Democracy Now!

The U.S. State Department is pushing to extradite WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange from Britain, where Biden is now meeting with leaders during the G7 summit. A U.K. judge blocked Assange's extradition in January, citing serious mental health concerns. Assange faces up to 175 years in prison if brought to the U.S., where he was indicted for violations of the Espionage Act related to the publication of classified documents exposing U.S. war crimes. We speak with Assange's father and half-brother, who are on a tour of the United States to advocate for his release. "The G7 meeting is based upon values, and yet they have, just a few kilometers down the road, a foremost journalist in jail," says John Shipton. Assange is a victim of "an abusive process" meant to punish him for his journalism, adds Gabriel Shipton. "The situation there is really dire, and Julian is suffering inside that prison.”

As world leaders gather for the first in-person G7 summit in two years, talks are set to focus heavily on ending the pandemic and the climate crisis, and climate activists are calling on them for more immediate action. "It's not just one crisis," says Asad Rehman, executive director of War on Want and spokesperson for the COP26 Climate Coalition. "What we've seen is simply rich countries doing too little too late and not taking up their responsibility, and unfortunately this G7 has not changed that at all."

G7 to Donate 1 Billion Vaccine Doses to Poorer Nations, But Billions More Needed, Biden Says "No Strings Attached" to Vaccine Donations, But Venezuela Is Blocked from Getting Any, Trump Administration Secretly Seized Private Data from Two Democratic Lawmakers, Bipartisan Infrastructure Deal Slammed for Failing to Address Climate Crisis, U.N.: Tigray Region of Ethiopia Facing World's Worst Famine in a Decade, Socialist Teacher Pedro Castillo Closing In on Becoming Peruvian President, Undercover Israeli Forces Kill Three Palestinians in West Bank Raid, Shocking Video Shows Israeli Guards Brutally Assaulting Palestinian Prisoners, Amnesty International Accuses China of Crimes Against Humanity in Xinjiang, Republican Lawmaker in Oregon Expelled for Helping Armed Protesters Enter State Capitol, State Autopsy Confirms Police Shot Andrew Brown Jr. in the Back of His Head, DA in Westchester, NY Orders Review of 2011 Police Killing of Kenneth Chamberlain Sr., Texas Sheriff Deputy Placed on Leave for Tasering Teenage Honduran Asylum Seeker, Puerto Rico Faces Massive Blackout Days After Privatization of Electrical Grid

President Biden's plan to buy 500 million doses of Pfizer's coronavirus vaccine and donate them to 92 countries comes as health experts warn vaccination inequity could prolong the pandemic for everyone if the coronavirus continues to mutate, possibly making it more infectious and resistant to vaccines. Africa CDC Director John Nkengasong has said people on the continent are watching in "amazement" as Americans turn down vaccines, many of which are now expiring instead of being sent elsewhere. "Right now the game plan should be providing the surplus vaccines to countries around the world, because the pandemic is happening right now," says Dr. Syra Madad, infectious disease epidemiologist who leads the Special Pathogens Program for NYC Health and Hospitals, the largest public healthcare system in the United States.

As President Biden pledges to buy half of a billion COVID-19 vaccine doses to give to the world, many Americans are refusing to get vaccinated, and thousands of Johnson & Johnson shots will expire soon. This week, Houston Methodist Hospital suspended 178 staff members who refused to abide by its mandate that employees be fully vaccinated. We speak with infectious disease epidemiologist Dr. Syra Madad, who heads the largest public healthcare system in the United States and says we must counter vaccine hesitancy. She also describes her own struggle to encourage health aides in her own household to get the shot. "It's been an uncomfortable reality to see that we are now in June and nearly 50% of healthcare workers remain unvaccinated and unprotected."

As President Biden prepares for the G7 and NATO summits and a meeting with Vladimir Putin, we look at how the United States, Russia and other nuclear-armed nations continue to spend billions on nuclear weapons during the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite President Biden's criticisms of the Trump administration's nuclear policies during his candidacy, his administration is continuing initiatives to expand the U.S. nuclear arsenal and is seeking $43 billion for nuclear weapons in his new budget. This comes as a new report from the Nobel Prize-winning International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons reveals global spending on nuclear weapons increased during the pandemic, and found the world's nine nuclear-armed countries spent $72.6 billion on nuclear weapons in 2020, with the United States alone spending $37 billion. "We've been seeing, from year to year, the spending on nuclear weapons has been increasing," says Alicia Sanders-Zakre, ICAN's policy and research coordinator. "Despite Biden's campaign promises of wanting to work for arms control, wanting to work for disarmament, we're seeing that in reality he's going full steam ahead with Trump's legacy nuclear weapons programs and continuing to spend more money on these weapons of mass destruction."

