Democracy Now!

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has announced his resignation, effective August 24, after a week of intense pressure from fellow Democrats for him to step down. Cuomo, who has been in office since 2011, had few allies left after an investigation by New York's attorney general found he had sexually harassed at least 11 women — allegations he continues to deny. "Governor Cuomo is still gaslighting New Yorkers," says Yuh-Line Niou, a member of the New York State Assembly representing Manhattan, who says Cuomo must still be impeached. "Impeachment means that New York will not be paying Andrew Cuomo's pension for the rest of his life. Impeachment means that Governor Cuomo will not be able to run for office again."

Senate Dems Approve $3.5 Trillion Budget Hours After Passage of Bipartisan Infrastructure Plan, Gov. Andrew Cuomo Resigns, Continues to Faces Ongoing Probes and Possible Impeachment, Cases Spike in Tacoma ICE Jail; TX Counties Can Bypass Mask Mandate Ban as Delta COVID Cases Surge, COVID-19 Surges in Mexico; Bangladesh Launches Rohingya Refugee Vaccination Drive, Taliban Claim More Territory, Seizing Three More Afghan Cities, Ethiopian PM Calls for Citizens to Join Fight Against Tigray Forces as Humanitarian Disaster Grows, U.S. Appeals Ruling That Blocked Julian Assange's Extradition, Algerian Wildfires Kill 42 People as Severe Drought in Chile Threatens Crops and Water Supply, Lawsuit Against Biden Admin Details Abuse, Neglect of Migrant Children at Texas Facilities, Texas Law Enforcement Could Start Arresting Dems Who Fled the State to Block Voter Suppression Bill, USPS to Start Slowing Down Deliveries, Grants Major Contract to Co. Tied to Postmaster General DeJoy, Australia Will Pay Reparations to Indigenous People Taken from Their Families as Children

Lawmakers in New York are preparing impeachment proceedings against Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo after the state attorney general found Cuomo harassed at least 11 women in violation of the law — including unwanted touching and kissing, and inappropriate remarks. Cuomo's former executive assistant, Brittany Commisso, has filed a criminal complaint against him, and other cases are expected to follow. "The governor is unfit to lead," says New York state Senator Alessandra Biaggi, who first called on Cuomo to resign in February. She says the damage Cuomo has inflicted goes beyond sexual harassment and includes the state's COVID relief programs, nursing homes deaths, transit funding and more. "It is very important that we act with a serious sense of urgency."

We continue to look at the state of school reopenings amid a surge in COVID-19 infections among children in the U.S. with Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers. Weingarten, who had favored voluntary vaccinations for teachers, now backs a vaccine mandate for educators because the Delta variant "significantly changes the circumstances." Weingarten notes that almost 90% of teachers represented by the American Federation of Teachers are already vaccinated, saying it's time to stop "scapegoating" teachers for the challenges in reopening schools. "The teachers in the country understand the importance of being back in school and the importance of vaccinations," she says.

As the highly contagious Delta variant continues to spread, many hospitals are reporting record numbers of children being hospitalized, especially in areas with low vaccination rates, including Arkansas, Florida, Missouri and Texas. Dr. Christina Propst, a pediatrician in Houston, says children under 12 who are still ineligible for COVID-19 vaccines are at risk. "They are currently our most vulnerable population, just as this highly transmissible variant is surging across the country," Propst says. She says Texas Governor Greg Abbott's order banning mask mandates in schools is a purely political decision that ignores science. ​​"What he is doing is a direct threat to the health and well-being of the children of Texas," says Propst.

Pentagon Will Require All Military Personnel to Get Vaccinated Against COVID-19, Florida Reopens Schools, with Masks Optional, as State Becomes Coronavirus Epicenter, Canada Reopens Border to Vaccinated U.S. Travelers, California Officials Warn Record-Shattering Wildfire Could Burn for Weeks, Greek Prime Minister Apologizes Amid Protests over Government's Handling of Wildfires, Germany Sets Up 30 Million Euro Recovery Fund After Devastating Floods, Small Island States Warn Climate Crisis Threatens "Our Very Future", Sixth Afghan Provincial Capital Falls to Taliban , Indigenous Brazilians Seek Genocide Charges Against President Bolsonaro at International Court, Senators Unveil $3.5 Trillion Spending Package Amid Vote on $1.2 Trillion Infrastructure Bill, New York Lawmakers Pledge Swift Impeachment Probe of Gov. Andrew Cuomo , Epstein Accuser Virginia Giuffre Sues Prince Andrew over Alleged Sexual Abuse, R. Kelly Sex Trafficking Trial Opens in New York, Brooklyn Protesters Reject Fracked Gas Pipeline

Despite a new two-month moratorium on evictions issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, millions of people in the U.S. are still at risk of losing their homes as landlords in some states fight back against the measure. The new CDC moratorium is "a band-aid over a bullet wound," says Tara Raghuveer, director of KC Tenants, a tenants' rights organization in Kansas City. "This is a very small step. It's the bare minimum. And for many tenants … this will actually not offer the protections that are needed to keep them in their homes."

