Contributing Writers

We get an update on Israel’s war on Lebanon from journalist Rania Abouzeid in Beirut. “We are seeing a definite escalation that started a month ago and doesn’t show any sign of letting up,” she observes, describing unrestrained attacks by Israel throughout the country, on all sectors of society, as Israel carries out its “Dahiya doctrine” in an attempt to foment division among the Lebanese population. “This is the Gaza playbook.

The new documentary film Union, premiering this week, follows Amazon workers at the JFK8 fulfillment center on Staten Island as they formed the first-ever U.S. Amazon union in 2022. Co-directed by Stephen Maing and Brett Story, the film follows “the invisible working class” as they face an uphill battle against the notoriously anti-labor corporation, says Maing, who joins Democracy Now! to discuss the film.

With just 19 days until the presidential election, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are ramping up efforts to appeal to a major voting bloc in battleground states: Latinx voters. This comes as both major candidates are boasting hard-line immigration policies that impose harsh conditions on those entering the United States. “It will not be a solution for Vice President Harris to mimic Donald Trump’s policies on immigration.

Less than three weeks from the election, Kamala Harris is campaigning in Michigan. Will she lose votes over the Biden administration’s support for Israel’s war on Gaza and expanding war on Lebanon? Meanwhile, Republican candidate Donald Trump has opened a new campaign office in the swing state.

As the official death toll in Gaza passes more than 42,400, the true number may be impossible to know until Israel’s war is over. But medical workers who witnessed the carnage in Gaza’s hospitals are speaking out. We speak with Dr. Feroze Sidhwa about his op-ed in The New York Times that features harrowing stories from dozens of healthcare workers and CT scans of children shot in the head or the left side of the chest.

Israel is facing international condemnation after repeatedly attacking U.N. peacekeeping forces in southern Lebanon. At least five members of the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon, UNIFIL, have been injured in recent days. The U.N. also accused Israel of forcibly entering and destroying part of a UNIFIL base near the Israeli border after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called to remove the peacekeeping forces from the region.

The new documentary film Union, premiering this week, follows Amazon workers at the JFK8 fulfillment center on Staten Island as they formed the first-ever U.S. Amazon union in 2022. Co-directed by Stephen Maing and Brett Story, the film follows “the invisible working class” as they face an uphill battle against the notoriously anti-labor corporation, says Maing, who joins Democracy Now! to discuss the film.

“There is nothing antisemitic about fighting for people’s right to live,” says Jewish Voice for Peace organizer Elena Stein, who on Monday joined hundreds of protesters arrested to block entrances to the New York Stock Exchange. We discuss the historic mass protest, which called for an Israeli arms embargo and an end to war profiteering by companies like Raytheon and Lockheed Martin.

The Biden administration is sending an advanced anti-missile defense system and 100 U.S. troops to Israel in advance of expected retaliatory strikes against Iran. This marks the first significant deployment of American troops to Israel since the beginning of its assault on Gaza, though the U.S. has spent an estimated tens of billions of dollars on the Israeli military and related operations.

Israel is facing international condemnation after repeatedly attacking U.N. peacekeeping forces in southern Lebanon. At least five members of the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon, UNIFIL, have been injured in recent days. The U.N. also accused Israel of forcibly entering and destroying part of a UNIFIL base near the Israeli border after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called to remove the peacekeeping forces from the region.

We speak with the reporter who revealed the Israeli plan to displace or kill the entire Palestinian population of north Gaza. Israeli Major General Giora Eiland has proposed ordering everyone in northern Gaza to evacuate within one week, after which Israel will conduct a total siege on the area and deem anyone who remains an eligible target for military attack.

We get another update on Israel’s brutal siege and bombing in the north of the Gaza Strip, where hospitals are desperate for supplies. “Every day is a breaking point. Every day is a desperate rush for food, water, fuel and medicine and shelter,” says Dr. Samer Attar, who has volunteered four times as a surgeon in north Gaza, most recently in June. “It never ends. Every day you wake up to more and more of it. That’s just what makes it so horrifying.

We speak with Dr. Mohammed Salha, the acting director of Al-Awda Hospital at the Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza, as Israel continues to escalate attacks against northern Gaza and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is considering implementing a “surrender or starve” policy there. Palestinians in north Gaza report Israeli forces are conducting a strict and deadly siege while bombing more tent encampments, hospitals and schools this weekend.

