Contributing Writers

We look at the life and legacy of former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who died on Tuesday at the age of 91. Gorbachev led the Soviet Union from 1985 until its dissolution in 1991 and has been credited internationally with bringing down the Iron Curtain, helping to end the Cold War and reducing the risk of nuclear war. Inside Russia, many say his policies led to the breakup of the Soviet Union and the collapse in the standard of living for millions.

On the last day of Black August, as President Biden calls for an assault weapons ban and more funding for police, we speak with UCLA professor Robin D. G. Kelley, who recently published the revised and expanded 20th anniversary edition of his book “Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination,” with an added foreword by poet Aja Monet.

At least 30 people were killed and hundreds more injured in Iraq after armed supporters of the powerful Iraqi cleric Muqtada al-Sadr clashed with security forces in the capital of Baghdad following the cleric’s announcement Monday he would be quitting politics.

We speak with an evacuated resident of Jackson, Mississippi, where over 180,000 residents are on their third day without access to running water. We speak with longtime Jackson activist Kali Akuno, co-founder of Cooperation Jackson, who joins us from New Orleans, where he went when floods recently inundated the majority-Black city and shut down the main water plant. He attributes the water crisis to decades of white flight and the subsequent disinvestment in majority-Black and Brown cities.

We get an update on the water crisis in Jackson, Mississippi, from Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba, where more than 180,000 residents of the majority-Black city are without running water. President Biden declared a federal emergency on Tuesday. Water has been cut off since the main water treatment plant flooded amid torrential rains. Lumumba says the emergency is the result of three decades of disinvestment from the state.

Hundreds of farmworkers concluded a 24-day march to Sacramento spanning 335 miles to demand California Governor Gavin Newsom support legislation that would make it easier for farmworkers to cast their ballots in union elections by mail. Newsom has threatened to veto the bill, which would keep farmworkers safe from employer retaliation, explains Teresa Romero, president of the United Farm Workers, the labor union that helped organize the march.

We go to Florida to speak with 25-year-old gun control activist Maxwell Alejandro Frost, who made history last week when he won the Democratic primary for an open U.S. House seat in Orlando. Frost is set to become the first Afro-Cuban and first member of Generation Z elected to Congress if he goes on to win November’s general election for Florida’s heavily Democratic 10th Congressional District.

We look at what’s happened to Afghan refugees who have struggled to flee the country since the last U.S. troops left Afghanistan one year ago today. While the U.S. and allied nations helped evacuate some 122,000 people out of Afghanistan, the U.S. has failed to process requests for “humanitarian parole” — a program granting U.S.

We discuss Western hegemony and U.S. policy in Russia, Ukraine and China with Columbia University economist Jeffrey Sachs, whose new article is headlined “The West’s False Narrative About Russia and China.” Sachs says the bipartisan U.S. approach to foreign policy is “unaccountably dangerous and wrongheaded,” and warns the U.S. is creating “a recipe for yet another war” in East Asia.

Millions of pregnant people in the United States have now lost access to abortion in their state since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Anti-abortion “trigger laws” have gone into effect in numerous states across the country, including Texas, where it became a felony to perform an abortion starting Thursday,​​ punishable by up to life in prison. We speak to Dr.

Hundreds of farmworkers concluded a 24-day march to Sacramento spanning 335 miles to demand California Governor Gavin Newsom support legislation that would make it easier for farmworkers to cast their ballots in union elections by mail. Newsom has threatened to veto the bill, which would keep farmworkers safe from employer retaliation, explains Teresa Romero, president of the United Farm Workers, the labor union that helped organize the march.

The Justice Department has released a redacted version of the affidavit used by the FBI to raid former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate. The affidavit revealed authorities were concerned Trump still had possession of top-secret documents that could have compromised U.S. intelligence sources and methods, and said there was “probable cause to believe that evidence of obstruction was found.

Pakistan has declared a national emergency as massive floods continue to devastate the country, displacing 33 million people and bringing the death toll to over 1,000 since June. We speak with Shah Meer Baloch, Islamabad-based reporter for The Guardian, who describes how the floods have swept away homes, roads and bridges in what Baloch and Pakistan’s top climate official have called a serious “climate catastrophe.

Millions of pregnant people in the United States have now lost access to abortion in their state since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Anti-abortion “trigger laws” have gone into effect in numerous states across the country, including Texas, where it became a felony to perform an abortion starting Thursday,​​ punishable by up to life in prison. We speak to Dr.

One year after the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and the Taliban takeover of the government, the country is in a humanitarian crisis that includes widespread hunger and poverty. Meanwhile, the U.S. refuses to release $7 billion in foreign assets that belong to Afghanistan’s central bank.