Contributing Writers

As we broadcast, the House was soon set to vote on the so-called big, beautiful bill before the July 4 deadline imposed by President Trump. Should the House pass the legislation, the bill would be sent to Trump’s desk to be signed into law. The bill massively increases funding for ICE, cuts $1 trillion from Medicaid over a decade and adds $3.3 trillion to the nation’s debt.

In his first live broadcast interview since being released from ICE detention, Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil tells Democracy Now! about his experience behind bars, the ongoing threat of deportation that hangs over him and why he continues to speak out against the U.S.-backed Israeli war on Gaza. The Columbia University graduate was the first pro-Palestinian campus protester to be jailed by the Trump administration.

As part of our July Fourth special broadcast, we continue our extended interview with Karen Hao, author of Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI. The book documents the rise of OpenAI and how the AI industry is leading to a new form of colonialism. “One of the things that you really have to understand about AI development today is that there are what I call quasi-religious movements that have developed within Silicon Valley,” says Hao.

In our July Fourth special broadcast, we revisit our interview with longtime technology reporter Karen Hao, author of the new book Empire of AI, which 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.

We begin our July Fourth special broadcast with the words of Frederick Douglass. Born into slavery around 1818, Douglass became a key leader of the abolitionist movement. On July 5, 1852, in Rochester, New York, Douglass gave one of his most famous speeches, “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” He was addressing the Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society.

In an effort to fulfill the Trump administration’s daily immigration arrest “quotas,” federal agents and deputized local law enforcement are racially profiling and snatching people off the streets without due process. These arrests, carried out by armed and masked agents, are sowing terror and confusion in communities across the United States.

Deep in the Florida Everglades, at an abandoned airfield surrounded by barren swampland, local law enforcement authorities are opening the doors to a huge tent facility that hopes to lock up immigrants swept up in the Trump administration’s mass deportation machine.

As we broadcast, the House was soon set to vote on the so-called big, beautiful bill before the July 4 deadline imposed by President Trump. Should the House pass the legislation, the bill would be sent to Trump’s desk to be signed into law. The bill massively increases funding for ICE, cuts $1 trillion from Medicaid over a decade and adds $3.3 trillion to the nation’s debt.

In his first live broadcast interview since being released from ICE detention, Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil tells Democracy Now! about his experience behind bars, the ongoing threat of deportation that hangs over him and why he continues to speak out against the U.S.-backed Israeli war on Gaza. The Columbia University graduate was the first pro-Palestinian campus protester to be jailed by the Trump administration.

In an effort to fulfill the Trump administration’s daily immigration arrest “quotas,” federal agents and deputized local law enforcement are racially profiling and snatching people off the streets without due process. These arrests, carried out by armed and masked agents, are sowing terror and confusion in communities across the United States.

Deep in the Florida Everglades, at an abandoned airfield surrounded by barren swampland, local law enforcement authorities are opening the doors to a huge tent facility that hopes to lock up immigrants swept up in the Trump administration’s mass deportation machine.

The budget bill just passed by the Senate provides more than $170 billion in new funding for immigration enforcement and detention. Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, who worked on an analysis published by the American Immigration Council, says the new budget would make ICE “the single largest federal law enforcement agency in the history of the nation.

After a contentious round of last-minute negotiations, President Trump’s budget bill has passed in the Senate, squeaking by thanks to Vice President JD Vance casting the tie-breaking vote. Three Republicans joined Senate Democrats in voting “no” on the bill, which gives tax cuts to the rich and makes historic cuts to Medicaid and food assistance. The bill now heads to the House of Representatives, where Republicans hold a slim majority, for a final vote before Trump’s July 4 deadline.

A heat wave is raising temperatures to dangerous levels across much of Europe, just days after a heat wave in North America saw over 3,000 temperature records set. For more, we speak with climate scientist Michael Mann, who warns that heat domes and flooding have nearly tripled since the 1950s. “At some level, this isn’t that complicated.

“There are many things that happened in this war that are clearly war crimes,” Volker Türk, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, says about Israel’s war on Gaza. Democracy Now!’s Amy Goodman spoke with the top U.N. rights watchdog in Geneva this week at the headquarters of the United Nations Human Rights Council.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is visiting the United States next week to meet with President Donald Trump and other top officials in the U.S. administration, supposedly to “capitalize on the success” of the 12-day war against Iran. This comes after nearly 21 months of Israel’s war on Gaza that has killed at least 56,000 Palestinians, with daily violence only increasing. “There’s basically an airstrike every other minute,” says Palestinian writer and analyst Muhammad Shehada.

We speak with American neurosurgeon Dr. Abdul Basit Khan in Gaza, where he is volunteering at the Nasser Hospital. He describes treating patients with blast injuries and gunshot wounds from Israeli attacks, all while coping with a lack of basic medical supplies and widespread hunger. “Food insecurity is rampant, from all levels of society. Even the physicians are not eating,” he says. Multiple blasts were heard during the interview, with Dr.

The legendary journalist Bill Moyers has died at the age of 91. Moyers, whose long career included helping found the Peace Corps and serving as press secretary for President Lyndon Johnson, was an award-winning champion of public television and independent media. We feature one of his numerous interviews on Democracy Now! where we discussed the history of public broadcasting in the United States and the powerful role of money in corporate media.

We go to the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva, where activists are shining a light on Morocco’s brutal occupation of Western Sahara and its Indigenous people, the Sahrawi. The Sahrawi journalist and activist Asria Mohamed speaks with Democracy Now!’s Amy Goodman about “Jaimitna,” an art installation that evokes the tents of Sahrawi people living in refugee camps. The installation features various melhfas, traditional clothing worn by Sahrawi women, and includes their stories.

The Supreme Court’s term ended Friday with a decision that promises to further expand the power of the president. Conservative justices argued lower federal courts cannot issue nationwide injunctions — a decision that limits judicial checks on presidential power. “We have an imperial court that has created an imperial presidency,” says Dahlia Lithwick, writer and host of the legal podcast Amicus.

Senate lawmakers are debating President Trump’s 940-page so-called big, beautiful bill as Republicans race to meet a Trump-imposed July 4 deadline and are set to vote on key amendments. Senate Republicans have deepened the cuts to Medicaid while cutting taxes for the wealthy and increasing the national deficit.

The legendary journalist Bill Moyers has died at the age of 91. Moyers, whose long career included helping found the Peace Corps and serving as press secretary for President Lyndon Johnson, was an award-winning champion of public television and independent media. We feature one of his numerous interviews on Democracy Now! where we discussed the history of public broadcasting in the United States and the powerful role of money in corporate media.

Democrat Pramila Jayapal is holding a series of “shadow hearings” in Congress on Trump’s immigration actions. Jayapal, the ranking member of the Subcommittee on Immigration, Integrity, Security and Enforcement, explains how Trump’s immigration crackdown has created a “Catch-22” for asylum seekers, who are being targeted for “expedited removal” at their own immigration hearings. “If you show up, you could get detained and deported.

Over 100 days have passed since the Trump administration’s unprecedented removal of more than 230 immigrants to El Salvador’s notorious mega-prison CECOT. They were removed without any due process in the United States. Democracy Now! spoke with the loved ones of Andry Hernández Romero, a 33-year-old gay makeup artist and asylum seeker who was told he would be sent home to Venezuela, according to his mother. But instead, he was sent to CECOT, where reports of torture and abuse are rampant.