Contributing Writers

As President Biden ends Title 42, the Trump-era policy blocking asylum seekers, and plans stronger enforcement measures on the border, we speak with Salvadoran poet and writer Javier Zamora, whose best-selling memoir, Solito, details his odyssey as a 9-year-old child traveling unaccompanied through Guatemala, Mexico and eventually through the Sonoran Desert, before he makes it to Arizona and reunites with his parents with the aid of other migrants.

A jury on Tuesday found Donald Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation against E. Jean Carroll, the writer who accused him of raping her in a department store dressing room in the 1990s. We speak with one of the people who testified at trial: Jessica Leeds, a retired businesswoman who says Trump sexually assaulted her on an airplane in the 1980s — one of dozens of women who has accused him of sexual misconduct over the years.

A Manhattan jury on Tuesday sided with the writer E. Jean Carroll in her civil case against former President Donald Trump, finding him liable for sexually abusing and defaming Carroll, and awarding her $5 million in damages. The jury did not find that Trump had raped her, as she has claimed. Trump says he will appeal. The closely watched trial stemmed from an incident in the 1990s, when Carroll says Trump sexually assaulted her in a department store dressing room in New York.

Eleven people were arrested at a protest in New York on Monday demanding justice for Jordan Neely, a 30-year-old unhoused Black man who was choked to death on a subway car last week by another passenger. Neely was well known as a dancer and Michael Jackson impersonator. He was crying out that he was hungry, when he was fatally attacked on the train by a 24-year-old former marine named Daniel Penny, who was questioned by police but released without charges.

Conflict in Sudan between two rival military factions is entering its fourth week. Despite international calls for a humanitarian ceasefire, both combatant groups have repeatedly breached truce agreements. More than 700 people have died. As thousands of Sudanese civilians flee both the capital Khartoum and the country entirely, the fighting is expected to continue, with no end in sight.

Israel launched surprise airstrikes in Gaza overnight, targeting three commanders of the Islamic Jihad militant group, who were assassinated in their homes. The attacks killed a total of 13 people, including the wives and children of the men. The Israeli attack broke a ceasefire that had been reached last week after a spike in violence following the death of Palestinian prisoner Khader Adnan in Israeli custody.

As Russia marks the Soviet Union’s defeat of the Nazis 78 years ago, Ukraine is preparing to launch a major counteroffensive, which has forced Moscow to issue an evacuation order for thousands of residents in areas occupied by Russian forces. Meanwhile, international actors are calling for negotiations, possibly brokered by China or Brazil, to end the war.

Oklahoma death row prisoner Richard Glossip’s execution was stayed by the Supreme Court on Friday, marking the ninth time he had an execution date put on hold. Glossip has maintained his innocence throughout his 25 years of incarceration; his accuser has previously attempted to recant his testimony.

We look at the question of whether Senator Dianne Feinstein, who is on the Judiciary Committee, should resign due to mental deterioration, and how the media has failed to fully address the issue, with longtime Supreme Court reporter Dahlia Lithwick. As a result of Feinstein’s current condition, “we’re not getting judges confirmed at rates that we need to see,” Lithwick says.

We speak with longtime Supreme Court reporter Dahlia Lithwick about the mounting evidence of apparent financial impropriety by the court’s conservatives. ProPublica recently reported that Republican billionaire Harlan Crow paid two years of private school tuition for Clarence Thomas’s grandnephew — payments that Thomas did not include on his annual financial disclosures.