Contributing Writers

We speak with Dr. Rupa Marya, a physician, activist, author and composer, who this week filed two free speech complaints against her former employer, the University of California, San Francisco. The school fired her last month after a lengthy suspension over her criticism of Israel’s war on Gaza and its impact on healthcare in the Palestinian territory.

We get an update from the Madleen, the Freedom Flotilla ship sailing to Gaza with vital humanitarian aid for Palestinians. Brazilian activist Thiago Ávila, one of 12 people on the ship, says “spirits are high” despite the constant presence of drones overhead and threats from the Israeli government. “Palestine is now the strategic place for all peoples to unite and fight against oppression, exploitation and the destruction of nature,” says Ávila.

Newark Mayor Ras Baraka has filed a federal lawsuit, after he was arrested by masked federal agents outside an Immigration and Customs Enforcement jail in Newark. “They arrested me without any evidence,” says Baraka of his decision to sue. “They humiliated me. They cuffed me. They dragged me in the car, took me to the cell. … It was completely unwarranted.

President Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” now before the Senate could result in over 51,000 preventable deaths each year in the United States. That’s according to public health experts at Yale and the University of Pennsylvania, who sent a letter warning about the bill’s impact to the Senate Finance Committee.

Is the Donald Trump-Elon Musk bromance finally over? President Trump is threatening to cut off billions of dollars in federal contracts with Musk after the two billionaires engaged in a dramatic online feud just days after Musk called Trump’s budget bill a “disgusting abomination.” Musk appeared to back the impeachment of Trump and claimed the president is named in the Jeffrey Epstein files.

We speak with Dr. Rupa Marya, a physician, activist, author and composer, who this week filed two free speech complaints against her former employer, the University of California, San Francisco. The school fired her last month after a lengthy suspension over her criticism of Israel’s war on Gaza and its impact on healthcare in the Palestinian territory.

We get an update from the Madleen, the Freedom Flotilla ship sailing to Gaza with vital humanitarian aid for Palestinians. Brazilian activist Thiago Ávila, one of 12 people on the ship, says “spirits are high” despite the constant presence of drones overhead and threats from the Israeli government. “Palestine is now the strategic place for all peoples to unite and fight against oppression, exploitation and the destruction of nature,” says Ávila.

Newark Mayor Ras Baraka has filed a federal lawsuit, after he was arrested by masked federal agents outside an Immigration and Customs Enforcement jail in Newark. “They arrested me without any evidence,” says Baraka of his decision to sue. “They humiliated me. They cuffed me. They dragged me in the car, took me to the cell. … It was completely unwarranted.

President Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” now before the Senate could result in over 51,000 preventable deaths each year in the United States. That’s according to public health experts at Yale and the University of Pennsylvania, who sent a letter warning about the bill’s impact to the Senate Finance Committee.

Is the Donald Trump-Elon Musk bromance finally over? President Trump is threatening to cut off billions of dollars in federal contracts with Musk after the two billionaires engaged in a dramatic online feud just days after Musk called Trump’s budget bill a “disgusting abomination.” Musk appeared to back the impeachment of Trump and claimed the president is named in the Jeffrey Epstein files.

We speak with Dr. Rupa Marya, a physician, activist, author and composer, who this week filed two free speech complaints against her former employer, the University of California, San Francisco. The school fired her last month after a lengthy suspension over her criticism of Israel’s war on Gaza and its impact on healthcare in the Palestinian territory.

We get an update from the Madleen, the Freedom Flotilla ship sailing to Gaza with vital humanitarian aid for Palestinians. Brazilian activist Thiago Ávila, one of 12 people on the ship, says “spirits are high” despite the constant presence of drones overhead and threats from the Israeli government. “Palestine is now the strategic place for all peoples to unite and fight against oppression, exploitation and the destruction of nature,” says Ávila.