Biden Set to Announce U.S. Donation of 500 Million COVID-19 Vaccine Doses to Poorer Nations, WTO to Start Negotiations on COVID Vaccine Patent Waivers, 8 Months After They Were Proposed, India Logs Pandemic-High Daily Death Toll; COVID Surges in Haiti, Where 0% Are Vaccinated, 10 Killed in Afghanistan as ISIS Attacks Mine-Clearing Charity, Rights Group Says Colombian Police Have Killed at Least 20 Anti-Government Protesters, U.S. to Keep Trump-Era Sanctions on Iran Even If Nuclear Deal Is Restored, AG Merrick Garland Explains DOJ Decision to Defend Trump in Defamation Case, TC Energy Cancels Keystone XL Pipeline as Water Defenders Continue to Fight Enbridge Line 3, Massive Wildfires Rage in Arizona as Drought Worsens Across Western United States, Louisiana Police Unit That Killed Ronald Greene Investigated for Other Abuses Against Black Drivers, 55 Corporations That Paid No Taxes in 2020 Spent $450 Million on Lobbying and Campaigns Since 2016, Biden Admin Revokes Trump Orders on TikTok & WeChat, Orders Review on Risks of Foreign Apps, Calls Mount for University of North Carolina to Grant Tenure to Nikole Hannah-Jones

A new film called "Takeover" follows the 12 historic hours on July 14, 1970, when members of the Young Lords Party took over the rundown Lincoln Hospital in the South Bronx in New York City. The Young Lords were a radical group founded by Puerto Ricans modeled on the Black Panther Party. Democracy Now! co-host Juan González, a co-founder of the Young Lords, helped organize the action. Using archival footage and modern-day interviews, "Takeover" chronicles their resistance to institutions founded on wealth and white supremacy, and their collective struggle for quality, accessible healthcare. "The takeover really exemplified what the Young Lords were about," says director Emma Francis-Snyder, who says she wanted to capture the heroism of the activists. "There's so much emotion and planning and courage that comes along with direct action," Francis-Snyder says. "We understood that to get the system to listen and change, you had to disrupt it," adds González. "You had to find a way to force people to pay attention to the problems."

The Biden administration has vowed to take a compassionate approach to migrants and asylum seekers who are fleeing violence, poverty and persecution, but a damning new investigation reveals the mistreatment of children upon their arrival to the border. The report found more than 80 children in government-funded shelters were turned over to local law enforcement when they engaged in behavior common for kids, especially those who have been through trauma. Many were arrested for fighting, breaking property or mental health crises, and police body-camera footage obtained by Reveal shows at least one child was tasered without warning by a sheriff's deputy in San Antonio, Texas. "The idea that a child, particularly a refugee child, someone who is fleeing violence and is a minor and has special rights under international law and U.S. law, would then be subjected to arrest for something like fighting … that seems highly unusual," says Aura Bogado, senior investigative reporter at Reveal.

A major exposé by ProPublica has revealed how U.S. billionaires pay little in income tax compared to their massive wealth, or sometimes even nothing. Private tax records of some of the country's top billionaires show that between 2014 and 2018 the wealthiest 25 Americans saw their collective wealth jump by more than $400 billion, but they paid just over $13 billion in federal income taxes — amounting to a tax rate of just 3.4%. "Typical wage earners like you or me, we pay taxes every time we get a paycheck," says Jeff Ernsthausen, a senior data reporter at ProPublica. "But for the ultra-wealthy, it's a completely different story."

VP Harris Meets with Mexico's AMLO, Faces Backlash for Not Visiting U.S. Southern Border, Over 2,000 Migrant Children Might Still Be Separated from Families, Activists Call on Thomson Reuters to Cut Ties with ICE, Biden Ends Weeks-Long Talks on Infrastructure as New Bipartisan Groups Aim to Reach Compromise, Manchin Remains Steadfast in Opposition to Voting Rights Bill in Face of Mounting Pressure, "Planned in Plain Sight": Senate Report Details Security Failures Ahead of Jan. 6 Insurrection, Vaccination Key to Curbing Spread of Delta COVID Variant; CDC Updates Coronavirus Travel Guidance, International Sting Leads to 100s of Arrests After Suspects Used an FBI-Created Encrypted Device, U.N. Warns of Mass Deaths and Suffering After Military Attacks Displace 100,000 in Eastern Burma, Salvadoran Woman Jailed for Having Miscarriage Freed After 10 Years Behind Bars, Dems Reintroduce Act to Protect Reproductive Rights Amid Republican Assault on Abortion Access

We get an update from Peru, where socialist candidate Pedro Castillo has pulled ahead of his right-wing rival Keiko Fujimori in the country's presidential election on Sunday. Castillo is the son of peasant farmers, and a union leader who led a nationwide teachers' strike in 2017. Fujimori is the daughter of former dictator Alberto Fujimori, who is in prison for human rights abuses and corruption. Political scientist Carlos León Moya discusses the history of the two candidates and describes how the election took place amid a years-long political crisis. "You have most of the Peruvian political elite charged by corruption," he says. "Keiko Fujimori was in prison herself two years ago for a corruption case."

