Contributing Writers

We go to Lebanon, where an Israeli invasion is in full swing along the southern border. Israel has announced the expansion of its so-called buffer zone and issued mass evacuation orders as its military destroys homes and infrastructure throughout the region. A humanitarian crisis is brewing as hospitals have been blocked from receiving medical supplies and as healthcare workers, as well as other civilians, have been killed in targeted Israeli strikes.

The White House is seeking a record-shattering Pentagon budget of $1.5 trillion for the next fiscal year, the largest year-over-year increase in a presidential military spending request since World War II. The United States already has the world’s largest military budget at roughly $1 trillion, more than the combined budgets of the next nine highest-spending countries.

Democracy Now! co-host Juan González discusses the Latinx Freedom Movement Conference, taking place this week at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York. The conference will be a landmark gathering of 1960s movement veterans, scholars, cultural leaders and more.

We speak with two Iranian scholars ahead of an 8 p.m. ET deadline set by President Donald Trump for Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz or face destruction of all its power plants, bridges and other civilian infrastructure. Twelve hours ahead of the deadline, the president posted on social media, “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will.

We speak with Palestinian activist Leqaa Kordia, who was freed on March 16 after spending more than a year in an ICE jail in Texas. She was arrested in 2025 as part of the Trump administration’s campaign to target student activists and others who advocated for Palestinian rights.
Kordia was born in the occupied West Bank and lives in New Jersey. She was arrested in 2024 during the Gaza solidarity protests at Columbia University.

We go to Lebanon, where an Israeli invasion is in full swing along the southern border. Israel has announced the expansion of its so-called buffer zone and issued mass evacuation orders as its military destroys homes and infrastructure throughout the region. A humanitarian crisis is brewing as hospitals have been blocked from receiving medical supplies and as healthcare workers, as well as other civilians, have been killed in targeted Israeli strikes.

We get the latest analysis on the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran from Trita Parsi, the executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. Parsi discusses the increasing “desperation” of U.S. strategy, Iran’s long-term economic control over the Strait of Hormuz and growing “hawkishness,” and the dangerous possibility of nuclear warfare.

At least 17 people were arrested Saturday as Israeli police violently cracked down on an antiwar protest in Tel Aviv, where hundreds had gathered condemning the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran. Israeli peace activist Alon-Lee Green, who helped organize the protest and was among those arrested, says the Israeli public’s initial support for the war has rapidly declined in recent weeks, as the quick, decisive engagement that was promised has not come to fruition.

We speak with Palestinian activist Leqaa Kordia, who was freed on March 16 after spending more than a year in an ICE jail in Texas. She was arrested in 2025 as part of the Trump administration’s campaign to target student activists and others who advocated for Palestinian rights.
Kordia was born in the occupied West Bank and lives in New Jersey. She was arrested in 2024 during the Gaza solidarity protests at Columbia University.

Democrats and voting advocacy groups have filed lawsuits against President Trump’s sweeping new executive order to limit mail-in voting ahead of this year’s midterm elections. “This is clearly an attempt for the president to pick his own voters,” says Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, who is legally challenging Trump’s order.

Legal expert David Cole speaks about the “blatantly illegal” U.S.-Israeli war on Iran: “The U.N. Charter absolutely prohibits one country from aggressively attacking another country, using force against another country, unless that country has attacked us — and Iran had not attacked us.

President Trump has fired Attorney General Pam Bondi amid reports of his growing frustration with her failure to prosecute his political enemies and her handling of the Epstein files.
Bondi, Florida’s former attorney general, was a Trump loyalist who openly heaped praise on the president and did away with the long-standing Department of Justice practice of maintaining political independence from the White House.

We speak with Palestinian activist Leqaa Kordia, who was freed on March 16 after spending more than a year in an ICE jail in Texas. She was arrested in 2025 as part of the Trump administration’s campaign to target student activists and others who advocated for Palestinian rights.
Kordia was born in the occupied West Bank and lives in New Jersey. She was arrested in 2024 during the Gaza solidarity protests at Columbia University.

Democrats and voting advocacy groups have filed lawsuits against President Trump’s sweeping new executive order to limit mail-in voting ahead of this year’s midterm elections. “This is clearly an attempt for the president to pick his own voters,” says Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, who is legally challenging Trump’s order.

Legal expert David Cole speaks about the “blatantly illegal” U.S.-Israeli war on Iran: “The U.N. Charter absolutely prohibits one country from aggressively attacking another country, using force against another country, unless that country has attacked us — and Iran had not attacked us.