We continue to discuss the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, which details the damage of climate change already underway around the world and warns that much worse is yet to come unless governments drastically reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. The report tallies the losses from human-induced climate change "in an absolutely scientifically verifiable and attributable manner," says climate scientist Saleemul Huq, director of the International Center for Climate Change and Development in Bangladesh. "The path to keeping it below 1.5 degrees is diminishing by the hour." We also continue with Kim Cobb and Bob Kopp, two lead authors of the new IPCC report.

Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg says the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change should serve as a "wake-up call" for governments to do more to lower emissions. In its first major report in nearly a decade, the IPCC says the Earth could face runaway global warming unless drastic efforts are made to eliminate greenhouse gases and that humans are "unequivocally to blame for the climate crisis," which is already causing widespread and rapid changes. "The climate crisis is not going away," Thunberg said. "It's only escalating, and it's only growing more intense by the hour."

In its first major report in nearly a decade, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has warned the Earth could face runaway global temperature changes unless drastic efforts are made to reduce greenhouse gases. The IPCC says humans are "unequivocally" to blame for the climate crisis, which has already caused "widespread and rapid changes." Scientists conclude average global temperatures will likely rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius, or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, above preindustrial levels by 2040 based on carbon emissions already in the atmosphere. The report also warns temperatures will continue to rapidly warm after 2040 unless immediate action is taken now. For more, we speak with two lead authors of the new IPCC report: Kim Cobb, professor of Earth and atmospheric sciences at Georgia Tech, and Bob Kopp, professor and director of the Institute of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences at Rutgers University. "The changes we're seeing now are widespread. They're rapid. They're intensifying. They're unprecedented in thousands of years," says Kopp. "It's indisputable that these changes are linked to human activities."

Irreversible Climate Devastation Unavoidable, World Has Little Time to Make Drastic Change, Dixie Fire Explodes to Largest Single Fire in CA History; Wildfires Continue to Ravage Greece, Taliban Seize 5 Afghan Cities as War Threatens to Claim Even More Lives, Fauci Warns New Variant Could Emerge If Pandemic Not Brought Under Control, Cases Surge in TX, FL as GOP Govs Fight Health Measures; Teachers Union Considers Vaccine Mandate, Biden Admin Extends Pause on Federal Student Loan Repayment, Senators Push Forward $1.2 Trillion Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill, Texas Democrats Absent from Special Session, Again Blocking GOP Voter Suppression Effort, Texas Facilities for Immigrant Children Could Soon Operate Without Official Oversight, 42 Refugees Feared Dead After Shipwreck Off Coast of Western Sahara, Mass Protests Erupt Across Argentina as Anger Mounts over Poverty & Unemployment, Thai Protesters Demand Resignation of Prime Minister over Economic Crisis & COVID-19, Former Acting AG Jeffrey Rosen Says Deputy Tried to Subvert 2020 Election Results, Aide Accuses Gov. Andrew Cuomo of Groping: "What He Did to Me Was a Crime", Nagasaki Marks 76th Anniversary of U.S. Nuclear Attack

Protests across the United States are calling for the immediate release of environmental and human rights lawyer Steven Donziger, who has been held under house arrest in New York for two years after being targeted by the oil giant Chevron. Donziger sued the oil giant in Ecuador on behalf of 30,000 Amazonian Indigenous people for dumping 16 billion gallons of oil into their ancestral lands. Ecuador's Supreme Court ordered Chevron to pay $18 billion a decade ago, a major victory for the environment and corporate accountability. But Chevron refused to pay or clean up the land, and instead launched a legal attack targeting Donziger in the United States. A federal judge in July found Donziger guilty of six counts of criminal contempt of court after he refused to turn over his computer and cellphone. In an unusual legal twist, the judge appointed a private law firm with ties to Chevron to prosecute Donziger, after federal prosecutors declined to bring charges. "This is a broader threat to our society," says Donziger. "We cannot allow in any rule-of-law country, or any country, private prosecutions run by corporations."

As the United Nations Security Council holds an emergency session to discuss the crisis in Afghanistan, we speak with Polk Award-winning journalist Matthieu Aikins, who is based in Kabul. The Taliban have been seizing territory for months as U.S. troops withdraw from the country, and the group is now on the verge of taking several provincial capitals. "In the 13 years I've been working here, I've never seen a situation as grim," says Aikins.