In her first foreign trip as vice president, Kamala Harris is in Mexico City to meet with President Andrés Manuel López Obrador after first visiting Guatemala to meet with President Alejandro Giammattei. Harris is tasked by President Joe Biden with stemming the flow of Central American migrants fleeing corruption, violence and poverty, even after the two campaigned on allowing more migrants to apply for asylum along the U.S.-Mexico border, and issued a stern warning to migrants: "Do not come." Her visit comes after voters cast their ballots in one of Mexico's largest and deadliest elections in history, as over 80 politicians were killed in the run-up to the election, which had 21,000 local and national seats up for grabs. "This electoral process has been one of the most violent," says Erika Guevara-Rosas, a human rights lawyer and Americas director for Amnesty International. "It is reflective of the human rights crisis that Mexico has been facing for many years."

In the largest act of civil disobedience to date to halt the Enbridge Line 3 pipeline, more than 100 water protectors led by Indigenous women have been arrested in Minnesota. We get an on-the-ground update on the day of action and how water protectors blockaded a pipeline pump station north of the town of Park Rapids, with many locking themselves to heavy machinery as authorities tried to disperse protesters by sending in a low-flying Customs and Border Protection helicopter which produced a sandstorm. Thousands gathered for a Treaty People Gathering weekend of action to stop Line 3, which would carry more than 750,000 barrels of tar sands oil a day through Indigenous land and fragile ecosystems and endanger lakes, rivers and wild rice beds. If completed, Line 3 would be "the largest tar sands pipeline in the world," says Winona LaDuke, an Anishinaabe activist and executive director of Honor the Earth who lives and works on the White Earth Reservation in northern Minnesota. "We have a Canadian corporation coming in here trying to make a buck at the end of the fossil fuels era and run over a bunch of Indigenous people, and we're not having it."

Over 100 Water Protectors Arrested in Minnesota as Mass Civil Disobedience Targets Line 3 Pipeline, Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Hits 420 Parts Per Million, Highest Level in 4 Million Years, "A Two-Track Pandemic": Wealthy Nations Ease Restrictions as COVID Surges in Unvaccinated Countries, ProPublica: Vast Trove of IRS Data Shows How U.S. Billionaires Pay Little in Income Tax, Canadian Police Say Hit-and-Run That Killed Four Was Deliberate Islamophobic Attack, VP Harris to Refugees Fleeing Violence, Poverty and Climate Crisis: "Do Not Come to the U.S.", Supreme Court Rules Immigrants with Temporary Protected Status Are Ineligible for Green Cards, Peruvian Presidential Candidate Fujimori Claims Electoral Fraud as Leftist Opponent Gains Lead, Biden Administration Won't Rule Out Military Action Against Ransomware Hackers, Massive Internet Outage Hits Websites and Apps Worldwide, NJ Governor Orders Closure of Edna Mahan Women's Prison over Widespread Abuses, Biden Administration Defends Trump Against Defamation Suit Brought by Rape Accuser E. Jean Carroll, 1,100 Alabama Coal Miners Enter Second Week of Strike for Better Wages and Benefits

Israel is cracking down on Palestinians living in the occupied West Bank, occupied East Jerusalem and inside Israel amid the ongoing ceasefire between Israel and Gaza. Israeli police have arrested nearly 2,000 Palestinians over the past month in an attempt to quell protests and uprisings against the occupation, according to the newspaper Haaretz. "Israel is criminalizing our right to say we're Palestinian, our right to say we want to live in our homes in dignity, our right to be free," says Mariam Barghouti, a Palestinian writer and researcher.

Social media giant Facebook has announced it has suspended former President Donald Trump's account until at least 2023. He was initially suspended from the platform for comments to supporters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6 and is permanently banned on Twitter. Facebook's move could have implications for other world leaders who use Facebook, like Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Jameel Jaffer, director of the Knight First Amendment Institute, said he is not sure the decision struck the right balance for protecting free speech but is defensible because Facebook "has a responsibility to ensure that the people using its platform aren't using it to undermine democracy or incite violence." But he argues the much bigger issue is Facebook's engineering and design decisions, such as ranking algorithms, which really determine which speech gets heard or marginalized.

