journalist and professor who has closely reported on Colombia for decades and says the current round of violence is "a continuation" of a right-wing backlash to the 2016 peace accords between the government and FARC guerrillas, which ended more than 50 years of conflict. Murillo says right-wing forces have worked since the signing of that agreement "to completely derail that peace process" and crush social movements.

Democratic Congressmember Ro Khanna, the chair of the House Oversight Subcommittee on the Environment, has announced plans to ask the CEOs of Exxon and other fossil fuel companies to testify before the committee about their role in blocking congressional action to address the climate emergency. Khanna made the request after Greenpeace UK released a video of two lobbyists discussing Exxon's secretive efforts to fight climate initiatives in Washington, revealing how the oil giant supported a carbon tax to appear proactive about climate change while privately acknowledging that such a tax has no chance of being passed. We feature the complete video and speak to one of the activists involved with it. "The reality is that almost nothing has changed in the Exxon playbook," says Charlie Kronick, senior climate adviser at Greenpeace UK. "This has been going on for decades."

A former U.S.-trained Honduran military officer and businessman has been found guilty of plotting the assassination of Berta Cáceres, the award-winning Lenca land and water defender killed in 2016. The Honduran Supreme Court ruled unanimously that David Castillo, the former president of the hydroelectric corporation DESA, was a co-perpetrator in Cáceres's murder. Cáceres was assassinated as she led the fight against the construction of DESA's massive hydroelectric dam on a river in southwestern Honduras that is sacred to the Lenca people. Seven hired hitmen were convicted of her murder in 2018 and sentenced in 2019. Castillo's conviction this week comes just days after Honduras marked the 12th anniversary of the 2009 U.S.-backed coup. "This is the first time in 12 years that we have seen any kind of justice in Honduras," says Honduran scholar Suyapa Portillo Villeda, an associate professor at Pitzer College and the author of "Roots of Resistance: A Story of Gender, Race, and Labor on the North Coast of Honduras."

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As gun violence soars in the United States, we look at the Second Amendment and its racist roots with Carol Anderson, author of the new book, "The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America." In the book, Anderson details how the Second Amendment was written to empower local militia groups to put down slave revolts and protect plantation owners. She writes the Second Amendment is "rooted in fear of Black people, to deny them their rights, to keep them from tasting liberty." Carol Anderson joined us from Atlanta, where she is a professor at Emory University. She is also the author of "One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression Is Destroying Our Democracy" and "White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide."

Amanda Gorman became the youngest inaugural poet in U.S. history when she spoke at the inauguration of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. She was 22 years old when she read "The Hill We Climb," a poem she finished right after the insurrection at the Capitol on January 6. We continue our July Fourth special broadcast with Gorman's remarkable address.

We begin our July Fourth special broadcast with the words of Frederick Douglass. Born into slavery around 1818, Douglass became a key leader of the abolitionist movement. On July 5, 1852, in Rochester, New York, Douglass gave one of his most famous speeches, "What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?" He was addressing the Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society. James Earl Jones reads the historic address during a performance of "Voices of a People's History of the United States," which was co-edited by Howard Zinn. The late great historian introduces the address.

Republican South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem has announced she is deploying 50 members of the South Dakota National Guard to the U.S.-Mexico border at the request of Texas Governor Greg Abbott. In an extraordinary twist, the deployment is being paid for by billionaire Republican megadonor Willis Johnson, who lives in Tennessee. Critics say Noem is turning the National Guard into a private mercenary force targeting migrants, but the governor's plans for the National Guard could encompass other activities. Water protector and land back attorney Bruce Ellison has obtained documents that indicate the same force could be deployed to suppress Indigenous activists resisting pipelines — including through "lethal force," Ellison says. We also speak to Tara Houska, Indigenous lawyer, activist and founder of the Giniw Collective, who adds the Department of Homeland Security has also been involved in suppressing resistance to construction of the Enbridge Line 3 tar sands pipeline in northern Minnesota.

