Contributing Writers

The Supreme Court has blocked President Biden’s student debt relief plan, which sought to cancel up to $20,000 in individual loans, adding up to over $400 billion of federal student debt. The decision comes as a major blow to some 40 million qualified borrowers. Biden has announced his administration will pursue a “new path” for debt relief. “It was a blow to debtors,” says Astra Taylor, organizer with the Debt Collective and advocate for debt abolition.

In France, more than 3,000 people have been arrested after a week of nationwide protests following the police killing of Nahel Merzouk, a teenager of North African descent, captured on video. Nahel’s family and friends held his funeral Saturday at a mosque in Nanterre. We speak with Rokhaya Diallo, a French journalist in Paris, who explains this killing is part of a long pattern of racist policing that has divided the country.

Israel attacked the Jenin refugee camp this weekend in what some are calling the largest military operation in the occupied West Bank in 20 years. Israel claims to have attacked militants in the camp, but camp residents say they were targeted by airstrikes and ground troops. Palestinian health officials say the massive two-day military offensive killed 12 Palestinians and injured at least 140 more.

Whistleblower Dan Ellsberg joined us after the Justice Department charged WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange with 17 counts of violating the Espionage Act for publishing U.S. military and diplomatic documents exposing U.S. war crimes. Assange is locked up in London and faces up to 175 years in prison if extradited and convicted in the United States.

As we remember Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, who died in June, we look at how he was also a lifelong anti-nuclear activist, stemming from his time working as a nuclear planner for the U.S. government. In December 2017, he joined us to discuss his memoir, The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner. “This was an actual war plan for how we would use the existing weapons,” he noted, “many of which I had seen already that time.

Over the past 50 years, Daniel Ellsberg remained an antiwar and anti-nuclear activist who inspired a new generation of whistleblowers. In his last interview with Democracy Now!, in April, he spoke about the war in Ukraine and why it required a diplomatic solution, and about the latest leak of Pentagon documents by Air National Guard member Jack Teixeira, who has been indicted on six counts of willful retention and transmission of classified information.

In a special broadcast, we look at voices of a people’s history inspired by the late great historian Howard Zinn’s groundbreaking book, A People’s History of the United States, which helped reshape how history is taught in classrooms. Twenty years ago, Zinn and Anthony Arnove began organizing public readings of historical texts referenced in A People’s History of the United States.

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.

On the final day of the Supreme Court’s term, we speak with David Dayen, executive editor of The American Prospect, about recent revelations detailing many of the Supreme Court conservative justices’ close relationships to Republican megadonors, and how allegations of financial impropriety further delegitimize the court’s standing as an objective legal authority. “These are lifetime appointments,” says Dayen. “This is what arrogance looks like.

Whistleblower Dan Ellsberg joined us after the Justice Department charged WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange with 17 counts of violating the Espionage Act for publishing U.S. military and diplomatic documents exposing U.S. war crimes. Assange is locked up in London and faces up to 175 years in prison if extradited and convicted in the United States.

As we remember Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, who died in June, we look at how he was also a lifelong anti-nuclear activist, stemming from his time working as a nuclear planner for the U.S. government. In December 2017, he joined us to discuss his memoir, The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner. “This was an actual war plan for how we would use the existing weapons,” he noted, “many of which I had seen already that time.

Over the past 50 years, Daniel Ellsberg remained an antiwar and anti-nuclear activist who inspired a new generation of whistleblowers. In his last interview with Democracy Now!, in April, he spoke about the war in Ukraine and why it required a diplomatic solution, and about the latest leak of Pentagon documents by Air National Guard member Jack Teixeira, who has been indicted on six counts of willful retention and transmission of classified information.

In a special broadcast, we remember the life and legacy of Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, who died in June at the age of 92, just months after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. In 1971, Daniel Ellsberg, then a top military strategist working for the RAND Corporation, risked life in prison by secretly copying and then leaking 7,000 pages of top-secret documents outlining the secret history of the U.S. War in Vietnam.

On the final day of the Supreme Court’s term, we speak with David Dayen, executive editor of The American Prospect, about recent revelations detailing many of the Supreme Court conservative justices’ close relationships to Republican megadonors, and how allegations of financial impropriety further delegitimize the court’s standing as an objective legal authority. “These are lifetime appointments,” says Dayen. “This is what arrogance looks like.

The Supreme Court has struck down President Biden’s plan to provide relief to 40 million student borrowers of up to $20,000 in student loan debt. We speak to David Dayen, executive editor of The American Prospect, about how one of the key complainant states, Missouri, hinged its opposition on the argument that its state agency, the Missouri Higher Education Loan Authority, or MOHELA, will be harmed by the debt relief plan.

In one of the last cases in the Supreme Court’s current session, the justices ruled in favor of a wedding website designer who wants to be allowed to refuse service to same-sex couples. Lorie Smith of Colorado filed the lawsuit with help from the right-wing Alliance Defending Freedom as part of the group’s ongoing attempt to roll back the rights of LGBTQ people. But as reporter Melissa Gira Grant discovered, part of the case may be built on a lie.

The conservative majority of the U.S. Supreme Court has declared race-conscious admissions policies at colleges and universities across the country to be unlawful, effectively ending affirmative action in education. The landmark 6-3 ruling was along ideological lines and strikes down decades of precedent, but stops short of banning legacy admissions and allows military academies to continue using affirmative action.