Richard Trumka, the longtime president of the AFL-CIO and one of the most powerful labor leaders in the United States, has died of a heart attack at the age of 72. Trumka's death has prompted an outpouring of tributes from fellow labor figures, activists and lawmakers, including President Joe Biden. Trumka was a third-generation coal miner from Pennsylvania who, at the age of 33, became the youngest president of the United Mine Workers of America. He continued climbing through the ranks of organized labor for the rest of his life, fighting campaigns against apartheid in South Africa, racism within the labor movement and anti-union rules across the United States. He was elected president of the AFL-CIO, the country's largest labor federation, in 2009. "We were broken by the news," says Arlene Holt Baker, former executive vice president for the AFL-CIO and friend of Trumka's. "He's the brother in our movement who fought in so many ways for what was right." We also speak with veteran labor organizer José La Luz, who says Trumka's main challenge was fighting the erosion of worker power. "What we have witnessed in the past few decades is a massive distribution of wealth from the bottom to the top," says La Luz. "This remains a fundamental challenge for whoever is going to take up the mantle."

Dixie Fire Grows to Become Sixth Largest in California History, Greek PM Blames Climate Change as Thousands Flee Wildfires Near Athens, Study Warns Atlantic Ocean Current Could Collapse, with Devastating Impact on Climate, Biden Restores Tailpipe Emissions Standards, Promotes Switch to Electric Vehicles, Democratic Bill Would Tax Big Polluters $500 Billion to Pay for Climate Damage, U.S. Coronavirus Cases Hit Six-Month High with Over 100,000 Daily Infections, Africa COVID-19 Deaths Surged by 80% in Last Month as Delta Variant Spread, U.N. Security Council Meets on Afghanistan as Taliban Offensive Sparks Humanitarian Crisis, Nicaraguan Police Arrest Another Candidate Challenging President Ortega, New Guatemalan Anti-Corruption Prosecutor Accused of Protecting the Corrupt, Texas Governor Orders Special Legislative Session in Latest Attempt to Pass Voter Suppression Bills, Richard Trumka, Longtime Head of AFL-CIO Labor Federation, Dies at 72, Justice Department to Probe Excessive Force, Abuse and Discrimination by Phoenix Police, ACLU Sues to Overturn Texas Order Restricting Travel by Asylum Seekers, Biden Administration Will Outfit Thousands of Border Agents with Body Cameras, Hiroshima Marks 76th Anniversary of U.S. Nuclear Attack

One year after the Beirut port explosion, a new Human Rights Watch report implicates senior Lebanese officials in the disaster that killed 218 people, wounded 7,000 others and destroyed vast swaths of the city. The blast on August 4, 2020, was one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in history. It resulted from the detonation of hundreds of tons of ammonium nitrate, which had been sitting in a hangar at the port for years while multiple government officials who knew about the highly explosive chemicals did nothing. "We didn't find any Lebanese official who took any responsibility for securing the port and removing the ammonium nitrate," says Human Rights Watch researcher Aya Majzoub. "The levels of corruption and negligence that we found through this documentation was really just shocking." We also speak with Nisreen Salti, economics professor at the American University of Beirut, who says the port explosion is part of a decades-long pattern of "negligence and corruption and collapse" in Lebanon. "What the port explosion has done, instead of being a turning point or a moment of reckoning, has just pushed us further into the abyss of total economic freefall."

Congressmember Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, whose district includes Minneapolis, says she supports a ballot initiative to abolish the city's police department and replace it with a new "Department of Public Safety." Local activists have already gathered tens of thousands of signatures for the move. "We've had a very incompetent and brutal police department for a really long time," says Omar, who adds that while much of the world associates the city's cops with the murder of George Floyd, local residents have witnessed the department's violence for much longer.

We speak with Minnesota Congressmember Ilhan Omar about her memoir "This Is What America Looks Like," the Biden administration's recent airstrikes in her birth country of Somalia and why the U.S. must remain a country of refuge for people fleeing war and poverty like she did. Omar adds that the Biden administration must stop enforcing Trump-era immigration rules that allow for expedited deportations of asylum seekers. "These policy choices have consequences. We have a moral imperative in this country to get our immigration policy right and make it a more humane system," she says.

Minnesota Congressmember Ilhan Omar was among the progressive Democrats who camped outside the U.S. Capitol to pressure the Biden administration into passing a new eviction moratorium after the previous moratorium lapsed July 31. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a new two-month moratorium earlier in the week that covers areas of the country where there is "substantial" or "high" spread of the coronavirus. "As lawmakers, we have a responsibility to protect those that sent us to legislate on their behalf," says Omar, adding that she has personal familiarity with housing precarity. "I certainly have experienced severe aspects of that as someone who not only slept on the side of roads, on beaches … but also spent a lot of time in a refugee camp."

