Contributing Writers

Tuesday is the culmination of the most expensive primary race in U.S. history in New York’s 16th Congressional District. Democratic Congressmember Jamaal Bowman, a former Bronx middle school principal and one of the first to call for a ceasefire in Gaza in October, is being challenged by a former corporate executive, George Latimer, who was encouraged to run by the Democratic Majority for Israel PAC.

The new film Green Border, from acclaimed Polish director Agnieszka Holland, dramatizes the humanitarian crisis facing millions of migrants seeking refuge in Europe. It tells the true story of how refugees from the Middle East and Africa became trapped in 2021 at the so-called green border between Poland and Belarus, through the perspectives of refugees, border guards and refugee rights activists.

The Night Won’t End, a new documentary from Al Jazeera English, takes an in-depth look at attacks on civilians by the Israeli military in Gaza and the United States’ role in the war.

Democratic Congressmember Delia Ramirez of Illinois says “big money in politics” is a threat to U.S. democracy, pointing to Jamaal Bowman’s primary race as an example of how deep-pocketed interest groups can impact election contests.

President Joe Biden’s latest executive order on immigration gives legal protections to about half a million undocumented immigrants who are married to American citizens, preventing their deportation and providing a streamlined pathway to citizenship for them and their children. The announcement is being welcomed by immigrant rights groups, but comes just weeks after Biden signed another order giving himself far-reaching power to shut down the U.S. border with Mexico to limit asylum requests.

The new film Green Border, from acclaimed Polish director Agnieszka Holland, dramatizes the humanitarian crisis facing millions of migrants seeking refuge in Europe. It tells the true story of how refugees from the Middle East and Africa became trapped in 2021 at the so-called green border between Poland and Belarus, through the perspectives of refugees, border guards and refugee rights activists.

The Night Won’t End, a new documentary from Al Jazeera English, takes an in-depth look at attacks on civilians by the Israeli military in Gaza and the United States’ role in the war.

Democratic Congressmember Delia Ramirez of Illinois says “big money in politics” is a threat to U.S. democracy, pointing to Jamaal Bowman’s primary race as an example of how deep-pocketed interest groups can impact election contests.

President Joe Biden’s latest executive order on immigration gives legal protections to about half a million undocumented immigrants who are married to American citizens, preventing their deportation and providing a streamlined pathway to citizenship for them and their children. The announcement is being welcomed by immigrant rights groups, but comes just weeks after Biden signed another order giving himself far-reaching power to shut down the U.S. border with Mexico to limit asylum requests.

Democratic Congressmember Delia Ramirez of Illinois says “big money in politics” is a threat to U.S. democracy, pointing to Jamaal Bowman’s primary race as an example of how deep-pocketed interest groups can impact election contests.

President Joe Biden’s latest executive order on immigration gives legal protections to about half a million undocumented immigrants who are married to American citizens, preventing their deportation and providing a streamlined pathway to citizenship for them and their children. The announcement is being welcomed by immigrant rights groups, but comes just weeks after Biden signed another order giving himself far-reaching power to shut down the U.S. border with Mexico to limit asylum requests.

The new film Green Border, from acclaimed Polish director Agnieszka Holland, dramatizes the humanitarian crisis facing millions of migrants seeking refuge in Europe. It tells the true story of how refugees from the Middle East and Africa became trapped in 2021 at the so-called green border between Poland and Belarus, through the perspectives of refugees, border guards and refugee rights activists.

The Night Won’t End, a new documentary from Al Jazeera English, takes an in-depth look at attacks on civilians by the Israeli military in Gaza and the United States’ role in the war.

Democratic Congressmember Delia Ramirez of Illinois says “big money in politics” is a threat to U.S. democracy, pointing to Jamaal Bowman’s primary race as an example of how deep-pocketed interest groups can impact election contests.

President Joe Biden’s latest executive order on immigration gives legal protections to about half a million undocumented immigrants who are married to American citizens, preventing their deportation and providing a streamlined pathway to citizenship for them and their children. The announcement is being welcomed by immigrant rights groups, but comes just weeks after Biden signed another order giving himself far-reaching power to shut down the U.S. border with Mexico to limit asylum requests.