We speak to Jameel Jaffer about a petition asking the Supreme Court to review whether the public has a right to access the decisions of the special federal court that rules on the legality of government surveillance, known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, or FISA Court. The American Civil Liberties Union submitted the request with support from the Knight First Amendment Institute, whose director, Jameel Jaffer, notes the court routinely issues rulings that have far-reaching implications for Americans' privacy and freedom of speech rights. He says the argument free speech advocates are making is that the First Amendment guarantees the public a right of access to the FISA Court rulings like other courts that also deal with national security issues.

The New York Times has revealed shocking details about an unsuccessful attempt by the Trump administration, and then the Biden administration, to secretly obtain the email logs of four reporters at the newspaper. As part of the campaign, the Biden Justice Department placed a gag order on the Times in March to prevent many at the paper from even knowing about the request until a federal court lifted it. In recent weeks the Justice Department also disclosed the Trump administration had secretly obtained the call records of four journalists at the Times, as well as three journalists at The Washington Post and one at CNN. Jameel Jaffer, founding director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, says subpoenas for journalists' records are "really troubling" because of their potential chilling effect on critical journalism. "It's about the right of the public to have access to information about the government," he says.

Finance ministers from seven of the world's wealthiest nations have backed a plan to set a minimum global corporate tax rate of at least 15% on multinational companies. The agreement, which was reached during a meeting in Britain of the G7, or Group of 7, is "historic" but should have aimed higher, says economist Joseph Stiglitz. "If you have too low of a tax rate, that minimum tax becomes, de facto, the maximum tax," he says.

Sen. Joe Manchin Says He Won't Support Voting Rights Bill and Will Fight to Keep Filibuster, G7 Ministers Back 15% Corporate Tax Rate Derided by Critics as Too Low a Bar, Brazilian Soccer Stars Suggest Postponement of Copa America Tournament as COVID-19 Rages, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu Blames Looming Ouster on "Biggest Election Fraud in History", Israeli Soldiers Assault Al Jazeera Reporter Amid Mass Arrests of Palestinians , At Least 132 Killed as Gunmen Raid Village in Burkina Faso, Nigeria Bans Twitter After President's Threatening Tweet Is Deleted, Mexican President's Party to Lose Supermajority After Midterm Elections Marred by Violence, Peru's Presidential Runoff Too Close to Call, Colombian Social Leader Who Co-Signed FARC Peace Agreement Assassinated, VP Harris Visits Guatemala, Urging President Giammattei to Crack Down on Migration, Pope Stops Short of Apology for Church's Role in Deaths of Indigenous Children in Canada, Judge Overturns California's Assault Weapons Ban, Comparing AR-15s to Swiss Army Knives, North Carolina Teen Denied Diploma for Wearing Mexican Flag Over Graduation Gown

The pandemic has led to a sharp rise in gender-based violence, job losses in female-dominated industries, greater parenting duties for mothers, and other pressures that primarily fall on women around the world. These effects amount to a kind of "disaster patriarchy" in which "men exploit a crisis to reassert control and dominance and rapidly erase the hard-earned rights of women," says V, the artist and activist formerly known as Eve Ensler. "Women are losing their safety, their economic power, their autonomy, their education, and they are pushed onto the frontlines, where they are often used, unprotected and sacrificed."

As Democrats and Republicans in Washington continue to negotiate over an infrastructure bill, President Biden is reportedly considering dropping his demand to roll back the 2017 Trump tax cuts — which primarily benefited corporations and the richest people in the country — in order to gain support for infrastructure spending of at least $1 trillion. Biden is offering to keep Trump's tax cuts and shrink the size of his infrastructure proposal in exchange for a minimum 15% corporate tax rate for all companies. Economist Jeffrey Sachs says a capitulation on the Trump tax cuts would be a huge mistake for the Biden administration. "The corporations have had an unbelievable run of unjust and unaffordable tax cuts," he says.

The Biden administration on Thursday announced that the U.S. will donate 25 million surplus doses of COVID-19 vaccines to developing countries, pledging to donate a total of 80 million doses by July. Economist Jeffrey Sachs says rich countries have enough production capacity to speed up vaccine distribution and immunize the whole world within the next year. "There's massive supply, but there's no plan for allocation," he says. We also speak with South African health justice activist Fatima Hassan, who says the global vaccine imbalance comes down to political will. "Even now countries are still sitting around a table and talking and having long conversations instead of figuring out an urgent way to ramp up manufacturing, scale up production and get as many doses to as many people as possible all over the world."