WHO Calls for Moratorium on Third Doses Amid Stark Global Vaccine Inequity, Amid Soaring Profits, Moderna and Pfizer to Raise COVID-19 Vaccine Prices , Over Half of China's Provinces Log New COVID Cases; Tokyo Olympics Registers Worst Daily Toll, Illinois Issues Mask Mandate for Schools; Arkansas Governor Regrets Signing Anti-Mask Bill, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis Bans Mask Mandates, Blames Immigrants & Biden for Record COVID Surge, Landlords Ask Federal Judge to Block Biden CDC's New Eviction Moratorium, Protesters in Lebanon Demand Justice on First Anniversary of Beirut Port Explosion, Unfolding Climate Crisis Fuels Massive Fires in Turkey, Southern Europe, California and Siberia, Mexican Government Sues Glock, Colt and Other Gunmakers in U.S. Federal Court, Olympic Sprinter Krystsina Tsimanouskaya of Belarus Granted Humanitarian Visa in Poland, U.S. Ranks Dead Last for Healthcare Among 11 Wealthy Countries, Report on NCAA Finds Stark Gap in Resources for Men's and Women's Athletics, New York Gov. Cuomo Faces Multiple Criminal Probes over Sexual Harassment Claims

At least 20 water protectors were brutally arrested in Minnesota as resistance to the Enbridge Line 3 pipeline continues, and they say state and local police have escalated their use of excessive force, using tear gas, rubber and pepper bullets to repress opposition to Line 3, which, if completed, would carry Canadian tar sands oil across Indigenous land and fragile ecosystems. "The level of brutality that was unleashed on us was very extreme," says Indigenous lawyer and activist Tara Houska, who suffered bloody welts after she was shot with rubber bullets, then arrested and held in Pennington County Jail over the weekend, where several water protectors say they were denied medical care for their injuries, denied proper food and some reportedly held in solitary confinement.

The $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill is making its way through the Senate this week. The outcome of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which calls for $550 billion in new spending and reuses some unused COVID-19 relief aid, will set the stage for debate on Biden's much larger $3.5 trillion package, which Democrats hope to pass with a simple majority using the reconciliation process in the Senate. Jacobin staff writer Branko Marcetic says progressives must fight for the larger package and be willing to block the bipartisan bill, if needed. "If that reconciliation bill looks like it's actually going to get blocked, then progressives need to use their numbers and use their leverage and wield power that they really have in this Congress," he says.

The Biden administration has issued a new two-month moratorium on evictions, covering much of the country, after facing public pressure from progressive lawmakers led by Congressmember Cori Bush of Missouri, who was once unhoused herself and slept on the steps of the U.S. Capitol in protest after the moratorium on evictions lapsed on July 31. The new moratorium issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will cover areas of the United States where there is "substantial" or "high" spread of the coronavirus. The belated renewal of the eviction moratorium shows that "people need to be willing to criticize this administration," says Jacobin staff writer Branko Marcetic. "People want the administration to succeed, but treating them with kid gloves is not necessarily going to be the best way to get these kinds of progressive and just outcomes in policy."

Pressure is growing on New York Governor Andrew Cuomo to resign after the state's attorney general, Letitia James, released the damning findings of an independent investigation Tuesday about how Cuomo sexually harassed at least 11 women in violation of the law. "The report is devastating, and it is disturbing. And unfortunately, it's not surprising to anyone who has spent time in Albany," says New York state Senator Julia Salazar. We also speak with Sochie Nnaemeka, state director of the New York Working Families Party, who says removing Cuomo must include a wider reckoning with how Albany operates. "We need to usher in a post-Cuomo moment," says Nnaemeka. "We need a full transformation of New York state."

CDC Issues New Eviction Moratorium Following Rep. Cori Bush Protest to Protect Renters, Rep. Tlaib Calls for House Democrats to Return Donations from Real Estate Tycoon, COVID Death Toll in Indonesia Tops 100,000; Tokyo Reports Record Daily Cases, Hospitals Fill Up in Florida & Louisiana with Unvaccinated Patients, Report: 72K Children Tested Positive for COVID Last Week in 85% Jump, New York City to Require Proof of Vaccine for Indoor Dining & Events, NY Gov. Cuomo Faces Call to Resign over Probe Finds He Sexually Harassed 11 Women, Ohio House Primary: Shontel Brown Defeats Nina Turner, Afghanistan: Car Bombing Kills 8 in Kabul as Fight in Provincial Capitals Intensifies, Greece & Turkey Battle Wildfires Amid Heat Wave, Ukraine Probes Death of Belarusian Activist, Lebanon Marks One Year Since Blast at Port of Beirut Killed 218, Ebrahim Raisi Becomes New Iranian President, Vows to Fight U.S. Sanctions, Federal Judge in Texas Blocks Abbott's New Anti-Migrant Executive Order, Missouri Governor Pardons White Couple Who Aimed Guns at Black Lives Matter Protesters

A new book by two Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post reporters provides fresh details on former President Trump's response to the pandemic, his campaign to overturn the 2020 election results, and the events surrounding the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. The book, "I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trump's Catastrophic Final Year," details how the country's top general, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, feared Trump would wage a coup after losing the November election, among other revelations. We speak with co-authors Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig, who say their reporting unearthed "a lot of things that made our jaws drop to the ground." In an interview for the book, Trump said his only regret during his last year in office was not deploying the military against Black Lives Matter protesters. "He wanted to use active-duty troops on the streets of America's cities to combat American protesters who were exercising their First Amendment rights," says Rucker.

