Contributing Writers

The trailblazing human rights attorney Peter Weiss died November 3 at the age of 99. Weiss served on the board of the Center for Constitutional Rights for nearly five decades, where he worked to end South African apartheid and the Vietnam War, fought for nuclear disarmament and sought justice for victims of the U.S.-backed Contras in 1980s Nicaragua. He pioneered using the 1789 Alien Tort Statute in human rights cases. He also represented the family of U.S.

Jelani Cobb, the acclaimed journalist and dean of the Columbia Journalism School, has just published a new collection of essays, “Three or More Is a Riot: Notes on How We Got Here.” The book collects essays beginning in 2012 with the killing of Travyon Martin in Florida. It traces the rise of Donald Trump and the right’s growing embrace of white nationalism as well as the historic racial justice protests after the police killing of George Floyd in 2020.

Over 5000 fossil fuel lobbyists were given access to U.N. climate summits over the past four years, a period marked by a rise in catastrophic extreme weather, inadequate climate action and record oil and gas expansion. “This is climate obstruction at work,” says Nina Lakhani, senior climate justice reporter for The Guardian US.

The 30th U.N. climate change conference begins today in the Brazilian rainforest city of Belem, located at the mouth of the Amazon River. The summit opens as a major typhoon hit the Philippines killing at least eight people and displacing more than 1.4 million others. Typhoon Fung-wong hit as the Philippines is still recovering from Typhoon Kalmaegi which killed at least 224 people last week.

The trailblazing human rights attorney Peter Weiss died November 3 at the age of 99. Weiss served on the board of the Center for Constitutional Rights for nearly five decades, where he worked to end South African apartheid and the Vietnam War, fought for nuclear disarmament and sought justice for victims of the U.S.-backed Contras in 1980s Nicaragua. He pioneered using the 1789 Alien Tort Statute in human rights cases. He also represented the family of U.S.

The U.S. is continuing to blow up boats in the Caribbean and the Pacific despite growing international condemnation, while the Trump administration reportedly considers launching airstrikes on Venezuela or even assassinating President Nicolás Maduro.

The Supreme Court heard oral arguments this week in a case challenging President Donald Trump’s tariffs, with plaintiffs arguing that his unilateral levies on imported goods violate the Constitution, which grants Congress the power to impose taxes and regulate foreign commerce.

In an unsigned order on Thursday, the Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to require U.S. passports to list travelers’ sex assigned at birth, another blow to the rights of transgender, nonbinary and intersex people, who had been able to select sex markers aligning with their gender identity or to use a gender-neutral X. Thursday’s order is an interim ruling while the passport case makes its way through lower courts.

The trailblazing human rights attorney Peter Weiss died November 3 at the age of 99. Weiss served on the board of the Center for Constitutional Rights for nearly five decades, where he worked to end South African apartheid and the Vietnam War, fought for nuclear disarmament and sought justice for victims of the U.S.-backed Contras in 1980s Nicaragua. He pioneered using the 1789 Alien Tort Statute in human rights cases. He also represented the family of U.S.

The U.S. is continuing to blow up boats in the Caribbean and the Pacific despite growing international condemnation, while the Trump administration reportedly considers launching airstrikes on Venezuela or even assassinating President Nicolás Maduro.

The Supreme Court heard oral arguments this week in a case challenging President Donald Trump’s tariffs, with plaintiffs arguing that his unilateral levies on imported goods violate the Constitution, which grants Congress the power to impose taxes and regulate foreign commerce.

In an unsigned order on Thursday, the Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to require U.S. passports to list travelers’ sex assigned at birth, another blow to the rights of transgender, nonbinary and intersex people, who had been able to select sex markers aligning with their gender identity or to use a gender-neutral X. Thursday’s order is an interim ruling while the passport case makes its way through lower courts.

The trailblazing human rights attorney Peter Weiss died November 3 at the age of 99. Weiss served on the board of the Center for Constitutional Rights for nearly five decades, where he worked to end South African apartheid and the Vietnam War, fought for nuclear disarmament and sought justice for victims of the U.S.-backed Contras in 1980s Nicaragua. He pioneered using the 1789 Alien Tort Statute in human rights cases. He also represented the family of U.S.

The U.S. is continuing to blow up boats in the Caribbean and the Pacific despite growing international condemnation, while the Trump administration reportedly considers launching airstrikes on Venezuela or even assassinating President Nicolás Maduro.

The Supreme Court heard oral arguments this week in a case challenging President Donald Trump’s tariffs, with plaintiffs arguing that his unilateral levies on imported goods violate the Constitution, which grants Congress the power to impose taxes and regulate foreign commerce.