Activists Call U.S. Plan to Ship 25 Million COVID Vaccine Doses Abroad "Deeply Insufficient", WHO Warns of Surging COVID-19 Cases in Africa as Vaccine Shipments Come to "Near Halt", Chinese Authorities Ban Hong Kong Vigil Commemorating Tiananmen Massacre, Arrest Organizer, Peruvian Presidential Runoff Pits Ex-Dictator's Daughter Against Socialist School Teacher, 89 Politicians Killed in Run-up to Mexican Midterm Elections, Lawyers for Guantánamo Prisoner Challenge Judge's Order Permitting Use of Info Obtained by Torture, Watchdog Says Pentagon Grossly Misrepresented Civilian Casualties from U.S. Military, U.N. Says 200,000 Gazans Need Aid as U.S. Affirms "Ironclad" Support for Israel After Deadly Assault, "Block the Boat" Actions at U.S. Ports Target Israeli Cargo Ships; SF Teachers' Union Backs BDS, Facebook to Extend Hate Speech Policy to Politicians, Mike Pence Defends Donald Trump But Says They'll Never "See Eye to Eye" on January 6, FBI Investigating Postmaster General Louis DeJoy for Campaign Finance Law Violations, Protesters Vow to Defend "George Floyd Square" as Minneapolis Authorities Start Clearing Memorial

Do African Americans have Second Amendment rights? That's the question Emory University professor Carol Anderson set out to answer in her new book, "The Second," which looks at the constitutional right to bear arms and its uneven application throughout U.S. history. She says she was prompted to write the book after the 2016 police killing of Philando Castile, who was fatally shot during a traffic stop after he told the officer he had a legal firearm. Anderson says the Second Amendment was always intended to be a means of arming white people to control the Black population. "There was this massive fear about these slave revolts, Black people demanding their freedom, being willing to have an uprising to gain their freedom," says Anderson. "What I saw was that it wasn't about guns. It was about the fear of Black people."

Right-Wing Pro-Settlement Millionaire Naftali Bennett Poised to Head New Israeli Government, International Red Cross Chief Tours Gaza, Decries "Heartbreaking" Killings of Civilians, Heads of IMF, World Bank, WHO and WTO Promote $50 Billion Plan to End the Pandemic, Biden Offers Incentives for Vaccinations: Sports Tickets, Child Care and Free Beer, Florida Man Pleads Guilty to Illegally Breaching Senate Chamber During January 6 Insurrection, Calls Grow on Democrats to Eliminate Filibuster as Republicans Stonewall Voting Rights Bills, U.N. Says Food Aid Needed for 90% of People in Ethiopia's Tigray as Calls Grow for Ceasefire, Sri Lanka Faces Devastating Oil Spill from Sinking Cargo Ship, Iran Navy Ship Catches Fire and Sinks Within Hours of Massive Blaze at Petrochemical Plant, Nicaragua Police Arrest Opposition Leader and Likely Presidential Challenger Cristiana Chamorro, British Royal Family Had Ban on Hiring People of Color, Foreigners Other Than as Domestic Workers, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott Moves to Shut Down Shelters for Unaccompanied Migrant Children, California Gov. Newsom Grants Pardons to Two Prisoner Firefighters Who Faced Deportation, Texas Valedictorian Blasts State's Abortion Ban in Graduation Speech

With the U.S. marking at least 242 mass shootings so far in 2021, according to the Gun Violence Archive, we speak with policy expert Julia Weber about the link between gun violence and domestic violence. "We know that this is a massive crisis that we need to address much more effectively," says Weber, the implementation director at the Giffords Law Center. A 2020 Bloomberg analysis looking at nearly 750 mass shootings over a six-year span found about 60% of the shootings were either domestic violence attacks or committed by men with histories of domestic violence.

Athletes around the globe are voicing support for tennis superstar Naomi Osaka, who withdrew from the French Open after being fined and threatened with disqualification for declining to take part in press conferences due to their effect on her mental health. Prominent athletes, from Stephen Curry to Serena Williams, have come forward to support 23-year-old Osaka, who is a four-time Grand Slam tournament winner. The escalating fines and criticism Osaka faced from tennis officials were "a disproportionate response" to her actions, says Amira Rose Davis, an assistant professor of history and women's, gender and sexuality studies at Penn State and co-host of the sports podcast "Burn It All Down." She adds that Black women athletes are often subjected to insensitive questioning from the media that can perpetuate racist and sexist narratives. "The media is overwhelmingly white, overwhelmingly older, overwhelmingly male," Davis says.