The Israeli Supreme Court this week offered Palestinian residents of Sheikh Jarrah a compromise in their ongoing fight to block Jewish settlers from forcibly expelling them from their own homes. The high court proposed that Palestinian families could stay in their homes for now if they begin paying rent to the Jewish settler group that claims ownership over the properties — a deal the families rejected, insisting they are the legal owners. The planned evictions in East Jerusalem helped spark the last war in Gaza in May and have galvanized international support for Palestinians facing dispossession from settler groups and the state. The United Nations has described the planned evictions as a possible war crime. Palestinian writer and poet Mohammed El-Kurd, whose family is among those facing eviction in Sheikh Jarrah, says the Israeli Supreme Court is "evading its responsibilities" by refusing to make a ruling, offering a face-saving compromise instead that will not ultimately benefit the families. "We would be living at the mercy of settlers, paying rent to live in our own homes and dealing with all kinds of arbitrary policies," he says.

The number of refugees trying to reach European soil continues to grow due to worsening poverty, violence and the climate crisis, and over 1,100 refugees have perished crossing the Mediterranean so far this year, according to the United Nations. We speak with Laurence Bondard of SOS Méditerranée, a humanitarian group that rescues migrants at sea, who says there is a severe shortage of search-and-rescue resources in the area to address the crisis. "The people that are actually fleeing via the sea that are on tremendously unseaworthy dinghies — most of the time without life jackets, without enough food or water — are in extreme danger, and they cannot always be rescued," Bondard says.

Louisiana Orders Mask Mandate as U.S. Logs Highest Coronavirus Toll Since February, Federal Employees Must Show Proof of Vaccination or Face Regular Tests, U.S., U.K. Say Afghan Taliban Massacred Civilians in Spin Boldak, State Department Offers to Resettle Thousands of Afghans Who Worked with U.S. , Refugee Advocates Sue as Biden Admin Continues Trump-Era Border Policy, HHS Watchdog to Probe Reports of Dire Conditions at Migrant Youth Detention Camp , Progressives Blast White House for Allowing Eviction Moratorium to Expire, 200+ Arrested at D.C. Protest Demanding End to Filibuster, Voting Rights, Study: Gerrymandering Could Win Republicans House Majority in 2022, Two More Officers Who Responded to January 6 Capitol Insurrection Die by Suicide, 5 Miami Beach Police Officers Face Criminal Charges over Brutality Caught on Video, NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo Questioned for 11 Hours on Sexual Harassment Allegations, Palestinian Families in Occupied East Jerusalem Reject Israeli Court Offer to Delay Evictions, Brutal Heat Wave Threatens to Topple Europe's All-Time Temperature Record, Water Protectors Shot with "Less Lethal" Police Munitions at Line 3 Pipeline Protests, Zürich Protesters Block Entrances to Swiss Banks That Finance Climate Crisis

We look at a groundbreaking new documentary on the climate crisis and the global food system, "The Ants and the Grasshopper," which follows the journey of a Malawian farmer as she tries to end hunger and gender inequality in her village, and tackle climate change in the United States. "In this film, what we're trying to do is decolonize the view of how it is that we fix the climate crisis and the health crisis by foregrounding the wisdom of peasants from around the world, whether they're in the United States or from Malawi," says co-director Raj Patel.

We speak with Missouri Congressmember Cori Bush, who is formerly unhoused, about why she has been sleeping on the steps of the U.S. Capitol with others since Friday night to protest her colleagues' decision to adjourn for August recess without passing an extension to the federal eviction moratorium, which expired July 31, as millions are behind on rent. Bush tells Democracy Now! she could not "walk away from this situation and go on vacation" knowing that millions of people could end up on the streets. "This isn't easy. This is not performative in any way. I would rather be at home, but I understand the urgency and the need of this crisis right now," Bush says.

As much of the world struggles to cope with the pandemic and its impacts, we speak with Dr. Rupa Marya and Raj Patel, co-authors of the new book, "Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice," which examines the social and environmental roots of poor health. "Inflammation is the body's appropriate response to damage, or the threat of damage," says Marya, a physician and co-founder of the Do No Harm Coalition. "We're learning that the social structures around us, the environmental, political structures around us, are tuning the immune system to sound out the full range of inflammation." Patel adds that "capitalism primes bodies … for sickness."

