Contributing Writers

This week former Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva formally launched his campaign to challenge Brazil’s far-right President Jair Bolsonaro this October. Fear is growing Bolsonaro might try to stay in office even if he loses, possibly with help from the Brazilian military. Lula, a union leader who held office from 2003 through 2010, is running on a platform to lift up Brazil’s poor, preserve the Amazon rainforest and protect Brazil’s Indigenous communities.

We look at the outcome of Tuesday’s primaries for opponents of former President Trump. In Wyoming, Liz Cheney, Trump’s chief House Republican foe, lost her primary to a Trump-backed challenger. In Alaska, Senator Lisa Murkowski, another Republican Trump critic, will move forward to the general election alongside a Trump challenger who also advanced under the state’s ranked-choice voting system.

President Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law Tuesday, a sweeping $739 billion bill to address the climate crisis, reduce drug costs and establish a 15% minimum tax for large corporations. Biden has praised the IRA as one of the most significant measures in the history of the United States, though many climate groups and Indigenous land and water defenders have criticized the package for including major handouts to the fossil fuel industry and other corporate entities.

We speak with CodePink co-founder Medea Benjamin on the aftermath of the largest oil fire in Cuba’s history, the sentencing of Saudi women rights activist Salma al-Shehab and the ballooning of the Pentagon budget. Benjamin is calling on the Biden administration to remove Cuba off a state sponsor of terrorism list — which she says is holding up the transfer of humanitarian funds to the country’s people.

The Biden administration has ruled out releasing roughly $7 billion of frozen U.S.-held Afghan assets, a year after the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan and occupation, even as the United Nations warns a staggering 95% of Afghans are not getting enough to eat. “This money belongs to the Afghan people. And the U.S.

Renowned Indian British novelist Salman Rushdie is in critical condition and faces a long road to recovery after he survived an assassination attempt Friday morning in western New York. Rushdie is one of the most highly acclaimed writers in the world today and has lived underground for many years after facing systematic threats of assassination for his writing.

Dozens of civil rights groups have joined an urgent push for the compassionate release of longtime political prisoner Mutulu Shakur from prison. The 72-year-old Black liberation activist is said by prison doctors to have less than six months to live, after being diagnosed with stage 3 bone marrow cancer. Shakur was part of the Black nationalist group Republic of New Afrika that worked with the Black Panther Party and others, and is the stepfather of the late rapper icon Tupac Shakur.

Lawyers and journalists sued the CIA and former CIA Director Mike Pompeo Monday for spying on them while they met Julian Assange when he was living in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where he had political asylum. The lawsuit is being filed as Britain prepares to extradite the WikiLeaks founder to the United States, where he faces up to 175 years in prison for violating the Espionage Act by publishing classified documents exposing U.S. war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“Defund the FBI” is the growing call by Republicans after the FBI searched former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate. We get response from Alex Vitale, author of “The End of Policing,” who lays out reasons to defund the FBI that have nothing to do with Trump.

We speak to Walden Bello, the longtime Filipino activist and former vice-presidential candidate. He was arrested Monday on “cyber libel” charges, which he says was just a tactic by the new administration to suppress his vocal criticism of them. The arrest took place just weeks after the inauguration of Ferdinand Marcos Jr., the son of the former U.S.-backed dictator. Bello says people are “worried that this is a foretaste of things to come.

Renowned Indian British novelist Salman Rushdie is in critical condition and faces a long road to recovery after he survived an assassination attempt Friday morning in western New York. Rushdie is one of the most highly acclaimed writers in the world today and has lived underground for many years after facing systematic threats of assassination for his writing.

One year ago today, the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan, promising to bring stability after two decades of war and U.S. occupation. But the country now faces a grave humanitarian crisis and a severe rollback of women’s rights. We speak with Afghan journalist Zahra Nader, editor-in-chief of Zan Times, a new women-led outlet documenting human rights issues in Afghanistan.

A search warrant made public on Friday reveals the FBI is investigating former President Donald Trump for three federal crimes, including violating the Espionage Act, obstruction of justice and criminal handling of government records, after removing top-secret documents when they raided former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate last week. Meanwhile, Trump is calling the investigation a hoax, and Republican threats are growing against the FBI.

We speak to Walden Bello, the longtime Filipino activist and former vice-presidential candidate. He was arrested Monday on “cyber libel” charges, which he says was just a tactic by the new administration to suppress his vocal criticism of them. The arrest took place just weeks after the inauguration of Ferdinand Marcos Jr., the son of the former U.S.-backed dictator. Bello says people are “worried that this is a foretaste of things to come.

A jury in California has convicted a former worker at Twitter of spying for Saudi Arabia by providing the kingdom private information about Saudi dissidents. The spying effort led to the arrest, torture and jailing of Abdulrahman al-Sadhan, who ran an anonymous satirical Twitter account. His sister, Areej al-Sadhan, and the lawyer for the family, Jim Walden, are calling on the Biden administration to push for his release.