Contributing Writers

We look at U.S. policy toward Cuba as U.S. and Cuban officials met Wednesday to discuss migration from the island. This January, the U.S. Embassy in Havana began processing immigrant visas for the first time in more than five years in an attempt to control the extent of undocumented migration from the island. Meanwhile, the U.S. continues to face pressure to lift the embargo that has severely limited trade and more with Cuba for decades.

Faculty at the state-run Rutgers University in New Jersey have entered their fifth day of a historic strike — the first faculty strike in the school’s 257-year history. Organizers of three unions, representing more than 9,000 professors, lecturers and graduate assistants, are demanding increased pay and better job security, especially for poorly paid graduate workers and adjunct faculty.

President Biden was in Ireland this week to mark the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement, the U.S.-brokered peace deal that ended three decades of fighting in Northern Ireland, known as the Troubles.

We look at the state of abortion access in the United States with The Nation’s Amy Littlefield as the Supreme Court is expected to weigh in on a ruling set to take effect Saturday that effectively overrides the Food and Drug Administration’s two-decade-old approval of the medication abortion pill mifepristone. Her most recent piece is headlined “A Conservative Christian Judge Rules Against Medication Abortion.

We look more at what recently leaked Pentagon documents reveal about the war in Ukraine, and U.S. spying on both its adversaries and its allies, including Israel. In Part 2 of our interview with James Bamford, the longtime investigative journalist discusses how the leaks challenge the corporate media’s portrayal of the war in Ukraine, and more. Bamford’s latest book is Spyfail: Foreign Spies, Moles, Saboteurs, and the Collapse of America’s Counterintelligence.

President Biden has declared an end to the COVID-19 national emergency, but people living with long COVID say the pandemic is far from over. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found nearly one in five people infected with COVID-19 go on to experience symptoms of long COVID. We speak to science writer Ryan Prior about the movement to expand research and resources for those with long COVID, and his own experience living with the chronic illness.

We discuss the debate over gun control, as well as Republican attacks on democracy, with author and academic Carol Anderson, who says U.S. gun culture has always been connected to “the inherent, fundamental fear of Black people.

As the world watched, the Shelby County Board of Commissioners voted unanimously Wednesday to reappoint Justin Pearson to the Tennessee House of Representatives, less than a week after the Republican-led House voted to expel him and fellow state Representative Justin Jones from the body for joining peaceful protests against gun violence after the school massacre in Nashville. Pearson and Jones were the two youngest Black lawmakers in the Tennessee House.

The Justice Department has launched a criminal investigation into a recent leak of highly classified Pentagon intelligence documents revealing secrets about the war in Ukraine, as well as details about the U.S. spying on a number of its adversaries, as well as its allies, including Israel and South Korea.