Contributing Writers

A new report in The New York Times takes a deep dive into Project Esther, a policy blueprint to crush the pro-Palestinian movement in the United States from the Heritage Foundation, the right-wing think tank best known for spearheading Project 2025. Project Esther was formed during the Biden administration and lays out plans for surveilling, silencing and punishing pro-Palestinian activists, including deporting non-U.S. citizens and withholding funds from universities.

Palestinians in Gaza are fleeing Khan Younis after the Israeli military issued expulsion orders for the besieged territory’s second-largest city. This comes as Israel’s bombardment of Gaza intensifies, killing hundreds of Palestinians over the weekend, including at least five journalists. Health facilities have been under constant attack. Israel on Sunday announced the start of a renewed ground invasion it calls Operation Gideon’s Chariots.

House Republicans have successfully pushed forward President Trump’s budget proposals to slash Medicaid and food stamps, putting millions of low-income Americans at risk. Anthony Wright, executive director of Families USA, a healthcare consumer advocacy organization, says the $715 billion reduction is “literally the biggest cut to the Medicaid program in history.

In his first live interview since his release from ICE detention, Columbia University student and Palestinian activist Mohsen Mahdawi recounts the traumatic experience of his arrest and incarceration. Mahdawi, a green card holder who was born and raised in a refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, was arrested in Vermont on April 14 when he appeared for what he was told would be a citizenship interview, and spent more than two weeks in U.S.

Israel has imposed a complete block on humanitarian aid into Gaza since March 2, with hundreds of trucks with lifesaving aid waiting at the border. Now many of Gaza’s kitchens have closed, and Palestinians face mass starvation as rations run low. We speak with Alex de Waal, executive director of the World Peace Foundation at Tufts University, author of Mass Starvation: The History and Future of Famine.

House Republicans have successfully pushed forward President Trump’s budget proposals to slash Medicaid and food stamps, putting millions of low-income Americans at risk. Anthony Wright, executive director of Families USA, a healthcare consumer advocacy organization, says the $715 billion reduction is “literally the biggest cut to the Medicaid program in history.

In his first live interview since his release from ICE detention, Columbia University student and Palestinian activist Mohsen Mahdawi recounts the traumatic experience of his arrest and incarceration. Mahdawi, a green card holder who was born and raised in a refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, was arrested in Vermont on April 14 when he appeared for what he was told would be a citizenship interview, and spent more than two weeks in U.S.

Israel has imposed a complete block on humanitarian aid into Gaza since March 2, with hundreds of trucks with lifesaving aid waiting at the border. Now many of Gaza’s kitchens have closed, and Palestinians face mass starvation as rations run low. We speak with Alex de Waal, executive director of the World Peace Foundation at Tufts University, author of Mass Starvation: The History and Future of Famine.

Israel has imposed a complete block on humanitarian aid into Gaza since March 2, with hundreds of trucks with lifesaving aid waiting at the border. Now many of Gaza’s kitchens have closed, and Palestinians face mass starvation as rations run low. We speak with Alex de Waal, executive director of the World Peace Foundation at Tufts University, author of Mass Starvation: The History and Future of Famine.

House Republicans have successfully pushed forward President Trump’s budget proposals to slash Medicaid and food stamps, putting millions of low-income Americans at risk. Anthony Wright, executive director of Families USA, a healthcare consumer advocacy organization, says the $715 billion reduction is “literally the biggest cut to the Medicaid program in history.

In his first live interview since his release from ICE detention, Columbia University student and Palestinian activist Mohsen Mahdawi recounts the traumatic experience of his arrest and incarceration. Mahdawi, a green card holder who was born and raised in a refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, was arrested in Vermont on April 14 when he appeared for what he was told would be a citizenship interview, and spent more than two weeks in U.S.

We speak with a Salvadoran journalist who fled El Salvador along with others from the acclaimed news outlet El Faro after Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele threatened to arrest them for exposing how Bukele had made secret deals with Salvadoran gangs. Bukele has run the country under a so-called state of exception since 2022, detaining nearly 80,000 people accused of being in gangs, largely without access to due process.

Israel has imposed a complete block on humanitarian aid into Gaza since March 2, with hundreds of trucks with lifesaving aid waiting at the border. Now many of Gaza’s kitchens have closed, and Palestinians face mass starvation as rations run low. We speak with Alex de Waal, executive director of the World Peace Foundation at Tufts University, author of Mass Starvation: The History and Future of Famine.

A major new report by U.S. academics analyzes Israel’s occupation of Palestine under the legal framework of the crime of apartheid. The report was intentionally released on Nakba Day — the day that marks the mass expulsion of Palestinians from their homes during Israel’s violent founding in 1948. Citing dozens of experts, human rights organizations and judicial decisions, it concludes that Israel’s treatment of Palestinians “meets the legal threshold of apartheid.

The Trump administration has suspended refugee resettlement for most of the world, but welcomed 59 white South African Afrikaners Monday who were granted refugee status. President Trump claims Afrikaners face racial discrimination — even though South Africa’s white minority still own the vast majority of farmland decades after the end of apartheid — and claims they are escaping “genocide.

We speak with 22-year-old Palestinian journalist Abubaker Abed in Ireland after he evacuated Gaza last month suffering from malnutrition and under threat for his reporting on Israel’s genocide. Abed describes himself as an “accidental war correspondent” and hoped to become a sports journalist and commentator before the start of the war, but spent much of the last two years reporting on daily death and destruction.

We speak with a Salvadoran journalist who fled El Salvador along with others from the acclaimed news outlet El Faro after Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele threatened to arrest them for exposing how Bukele had made secret deals with Salvadoran gangs. Bukele has run the country under a so-called state of exception since 2022, detaining nearly 80,000 people accused of being in gangs, largely without access to due process.

Amid President Donald Trump’s visit to the Middle East, we continue our interview with DAWN’s Sarah Leah Whitson and HuffPost’s Akbar Shahid Ahmed about Trump’s acceptance of a luxury plane gifted to him by the Qatari government, nuclear negotiations with Iran and Saudi Arabia, a less cooperative relationship with Israel and more.

We look at President Donald Trump’s diplomatic visit to the Middle East and discuss his administration’s foreign policy in the region with Akbar Shahid Ahmed, senior diplomatic correspondent for HuffPost, and Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of DAWN. As Trump sells U.S. military power in the Gulf in exchange for investments in U.S. businesses, they warn that Trump’s transactional business philosophy is spreading to the administration’s dealings around the world.

We speak with 22-year-old Palestinian journalist Abubaker Abed in Ireland after he evacuated Gaza last month suffering from malnutrition and under threat for his reporting on Israel’s genocide. Abed describes himself as an “accidental war correspondent” and hoped to become a sports journalist and commentator before the start of the war, but spent much of the last two years reporting on daily death and destruction.

“People are starving to death, and this is a fact that we are witnessing and experiencing nowadays,” says Oxfam’s food security coordinator in Gaza, Mahmoud Alsaqqa. More than 10 weeks after Israel instituted a total siege on Gaza, blocking all food and other aid from entering, hunger has reached catastrophic levels in the Palestinian territory.

As President Donald Trump meets with leaders in the Middle East this week, we look at how his administration and family have opened wide to foreign powers and wealthy interests willing to spend big to gain influence. Top buyers of Trump’s novelty cryptocurrency have spent millions as part of a contest to have dinner with the president. Trump’s sons Donald Jr.

We speak with Robert Weissman, co-president of the advocacy group Public Citizen, about President Donald Trump’s “corrupt deal” to accept a $400 million jumbo luxury jet from the royal family of Qatar — possibly the most valuable such gift a foreign government has ever given.