Contributing Writers

Silicon Valley and tech billionaires are lining up to support the incoming Trump administration. With the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, as one of Trump’s closest advisers, Trump has hosted Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg for dinners at Mar-a-Lago. Amazon, Meta and OpenAI’s Sam Altman have all announced donations of $1 million each to Trump’s inaugural committee.

Donald Trump has set his sights on the Americas, threatening to retake the Panama Canal if Panama doesn’t lower fees for U.S. ships. The United States controlled the waterway until 1977, when President Jimmy Carter signed a landmark treaty to give Panama control of the canal. Trump has also recently floated the idea of annexing Canada, and even a possible “soft invasion” of Mexico.

We speak with a Greenlandic member of the Danish Parliament, Aaja Chemnitz, about incoming U.S. President Donald Trump’s plans to make America larger, in part by taking ownership of Greenland, which is controlled by Denmark. Greenland’s prime minister rejected the idea this week, saying, “We are not for sale and will never be for sale.” Trump’s statement on Greenland was made as he announced he was picking PayPal co-founder Ken Howery as his pick for United States ambassador to Denmark.

In northern Gaza, the director of the besieged Kamal Adwan Hospital says five medical workers were among 50 people killed in Israeli strikes near the hospital. Israeli forces then stormed the hospital and forced hundreds, including patients, into the streets. This all comes as The New York Times has confirmed past reporting by +972 Magazine that on October 7, 2023, Israel loosened military rules meant to protect noncombatants in Gaza.

His name might not be familiar to many, but his songs are sung by millions around the world. Today, we take a journey through the life and work of Yip Harburg, the Broadway lyricist who wrote such hits as “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” and who put the music into The Wizard of Oz, the movie that inspired the hit Broadway musical and now Hollywood blockbuster, Wicked.

More than 3,100 Indigenous students died at boarding schools in the United States between 1828 and 1970 — three times the number of deaths reported earlier this year by the Department of Interior, according to a new investigation by The Washington Post. Many of the students had been forcibly removed from their families and tribes as part of a government policy of cultural eradication and assimilation.

We go to Damascus for an update on the state of affairs in Syria after the surprise collapse of the long-reigning Assad regime, with BBC Middle East correspondent Lina Sinjab. She is reporting in Syria for the first time in over a decade, after she was forced to flee the country in 2013.

After a 15-year career in the Foreign Service, Michael Casey resigned from the State Department in July over U.S. policy on Gaza and is now speaking out publicly for the first time. He was deputy political counselor at the United States Office for Palestinian Affairs in Jerusalem for four years before he left. Casey says he resigned after “getting no action from Washington” for his recommendations on humanitarian actions for Palestinians and toward a workable two-state solution.

As foreign powers look to shape Syria’s political landscape after the toppling of the Assad regime, the country’s Kurdish population is in the spotlight. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan continues to threaten the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia, which Turkey regards as an extension of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party militants who have fought an insurgency against the Turkish state for 40 years.

The U.S. House Ethics Committee has released its damning report on former Republican Representative Matt Gaetz, whom Trump had picked to be his attorney general before the Florida politician was forced to withdraw from consideration. The bipartisan committee’s report found Gaetz “regularly paid women for engaging in sexual activity with him” and possessed illegal drugs, including cocaine and ecstasy, on “multiple different occasions.

President Biden has spared the lives of 37 of 40 federal death row prisoners by commuting their sentences to life in prison. This comes just weeks before President-elect Donald Trump is set to return to the White House with a promise to restart and expand federal executions.

His name might not be familiar to many, but his songs are sung by millions around the world. Today, we take a journey through the life and work of Yip Harburg, the Broadway lyricist who wrote such hits as “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” and who put the music into The Wizard of Oz, the movie that inspired the hit Broadway musical and now Hollywood blockbuster, Wicked.

Christmas celebrations are canceled in the West Bank and the city of Bethlehem, Jesus Christ’s birthplace, for the second year in a row in response to Israel’s genocidal attack on Gaza and ethnic cleansing of the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

As foreign powers look to shape Syria’s political landscape after the toppling of the Assad regime, the country’s Kurdish population is in the spotlight. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan continues to threaten the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia, which Turkey regards as an extension of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party militants who have fought an insurgency against the Turkish state for 40 years.

The U.S. House Ethics Committee has released its damning report on former Republican Representative Matt Gaetz, whom Trump had picked to be his attorney general before the Florida politician was forced to withdraw from consideration. The bipartisan committee’s report found Gaetz “regularly paid women for engaging in sexual activity with him” and possessed illegal drugs, including cocaine and ecstasy, on “multiple different occasions.

President Biden has spared the lives of 37 of 40 federal death row prisoners by commuting their sentences to life in prison. This comes just weeks before President-elect Donald Trump is set to return to the White House with a promise to restart and expand federal executions.

We speak with Yale historian and author Timothy Snyder, an expert on authoritarianism, about how corporate America has responded to Donald Trump’s reelection. Snyder’s 2017 book On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century came out just a month after Trump began his first term, and opened with the warning: “Do Not Obey in Advance.

Christmas celebrations are canceled in the West Bank and the city of Bethlehem, Jesus Christ’s birthplace, for the second year in a row in response to Israel’s genocidal attack on Gaza and ethnic cleansing of the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

In France, sentences have been handed down in the trial of Dominique Pelicot and 51 other men convicted of rape against Pelicot’s ex-wife, Gisèle. Dominique Pelicot had repeatedly and systematically drugged and facilitated the rape of Gisèle Pelicot, approaching other men online to visit their home and assault her over a period of 10 years.

After the Republican-led Congress passes a government spending bill but rejects a last-minute demand for a debt limit suspension from President-elect Donald Trump and his billionaire adviser Elon Musk, we look at the richest man in the world’s growing influence, with The American Prospect editor Robert Kuttner. “At the end of the day, Musk got exactly what he wanted,” says Kuttner, referring to Musk’s influence in the removal of an anti-China trade provision in the bill.

We speak with Yale historian and author Timothy Snyder, an expert on authoritarianism, about how corporate America has responded to Donald Trump’s reelection. Snyder’s 2017 book On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century came out just a month after Trump began his first term, and opened with the warning: “Do Not Obey in Advance.

We continue to look at the U.S. health insurance industry and how patients can fight back against their providers with advocate Elisabeth Benjamin, vice president of health initiatives at the Community Service Society of New York and co-founder of the Health Care for All New York campaign. She says her advice for patients is to always appeal denials and to seek outside help when possible, including advocacy groups like hers and external review boards.

Luigi Mangione, the suspect in the shooting death of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, has been charged with first-degree murder and second-degree murder as an act of terrorism. Thompson’s assassination has brought renewed attention to the practices of the health industry and especially UnitedHealth Group, which reported $22 billion in profits last year.