Newark Mayor Ras Baraka has filed a federal lawsuit, after he was arrested by masked federal agents outside an Immigration and Customs Enforcement jail in Newark. “They arrested me without any evidence,” says Baraka of his decision to sue. “They humiliated me. They cuffed me. They dragged me in the car, took me to the cell. … It was completely unwarranted.

President Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” now before the Senate could result in over 51,000 preventable deaths each year in the United States. That’s according to public health experts at Yale and the University of Pennsylvania, who sent a letter warning about the bill’s impact to the Senate Finance Committee.

Is the Donald Trump-Elon Musk bromance finally over? President Trump is threatening to cut off billions of dollars in federal contracts with Musk after the two billionaires engaged in a dramatic online feud just days after Musk called Trump’s budget bill a “disgusting abomination.” Musk appeared to back the impeachment of Trump and claimed the president is named in the Jeffrey Epstein files.

We’re joined by award-winning investigative journalist Carole Cadwalladr, who in 2018 exposed the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data scandal and is now taking on what she terms the “broligarchy,” the billionaire Silicon Valley businessmen who now wield major influence in U.S. government and society. “This is a new type of power, and the world hasn’t seen this before, in which you have state power now with this enormous surveillance engine machine,” says Cadwalladr.

We speak to political scientist Neve Gordon and medical anthropologist Guy Shalev about their new article, “The Shame of Israeli Medicine,” which looks at the “complicity of the Israeli medical establishment with Israel’s egregious violations of international law.” The article’s third author, Osama Tanous, is a Palestinian citizen of Israel and has not been able to make media appearances for fear of reprisal by the Israeli government.

A group of veterans and their allies have entered their third week of a “Fast for Gaza” outside the United Nations headquarters in New York City. The group is calling for an end to arms sales to Israel and of Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip. We hear from multiple hunger strikers on their decisions to join the planned 40-day action and why they are pressuring the U.N. in particular.

We get an update on the case of former Columbia University student protest negotiator Mahmoud Khalil from Baher Azmy, a member of Khalil’s legal team at the Center for Constitutional Rights. Khalil has been detained in Louisiana for nearly three months, in what Azmy calls one of “our immigration gulags.” Khalil’s legal team is now challenging the State Department’s determination that his presence in the United States harms the country’s foreign policy interests.

President Trump has signed a new travel ban barring citizens of 12 countries from entering the United States. The ban applies to Afghanistan, Burma, Chad, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen and the Republic of Congo. The Trump administration is calling some of the countries “terrorist safe havens” and citing high visa overstay rates for others.

The Trump administration has tapped Palantir — the notorious data-mining firm co-founded by billionaire tech investor Peter Thiel — to compile information on people in the United States for a “master database,” creating an easy way to cross-reference sensitive data from tax records, immigration records and more. Palantir also has a $30 million contract with ICE to provide almost real-time visibility into immigrants’ movements as the agency seeks to arrest 3,000 people a day.

The new book Empire of AI by longtime technology reporter Karen Hao unveils the accruing political and economic power of AI companies — especially Sam Altman’s OpenAI. Her reporting uncovered the exploitation of workers in Kenya, attempts to take massive amounts of freshwater from communities in Chile, along with numerous accounts of the technology’s detrimental impact on the environment.

As Gaza faces over three months of Israeli blockade, a group of 12 activists is sailing to Gaza to deliver humanitarian aid. The Madleen ship was launched by the Freedom Flotilla Coalition and initially planned to sail from Malta last month, but the group’s ship was damaged in a drone attack. The new mission includes the renowned Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, who speaks with Democracy Now! live from the Madleen.

Officials in Gaza say over 100 Palestinians have been killed during recent Israeli attacks on people waiting at aid sites. An additional 500 are wounded. Following the series of deadly attacks, the shadowy U.S.-Israeli humanitarian aid operation is shutting down for a day, and Israel’s military warned Palestinians that roads leading to the aid distribution centers will be considered “combat zones.