Contributing Writers

For his incoming economic team, President-elect Joe Biden has picked several people associated with the investment giant BlackRock, which has been called “the fourth branch of government.” This includes his choice of Brian Deese, a former adviser to Barack Obama, to be his director of the National Economic Council. Deese was the global head of sustainable investing for BlackRock, which is the world’s largest asset manager, with over $7 trillion in its portfolio.

President-elect Joe Biden announced his top economic advisers this week, setting the tone for his administration’s recovery plan, including Neera Tanden, president of the Center for American Progress think tank, as head of the Office of Management and Budget.

We look at the unprecedented five federal executions President Trump’s Department of Justice has scheduled before Inauguration Day, starting with Brandon Bernard on International Human Rights Day and ending with Dustin Higgs on January 15, Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday. Four of the people set to die are Black men, and the other is Lisa Montgomery, a severely mentally ill white woman who faced a lifetime of sexual abuse and would be the first woman executed in nearly 70 years.

December 1 is World AIDS Day, and as the world waits on an effective vaccine for COVID-19, we look at the ongoing AIDS epidemic and how the coronavirus has threatened treatment for those living with HIV. Author and journalism professor Steven Thrasher says the coronavirus has amplified racial, class and other disparities, just as AIDS has done for decades, and that treatments must have an antiracist and anti-capitalist foundation in order to be successful.

As distribution of coronavirus vaccines draws near, a recent poll suggests that 42% of Americans are reluctant to take the vaccine. In response, some, including former Maryland congressmember and presidential candidate John Delaney, are pushing to pay people to get vaccinated, a move being discouraged by many, including Dr. Monica Peek, a physician, associate professor of medicine and health disparities researcher at the University of Chicago.

As the drugmakers Pfizer and Moderna seek emergency approval for their coronavirus vaccines, public health bodies and regulators are weighing how to distribute the vaccines and who will get access to them. The pandemic is disproportionately impacting African American, Latinx and Indigenous communities, exposing long-standing inequities and systemic racism in the U.S. healthcare system.

We look at the unprecedented five federal executions President Trump’s Department of Justice has scheduled before Inauguration Day, starting with Brandon Bernard on International Human Rights Day, and ending with Dustin Higgs on January 15, Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday. Four of the people set to die are Black men, and the other is Lisa Montgomery, a severely mentally ill white woman who faced a lifetime of sexual abuse and would be the first woman executed in nearly 70 years.

We look at one of the most shocking cases in the slew of federal executions the Trump administration has scheduled in its final months: Lisa Montgomery, who was convicted in 2007 for a gruesome murder of a pregnant woman, is set be the first woman to be executed by the federal government in 70 years if her January 12 execution goes forward. Advocates say Montgomery suffers from mental illnesses caused by a life of abuse and sexual assault, and that she deserves clemency.

Sister Helen Prejean, one of the world’s best known anti-death-penalty activists, says the spate of federal executions carried out by the Trump administration reflect a “fundamental flaw” in the law, which does not set limits on use of the death penalty. “When you give absolute power over life and death to government officials, they can really do what they want,” she says.

Iran’s top nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was assassinated Friday while driving on a highway outside Tehran. Iran accuses Israel of orchestrating the killing, which is the latest in a string of assassinations targeting scientists involved with Iran’s nuclear program.

In this special rebroadcast of a Democracy Now! exclusive documentary, we break the media blockade and go to occupied Western Sahara in the northwest of Africa to document the decades-long Sahrawi struggle for freedom and Morocco’s violent crackdown. Morocco has occupied the territory since 1975 in defiance of the United Nations and the international community. Thousands have been tortured, imprisoned, killed and disappeared while resisting the Moroccan occupation.

As President-elect Joe Biden and his running mate Kamala Harris prepare to take power, we continue to look at the growing debate over the direction of the Democratic Party. House Majority Whip James Clyburn recently criticized calls to “defund the police” and argued the phrase hurt Democratic congressional candidates.

About 160 million voters cast ballots in this election, setting a new record, and President-elect Joe Biden’s lead in the popular vote has jumped to over 6 million. Much of the increased turnout was powered by people of color, while the total number of votes cast by white Americans barely increased from the last presidential election.

As COVID-19 rampages through the U.S., we look at how the rapid spread of the disease is affecting Native American communities, which have already faced disproportionate infection and death rates throughout the pandemic. We speak to Jodi Archambault, a citizen of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and former special assistant to President Obama for Native American affairs. We also speak with Protect the Sacred founder Allie Young of the Navajo Nation.

A massive fight is brewing in Minnesota against the Enbridge Line 3 pipeline after the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers approved a permit for the project this week. After years of resistance, pipeline construction is now set to begin by the end of the month despite the concerns of Indigenous communities, who say it would violate tribal sovereignty and contaminate the land and water.