Contributing Writers

As Democrats in Congress struggle to pass the $1.75 trillion Build Back Better Act, there is large bipartisan consensus in the U.S. Congress to spend over $7 trillion over the next 10 years in military spending. The United States spends more each year on defense than China, Russia, India, the U.K., Germany, France, Japan, South Korea, and Australia combined.

The survivor of a serial rapist who received probation joins us to speak out after a New York judge sparked international outrage when he ruled it is inappropriate to jail the man who attacked her. Christopher Belter pleaded guilty to raping and sexually assaulting her along with three other teenage girls age 15 and 16, but he will avoid serving time in prison, and instead receive 8 years of probation.

Update on Nov. 24: Jurors on Wednesday afternoon returned guilty verdicts against all three of the white men charged with killing 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery in February 2020. Travis McMichael fired the fatal shots and was convicted on all counts, including the charge of malice murder. His father Gregory McMichael, a former police officer, and neighbor William “Roddie” Bryan were convicted of felony murder and other charges.

A federal jury has ordered a group of white supremacists to pay over $26 million in damages for their role in organizing the deadly 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. “Is bankrupting these organizations, is bankrupting these individuals enough to actually stop the growing threat … of white supremacy and Nazism in the United States?” asks Slate senior editor Nicole Lewis. “I don’t think so.

We feature dramatic video footage just released that shows a violent raid Friday by Canadian federal police on one of the camps set up to keep Coastal GasLink out of sovereign Indigenous territory. Fifteen people in total were arrested, including two journalists. Wet’suwet’en land defender Sleydo’, also known as Molly Wickham, has now been released. The new footage was filmed by documentary filmmaker Michael Toledano, who was also just released.

The parents of Anthony Huber, one of two men killed by Kyle Rittenhouse, say they are heartbroken and angry over the jury’s Friday verdict, and argue it failed to deliver justice for any of Rittenhouse’s victims. In a statement Friday, they said: “Make no mistake: our fight to hold those responsible for Anthony’s death accountable continues in full force.

Jacob Blake Sr., whose son was shot by Kenosha police in 2020 and left partially paralyzed, says the family is part of a larger movement fighting for victims of police violence and racial injustice. “We were always pro-Black activists and then after this happened to my son, we’ve become activists for everyone who’s been affected,” he says. The Blake family has a long history of activism going back to the civil rights movement and beyond.

We feature an excerpt from our recent interview with world-renowned scholar and political dissident Noam Chomsky about how the Biden administration is continuing a reckless foreign policy, despite taking a softer tone than the Trump administration. “The trajectory is not optimistic,” Chomsky says. “The worst case is the increasing provocative actions towards China. That’s very dangerous.

Amid a right-wing attack on teaching critical race theory, we speak in-depth with Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones, creator of the New York Times Magazine’s 1619 Project, which reframes U.S. history by marking the year when the first enslaved Africans arrived on Virginia soil as the foundational date for the United States.

The parents of Anthony Huber, one of two men killed by Kyle Rittenhouse, say they are heartbroken and angry over the jury’s Friday verdict, and argue it failed to deliver justice for any of Rittenhouse’s victims. In a statement Friday, they said: “Make no mistake: our fight to hold those responsible for Anthony’s death accountable continues in full force.

Jacob Blake Sr., whose son was shot by Kenosha police in 2020 and left partially paralyzed, says the family is part of a larger movement fighting for victims of police violence and racial injustice. “We were always pro-Black activists and then after this happened to my son, we’ve become activists for everyone who’s been affected,” he says. The Blake family has a long history of activism going back to the civil rights movement and beyond.

In Missouri, white Kansas City police detective Eric DeValkenaere was found guilty Friday of fatally shooting Cameron Lamb, a Black man, who was backing his truck into his garage in December of 2019. DeValkenaere, who had no arrest warrant nor evidence of a crime at the time of shooting, was convicted of second-degree involuntary manslaughter and armed criminal action. The jury decision was unexpected and may set a precedent for future cases in Missouri.

Protests erupted nationwide after a jury in Kenosha, Wisconsin, acquitted Kyle Rittenhouse on all five counts for fatally shooting two people and wounding a third last year during protests sparked by the police shooting that left Jacob Blake paralyzed. Kyle Rittenhouse claimed he acted in self-defense when he killed Anthony Huber and Joseph Rosenbaum with an AR-15-style rifle. The jury’s decision was announced Friday afternoon after about 26 hours of deliberations.