The U.S. military ran a secret anti-vaccination campaign at the height of the pandemic in the Philippines and other nations to sow doubt about COVID vaccines made by China, according to a new investigation by Reuters. The clandestine Pentagon campaign, which began in 2020 under Donald Trump and continued into mid-2021 after Joe Biden took office, relied on fake social media accounts on multiple platforms to target local populations in Southeast Asia and beyond.

Boeing CEO David Calhoun appeared before a Senate committee on Tuesday to face questions about the aerospace giant’s safety record, just hours after the release of a damning report on Boeing’s business practices. Released by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, the report found that the company lost track of hundreds of substandard aircraft parts, eliminated quality inspectors and put manufacturing workers in charge of signing off on their own work.

We speak with Israeli American Jewish scholar Raz Segal about the University of Minnesota’s move to rescind a job offer over his comments early in the war on Gaza, when he characterized the Israeli assault as a “textbook case of genocide.

We host a roundtable conversation on Maryland Governor Wes Moore’s historic pardons of 175,000 marijuana-related convictions in the state, including drug paraphernalia-related convictions. Jheanelle Wilkins is the chair of Maryland’s Legislative Black Caucus; Maritza Perez Medina is the director of federal affairs at the Drug Policy Alliance; and Jason Ortiz, who was himself arrested at the age of 16 for cannabis possession, is director of strategic initiatives at the Last Prisoner Project.

“Another Wasted Life.” That’s the name of a remarkable new song by the Pulitzer Prize-winning, Grammy-winning artist Rhiannon Giddens. She released a video of the song on October 2 to mark International Wrongful Conviction Day. The song was inspired by Kalief Browder, a Bronx resident who died by suicide in 2015 at the age of 22 after being detained at Rikers Island jail for nearly three years, after being falsely accused at the age of 16 of stealing a backpack.

As part of our Juneteenth special broadcast, we feature our interview with pioneering musical artist Rhiannon Giddens, who won a Pulitzer Prize for her opera Omar, about Omar ibn Said, a Muslim scholar in Africa who was sold into slavery in the 1800s.

We feature a special broadcast marking the Juneteenth federal holiday that commemorates the day in 1865 when enslaved people in Galveston, Texas, learned of their freedom more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation. We begin with our 2021 interview with historian Clint Smith, originally aired a day after President Biden signed legislation to make Juneteenth the first new federal holiday since Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

Acclaimed author Arundhati Roy could soon face trial under India’s contested “anti-terror” laws in a case that has drawn outrage from free speech advocates in India and beyond. An official from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s far-right ruling Bharatiya Janata Party gave the go-ahead on Friday for Roy’s prosecution over comments she made about Kashmir in 2010.

Democratic Congressmember Jamie Raskin of Maryland says he may not attend Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to Congress in July, as some other Democrats have already vowed to boycott the speech. “My main commitment at this point is to see a ceasefire to end the bloodshed, to get the hostages returned and to surge humanitarian aid into Gaza,” says Raskin.

We speak with Israeli American Jewish scholar Raz Segal about the University of Minnesota’s move to rescind a job offer over his comments early in the war on Gaza, when he characterized the Israeli assault as a “textbook case of genocide.

We host a roundtable conversation on Maryland Governor Wes Moore’s historic pardons of 175,000 marijuana-related convictions in the state, including drug paraphernalia-related convictions. Jheanelle Wilkins is the chair of Maryland’s Legislative Black Caucus; Maritza Perez Medina is the director of federal affairs at the Drug Policy Alliance; and Jason Ortiz, who was himself arrested at the age of 16 for cannabis possession, is director of strategic initiatives at the Last Prisoner Project.

Acclaimed author Arundhati Roy could soon face trial under India’s contested “anti-terror” laws in a case that has drawn outrage from free speech advocates in India and beyond. An official from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s far-right ruling Bharatiya Janata Party gave the go-ahead on Friday for Roy’s prosecution over comments she made about Kashmir in 2010.

Democratic Congressmember Jamie Raskin of Maryland says he may not attend Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to Congress in July, as some other Democrats have already vowed to boycott the speech. “My main commitment at this point is to see a ceasefire to end the bloodshed, to get the hostages returned and to surge humanitarian aid into Gaza,” says Raskin.

Former President Donald Trump returned to the U.S. Capitol last week for the first time since the January 6 insurrection in 2021, where he met with Republican lawmakers including House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and reportedly discussed how to quash his 34 felony convictions stemming from his New York fraud case, as well as how to punish prosecutors involved in the various cases against him.