Contributing Writers

Documents obtained by The Intercept reveal the Department of Homeland Security is working with private tech companies to fight online speech that undermines support for the U.S. government. We speak to one of the co-authors of The Intercept’s report, investigative journalist Lee Fang, who says the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act signed into law in 2018 by then-President Donald Trump expanded the government’s power to reshape online discourse.

As thousands of asylum seekers continue to arrive on buses in New York, we speak with a man from Venezuela about his journey, and two New Yorkers who have been helping since August to welcome them with dignity and ensure they get the housing, food and other assistance they need. “The system here in New York City is not created for this type of community, which is the migrants that are arriving,” says former asylum seeker, Adama Bah.

Benjamin Netanyahu is set to return as Israel’s prime minister, with Tuesday’s election results showing his Likud Party and far-right allies winning enough seats to form a parliamentary majority. This includes far-right lawmaker Itamar Ben-Gvir, who openly supports the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, vows to crack down on the LGBTQ community and was once convicted of racist incitement against Arabs.

The Ethiopian government and forces in Tigray have reached a truce to end two years of brutal civil war. The new peace deal follows a week of peace talks mediated by the African Union in South Africa. The Ethiopian government wants a unified country and Tigrayans want minoritarian rights upheld, says Adebayo Olukoshi, distinguished research professor at the Wits School of Governance who formerly worked on peace efforts in Tigray with the International IDEA.

We look at the impact of the war in Ukraine on the continent of Africa with Adebayo Olukoshi, an international relations scholar based in Johannesburg, South Africa. African nations import much of their grain. With their significant dependency on Ukrainian wheat and fertilizer in the Global South, “there is a wish for much more investment in diplomacy” between Ukraine and Russia, says Olukoshi.

As G7 leaders discuss supporting Ukrainian defense forces against Russia, we speak with Richard Gowan, U.N. director at the International Crisis Group, about the possibility of diplomacy to end the war. It is possible for the U.N. to help broker a peace deal, says Gowan.

Egyptian authorities have arrested hundreds in a crackdown on dissenting voices ahead of COP27, the U.N. climate conference which starts Sunday in Sharm El-Sheikh. Fifteen Nobel laureates have signed an open letter asking world leaders to pressure Egypt into releasing its many political prisoners, including human rights activist Alaa Abd El-Fattah, who plans to intensify his six-month hunger strike by forgoing water on the opening day of the climate summit.

The city and state of New York have agreed to pay $36 million to settle lawsuits on behalf of two men wrongly convicted and imprisoned for decades for the 1965 assassination of Malcolm X. Muhammad Aziz and Khalil Islam were exonerated last year for the murder after investigators found “serious miscarriages of justice” in the case. They each spent more than 20 years in prison for a crime they did not commit, and Islam died in 2009 before his record was cleared.

As Israel holds national elections amid increasing crackdowns on Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, we speak with Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, who is in Jerusalem and has been speaking with Palestinian families in the Occupied Territories. He is calling on Israel to end its decades-long occupation.

We look at the high stakes of the midterm elections for workers, including in key battleground states. Mary Kay Henry, president of the Service Employees International Union, says they are campaigning to empower working people, especially infrequent voters of color and new immigrants, to vote in their best interests. “We have got to make our votes a demand, and not a show of support for candidates that are with us one day and against us the next,” says Henry.

As the U.S. pours billions in military aid into Ukraine, we host a debate on the Biden administration’s response to the war and U.S. policy toward Russia amid increasing calls among progressives for a diplomatic end to the conflict. We speak to former Bernie Sanders foreign policy adviser Matt Duss, now a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and Ray McGovern, a former CIA analyst who specialized in the Soviet Union.

Democratic Congressmember Ro Khanna says Saudi Arabia should face consequences for its decision to cut oil output by 2 million barrels a day as part of the OPEC+ cartel, raising gas prices in the United States just before the midterm elections where cost-of-living issues are expected to be a major factor. He also discusses the Saudi-led war in Yemen, describing it as “one of the largest humanitarian crises in the world” that must be brought to an end.