Millions of people across North America have experienced hazardous air pollution this month as nearly a thousand active wildfires continue to rage in Canada. In addition to releasing hazardous chemicals and smoke darkening skies across the continent, the fires in Canada have also disproportionately impacted Indigenous communities, forcing thousands to evacuate their homes.

As calls mount for accountability over the ICE killing of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston, we speak with Democratic Congressmember Al Green, who represents Texas’s 9th Congressional District. He demands an independent investigation into the shooting to stop “an attempt to cover up” the killing by the Trump administration.

Houston community members continue to demand justice for Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, the 52-year-old Mexican father who was shot and killed by an ICE agent July 7. He had lived in the United States for nearly 35 years and had three U.S. citizen children. The ICE agents involved in his killing have not been identified, and it’s unclear whether they remain on active duty.
For more on the community response, we get a report from Democracy Now! producers on the ground in Houston.

The United States is expanding its attacks on Iran after three U.S. soldiers were killed over the weekend, the first U.S. fatalities in the conflict since March. Two U.S. service members were killed in an Iranian attack on a base in Jordan, and a third soldier was killed in northern Iraq during a “controlled detonation” of a downed Iranian drone. The United States has now bombed Iran for nine consecutive nights, and Iran has retaliated by striking U.S. allies across the Persian Gulf.

Hollywood’s blockbuster adaptation of the ancient Greek epic The Odyssey premieres around the world today amid growing calls for a boycott. Human rights campaigners are criticizing director Christopher Nolan over his decision to film part of the film in Western Sahara, a vast territory in northwestern Africa that Morocco has occupied for the past half-century.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio and top White House adviser Stephen Miller are pushing for a global crackdown on leftist organizations. The State Department on Thursday hosted a summit “on the resurgence of political terrorism,” where Miller described the left as “enemies of civilization” and described efforts to “disrupt, identify, defund, debank, arrest and prosecute these political terrorists that are operating in our country.” Rubio announced the U.S.

Hundreds of community members gathered in Houston on Thursday evening for a public viewing of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, the 52-year-old Mexican man shot and killed by an ICE agent on July 7. His sons stood by their father’s casket for hours greeting mourners who wore blue, Salgado Araujo’s favorite color. A mariachi band played, and several altars adorned the chapel: One table held Salgado Araujo’s construction tools and hard hats, while another displayed two of his Mexico soccer jerseys.

In a primetime address on Thursday, President Trump accused China of meddling in U.S. elections in his latest effort to spread doubt about the U.S. voting system ahead of the midterm elections in November. Trump announced he was declassifying documents that show what he called “shocking vulnerabilities in our election infrastructure,” but offered no evidence that China or any other country directly interfered with recent elections.

Lifelong activist, organizer and educator Denise Oliver-Vélez has died at the age of 78. She was a central figure in the civil rights movements of the 1960s and 1970s and was the first woman elected to the Young Lords Central Committee, a radical Puerto Rican human rights group modeled on the Black Panther Party, which Oliver-Vélez was also a member of. She later became the first Black female program director in public radio and taught at SUNY New Paltz.