Contributing Writers

The United States is expanding its attacks on Iran after three U.S. soldiers were killed over the weekend, the first U.S. fatalities in the conflict since March. Two U.S. service members were killed in an Iranian attack on a base in Jordan, and a third soldier was killed in northern Iraq during a “controlled detonation” of a downed Iranian drone. The United States has now bombed Iran for nine consecutive nights, and Iran has retaliated by striking U.S. allies across the Persian Gulf.

Hollywood’s blockbuster adaptation of the ancient Greek epic The Odyssey premieres around the world today amid growing calls for a boycott. Human rights campaigners are criticizing director Christopher Nolan over his decision to film part of the film in Western Sahara, a vast territory in northwestern Africa that Morocco has occupied for the past half-century.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio and top White House adviser Stephen Miller are pushing for a global crackdown on leftist organizations. The State Department on Thursday hosted a summit “on the resurgence of political terrorism,” where Miller described the left as “enemies of civilization” and described efforts to “disrupt, identify, defund, debank, arrest and prosecute these political terrorists that are operating in our country.” Rubio announced the U.S.

Hundreds of community members gathered in Houston on Thursday evening for a public viewing of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, the 52-year-old Mexican man shot and killed by an ICE agent on July 7. His sons stood by their father’s casket for hours greeting mourners who wore blue, Salgado Araujo’s favorite color. A mariachi band played, and several altars adorned the chapel: One table held Salgado Araujo’s construction tools and hard hats, while another displayed two of his Mexico soccer jerseys.

In a primetime address on Thursday, President Trump accused China of meddling in U.S. elections in his latest effort to spread doubt about the U.S. voting system ahead of the midterm elections in November. Trump announced he was declassifying documents that show what he called “shocking vulnerabilities in our election infrastructure,” but offered no evidence that China or any other country directly interfered with recent elections.

Lifelong activist, organizer and educator Denise Oliver-Vélez has died at the age of 78. She was a central figure in the civil rights movements of the 1960s and 1970s and was the first woman elected to the Young Lords Central Committee, a radical Puerto Rican human rights group modeled on the Black Panther Party, which Oliver-Vélez was also a member of. She later became the first Black female program director in public radio and taught at SUNY New Paltz.

Hollywood’s blockbuster adaptation of the ancient Greek epic The Odyssey premieres around the world today amid growing calls for a boycott. Human rights campaigners are criticizing director Christopher Nolan over his decision to film part of the film in Western Sahara, a vast territory in northwestern Africa that Morocco has occupied for the past half-century.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio and top White House adviser Stephen Miller are pushing for a global crackdown on leftist organizations. The State Department on Thursday hosted a summit “on the resurgence of political terrorism,” where Miller described the left as “enemies of civilization” and described efforts to “disrupt, identify, defund, debank, arrest and prosecute these political terrorists that are operating in our country.” Rubio announced the U.S.

Hundreds of community members gathered in Houston on Thursday evening for a public viewing of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, the 52-year-old Mexican man shot and killed by an ICE agent on July 7. His sons stood by their father’s casket for hours greeting mourners who wore blue, Salgado Araujo’s favorite color. A mariachi band played, and several altars adorned the chapel: One table held Salgado Araujo’s construction tools and hard hats, while another displayed two of his Mexico soccer jerseys.

In a primetime address on Thursday, President Trump accused China of meddling in U.S. elections in his latest effort to spread doubt about the U.S. voting system ahead of the midterm elections in November. Trump announced he was declassifying documents that show what he called “shocking vulnerabilities in our election infrastructure,” but offered no evidence that China or any other country directly interfered with recent elections.

Lifelong activist, organizer and educator Denise Oliver-Vélez has died at the age of 78. She was a central figure in the civil rights movements of the 1960s and 1970s and was the first woman elected to the Young Lords Central Committee, a radical Puerto Rican human rights group modeled on the Black Panther Party, which Oliver-Vélez was also a member of. She later became the first Black female program director in public radio and taught at SUNY New Paltz.

Hollywood’s blockbuster adaptation of the ancient Greek epic The Odyssey premieres around the world today amid growing calls for a boycott. Human rights campaigners are criticizing director Christopher Nolan over his decision to film part of the film in Western Sahara, a vast territory in northwestern Africa that Morocco has occupied for the past half-century.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio and top White House adviser Stephen Miller are pushing for a global crackdown on leftist organizations. The State Department on Thursday hosted a summit “on the resurgence of political terrorism,” where Miller described the left as “enemies of civilization” and described efforts to “disrupt, identify, defund, debank, arrest and prosecute these political terrorists that are operating in our country.” Rubio announced the U.S.

Hundreds of community members gathered in Houston on Thursday evening for a public viewing of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, the 52-year-old Mexican man shot and killed by an ICE agent on July 7. His sons stood by their father’s casket for hours greeting mourners who wore blue, Salgado Araujo’s favorite color. A mariachi band played, and several altars adorned the chapel: One table held Salgado Araujo’s construction tools and hard hats, while another displayed two of his Mexico soccer jerseys.

