Contributing Writers

On Wednesday, President Joe Biden pledged to deploy nuclear-armed submarines to South Korea for the first time in 40 years. Alongside South Korea’s President Yoon Suk-yeol, Biden also pledged to involve officials from Seoul in nuclear planning operations targeting North Korea. The visit between the two leaders comes as the U.S. and South Korea mark 70 years of military alliance under 1953’s Mutual Defense Treaty, signed at the close of active conflict in the Korean War.

Tennessee’s Justin Jones and Montana’s Zooey Zephyr, two Democratic state lawmakers who were both punished by their Republican-led legislatures for peaceful protests, say the only way to fight such anti-democratic moves is through broad solidarity. “Courage is contagious,” says Zephyr, who has been barred from the floor of the Montana House of Representatives for opposing anti-trans legislation.

Earlier this month, the largely white Tennessee House of Representatives, with its heavily gerrymandered Republican supermajority, expelled two members, Justin Jones and Justin Pearson, the two youngest Black representatives in the House. They stood accused of breaching House “decorum” for nonviolently protesting the chamber’s inaction on gun violence in the wake of a mass school shooting in Nashville.

The Republican-controlled Montana House of Representatives voted Wednesday to censure the state’s first and only openly transgender lawmaker, Zooey Zephyr, banning her from the House floor and forbidding her from speaking, a week after Zephyr delivered a searing condemnation of a bill that would ban gender-affirming healthcare for youth. Zephyr will only be able to cast votes remotely for the remainder of the legislative session.

Harry Belafonte last appeared on Democracy Now! in 2016 at a special event at the historic Riverside Church in New York to celebrate our 20th anniversary. He co-headlined the event with Noam Chomsky in their first public appearance together. Belafonte spoke about Donald Trump, who had just been elected president, and ongoing struggles for freedom and justice in the United States.

Chinese President Xi Jinping spoke by phone with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky this week for the first time since Russia’s invasion last year. The call comes two months after China put forward a 12-point peace plan to end the war, and Xi reportedly said negotiations are “the only viable way out” of the conflict. The Chinese president also offered to send a special envoy to Ukraine to help resolve the crisis.

This weekend, Democracy Now! co-host Juan González gives the opening plenary at American University’s one-day conference, “Burying 200 Years of the U.S. Monroe Doctrine,” marking 200 years since the Monroe Doctrine, the foreign policy directive from President James Monroe that effectively declared all of Latin America a U.S. sphere of influence.

We speak with investigative reporter Liliana Segura about the remarkable case of Oklahoma death row inmate Richard Glossip, whose execution is set for May 18. Oklahoma’s Pardon and Parole Board on Wednesday denied Glossip clemency even though Oklahoma’s own Republican attorney general has sought to vacate Glossip’s conviction. Glossip has always maintained his innocence.