Contributing Writers

As part of our ongoing series on artificial intelligence, we speak with researcher Shreya Johri, who says AI has the power to revolutionize the field of medicine, particularly in diagnosing patients. Johri is a postdoctoral fellow at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and completed her Ph.D. at Harvard Medical School in 2025. She discusses ways that new technology is improving patient care, but she says AI must be treated like an additional tool and not be given control over patient care.

Ahead of the November midterm elections, Republican officials in the third most populous county of Texas have voted to slash the number of polling sites by nearly one-third. Tarrant County, which includes Fort Worth, will have just 224 polling sites for 1.3 million voters. The change was approved in a party-line vote Tuesday, with all three of the county’s Republican commissioners voting in favor and the two Democrats opposing it.

An anonymous federal whistleblower has warned that the Trump administration’s new system for handling mail ballots through the U.S. Postal Service is untested, fatally flawed and likely to lead to a “catastrophic failure” if it’s implemented ahead of November’s midterm elections. This follows President Trump’s executive order in March directing his administration to create federal lists of citizens and to refuse delivery of mail-in ballots to people not on those lists.

Feminist icon Gloria Steinem has died at the age of 92. According to her Instagram page, she died Wednesday “at her home in New York City, surrounded by some of the many who loved her.” Steinem was a tireless advocate for the social, economic and political advancement of women. Steinem co-founded Ms. magazine, the first major publication to be owned, run and written by women.

Juan Carlos Dávila reports from Puerto Rico as the island grapples with a severe water crisis. A record-breaking drought has led to severe shortages and a system of water rationing that residents say could have been prevented by better infrastructure maintenance.

Demonstrators gathered outside Madison Square Garden in New York City on Saturday to protest against the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, a far-right Indian paramilitary Hindu nationalist organization with close ties to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The leader of the RSS, Mohan Bhagwat, was holding a rally inside the arena to launch a global speaking tour marking the 100th anniversary of the RSS.

A year ago today, the United States bombed a small boat in the Caribbean, killing nine people on board. Two survivors clung to the wreckage for 45 minutes, reportedly waving for help, before a second “double-tap” strike killed them, too. President Trump posted a video of the first attack on social media, announcing that 11 terrorists had been killed in a military operation that would be called “Operation Southern Spear.

We speak to Richard Wolff, a prominent Marxist economist, about the economic fallout from the war on Iran, which recently reached the six-month mark. “Because it’s only been going on for a few months, the impact on the prices we pay is about to unload itself,” says Wolff.
The U.S. national debt, which recently topped $40 trillion, is “one of the many signs of an economy and of an empire that is now in decline,” says Wolff.

Tributes continue to pour in for Dolly Parton after the iconic country singer, actor and philanthropist’s death on August 25 at age 80. Her former co-star Jane Fonda tells Democracy Now! how they made the classic workplace comedy 9 to 5, for which Parton wrote the accompanying hit song. “She could see through people to their essence,” Fonda says of Parton. “She loved everyone.

Juan Carlos Dávila reports from Puerto Rico as the island grapples with a severe water crisis. A record-breaking drought has led to severe shortages and a system of water rationing that residents say could have been prevented by better infrastructure maintenance.

As part of its mass deportation campaign, the Trump administration is secretly deporting immigrants to countries that they have no ties to. CNN correspondent Isobel Yeung recently traveled to the Central African Republic, which in recent months has accepted dozens of immigrants who had previously been granted deportation protections because they risk facing torture in their home countries. Despite the fact that the State Department warns U.S.

The U.S. has struck a deal to take majority control of more than 65 billion barrels of Venezuela’s oil reserves, nine months after the U.S. military abducted President Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores in a raid on Caracas and two months after The New York Times revealed that U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has become the de facto viceroy of Venezuela, effectively controlling Venezuela’s finances, the distribution of its natural resources and its government.

Tributes continue to pour in for Dolly Parton after the iconic country singer, actor and philanthropist’s death on August 25 at age 80. Her former co-star Jane Fonda tells Democracy Now! how they made the classic workplace comedy 9 to 5, for which Parton wrote the accompanying hit song. “She could see through people to their essence,” Fonda says of Parton. “She loved everyone.

As Gary, Indiana, recovers from flooding and a two-week power outage, we also speak with Ron Daniels, president of the Institute of the Black World 21st Century, who discusses the city’s history as a site of Black struggle and organizing. In 1972, the city hosted the National Black Political Convention, which brought together thousands of activists to plan for increasing African American political power.

Thousands of residents recently spent two weeks without power in Gary, Indiana, following a storm that ripped through the majority-Black city. The blackout ground the city to a halt, trapping residents in their apartments, forcing the closure of many businesses and leading to fuel shortages at gas stations. Officials in Indiana estimate the storm might have caused up to $5 billion in damage in Gary and other communities.

