Contributing Writers

As we continue our coverage of the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran, we speak with Israeli analyst Ori Goldberg in Tel Aviv. He says “there is a broad embrace of this attack” among Israelis, bringing together the country’s liberal, right-wing, religious and settler groups.
“They all seem to agree, broadly and deeply, that this war is inevitable,” says Goldberg, who adds that nobody has articulated a clear strategic vision for the war.

As the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran enters its third day, dragging much of the Middle East into armed conflict, we speak with two Iranian American scholars about the situation.
“It’s quite a devastating attack on the infrastructure of the country, both in terms of the state infrastructure and civilian infrastructure,” says Golnar Nikpour, associate professor of modern Iranian history at Dartmouth College.

Cori Bush is running for Congress again. Bush previously served two terms as a Democratic congressmember for Missouri, until she was unseated in 2024 following a multimillion-dollar attack campaign run by pro-Israel groups. Bush, a community activist who participated in the 2014 Ferguson uprising over the police killing of Michael Brown, was an outspoken critic of Israel in Congress and introduced a resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza in October 2023.

The funeral for 56-year-old Nurul Amin Shah Alam, a disabled Rohingya refugee from Burma who was found dead after he was abandoned by Border Patrol agents miles away from his home, was held yesterday in Buffalo, New York. Local reporter J. Dale Shoemaker, who first reported on Shah Alam’s disappearance for the Buffalo news organization Investigative Post, explains what we know about the case.

Federal agents detained a Columbia University student early Thursday after Department of Homeland Security officers allegedly gained access to a university-owned residence by presenting a fake missing person poster of a 5-year-old. As news broke of the student, Ellie Aghayeva, and her detention, students and community members rallied en masse demanding her release and an end to immigration enforcement on campus.

As fallout from the Epstein files continues, we speak with investigative journalist Barry Levine, author of The Spider: Inside the Tangled Web of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. Recordings of the House Oversight depositions of Bill and Hillary Clinton are set to be released today and tomorrow.

Cori Bush is running for Congress again. Bush previously served two terms as a Democratic congressmember for Missouri, until she was unseated in 2024 following a multimillion-dollar attack campaign run by pro-Israel groups. Bush, a community activist who participated in the 2014 Ferguson uprising over the police killing of Michael Brown, was an outspoken critic of Israel in Congress and introduced a resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza in October 2023.

The funeral for 56-year-old Nurul Amin Shah Alam, a disabled Rohingya refugee from Burma who was found dead after he was abandoned by Border Patrol agents miles away from his home, was held yesterday in Buffalo, New York. Local reporter J. Dale Shoemaker, who first reported on Shah Alam’s disappearance for the Buffalo news organization Investigative Post, explains what we know about the case.

Federal agents detained a Columbia University student early Thursday after Department of Homeland Security officers allegedly gained access to a university-owned residence by presenting a fake missing person poster of a 5-year-old. As news broke of the student, Ellie Aghayeva, and her detention, students and community members rallied en masse demanding her release and an end to immigration enforcement on campus.

As fallout from the Epstein files continues, we speak with investigative journalist Barry Levine, author of The Spider: Inside the Tangled Web of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. Recordings of the House Oversight depositions of Bill and Hillary Clinton are set to be released today and tomorrow.

Cori Bush is running for Congress again. Bush previously served two terms as a Democratic congressmember for Missouri, until she was unseated in 2024 following a multimillion-dollar attack campaign run by pro-Israel groups. Bush, a community activist who participated in the 2014 Ferguson uprising over the police killing of Michael Brown, was an outspoken critic of Israel in Congress and introduced a resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza in October 2023.

The funeral for 56-year-old Nurul Amin Shah Alam, a disabled Rohingya refugee from Burma who was found dead after he was abandoned by Border Patrol agents miles away from his home, was held yesterday in Buffalo, New York. Local reporter J. Dale Shoemaker, who first reported on Shah Alam’s disappearance for the Buffalo news organization Investigative Post, explains what we know about the case.

Federal agents detained a Columbia University student early Thursday after Department of Homeland Security officers allegedly gained access to a university-owned residence by presenting a fake missing person poster of a 5-year-old. As news broke of the student, Ellie Aghayeva, and her detention, students and community members rallied en masse demanding her release and an end to immigration enforcement on campus.

As fallout from the Epstein files continues, we speak with investigative journalist Barry Levine, author of The Spider: Inside the Tangled Web of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. Recordings of the House Oversight depositions of Bill and Hillary Clinton are set to be released today and tomorrow.

A record 129 press workers were killed worldwide in 2025, more in one year than in any of the previous three decades for which the Committee to Protect Journalists has collected data. The previous record was set in 2024. For both 2024 and 2025, the Israeli military was responsible for two-thirds of all press killings.

Testimony and evidence from 59 Palestinian journalists reveals “strikingly consistent” reports of beatings, sensory deprivation, sexual violence, starvation and medical neglect while detained, according to a review by the Committee to Protect Journalists. Most of them were held under Israel’s so-called “administrative detention” policy and were never charged with any crime. The journalists lost an average of 52 pounds in Israeli prisons.

