Contributing Writers

As the war on Gaza spans a second year, we continue our conversation with the acclaimed writer Ta-Nehisi Coates. His new book, The Message, is based in part on his visit last year to Israel and the occupied West Bank, where he says he saw a system of segregation and oppression reminiscent of Jim Crow in the United States. “It was revelatory,” says Coates.

We spend the hour with the acclaimed writer Ta-Nehisi Coates, whose book The Message features three essays tackling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, book bans and academic freedom, and the legacy of the transatlantic slave trade. The Message is written as a letter to Coates’s students at Howard University, where he is the Sterling Brown Endowed Chair in the English department.

Lakota historian Nick Estes talks about the violent origins of Thanksgiving and his book Our History Is the Future. “This history … is a continuing history of genocide, of settler colonialism and, basically, the founding myths of this country,” says Estes, who is a co-founder of the Indigenous resistance group The Red Nation and a citizen of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe.

In Part 2 of our special broadcast, we look at a recent victory for Indigenous communities in Ecuador, where people overwhelmingly voted to approve a referendum last year banning future oil extraction in a biodiverse section of the Amazon’s Yasuní National Park — a historic referendum result that will protect Indigenous Yasuní land from development.

In this special broadcast, we begin with an extended interview with Palestinian poet and author Mosab Abu Toha about the situation in Gaza and his new book of poetry titled Forest of Noise. He fled Gaza in December after being detained by the Israeli military, but many of his extended family members were unable to escape.

Security forces in Pakistan arrested over 1,000 supporters of jailed former Prime Minister Imran Khan during a march on the capital of Islamabad. Protesters had vowed to stage a sit-in until Khan — who has been imprisoned since August 2023 on what are widely viewed as politically motivated charges — was released, but ended their efforts after six people were killed.

Next week, our guest Chase Strangio will make history as the first openly transgender lawyer to argue before the Supreme Court. Strangio will argue on behalf of the American Civil Liberties Union’s LGBTQ & HIV Project that Tennessee’s state ban on gender-affirming hormone therapies for transgender children is a form of sex discrimination.

As the war on Gaza spans a second year, we continue our conversation with the acclaimed writer Ta-Nehisi Coates. His new book, The Message, is based in part on his visit last year to Israel and the occupied West Bank, where he says he saw a system of segregation and oppression reminiscent of Jim Crow in the United States. “It was revelatory,” says Coates.

We spend the hour with the acclaimed writer Ta-Nehisi Coates, whose book The Message features three essays tackling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, book bans and academic freedom, and the legacy of the transatlantic slave trade. The Message is written as a letter to Coates’s students at Howard University, where he is the Sterling Brown Endowed Chair in the English department.

Lakota historian Nick Estes talks about the violent origins of Thanksgiving and his book Our History Is the Future. “This history … is a continuing history of genocide, of settler colonialism and, basically, the founding myths of this country,” says Estes, who is a co-founder of the Indigenous resistance group The Red Nation and a citizen of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe.

Security forces in Pakistan arrested over 1,000 supporters of jailed former Prime Minister Imran Khan during a march on the capital of Islamabad. Protesters had vowed to stage a sit-in until Khan — who has been imprisoned since August 2023 on what are widely viewed as politically motivated charges — was released, but ended their efforts after six people were killed.

Next week, our guest Chase Strangio will make history as the first openly transgender lawyer to argue before the Supreme Court. Strangio will argue on behalf of the American Civil Liberties Union’s LGBTQ & HIV Project that Tennessee’s state ban on gender-affirming hormone therapies for transgender children is a form of sex discrimination.

We’re joined by Israeli journalist Gideon Levy as we continue our conversation on the Israeli-Lebanon ceasefire. We take a look at the mood within Israel, where Levy characterizes the Israeli public as “sour” about what is seen as a premature deal. “They would like to see more blood, more destruction in Lebanon,” says Levy. “Israel wants wars.

Nearly two months after Israel invaded Lebanon, a “fragile” ceasefire has been reached between Israel and Lebanon. Under the deal, Israel says it will withdraw troops from Lebanon’s south over a 60-day period, though Lebanese writer Lina Mounzer says “this is already being contradicted by the behavior and the directives of the Israeli army,” which continued to bomb Lebanese civilian areas through the waning hours of official hostilities.

We speak with journalist Keri Blakinger about a new documentary, I Am Ready, Warden, based partly on her reporting about death row prisoner John Henry Ramirez, who was sentenced to die for the 2004 murder of a convenience store clerk named Pablo Castro in Texas. While on death row, Ramirez became a devout Christian and sued for the right to have his pastor lay hands on him when he was ultimately executed in 2022.

We continue our conversation with Amnesty International USA executive director Paul O’Brien, who has written to President Joe Biden urging him for a number of policy changes before he leaves office in January. O’Brien’s letter calls for Biden to stop arms transfers to Israel and use U.S.

With just weeks left in President Joe Biden’s term, we speak with Amnesty International USA executive director Paul O’Brien, who has written to the outgoing president urging him to “change course on critical human rights” before the end of his term in office. One of his key demands is for Biden to free Indigenous activist Leonard Peltier, who has been imprisoned for decades and repeatedly denied parole.

Since October 2023, Israel has killed over 3,700 people in Lebanon, with most of the deaths occurring over the past 10 weeks. The attacks have forced more than 1 million people to flee their homes in Lebanon, where Israel has also repeatedly targeted journalists.

Donald Trump has tapped a new loyalist to head the Department of Justice, former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, who served on his defense team during his first impeachment trial and now works at the Trump-aligned America First Policy Institute. Bondi previously dropped a probe into Trump University in 2013 after Trump’s family foundation donated $25,000 to her campaign.

President-elect Donald Trump has nominated a key architect of the right-wing Project 2025 planning document, Russell Vought, to return as head of the Office of Management and Budget. The Trump loyalist wrote the chapter of Project 2025 that lays out how to redefine the executive branch by firing thousands of civil servants. He has also supported deploying the military domestically.

We continue our coverage of the COP29 U.N. climate summit hosted in Baku, Azerbaijan, with a look at Azerbaijan’s treatment of the country’s Armenian minority population. Last year, the Azerbaijani government ethnically cleansed Armenians from the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region, leading to the forced expulsion of some 100,000 Armenians from the enclave and gruesome human rights violations, including cultural erasure and the torture and mass killing of civilians.

After wealthy countries refused to agree to a $1 trillion proposal from developing countries facing the brunt of climate change’s impacts, the COP29 U.N. climate summit concluded with a $300 billion climate finance deal that is “a drop in the ocean compared to what is needed.” For more, we hear from two climate activists who attended the conference and were among those calling for wealthier countries to contribute more to a global green energy transition.

Donald Trump has tapped a new loyalist to head the Department of Justice, former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, who served on his defense team during his first impeachment trial and now works at the Trump-aligned America First Policy Institute. Bondi previously dropped a probe into Trump University in 2013 after Trump’s family foundation donated $25,000 to her campaign.

The House of Representatives passed a bill Thursday that would empower the Treasury Department to revoke the tax-exempt status of any nonprofit it deems has provided material support to a terrorist organization. A broad coalition of civil society groups have opposed the bill, warning that it would give the Trump administration sweeping powers to crack down on political opponents. H.R.