Contributing Writers

The next mayor of New York City will likely be the Brooklyn borough president and former police officer Eric Adams, according to a newly released tally in the Democratic primary race which accounts for most absentee ballots. Adams would be the city’s second Black mayor and ran to the right of his party, promising to tackle crime.

Haiti is reeling from a new crisis after President Jovenel Moïse was assassinated in an attack on his home in the outskirts of Port-au-Prince early Wednesday. In a statement, Haitian Prime Minister Claude Joseph said “a group of unidentified individuals” attacked the private residence of the president, killing him and injuring the first lady.

As gun violence soars in the United States, we look at the Second Amendment and its racist roots with Carol Anderson, author of the new book, “The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America.” In the book, Anderson details how the Second Amendment was written to empower local militia groups to put down slave revolts and protect plantation owners.

An international human rights commission has arrived in Colombia to investigate the right-wing government’s brutal crackdown on protesters after a general strike was called in April. More than 80 people have died since the protests began, with many killed by police and paramilitary forces.

Democratic Congressmember Ro Khanna, the chair of the House Oversight Subcommittee on the Environment, has announced plans to ask the CEOs of Exxon and other fossil fuel companies to testify before the committee about their role in blocking congressional action to address the climate emergency.

A former U.S.-trained Honduran military officer and businessman has been found guilty of plotting the assassination of Berta Cáceres, the award-winning Lenca land and water defender killed in 2016. The Honduran Supreme Court ruled unanimously that David Castillo, the former president of the hydroelectric corporation DESA, was a co-perpetrator in Cáceres’s murder.

Republican South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem has announced she is deploying 50 members of the South Dakota National Guard to the U.S.-Mexico border at the request of Texas Governor Greg Abbott. In an extraordinary twist, the deployment is being paid for by billionaire Republican megadonor Willis Johnson, who lives in Tennessee.

Resistance to construction of the Enbridge Line 3 tar sands pipeline continues in northern Minnesota, where more than a dozen water protectors this week locked themselves to construction vehicles at two worksites, and to the pipeline itself. Just last month, 179 people were arrested when thousands shut down an Enbridge pumping station for two days as part of the Treaty People Gathering.

As gun violence soars in the United States, we look at the Second Amendment and its racist roots with Carol Anderson, author of the new book, “The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America.” In the book, Anderson details how the Second Amendment was written to empower local militia groups to put down slave revolts and protect plantation owners.

Amanda Gorman became the youngest inaugural poet in U.S. history when she spoke at the inauguration of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. She was 22 years old when she read “The Hill We Climb,” a poem she finished right after the insurrection at the Capitol on January 6. We continue our July Fourth special broadcast with Gorman’s remarkable address.

We begin our July Fourth special broadcast with the words of Frederick Douglass. Born into slavery around 1818, Douglass became a key leader of the abolitionist movement. On July 5, 1852, in Rochester, New York, Douglass gave one of his most famous speeches, “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” He was addressing the Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society.

Republican South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem has announced she is deploying 50 members of the South Dakota National Guard to the U.S.-Mexico border at the request of Texas Governor Greg Abbott. In an extraordinary twist, the deployment is being paid for by billionaire Republican megadonor Willis Johnson, who lives in Tennessee.

Resistance to construction of the Enbridge Line 3 tar sands pipeline continues in northern Minnesota, where more than a dozen water protectors this week locked themselves to construction vehicles at two worksites, and to the pipeline itself. Just last month, 179 people were arrested when thousands shut down an Enbridge pumping station for two days as part of the Treaty People Gathering.

The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office has charged former President Donald Trump’s family business with operating a 15-year tax fraud scheme, accusing the Trump Organization of helping executives evade taxes by giving them compensation off the books. Allen Weisselberg, the company’s chief financial officer, who has worked with Trump for decades, was also charged with grand larceny for avoiding taxes on $1.7 million in perks that he did not report as income.

In a pair of major rulings, the U.S. Supreme Court has gutted more of the Voting Rights Act while making it easier for billionaires to secretly bankroll political campaigns. In a 6-3 vote, the conservative justices upheld two Arizona election laws that have been widely criticized for their impact on minority voters, sending a signal that other voting restrictions in Republican-led states are also likely to be ruled constitutional if challenges are brought to the high court.