President Trump has fired Attorney General Pam Bondi amid reports of his growing frustration with her failure to prosecute his political enemies and her handling of the Epstein files.
Bondi, Florida’s former attorney general, was a Trump loyalist who openly heaped praise on the president and did away with the long-standing Department of Justice practice of maintaining political independence from the White House.

We speak with Palestinian activist Leqaa Kordia, who was freed on March 16 after spending more than a year in an ICE jail in Texas. She was arrested in 2025 as part of the Trump administration’s campaign to target student activists and others who advocated for Palestinian rights.
Kordia was born in the occupied West Bank and lives in New Jersey. She was arrested in 2024 during the Gaza solidarity protests at Columbia University.

Democrats and voting advocacy groups have filed lawsuits against President Trump’s sweeping new executive order to limit mail-in voting ahead of this year’s midterm elections. “This is clearly an attempt for the president to pick his own voters,” says Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, who is legally challenging Trump’s order.

Legal expert David Cole speaks about the “blatantly illegal” U.S.-Israeli war on Iran: “The U.N. Charter absolutely prohibits one country from aggressively attacking another country, using force against another country, unless that country has attacked us — and Iran had not attacked us.

President Trump has fired Attorney General Pam Bondi amid reports of his growing frustration with her failure to prosecute his political enemies and her handling of the Epstein files.
Bondi, Florida’s former attorney general, was a Trump loyalist who openly heaped praise on the president and did away with the long-standing Department of Justice practice of maintaining political independence from the White House.

More than 3,000 meatpacking workers in Greeley, Colorado, have been on strike since mid-March, the first major labor strike in the U.S. meatpacking industry since 1985. Workers at JBS USA, the U.S. subsidiary of Brazilian-based multinational JBS, are protesting unfair and dangerous labor conditions, including low wages, lack of personal protective gear and discrimination against its majority-immigrant workforce.

We speak with Sarit Michaeli from the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem following the Knesset’s passage of a new law mandating death by hanging for Palestinians who are convicted of murdering Israelis. Jewish Israelis will not face the same punishment for similar crimes. The law, which further cements Israel’s apartheid system, has drawn condemnation from rights groups and other countries.

The Supreme Court heard oral arguments Wednesday about President Donald Trump’s attempt to abolish birthright citizenship, which is enshrined in the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Several justices seemed highly skeptical of the administration’s arguments, though a final ruling is not expected for months.
“I think the oral arguments went really well for our side,” says Aarti Kohli, the executive director of the Asian Law Caucus and co-counsel in the Supreme Court case.

President Donald Trump gave a primetime televised address Wednesday to discuss the war on Iran, his first since the United States and Israel launched attacks on February 28. Trump gave few clues about when or how the war could end, but he boasted about killing top Iranian leaders and degrading the country’s military. He threatened to bomb Iran “back to the stone ages, where they belong.

More than 3,000 meatpacking workers in Greeley, Colorado, have been on strike since mid-March, the first major labor strike in the U.S. meatpacking industry since 1985. Workers at JBS USA, the U.S. subsidiary of Brazilian-based multinational JBS, are protesting unfair and dangerous labor conditions, including low wages, lack of personal protective gear and discrimination against its majority-immigrant workforce.

As Christians around the world prepare to celebrate Easter Sunday, we go to Palestine to speak to Reverend Munther Isaac, pastor of the Lutheran Church in Ramallah and director of the Bethlehem Institute for Peace and Justice, located in the city of Jesus Christ’s birth. This year’s Easter preparations come against the backdrop of the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran, which many Christian nationalists in the U.S., including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, are framing in extremist religious terms.

We take a look at how war in the Middle East is impacting the environment in “one of the most water-stressed regions in the world,” with Kaveh Madani, the renowned U.N. scientist, former Iranian politician and recipient of the 2026 Stockholm Water Prize. Madani discusses threats to civil water infrastructure in the Gulf region, how the Strait of Hormuz crisis highlights consumer countries’ overreliance on oil and gas, and his prize-winning work on the global effects of “water bankruptcy.

Ali Vaez, the Iran project director at the International Crisis Group, says the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran has transformed from a “war of choice” to a “war of necessity” as Iran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz sparks a worldwide oil crisis. Vaez discusses President Donald Trump’s “mixed messages” about U.S. military strategy and warns that “mission creep” could set in if Trump refuses to “exit this war and accept that he hasn’t been able to achieve most of his strategic objectives.

As the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran enters its second month, President Donald Trump has said he wants “to take the oil” and seize Kharg Island, Iran’s key export hub in the Persian Gulf. President Trump’s comments come as 3,500 U.S. troops began arriving in the region on Friday, with The Washington Post reporting that the Pentagon is preparing for weeks of potential ground combat in Iran.