President Biden traveled to Tulsa, Oklahoma, to mark the 100th anniversary of the 1921 Tulsa race massacre, one of the single greatest acts of racist terrorism in U.S. history. Over a span of 18 hours, a white mob burned down what was known as "Black Wall Street," the thriving Black neighborhood of Greenwood in Tulsa, and killed an estimated 300 African Americans. Duke University professor William Darity says it's "very impressive" that a sitting U.S. president highlighted the Tulsa race massacre and its lingering effects, but he says he's skeptical that Biden's economic proposals do enough to close the racial wealth gap. "We need something much more potent and much more substantial," Darity says. "If we were going to bring the share of Black wealth into consistency with the share of the Black population, it would require an expenditure of at least $11 trillion."

Biden Addresses Voting, Racial Wealth Gap as He Visits Tulsa Race Massacre Site on 100th Anniversary, 100+ Scholars Call for Congressional Action to Enact Federal Voting Rights Protections, Biden Ends Contested Trump-Era "Remain in Mexico" Policy, Rights Groups Call for End to Repressive, Invasive Technologies in Immigration Practices, Washington State's Most Populous County Bans Use of Facial Recognition Technology, Biden Administration Suspends Oil & Gas Leases in ANWR But Defends Massive "Willow" Project, Three Bombs Kill 10 People, Disable Electric Grid in Kabul, Sri Lanka Shoreline Coated in Plastic Debris from Sinking, Burning Cargo Ship, World Bank Urges U.S. to Free Up Vaccines for Latin America; Pandemic Recedes in U.K., Worsens in DRC, Florida Enacts Ban on Transgender Youth in School Sports, JBS, World's Largest Meat Producer, Halts Slaughterhouse Operations After Cyberattack, Democrat Melanie Stansbury Clinches New Mexico House Seat in Special Election, Puerto Ricans Set to Go on Strike After Weeks of Protest Against Privatization of Electric Grid

The Canadian government is facing pressure to declare a national day of mourning after the bodies of 215 children were found in British Columbia on the grounds of a school for Indigenous children who were forcibly separated from their families by the government. The bodies were discovered at the Kamloops Indian Residential School, which opened in 1890 and closed in the late 1970s. Over the span of a century, more than 150,000 Indigenous children were separated from their families and sent to residential schools to rid them of their Native cultures and languages and integrate them into mainstream Canadian society. "These children are just some of the children who died in the schools," says Cindy Blackstock, executive director of the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada. "There are many others in unmarked graves across the country." In 2015, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada concluded that residential schools were part of "a conscious policy of cultural genocide" against Canada's First Nations population.

A major new report on police killings suggests far more people of color have died in police custody than previously known. The report by the Raza Database Project and UnidosUS found that deaths of Latinos, Asian and Indigenous peoples have been historically undercounted. Researchers documented the deaths of 32,542 people who have been killed by police since 2000, 60% of whom constitute people of color, who make up just 40% of the U.S. population. "We found many more killings than expected," says Roberto Rodríguez, professor at the University of Arizona and director of the Raza Database Project, a network of researchers, scholars, journalists, activists and family members of victims killed by law enforcement. "There is no systematic effort to count, to collect this data. The FBI is supposed to, but they don't. It's up to the media and independent researchers, and it's really difficult," Rodríguez says. We also speak with Marissa Barrera, who became an advocate against police violence after police in Woodland, California, killed her brother, Michael Barrera, in 2017. "All the other families that I work with, they have similar stories just as bad," Barrera says. "We go through the same things."

Democratic lawmakers in Texas staged a dramatic walkout to prevent the Republican-controlled Legislature from passing a sweeping bill to rewrite election laws in the state. Critics say the bill will lead to mass voter suppression, especially of Black and Latinx voters, by eliminating drive-thru and 24-hour voting, as well as ballot drop boxes. The Republican bill would also make it easier for elections to be overturned even if there is no evidence of fraud. Trey Martinez Fischer, a Democrat representing House District 116 in the state Legislature, says the legislation would have "a tremendous impact" on ballot access in the state. "Just like every bad policy, Hispanics, Latinos and Asian Americans will be disproportionately impacted," Fischer says. "The time is now for a national response."

