We speak with BBC Arabic correspondent Rasha Qandeel, whose new documentary investigates Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s role in producing the highly addictive amphetamine known as Captagon and how this is impacting his relations with other states in the region.
The United Nations General Assembly has approved a resolution to establish an independent body to investigate what happened to more than 130,000 people who went missing during the conflict in Syria over the last 12 years. The Syrian government opposed the resolution, along with Russia, China, Belarus, North Korea, Cuba and Iran. “This is one of the most painful chapters in the Syrian crisis,” says Dr.
Press freedom groups around the world have condemned the brutal attack on Russian journalist Elena Milashina, who was beaten by unknown assailants in the Chechen capital of Grozny on July 4. Milashina, a reporter for Novaya Gazeta, was in town to report on Chechnya’s ongoing attacks on LGBTQ people when she was assaulted along with lawyer Alexander Nemov.
We remember the acclaimed Ukrainian writer Victoria Amelina, who died as a result of injuries from a Russian strike on a restaurant in Kramatorsk last week, which also killed 12 other people. Amelina was part of a human rights group, Truth Hounds, investigating Russian war crimes. Amelina’s friend Andrey Kurkov, a fellow author and the former president of PEN Ukraine, says the young writer’s death is just the latest in a long string of artists lost to the Russian invasion.
Republican Rusty Bowers said he spoke for four hours to officials about attempts to overturn Trump’s election loss.
The longtime Fox News analyst says supporting Trump “may come back to haunt the Republican Party in 2024.
The newly revealed paragraphs reveal that surveillance cameras showed boxes being relocated in the days before FBI and Justice Department investigators visited Mar-A-Lago.
Explaining his new proposal, the Florida conservative said that “we should embrace” recruits regardless of past marijuana use.
If you listened to the news over the holiday, you might have learned that it was not just exceptionally warm across much of the United States, but Monday was the hottest day in history. Or at least, the hottest day around the globe since temperature records have been maintained.
It was the first day in recorded history that the world had ever averaged over 17 degrees Celsius. That’s just 62.62 degrees Fahrenheit.
Following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to reverse decades of precedent upholding affirmative action in higher education, President Joe Biden was pressed on reforming the court. He told MSNBC’s Nicole Wallace that it would be a “mistake” to expand the court, because “I think if we start the process of trying to expand the court, we’re going to politicize it maybe forever in a way that is not healthy.
On Monday, there were reports that Ukrainian forces had moved out of the recently liberated town of Rivnopil in the Zaporizhzhia area and were heading toward the village of Pryyutne, 7 kilometers to the south. On Tuesday, there were reports that there was fighting near that town. On Wednesday, there are unconfirmed reports that Pryyutne has been liberated.
The MAGA/QAnon crowd celebrated Independence Day with one of their own, a federal district court judge in Louisiana who issued a broad injunction against President Joe Biden and a bunch of his administration officials from working with social media companies to combat disinformation.
Sen. Josh Hawley went looking for some patriotic and unmistakably right-wing sentiment to tweet out on the Fourth of July, and came up with a stirring quote from Patrick Henry, of “give me liberty or give me death” fame, about the centrality of Christianity in the founding of the United States. Or anyway, Hawley attributed the quote to Henry. That was false.
The Supreme Court has ruled 6 to 3 along ideological lines in favor of a Christian Colorado web designer who refused to create websites for same-sex couples even though the state bans such discrimination. “We’re entering into a terrible moment where a Pandora’s box has been opened,” says president and CEO of Interfaith Alliance Paul Brandeis Raushenbush, who warns “permission has been granted to use religion as a way to discriminate against your fellow people.
The Supreme Court has blocked President Biden’s student debt relief plan, which sought to cancel up to $20,000 in individual loans, adding up to over $400 billion of federal student debt. The decision comes as a major blow to some 40 million qualified borrowers. Biden has announced his administration will pursue a “new path” for debt relief. “It was a blow to debtors,” says Astra Taylor, organizer with the Debt Collective and advocate for debt abolition.
In France, more than 3,000 people have been arrested after a week of nationwide protests following the police killing of Nahel Merzouk, a teenager of North African descent, captured on video. Nahel’s family and friends held his funeral Saturday at a mosque in Nanterre. We speak with Rokhaya Diallo, a French journalist in Paris, who explains this killing is part of a long pattern of racist policing that has divided the country.
Israel attacked the Jenin refugee camp this weekend in what some are calling the largest military operation in the occupied West Bank in 20 years. Israel claims to have attacked militants in the camp, but camp residents say they were targeted by airstrikes and ground troops. Palestinian health officials say the massive two-day military offensive killed 12 Palestinians and injured at least 140 more.
Whistleblower Dan Ellsberg joined us after the Justice Department charged WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange with 17 counts of violating the Espionage Act for publishing U.S. military and diplomatic documents exposing U.S. war crimes. Assange is locked up in London and faces up to 175 years in prison if extradited and convicted in the United States.
As we remember Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, who died in June, we look at how he was also a lifelong anti-nuclear activist, stemming from his time working as a nuclear planner for the U.S. government. In December 2017, he joined us to discuss his memoir, The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner. “This was an actual war plan for how we would use the existing weapons,” he noted, “many of which I had seen already that time.
Over the past 50 years, Daniel Ellsberg remained an antiwar and anti-nuclear activist who inspired a new generation of whistleblowers. In his last interview with Democracy Now!, in April, he spoke about the war in Ukraine and why it required a diplomatic solution, and about the latest leak of Pentagon documents by Air National Guard member Jack Teixeira, who has been indicted on six counts of willful retention and transmission of classified information.
The Republican National Committee deleted the tweet after critics pointed out the mistake.
The president’s statement on the Illinois mass shooting arrives in the wake of three back-to-back fatal shootings early this week.
“The Free State of Florida is simply not free to exceed the bounds of the United States Constitution,” a federal judge wrote.
In a special broadcast, we look at voices of a people’s history inspired by the late great historian Howard Zinn’s groundbreaking book, A People’s History of the United States, which helped reshape how history is taught in classrooms. Twenty years ago, Zinn and Anthony Arnove began organizing public readings of historical texts referenced in A People’s History of the United States.
We begin our July Fourth special broadcast with the words of Frederick Douglass. Born into slavery around 1818, Douglass became a key leader of the abolitionist movement. On July 5, 1852, in Rochester, New York, Douglass gave one of his most famous speeches, “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” He was addressing the Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society.
A royal visit in Saudi Arabia gave former Republican David Jolly a much better understanding of the key Trump ally, he told MSNBC’s “The Beat.
Gov. Mike DeWine (R) said residents are still contacting authorities about health concerns connected to February’s fiery derailment in East Palestine.
On the final day of the Supreme Court’s term, we speak with David Dayen, executive editor of The American Prospect, about recent revelations detailing many of the Supreme Court conservative justices’ close relationships to Republican megadonors, and how allegations of financial impropriety further delegitimize the court’s standing as an objective legal authority. “These are lifetime appointments,” says Dayen. “This is what arrogance looks like.
The youngest generation of voters is ready to become a major force at the polls.
“It’s like, is everyone just numb at this point?” asked Phil Mattingly.