Resistance to construction of the Enbridge Line 3 tar sands pipeline continues in northern Minnesota, where more than a dozen water protectors this week locked themselves to construction vehicles at two worksites, and to the pipeline itself. Just last month, 179 people were arrested when thousands shut down an Enbridge pumping station for two days as part of the Treaty People Gathering. If completed, Line 3 would carry more than 750,000 barrels of Canadian tar sands oil a day across Indigenous land and fragile ecosystems. The pipeline has the backing of the Biden administration, and this week Indigenous leaders and climate justice activists blockaded access to the White House, calling on Biden to stop fossil fuel projects and invest in climate justice initiatives in his infrastructure plans. Indigenous lawyer and activist Tara Houska, founder of the Giniw Collective, describes the resistance to Line 3 as an "all-out ground fight" led by young people. "This, to me, is an extension of the fight that's happening all over Mother Earth, protecting the last beautiful places, protecting the sacred," Houska says.

The Manhattan District Attorney's Office has charged former President Donald Trump's family business with operating a 15-year tax fraud scheme, accusing the Trump Organization of helping executives evade taxes by giving them compensation off the books. Allen Weisselberg, the company's chief financial officer, who has worked with Trump for decades, was also charged with grand larceny for avoiding taxes on $1.7 million in perks that he did not report as income. Weisselberg surrendered Thursday and pleaded not guilty, and he could face up to a decade in prison if convicted. Legal experts suggest prosecutors targeted Weisselberg with the hope he will flip and help investigators in other ongoing probes into the former president's company. "Donald Trump, while not named in the indictment, is all over the document in terms of actions he had to take," says David Cay Johnston, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter who has followed Donald Trump and his finances for more than 30 years. "Donald Trump and the people around him believe that they shouldn't be subject to the law."

In a pair of major rulings, the U.S. Supreme Court has gutted more of the Voting Rights Act while making it easier for billionaires to secretly bankroll political campaigns. In a 6-3 vote, the conservative justices upheld two Arizona election laws that have been widely criticized for their impact on minority voters, sending a signal that other voting restrictions in Republican-led states are also likely to be ruled constitutional if challenges are brought to the high court. In a separate case, the court's conservative majority struck down a California law that required charities to privately disclose their top donors to the state attorney general, which could open the door to more "dark money" spending in campaigns. Ben Jealous, president of People for the American Way and former president of the NAACP, says the Supreme Court's actions reflect the conservative takeover of the federal judiciary. "They are hijacking our democracy from the top to aid and abet these Republican governors who have sought to hijack it from the bottom," he says.

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The Ethiopian military has withdrawn its forces from Mekelle, the capital of the war-torn Tigray region, after the government declared a ceasefire. Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed denied reports his military was defeated by Tigrayan forces, and said he had successfully pacified the city. Ahmed, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019, launched the offensive against Tigray separatists in November. Since then, thousands have been killed, over a million civilians have been displaced, and some 350,000 people are now on the brink of famine. Alemayehu Fentaw Weldemariam, a constitutional law scholar, political theorist and conflict analyst, says Prime Minister Ahmed's "unilateral" ceasefire hides the reality of what happened. "He was defeated," he says. We also speak with Stanley Chitekwe, chief of nutrition at UNICEF Ethiopia, who says the organization is seeing "very high levels of malnutrition" in Tigray, including among children under 5. "This malnutrition situation may deteriorate into famine," he warns.

After the Biden administration launched airstrikes targeting an Iranian-backed militia in Syria and Iraq, military historian Andrew Bacevich says the United States needs to reassess its decades-long hostility toward Iran. "The demonization of Iran is now a well-established reality of our contemporary politics. It's a mistake," he says. "Over the past 40 years or so, we've decided that Iran needs to be classified as an evil power, and I think that that inclination makes it very difficult for us to come to a reasoned understanding of how we got so deeply enmeshed in the Persian Gulf and how it is that we end up basically in the pocket of the Saudis." Bacevich also discusses the U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan and warns that a Taliban takeover of the country could spark another refugee crisis.