In a primetime address on Thursday, President Trump accused China of meddling in U.S. elections in his latest effort to spread doubt about the U.S. voting system ahead of the midterm elections in November. Trump announced he was declassifying documents that show what he called “shocking vulnerabilities in our election infrastructure,” but offered no evidence that China or any other country directly interfered with recent elections.

Lifelong activist, organizer and educator Denise Oliver-Vélez has died at the age of 78. She was a central figure in the civil rights movements of the 1960s and 1970s and was the first woman elected to the Young Lords Central Committee, a radical Puerto Rican human rights group modeled on the Black Panther Party, which Oliver-Vélez was also a member of. She later became the first Black female program director in public radio and taught at SUNY New Paltz.

The Trump administration has introduced a new interpretation of the Endangered Species Act, a bedrock of successful U.S. wildlife conservation for more than 50 years, dramatically weakening its power to protect natural habitats and opening vulnerable lands to real estate development, oil drilling and other extractive industries. A coalition of conservation groups is suing the Trump administration over the rule change.

Has the United States launched a forever war on Iran? As the Trump administration renews its attacks on Iran, killing at least 35 civilians over the course of five days, political analyst Ali Vaez warns that the U.S. is inciting potentially never-ending “cycles of violence” with its manipulations of the diplomatic process. The U.S.’s unilateral renunciation of the “memorandum of understanding” as a “pretext for another round of war” has further eroded trust between the countries, says Vaez.

After ICE agents shot and killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston, Texas, last week, they quickly arrested three witnesses: the other men that the 52-year-old father of three was driving to work. The three men, including Salgado Araujo’s younger brother Victor, are now being detained by ICE and threatened with deportation.
“There is a Trump militia roaming our streets, our towns, our cities, killing people regardless of immigration status with absolutely no accountability.

As we continue our conversation with Congressmember Pramila Jayapal, we turn to recent developments involving the United States military. On Wednesday, Jayapal was one of over half of all House Democrats to vote in favor eliminating over $3 billion in military aid to Israel. Although the proposed amendment was ultimately shot down, the final tally with over 100 members voting yes is still a “sea change” in U.S. political support for Israel, says Jayapal.

Confirmation hearings are underway for President Donald Trump’s nominee for attorney general, his personal attorney Todd Blanche. Blanche is mired in a number of controversies, most notably his mishandling of the administration’s release of the Epstein files while serving as deputy attorney general under Pam Bondi.

We get an update on elections and voting rights in the United States from Mother Jones’s national voting rights correspondent, Ari Berman, who warns of President Donald Trump’s escalating attempts to “try to claim dictatorial power” and commit an “unprecedented intervention” into the 2026 midterm elections.

Twelve Democratic-led states led by California sued this week to block Paramount Skydance’s $111 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery. Paramount is run by David Ellison, whose father, Larry Ellison, is the billionaire founder of Oracle and a prominent ally and financial backer of President Donald Trump.

Israeli settlers armed with clubs, rocks and a knife attacked a convoy of journalists in the West Bank on Saturday, the latest targeting of foreign journalists documenting the Israeli occupation. Four settlers have reportedly been detained over the attack. The convoy, which included CNN’s Jeremy Diamond, were accompanying the father of Palestinian American Saif Musallet to the site where he was beaten to death by Israeli settlers one year ago.

We speak with Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil about his lawsuit against top Trump administration officials, two pro-Israel groups and a conservative think tank for conspiring to suppress his constitutional right to free speech.
Khalil, who helped lead protests at Columbia University against the U.S.-backed Israeli genocide in Gaza, was one of several international students targeted for deportation by the Trump administration last year over pro-Palestine advocacy.

We get an update on elections and voting rights in the United States from Mother Jones’s national voting rights correspondent, Ari Berman, who warns of President Donald Trump’s escalating attempts to “try to claim dictatorial power” and commit an “unprecedented intervention” into the 2026 midterm elections.

The killing of 26-year-old Colombian immigrant Joan Sebastián Durán Guerrero by ICE agents in Biddeford, Maine, has put the sparsely populated state back in the national spotlight amid the ongoing fallout from a sexual assault allegation that led insurgent Democratic nominee Graham Platner to suspend his campaign for Senate. The nomination will now be determined by Maine Democratic Party delegates in an accelerated — and more crowded — version of the race’s contentious primary.

Just days after the killing of a Mexican immigrant in Texas, immigration agents fatally shot another immigrant, also driving to work, this time in a small town in southern Maine. Joan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, originally from Colombia, was 26 years old and the father of a 3-year-old daughter. He was reportedly authorized to work in the United States, had been issued a Social Security number and was not the target of any warrant.

“They were hunting for Latinos.” Outcry is continuing over the ICE shooting death of 52-year-old Mexican immigrant Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in a majority-Latino neighborhood in Houston, Texas, last week. Events pieced together by eyewitness videos and texts sent by the agents involved in Araujo’s killing suggest that agents largely ignored Araujo’s cries for help after he was shot.