Top U.S. military leaders have reportedly advised Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth against extending the war in Iran because ongoing operations in the Middle East have degraded the Pentagon’s ability to confront threats elsewhere. According to The Washington Post, the warnings appeared in a classified assessment for Hegseth prepared by the heads of the Army, Navy and Air Force and the four-star commanders overseeing U.S. operations throughout Europe, Asia and Latin America.

More than 900 people in Nepal are confirmed dead after a massive wall of water, mud and debris crashed through a Himalayan river valley on the border with Tibet. More than 4,200 people are missing in Nepal and hundreds more in Tibet. Families are searching hospitals for loved ones, and crews have buried hundreds of unidentified bodies in shallow graves.

Experts estimate that a language is lost every two weeks — and that half of the world’s 7,000 spoken languages could be lost by the end of the century. Quechua is the most widely spoken Indigenous language in the Americas, with approximately 7 to 10 million speakers living primarily in Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador. But like so many Indigenous languages, Qechua is vulnerable due to cultural pressures and discrimination.

A team of researchers led by Democracy Now!’s Juan González at the University of Illinois Chicago recently released an in-depth study on how, through a program called Tax Increment Financing (TIF), Chicago has spent some $16 billion in property taxes it collected over the past 40 years to fund downtown development. The money was supposed to be used to eliminate urban blight.

Amy Goodman is back to hosting Democracy Now! after taking time off following a medical procedure to remove skin cells on her nose that tested positive for squamous cell cancer. “I think it’s important that … we don’t have to be picture-perfect on TV or video. We are not plastic; we are people. And people get by in all sorts of ways around the world,” says Goodman.

We get a report from Nepal, where at least 547 people are confirmed to have died and over 1,500 are still missing after a glacial collapse on Wednesday sent a wall of ice, mud and rock into a Himalayan river, triggering catastrophic flooding in the Nepal-Tibet border region that swept away entire communities. Nepali authorities say they have rescued more than 3,700 people so far.

Calls to shut down the ICE jail known as the Dilley Immigration Processing Center in South Texas continue to grow following the detention and deportation of 5-year-old Liam Tadeo and his father Victor Martinez Nieto to Mexico. According to the family’s lawyer, Nieto had begged officers to let his son go as they were arrested on their way to soccer practice in Austin last week. Nieto wanted Liam released to his mother, but ICE reportedly refused.

Experts estimate that a language is lost every two weeks — and that half of the world’s 7,000 spoken languages could be lost by the end of the century. Quechua is the most widely spoken Indigenous language in the Americas, with approximately 7 to 10 million speakers living primarily in Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador. But like so many Indigenous languages, Qechua is vulnerable due to cultural pressures and discrimination.

A team of researchers led by Democracy Now!’s Juan González at the University of Illinois Chicago recently released an in-depth study on how, through a program called Tax Increment Financing (TIF), Chicago has spent some $16 billion in property taxes it collected over the past 40 years to fund downtown development. The money was supposed to be used to eliminate urban blight.

Amy Goodman is back to hosting Democracy Now! after taking time off following a medical procedure to remove skin cells on her nose that tested positive for squamous cell cancer. “I think it’s important that … we don’t have to be picture-perfect on TV or video. We are not plastic; we are people. And people get by in all sorts of ways around the world,” says Goodman.

We get a report from Nepal, where at least 547 people are confirmed to have died and over 1,500 are still missing after a glacial collapse on Wednesday sent a wall of ice, mud and rock into a Himalayan river, triggering catastrophic flooding in the Nepal-Tibet border region that swept away entire communities. Nepali authorities say they have rescued more than 3,700 people so far.

Calls to shut down the ICE jail known as the Dilley Immigration Processing Center in South Texas continue to grow following the detention and deportation of 5-year-old Liam Tadeo and his father Victor Martinez Nieto to Mexico. According to the family’s lawyer, Nieto had begged officers to let his son go as they were arrested on their way to soccer practice in Austin last week. Nieto wanted Liam released to his mother, but ICE reportedly refused.

Experts estimate that a language is lost every two weeks — and that half of the world’s 7,000 spoken languages could be lost by the end of the century. Quechua is the most widely spoken Indigenous language in the Americas, with approximately 7 to 10 million speakers living primarily in Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador. But like so many Indigenous languages, Qechua is vulnerable due to cultural pressures and discrimination.

A team of researchers led by Democracy Now!’s Juan González at the University of Illinois Chicago recently released an in-depth study on how, through a program called Tax Increment Financing (TIF), Chicago has spent some $16 billion in property taxes it collected over the past 40 years to fund downtown development. The money was supposed to be used to eliminate urban blight.