In an unsigned order on Thursday, the Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to require U.S. passports to list travelers’ sex assigned at birth, another blow to the rights of transgender, nonbinary and intersex people, who had been able to select sex markers aligning with their gender identity or to use a gender-neutral X. Thursday’s order is an interim ruling while the passport case makes its way through lower courts.

We get an overview of how Democrats won big across the United States in Tuesday’s elections, with Daniel Nichanian, editor-in-chief of Bolts. Democratic Congressmember Mikie Sherrill won New Jersey’s governor’s race, and Abigail Spanberger flipped Virginia’s governorship. In California, voters approved a new congressional map that could help Democrats pick up five additional congressional seats in a move to counter Texas’s redistricting plan.

Palestinian writer Tareq Baconi joins us to discuss his new memoir, Fire in Every Direction, a chronicle of his political and queer coming of age growing up between Amman and Beirut as the grandson of refugees from Jerusalem and Haifa.

A new special report from Futuro Media follows the Trump administration’s federal immigration raids and the growing community resistance against them. “Taken: The Agents Raiding Communities and the People Trying to Stop Them” documents how Latinos in the U.S. are being racially profiled, “kidnapped,” denied due process and forced to sign their own removal orders. “This is psychological terror,” says investigative journalist Maria Hinojosa.

Amid federal immigration raids in the Chicagoland area, the mayor of one Chicago suburb is on the frontlines of the anti-ICE protest movement. Mayor Daniel Biss says what he has seen of federal immigration raids in Evanston, Illinois, amounts to an “invasion from our own federal government.” His office is now launching investigations into reports of federal agents brutalizing and threatening community members. “They appear to have just started beating people up for no reason,” Biss says.

We get an overview of how Democrats won big across the United States in Tuesday’s elections, with Daniel Nichanian, editor-in-chief of Bolts. Democratic Congressmember Mikie Sherrill won New Jersey’s governor’s race, and Abigail Spanberger flipped Virginia’s governorship. In California, voters approved a new congressional map that could help Democrats pick up five additional congressional seats in a move to counter Texas’s redistricting plan.

At Zohran Mamdani’s victory party at the Brooklyn Paramount on Tuesday night, Democracy Now! spoke with Congressmember Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. “We’re not going to be intimidated,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “We’re going to fight for working families. We’re going to stand with immigrants. We’re going to stand with the diversity of this city.

Democracy Now! spoke with supporters celebrating Zohran Mamdani’s win in the New York City mayoral race Tuesday night. Volunteers with the Democratic Socialists and other campaign organizers at the Brooklyn Paramount victory party described the night as “surreal” and vowed to fight back against President Trump’s agenda. Sumaya Awad, a NYC-DSA member, describes Zohran as a politician “that doesn’t put the platform and the mission at the expense of anyone.

Democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani won the New York mayoral race, defeating former Governor Andrew Cuomo. A year ago, Mamdani was polling at just 1%, but on Tuesday he became the first New York mayoral candidate to win over a million votes since the 1960s. Mamdani won despite being vastly outspent by Cuomo, who was backed by a group of billionaires.

We speak to Wole Soyinka, the 91-year-old celebrated Nigerian writer and first African Nobel laureate, who recently had his U.S. visa revoked after he made comments critical of Trump. As Trump threatens U.S. military action against Nigeria over claims of a “Christian genocide” in the country, Soyinka says, “when religious differences began to be invoked as a means of political power, and even social and economic powers, we’ve had unquestionably the issue of impunity.

We speak with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists Carol Leonnig and Aaron Davis on the day they publish their new book, Injustice: How Politics and Fear Vanquished America’s Justice Department, which looks at how the DOJ during the Biden administration was overly cautious in pursuing cases against Trump and his allies over 2020 election interference, the January 6 riot and more.

Dick Cheney, the former vice president and one of the key architects of the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, died Monday at age 84. Cheney served six terms in Congress as Wyoming’s lone representative before serving as defense secretary under President George H.W. Bush, when he oversaw the first Gulf War and the bloody U.S. invasion of Panama that deposed former U.S. ally Manuel Noriega. From 1995 to 2000, Cheney served as chair and CEO of the oil services company Halliburton, before George W.

Voters in the United States are casting ballots in several closely watched elections on Tuesday, including mayoral races in New York, Seattle and Minneapolis, and gubernatorial contests in New Jersey and Virginia. The Nation’s executive editor John Nichols says Zohran Mamdani’s campaign in New York, in particular, has “captured the imagination of the country.

We speak to Wole Soyinka, the 91-year-old celebrated Nigerian writer and first African Nobel laureate, who recently had his U.S. visa revoked after he made comments critical of Trump. As Trump threatens U.S. military action against Nigeria over claims of a “Christian genocide” in the country, Soyinka says, “when religious differences began to be invoked as a means of political power, and even social and economic powers, we’ve had unquestionably the issue of impunity.