Millions Could Face Eviction as Congress Fails to Extend Moratorium, "Things Are Going to Get Worse": Fauci Warns Nation as COVID Cases Surge, China, Thailand, Malaysia, Japan Battle Delta Variant, Eight Die in Southwestern Turkey as 100 Wildfires Burn, Thousands of Rohingya Refugees Displaced By Mass Flooding in Bangladesh, U.S.: 91 Large Wildfires Burn in Western States, Trump to DOJ: "Just Say the Election was Corrupt + Leave the Rest to Me", Rep. McCarthy: "It Will Be Hard Not to Hit" Pelosi With Gavel, Taliban Launches Attacks on Three Afghan Provincial Capitals, Iran Denies Responsibility For Attack on Israel-Linked Oil Tanker, Mexico, Russia & Bolivia Send Aid to Cuba as U.S. Announces New Sanctions, 700 Refugees Rescued Off Coasts of Libya and Malta, New Zealand Apologizes for Anti-Migrant Raids in 1970s, Head of Burmese Military Junta Names Himself Prime Minister, Washington Post: Police Fatally Shot 1,021 People In 2020, Highest in Years, Ecuadorian Father Granted Temporary Reprieve After 2 Years in Connecticut Church, U.S. Olympic Medalist Probed For Displaying "X" Gesture to Protest Oppression, Belarusian Athlete Seeks Political Asylum in Poland's Embassy in Tokyo, Bread and Puppet Co-Founder Elka Schumann, 85, Dies

We go to Guatemala to speak with an opposition lawmaker and a Maya K’iche’ leader who joined Thursday’s major national strike demanding the resignation of right-wing President Alejandro Giammattei and other government officials facing allegations of corruption. Major highways were blocked for hours as protesters marched through Guatemala City and in rural communities denouncing corruption, a worsening economic crisis and the government's catastrophic mishandling of the pandemic. The demonstrations are the “third chapter of our history in the fight against corruption, which started in 2015,” says Lucrecia Hernández Mack, Guatemalan physician and a member of the Guatemalan Congress with the political party Movimiento Semilla who was the first woman to lead the country’s Ministry of Health. “People here in Guatemala are just outraged.” Indigenous governments and people across Guatemala united in leading the call for the mass mobilization, adds Andrea Ixchíu, Maya K’iche’ leader, journalist and human rights defender in Totonicapán, Guatemala. “We are tired [of] how in the midst of the pandemic the Guatemalan government is stealing the money from the vaccines and militariz[ing] the country.”

Israel has launched what has been described as a maximum pressure campaign against Ben & Jerry's and its parent company Unilever, after the iconic ice cream brand announced it would halt sales in Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. Israel has asked 35 U.S. governors to enforce state laws which make it a crime to support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, or BDS. The founders of Ben & Jerry's, who no longer have operational control of the company, have defended the company's decision. A number of Jewish groups including J Street, the New Israel Fund and Americans for Peace Now, all of whom oppose BDS, have defended Ben & Jerry's decision and rejected accusations that the company's decision was antisemitic. “What we are seeing is an aggressive, over the top, full-court press from senior officials in the Israeli government ... to target Ben & Jerry’s simply for the fact that they made a principled decision to respect the distinction between the state of Israel and the territory that it occupies beyond the green line,” says Logan Bayroff, Vice President of Communications of J-Street. “These anti-boycott laws aren’t just posing issues under the first amendment, they’re actually punishing companies that do the right thing by ending their complicity in human rights abuses,” adds Omar Shakir, Israel and Palestine Director at Human Rights Watch.

Human Rights Watch is calling on the International Criminal Court to open a probe into apparent Israeli war crimes committed during its recent 11-day assault on Gaza that killed 260 Palestinians, including 66 children. We discuss a major report HRW released this week that closely examines three Israeli strikes that killed 62 Palestinians civilians in May. U.S.-made weapons were used in at least two of the attacks investigated. Human Rights Watch concluded Israel had committed apparent war crimes. “You had people’s entire lives — their homes, their businesses, their wives, their children, their husbands — gone in a flash,” says Omar Shakir, Israel and Palestine Director at Human Rights Watch, who helped lead the investigation. “The international community focuses on Gaza maybe when there are armed hostilities. But two months later these families continue to deal with the aftermath of the devastation wrought upon their lives.”