It’s been almost one year since Israeli forces killed 15 Palestinian medics and aid workers in a brutal two-hour massacre on a vehicle convoy in southern Gaza. Israeli soldiers had attempted to cover it up by burying the bodies in a shallow mass grave, and crushing the rescue vehicles with heavy machinery, but a new investigation by Forensic Architecture and Earshot has recreated a minute-by-minute accounting of what took place.

Cuban exiles on a U.S.-registered speedboat attempted to enter Cuba undetected, but were confronted by border patrol in Cuban waters on Wednesday. According to the Cuban Interior Ministry, the Cuban nationals on the speedboat fired on the border agents who then returned fire — killing four and injuring six of the men. This comes as the Trump administration’s blockade of fuel has triggered a severe humanitarian and economic crisis in Cuba, compounding the impact of the U.S.

“I couldn’t in good conscience sit there and listen to Trump go on and on with what we knew was going to be hours of lies, gaslighting and maligning the very people that I represent,” says Congressmember Adelita Grijalva on her decision to skip Tuesday’s State of the Union address. “There was no attempt to bring the country together.

We speak with Minneapolis resident Aliya Rahman, who attended Tuesday’s State of the Union address as a guest of Congressmember Ilhan Omar. Rahman was removed from the chamber Tuesday and spent several hours in jail following what she describes as an aggressive arrest by Capitol Police — all for silently challenging Trump during the speech.
“There are only two things you can do at the State of the Union, and they are sit down and stand up,” says Rahman. “I was arrested for standing up.

Many Democratic lawmakers boycotted Tuesday’s State of the Union address to attend alternative events, including our guest Congressmember Summer Lee of Pennsylvania, who gave the Working Families Party response to President Trump. “The president is disgraceful, and I don’t think it’s worth our time to give him an audience,” says Lee, who encourages opponents to keep challenging his falsehoods. “When you take away the lie, there is no foundation for President Trump.

Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz responds to Donald Trump’s State of the Union address on Tuesday, when the president repeatedly touted his tariffs as saving the country money and boosting the economy. Stiglitz says Trump’s “lies” about tariffs can’t erase the truth about how they have raised costs for most U.S. residents. “It is estimated the average family is paying somewhere between $1,000 and $1,700 in extra money because of the tariffs,” says Stiglitz.

President Donald Trump on Tuesday delivered the longest State of the Union address in modern history, speaking for nearly two hours as he claimed the United States is entering a “golden age” under his leadership. Trump spent much of his speech touting his economic policies and his administration’s immigration crackdown. We play excerpts from Trump’s address as well as responses to it from different Democratic lawmakers, many of whom skipped the speech to attend alternative events.

As the winter Olympics come to a close, a number of athletes have drawn controversy for their political statements. U.S. athletes, in particular, have expressed conflicting feelings about representing the United States during the current political moment.
We speak with former athlete Jules Boykoff, who has written extensively on the Olympic games, about how politics intersect with the Games. “The Trump administration has politicized these Olympics from the very beginning,” he says.

War crimes prosecutor Reed Brody joins Democracy Now! to discuss a number of ongoing human rights issues, including the international fallout of the so-called “Epstein files,” the International Criminal Court case against former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, the Russian invasion of Ukraine — now marking its fourth anniversary — and more.

Aided by U.S. intelligence, Mexican security forces killed the nation’s most wanted man, the leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, known as “El Mencho,” on Sunday. At least 70 people were killed in the raid and aftermath as armed groups retaliated in more than a dozen states.
“There’s a real sense in Mexico and beyond that governments need to show the U.S.

As the Northeast United States contends with the aftermath of a historic bomb cyclone blizzard that blanketed the region, we speak to climate scientist Michael Mann about the causes and effects of increasingly intense weather events. “We expect to see that increase as long as we continue to warm up the planet by burning fossil fuels and putting carbon pollution into the atmosphere,” says Mann. Meanwhile, he adds, policy decisions are making it harder to prepare for extreme weather.

An immigration judge has blocked the Trump administration from deporting Mohsen Mahdawi, a Columbia University graduate and green card holder who was detained last April at what he thought was a citizenship interview. Mahdawi grew up in a refugee camp in the occupied West Bank and was an outspoken critic of Israel’s genocide in Gaza while attending Columbia. He spent two weeks in ICE custody before a federal judge ordered his release.

As the winter Olympics come to a close, a number of athletes have drawn controversy for their political statements. U.S. athletes, in particular, have expressed conflicting feelings about representing the United States during the current political moment.
We speak with former athlete Jules Boykoff, who has written extensively on the Olympic games, about how politics intersect with the Games. “The Trump administration has politicized these Olympics from the very beginning,” he says.

We speak with Mosab Abu Toha, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Palestinian poet and author from Gaza, who responds to recent developments in the region including the Trump administration’s policy on Palestine, a recent report finding that the genocide’s death toll is much higher than originally reported and more.