Contributing Writers

New York mayoral candidates held their final debate Wednesday before the November 4 election, with early voting beginning Saturday. Democratic nominee and front-runner Zohran Mamdani faced off against Republican Curtis Sliwa and former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, running as an independent after losing the primary to Mamdani.

The new short film Criminal highlights the injustices of the criminal legal system with a look at how for-profit bail preys on the poor and mentally ill.

“The Republican Party has really become an extremist movement.” Amid a growing political divide in the Republican Party over the release of federal documents related to the Jeffrey Epstein investigation, we speak to former Republican political operative Stuart Stevens about the erosion of support for Donald Trump from some of his most prominent backers.

Israel’s Knesset has advanced legislation that would effectively annex the West Bank, prompting rare criticism from the Trump administration, which says it does not support annexation. We get a report on the state of illegal settlement activity in the Palestinian territory from the Norwegian Refugee Council’s Jan Egeland, who has just returned from the occupied West Bank.

In recent weeks, the United States has conducted several deadly airstrikes on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean Sea, which the Trump administration has claimed, without providing evidence, were being used to traffic drugs. A group of United Nations experts said U.S. strikes targeting boats in the Caribbean off the coast of Venezuela amount to “extrajudicial executions.

New York mayoral candidates held their final debate Wednesday before the November 4 election, with early voting beginning Saturday. Democratic nominee and front-runner Zohran Mamdani faced off against Republican Curtis Sliwa and former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, running as an independent after losing the primary to Mamdani.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio is the latest top U.S. official to visit Israel as part of a push to maintain the Gaza ceasefire. Reports suggest the Trump administration is worried about Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu undermining the agreement, with the U.S. visits dubbed “Bibi-sitting” missions to prevent any sabotage.

The International Court of Justice ruled Wednesday that Israel, as an occupying power, must allow United Nations humanitarian aid into Gaza and may not use starvation as a method of warfare. In its advisory opinion, the World Court also found that Israel had failed to provide evidence for its claims that UNRWA, the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, lacks neutrality or that a significant number of its staff are affiliated with Hamas.

Armed Only with a Camera, the documentary chronicling the life of the late filmmaker Brent Renaud, premieres Tuesday on HBO. Renaud was the first Western journalist killed during the war in Ukraine. He was shot by Russian soldiers during the 2022 invasion while filming Ukrainian refugees with another photojournalist, Juan Arredondo, who was wounded in the attack.

In recent weeks, the United States has conducted several deadly airstrikes on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean Sea, which the Trump administration has claimed, without providing evidence, were being used to traffic drugs. A group of United Nations experts said U.S. strikes targeting boats in the Caribbean off the coast of Venezuela amount to “extrajudicial executions.

Tensions are escalating between Colombia and the United States as President Trump conducts deadly airstrikes on supposed “drug boats” in the Caribbean. Colombian President Gustavo Petro accused the U.S. of committing murder for killing a Colombian fisherman in one attack in mid-September and just recalled the country’s ambassador, Daniel García-Peña.

Virginia Roberts Giuffre’s posthumous memoir has just been released, detailing how she was groomed by Jeffrey Epstein and his co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell, whom she met at Donald Trump’s Mar-A-Lago resort. In Nobody’s Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice, she writes that she was forced to have sex with Prince Andrew three times, beginning when she was 17, and was beaten and raped by a “well-known prime minister.

Immigrant rights and labor icon Dolores Huerta, now 95 years old, is continuing her lifelong activism as immigration raids intensify across the country. She addressed the No Kings rally in Watsonville, California, this weekend to speak out against the Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda. “This is ethnic cleansing,” Huerta tells Democracy Now! “We have never seen such horrific, horrific attacks on our people.

Armed Only with a Camera, the documentary chronicling the life of the late filmmaker Brent Renaud, premieres Tuesday on HBO. Renaud was the first Western journalist killed during the war in Ukraine. He was shot by Russian soldiers during the 2022 invasion while filming Ukrainian refugees with another photojournalist, Juan Arredondo, who was wounded in the attack.

We look at the influence of Trump’s top budget adviser and the architect of Project 2025, Russell Vought, over the Trump administration’s policies and Trump himself. Vought is “the driving force behind the [government] shutdown” and “basically a second commander-in-chief, a shadow president,” says ProPublica reporter Andy Kroll, who spent months researching Vought for an extensive profile on the Office of Management and Budget director.

“We are under attack by our own federal government,” says Democratic Congressmember for Illinois Delia Ramirez about Trump’s immigration crackdown in Chicago. “What we’re seeing is an agency that has gone rogue, that has been emboldened and that thinks that they’re above the law.” She urges Americans to report and record ICE activity to strengthen future legal battles, “because what ICE is stating and what we’re seeing in the community in the streets is inconsistent.

Immigrant rights and labor icon Dolores Huerta, now 95 years old, is continuing her lifelong activism as immigration raids intensify across the country. She addressed the No Kings rally in Watsonville, California, this weekend to speak out against the Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda. “This is ethnic cleansing,” Huerta tells Democracy Now! “We have never seen such horrific, horrific attacks on our people.

An estimated 7 million people took part in No Kings rallies Saturday to protest President Trump’s authoritarian policies. Organizers say protests were held at about 2,600 sites across all 50 states in what was one of the largest days of protest in U.S. history, surpassing the first No Kings day of action in June. One of the biggest mobilizations was in Washington, D.C., where Trump has fired thousands of federal workers and sent in National Guard troops to patrol the streets.

“Even after having released almost 2,000 people last week, the Israeli military is still holding about 9,000 Palestinians, in what it calls security prisoners or detainees,” says Sari Bashi, an Israeli American human rights lawyer and former program director at Human Rights Watch. “Only about a thousand of them have actually been convicted of any crime. The vast majority of people being held are being held without trial.

We speak with Al Jazeera reporter Ibrahim al-Khalili in Gaza, where the shaky ceasefire between Israel and Hamas appears to be holding despite sporadic violence. Gaza officials say Israeli forces have repeatedly violated the agreement, including when they opened fire on a civilian bus, killing 11 members of a Palestinian family attempting to return home in Gaza City.

Even as President Trump has cracked down on dissent and sent troops into multiple cities, organizers of Saturday’s anti-authoritarian “No Kings” protests expect millions to join at least 2,500 rallies across all 50 states and several U.S. territories. The turnout could surpass the 5 million protesters who turned out for “No Kings Day” events in June.

There are growing questions over the legality of U.S. strikes on suspected drug boats in the Caribbean. “These are sitting ducks, and we are simply engaged in cold-blooded murder of individuals who may or may not be drug smugglers,” says David Cole, professor at the Georgetown University Law Center. Cole says that President Trump is “committing homicide” by killing people without trial.

Just days after the U.S.-backed ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas went into effect, President Trump has issued new threats against Hamas, saying Thursday the United States would back a military intervention against the group if it fails to uphold the ceasefire agreement.
“There is the fear all the time that the war will be renewed,” says Amira Hass, Haaretz correspondent for the Occupied Palestinian Territories, who joins us from Ramallah.