Texas Democratic Lawmakers Stage Walkout Against Sweeping GOP Voter Suppression Bill, Peru Revises COVID Death Toll to Become Nation with Highest Per Capita Death Rate , WHO Calls for Pandemic Preparedness Treaty, Warning "The Pathogens Are Winning", Tens of Thousands March in Cities Across Brazil Demanding Impeachment of Jair Bolsonaro, Colombian Police Continue Deadly Crackdown on Anti-Government Protests, China to Allow Married Couples to Have Up to Three Children as Birth Rate Continues to Fall, Bodies of 215 Indigenous Children Discovered at Canadian Boarding School, Israeli Opposition Parties Nearing Deal to End Netanyahu's 12-Year Reign as Prime Minister, National March for Palestine Demands Congress and Biden Admin Hold Israel Accountable, Two Killed and Over 20 Injured in Florida Mass Shooting; Suspects Remain at Large, Pressure Grows for Democrats to End Filibuster as GOP Stonewalls January 6 Commission, At Pro-Trump Conference, Michael Flynn Calls for Military Coup Against U.S. Government, Arizona Plans Executions Using Same Poison Gas Used in Nazi Death Camps, Eric Riddick Released from Prison After Serving 29 Years for Crime He Says He Didn't Commit , Illinois Lawmakers Pass Bill Barring Police Interrogators from Lying to Minors, Imprisoned Anti-Fascist Activist Says Prison Guards Allowed White Supremacists to Beat Him, Naomi Osaka Quits French Open, Citing Mental Health Challenges

Nearly 80 years ago, Richard Wright became one of the most famous Black writers in the United States with the publication of "Native Son." The novel's searing critique of systemic racism made it a best-seller and inspired a generation of Black writers. In 1941, Wright wrote a new novel titled "The Man Who Lived Underground," but publishers refused to release it, in part because the book was filled with graphic descriptions of police brutality by white officers against a Black man. His manuscript was largely forgotten until his daughter Julia Wright unearthed it at the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Yale University. "The Man Who Lived Underground" was not published in the 1940s because white publishers did not want to highlight "white supremacist police violence upon a Black man because it was too close to home," says Julia Wright. "It's a bit like lifting the stone and not wanting the worms, the racist worms underneath, to be seen."

A new four-part documentary series, "Exterminate All the Brutes," delves deeply into the legacy of European colonialism from the Americas to Africa. It has been described as an unflinching narrative of genocide and exploitation, beginning with the colonizing of Indigenous land that is now called the United States. The documentary series seeks to counter "the type of lies, the type of propaganda, the type of abuse, that we have been subject to all of these years," says director and Haitian-born filmmaker Raoul Peck. "We have the means to tell the real story, and that's exactly what I decided to do," Peck says. "Everything is on the table, has been on the table for a long time, except that it was in little bits everywhere. … We lost the wider perspective."

Memorial Day marks the 100th anniversary of the 1921 Tulsa race massacre, one of the deadliest episodes of racial violence in U.S. history, when the thriving African American neighborhood of Greenwood in Tulsa, Oklahoma — known as "Black Wall Street" — was burned to the ground by a white mob. An estimated 300 African Americans were killed and over 1,000 injured. Whites in Tulsa actively suppressed the truth, and African Americans were intimidated into silence. But efforts to restore the horrific event to its rightful place in U.S. history are having an impact. Survivors testified last week before Congress, calling for reparations. President Biden is set to visit Tulsa on Tuesday. We speak with documentary filmmaker Stanley Nelson, whose new film premiering this weekend explores how Black residents sought out freedom in Oklahoma and built a thriving community in Greenwood, and how it was all destroyed over two days of horrific violence. Nelson notes many African Americans migrated westward after the Civil War "to start a new life" with dignity. "Greenwood was one of over 100 African American communities in the West," he says. "Greenwood was the biggest and the baddest of those communities."

We go to Goma in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where tens of thousands of people are evacuating the city of Goma after a volcanic eruption killed dozens on May 22 and amid warnings that Mount Nyiragongo, one of the world's most active volcanoes, could blow yet again. We speak with Jan Egeland, head of the Norwegian Refugee Council, who says the volcano is worsening an already acute crisis in the country, where rising violence and displacement have left more than 20 million in need of humanitarian aid. "It's the largest neglected emergency on Earth," he says. "We need to talk about the war, the misery, the hunger and the whole looting of DRC from strong capital, from all over the world, that want to have the minerals that is in the ground under here." He also discusses the war in Yemen, how relatively small investments in humanitarian aid can help millions of people around the world and why rich countries have a responsibility to make vaccines accessible.

As the United Nations human rights chief warns Israel may have committed war crimes in Gaza, we look at how Israel killed 12 Palestinian children being treated for trauma from past Israeli bombings. Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, says Gaza has become "the home of hopelessness," particularly for young people in the besieged territory. "We humanitarian workers are sick and tired of building and rebuilding and see it all torn down again," Egeland says of Israel's repeated attacks on Gaza. "We are accumulating rubble, we're accumulating dead children, and we're accumulating hopelessness, if it continues like this."