Biden Announces New Federal COVID Mandates, CDC Finds Delta Variant Just as Transmissible in Breakthrough Infections, More Contagious Than Flu, House Weighing Bill to Extend Eviction Moratorium Hours Before Expiration, Half of Burma Could Contract COVID, Pakistan Enacts New Restrictions, Haiti Hospitals Overwhelmed, Congress Passes Emergency Funding Bill for Capitol Security, Resettlement of Afghan Interpreters, Report: Over 80 Afghan Troops Killed in Insider Attacks During Taliban Offensive, Dozens Killed in Flash Floods in Rural Afghanistan, U.S. Will Return 17,000 Looted Archaeological Treasures to Iraq, U.S. Weighing New Sanctions on Iran as Nuclear Deal Hangs in Balance, Israeli Soldiers Kill 20-Year-Old Palestinian at Funeral for Slain 12-Year-Old, First Protester Tried Under Hong Kong's National Security Law Receives 9 Years, Greenland Lost Enough Ice in One Day to Cover Florida in Two Inches of Water, Ex-Archbishop of D.C. Theodore McCarrick Charged With Sexual Assault of a Minor, Rep. Cori Bush Unveils Bill to Protect Rights of Unhoused People, Brooklyn Mutual Aid Group Attacked by NYPD While Serving the Community, NYPD Arrest 11 People Protesting City's Plan to Evict Unhoused People From Hotels, Alabama Coal Miners Bring Strike to BlackRock Offices in NYC, Carl Levin, Michigan Democratic Senator Who Fought Against Wall Street Criminality, Dies at 87, Lummi Nation Totem Pole Arrives in Capital After Lengthy Cross-Country Journey

Senate Democrats have announced that they have joined with 17 Republicans to vote in favor of taking up a $1.2 trillion infrastructure deal. The plan includes new spending on climate and environment measures, but critics say it falls far short of what is needed. Democrats say they hope to include additional climate measures in a $3.5 trillion reconciliation package that could advance without being blocked by a Republican filibuster if it is backed by all 50 Democrats. Climate and energy policy researcher Leah Stokes says the bipartisan bill does include positive measures but nowhere near enough. "There are some good investments and important things, but they are in many cases cents on the dollar," she says.

The highly contagious Delta variant is causing a rise in cases around the world, from the Olympics in Tokyo to Russia, Indonesia and the U.S. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has issued new guidelines suggesting that people resume wearing masks indoors, but state and local officials are not legally required to implement CDC guidelines. Dr. Leana Wen, an emergency physician and former Baltimore health commissioner, says she supports the new CDC guidelines because an "honor system" of trusting people to wear masks unless they were vaccinated clearly did not work. "We know that we can't trust the unvaccinated," she says. She also discusses global vaccine inequity, how to overcome vaccine hesitancy, and her new memoir, "Lifelines: A Doctor's Journey in the Fight for Public Health."

Senate Votes to Open Debate on $1.2T Infrastructure Bill, WTO Fails to Agree on Waiving IP Rights for COVID Vaccines, Vaccination Mandates Expand Across the Nation, Report: Pandemic Aid Helped Poverty Fall by 45%, But Gains May Be Just Temporary, Pelosi Argues Against Broad-Based Student Debt Cancellation, Peru: Pedro Castillo Sworn In, Vows to Be Champion of the Poor, Israeli Forces Shoot Dead 12-Year-Old Palestinian Boy in West Bank, Israel Launches Campaign Against Ben & Jerry's, But Some U.S. Jewish Groups Back Ice Cream Maker, Macron: Polynesians Owed "Debt" for French Nuclear Tests, U.S. and Russia Hold Nuclear Talks in Geneva, Whistleblowers: Migrant Children Are Being Mistreated at Fort Bliss, Acetic Acid Leak in Texas Kills Two, 30 Hospitalized in Texas, Voting Rights Activists Begin Selma-to-Montgomery-Style March in Texas, Virginia Cop Sent Back to Jail on Jan. 6 Charges After Ordering 37 Guns, Jailed Gymnastics Coach Spent $10K on Himself in Jail While Just $8 a Month to Victims, Black Agenda Report Founder Glen Ford, 71, Dies

More than 1,400 workers in West Virginia are set to lose their jobs this week when the Viatris pharmaceuticals plant in Morgantown shuts down and moves operations overseas to India and Australia. Workers say they've had no response to their urgent requests for help from their Democratic senator, Joe Manchin, who is often called the most powerful man in Washington. Viatris was formed through a merger between two pharmaceutical companies, Mylan and Upjohn. Mylan's chief executive, Manchin's daughter Heather Bresch, got a $31 million payout as a result of the corporate consolidation before the new company set about cutting costs, including the closure of the Morgantown plant. Joseph Gouzd, president of United Steelworkers of America Local 8-957 and a worker at the plant, says Viatris has given little reason for the closure except to say the company is looking to "maximize the best interests of the shareholders." We also speak with investigative journalist Katherine Eban, who says moving pharmaceutical production overseas contradicts the recommendations of numerous reports that have found major safety lapses in drug manufacturing abroad, as well as concern from lawmakers about keeping a key industry within the United States. "This is pure insanity," Eban says. "It seems like it is both pharmaceutical and national security suicide to close this plant."

We look at the life and legacy of civil rights icon Bob Moses, who recently died at the age of 86, with NAACP President Derrick Johnson, who formerly headed the NAACP Mississippi State Conference, where Moses served as field secretary for SNCC, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and helped register thousands of voters across the state. "Bob Moses was one of the most profound strategist leaders of the civil rights movement across the country," says Johnson. "He understood that the local fight had both national and global implications."

We speak with Derrick Johnson, president and CEO of the NAACP, about emotional testimony from four police officers who were attacked by violent and racist Trump supporters while defending the Capitol. At the opening of the House select committee hearing on the January 6 insurrection, the officers described facing down the rioters, being beaten with fists and makeshift weapons, as well as being called racial slurs and accused of treason by the pro-Trump crowds. "The fact that you had law enforcement officers from all backgrounds and walks of life who were being … treated in that manner is another example of white supremacy," says Johnson.

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As the United States imposes new Cuba sanctions, citing human rights abuses, we look at the U.S. military prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, a notorious gulag that President Biden himself has called an "advertisement for creating terror." This month, the first Guantánamo Bay prisoner to be released under the Biden administration, ​​Abdul Latif Nasser, returned to his home country of Morocco after nearly two decades of being held without charge even though he was cleared for release in 2016. There are 39 other prisoners still at Guantánamo, nearly two decades after the start of the U.S. war on terror. To discuss efforts to close the notorious prison and repatriate the remaining detainees, we are joined by Nasser's lawyer Mark Maher of Reprieve and Gary Thompson, lawyer for former Guantánamo prisoner Ravil Mingazov, who is currently being held in a UAE prison after being released from Guantánamo in 2017, where he was held without charge for 15 years. "If there was ever a right and just time to be releasing these men, this is the time to do it," says Maher.

After rare anti-government protests in Cuba, Cuban Americans are speaking out to demand the U.S. government end its blockade of the island. But President Joe Biden has responded with new sanctions. We speak with Cuban American Carlos Lazo, who just led a march from Miami to the White House with Puentes de Amor, or Bridges of Love, and says President Biden promised during the 2020 presidential campaign to undo Trump sanctions and return to a more constructive relationship with Cuba. "After seven months, he did nothing," says Lazo. "We get tired of waiting." We also speak with Latin American affairs scholar William LeoGrande, professor of government in the School of Public Affairs at American University in Washington, D.C., who says, despite official U.S. rhetoric, almost every president going back to Dwight Eisenhower has found areas of mutual interest with the Cuban government. "There's a long history of negotiation and cooperation just under the surface of the very real hostility that the United States has had toward Cuba," says LeoGrande.

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We remember the life of Bob Moses, the civil rights leader who left his job as a New York City high school teacher to register Black voters in Mississippi in the 1960s, facing down horrific violence and intimidation to become one of the icons of the movement. He died Sunday at age 86. Moses spent his later years as an advocate for improved math education, teaching thousands of students across the United States through the Algebra Project, the nonprofit he founded. Moses spoke to Democracy Now! in 2009, on the first day of the Obama presidency, recalling the 1964 fight for Black representation within the Democratic Party, the struggle against Jim Crow in the South and his passion for education. "In our country, I think we run sharecropper education," Moses said, warning that unequal educational opportunities would continue racial disparities in the country. "We need a constitutional amendment, something which simply says every child in the country is a child of the country and is entitled to a quality public school education."

At a sentencing hearing Tuesday, whistleblower Daniel Hale faces at least nine years in prison for leaking classified information about the U.S. drone and targeted assassination program. During his time in the Air Force from 2009 to 2013, Hale worked with the National Security Agency and the Joint Special Operations Task Force at the Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, where he helped identify targets for assassination. He later worked as a contractor for the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency. In March, Hale pleaded guilty to one count of violating the World War I-era Espionage Act for leaking documents exposing the drone program. "This has been an odyssey that has occupied most of the better part of his adult life for basically committing the truth," says Jesselyn Radack, an attorney for Daniel Hale. "The U.S. has never contested any of Daniel's disclosures," Radack adds. We also speak with Noor Mir, Daniel Hale's close friend and part of his support team, who describes him as a compassionate person willing to make sacrifices to do the right thing. "I know that when he's out, he will remain committed to ending suffering in all forms," Mir says.

Six months into the Biden administration, the COVID-19 pandemic continues to rage across the United States and around the world, driven by the highly contagious Delta variant. Meanwhile, as vaccinations stall in the United States, much of the world is still "desperate" for COVID-19 vaccines, says Yale epidemiologist Gregg Gonsalves. "We should be exporting vaccines rather than sitting on them and hoarding them," he says. "If we don't stop the virus all around the world, we're not going to stop it anywhere."