U.N. Human Rights Chief Says Israel May Have Committed War Crimes in Gaza, African Nations Need 20 Million AstraZeneca Doses Within Weeks to Complete Vaccinations , Public Citizen Says a $25 Billion Investment Could Vaccinate the World, Senate GOP Ready to Filibuster Commission on January 6 Insurrection , Biden Reportedly Offered Japan Ambassadorship to Former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Amazon Announces Deal to Acquire MGM Studios; WarnerMedia to Merge with Discovery , Elizabeth Warren Grills Bank CEOs for Preying on Customers During Pandemic, San Jose Gunman Expressed Hate for Co-Workers for Years, Had History of Sexual Violence, Washington Prosecutors Charge Tacoma Police Officers with Murdering Manuel Ellis, Up to 1 Million Ordered to Evacuate Goma, DRC Amid Fears of Another Volcanic Eruption, Australian Court Rules Government Has Duty to Protect Young People from Climate Disaster

President Joe Biden has ordered U.S. intelligence agencies to investigate the origins of COVID-19 as new questions are being raised over whether an accidental leak from a Chinese virology lab is to blame for the pandemic. The Wall Street Journal reports three employees of the Wuhan Institute of Virology fell ill with COVID-like symptoms in the autumn of 2019 and were hospitalized in November of that year, before the first recorded case of COVID-19. China has criticized the Biden administration's call for a new probe, saying the lab leak hypothesis is a "conspiracy created by U.S. intelligence agencies." In March, the World Health Organization said its investigation into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic found it was "extremely unlikely" that the novel coronavirus emerged from a laboratory, but many scientists are calling on the WHO to further investigate the possibility. We speak with infectious disease expert Dr. Monica Gandhi, who says there are real questions about whether information about the virus was withheld early on, delaying public health measures and vaccine development, but she stresses that "designing" a virus in a lab is very difficult. "I personally do not think that you can create these type of viruses in a lab. Only nature can do this," Dr. Gandhi says. She also discusses the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's loosening of public health restrictions and how the U.S. can use its vaccine surplus to help other countries. "The solution of the pandemic is immunity. And the only way to get to immunity is to vaccinate the world," she says.

Pressure is growing on organizers to cancel the Tokyo Olympics as Japan struggles to contain a fourth wave of COVID-19 cases. The games, which were delayed by a year due to the pandemic, are scheduled to begin July 23 even though less than 3% of the Japanese population has been fully vaccinated against COVID-19, one of the lowest rates in the developed world. Jules Boykoff, author and former Olympic athlete who played for the U.S. Olympic soccer team, says the "extremely lopsided" contracts the International Olympic Committee signs with host countries give the body ultimate authority over whether or not to cancel the event. "More than 80% of the people in Japan oppose hosting the Olympics this summer, and yet the IOC insists on pressing ahead," says Boykoff. We also speak with Satoko Itani, professor of sport, gender and sexuality studies at Kansai University, who says there is growing public anger at the government and a "sense of unfairness" that the games are going ahead during a pandemic. "They feel that the people are not protected," they say.

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Despite decades of warnings against the practice, police departments across the country continue to hogtie people during arrests, sometimes with fatal results. On September 8, 2018, Marcus Smith, a 38-year-old homeless Black man in Greensboro, North Carolina, was facing a mental health crisis and asked police officers for help. Instead, eight white officers brutally and fatally hogtied him. Police videos show officers pushed Smith face down on the street and tied a belt around his ankles, then attached it to his cuffed hands so tightly that his knees were lifted off the pavement. Smith's family filed a lawsuit in 2019 alleging wrongful death, accusing the police department of a cover-up. "The Greensboro Police Department, spearheaded by the chief of police at that time, watched the video and then chose to put out a press release that … ignored and left out the crucial factor that he was hogtied," says Flint Taylor, one of the lawyers for the Smith family and a founding partner of the People's Law Office in Chicago. We also speak with Marshall Project reporter Joseph Neff, who says there is little data about instances of police hogtying. "It's hard to know how extensive it is, because there's no reporting requirement," he says.

Protests and vigils were held across the U.S. to mark one year since the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Floyd's death sparked a national uprising and global movement against systemic racism and police brutality. Elizabeth Hinton, an associate professor of history and African American studies at Yale University and a professor of law at Yale Law School, connects the Black Lives Matter protests to a long history of Black rebellion against police violence in her new book "America on Fire" and notes that the U.S. has had previous opportunities to address systemic racism and state violence, but change remains elusive. "Every time inequality and police violence is evaluated, all of these structural solutions are always suggested, and yet they're never taken up," Hinton says.

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