We speak with the director of The Apprentice, “the movie Trump doesn’t want you to see,” which opens today in theaters despite legal threats from the former president. The film looks at how Trump was mentored by Roy Cohn, former chief counsel to Senator Joseph McCarthy during the Red Scare. He went on to represent Trump as he built his New York real estate empire, and “was the person who sort of built Trump, as a person, as a brand, as an identity,” says Abbasi.

A Japanese group of atomic bomb survivors, Nihon Hidankyo, has won the Nobel Peace Prize as fears grow of a new nuclear arms race. The head of the group has compared Gaza today to Japan 80 years ago when the U.S. bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We feature a Democracy Now! interview with Setsuko Thurlow, a survivor of the U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima and an anti-nuclear activist, and get response from Joseph Gerson, president of the Campaign for Peace, Disarmament and Common Security, a U.

As the Israeli military continues its assaults on Gaza and Lebanon, which have included the targeting of hospitals and ambulances and the killing of medical personnel, among other violations of international law, we speak to a doctor currently volunteering in Beirut. Dr. Bing Li is an emergency medicine physician and U.S. Army veteran who also volunteered at Indonesian Hospital in northern Gaza earlier this year.

We look at the Coalition of Immokalee Workers in southwest Florida, which runs a radio station called Radio Conciencia that helped immigrant farmworkers prepare for Hurricane Milton and other storms. Established in 2003, the community radio station broadcasts in Spanish, Creole and other languages to share crucial information during natural disasters. “This is always scary for us whenever a hurricane hits in our area,” says organizer Gerardo Reyes Chavez.

We speak with the director of The Apprentice, “the movie Trump doesn’t want you to see,” which opens today in theaters despite legal threats from the former president. The film looks at how Trump was mentored by Roy Cohn, former chief counsel to Senator Joseph McCarthy during the Red Scare. He went on to represent Trump as he built his New York real estate empire, and “was the person who sort of built Trump, as a person, as a brand, as an identity,” says Abbasi.

A Japanese group of atomic bomb survivors, Nihon Hidankyo, has won the Nobel Peace Prize as fears grow of a new nuclear arms race. The head of the group has compared Gaza today to Japan 80 years ago when the U.S. bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We feature a Democracy Now! interview with Setsuko Thurlow, a survivor of the U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima and an anti-nuclear activist, and get response from Joseph Gerson, president of the Campaign for Peace, Disarmament and Common Security, a U.

As the Israeli military continues its assaults on Gaza and Lebanon, which have included the targeting of hospitals and ambulances and the killing of medical personnel, among other violations of international law, we speak to a doctor currently volunteering in Beirut. Dr. Bing Li is an emergency medicine physician and U.S. Army veteran who also volunteered at Indonesian Hospital in northern Gaza earlier this year.

We look at the Coalition of Immokalee Workers in southwest Florida, which runs a radio station called Radio Conciencia that helped immigrant farmworkers prepare for Hurricane Milton and other storms. Established in 2003, the community radio station broadcasts in Spanish, Creole and other languages to share crucial information during natural disasters. “This is always scary for us whenever a hurricane hits in our area,” says organizer Gerardo Reyes Chavez.

We look at the Coalition of Immokalee Workers in southwest Florida, which runs a radio station called Radio Conciencia that helped immigrant farmworkers prepare for Hurricane Milton and other storms. Established in 2003, the community radio station broadcasts in Spanish, Creole and other languages to share crucial information during natural disasters. “This is always scary for us whenever a hurricane hits in our area,” says organizer Gerardo Reyes Chavez.

We speak with the director of The Apprentice, “the movie Trump doesn’t want you to see,” which opens today in theaters despite legal threats from the former president. The film looks at how Trump was mentored by Roy Cohn, former chief counsel to Senator Joseph McCarthy during the Red Scare. He went on to represent Trump as he built his New York real estate empire, and “was the person who sort of built Trump, as a person, as a brand, as an identity,” says Abbasi.

A Japanese group of atomic bomb survivors, Nihon Hidankyo, has won the Nobel Peace Prize as fears grow of a new nuclear arms race. The head of the group has compared Gaza today to Japan 80 years ago when the U.S. bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We feature a Democracy Now! interview with Setsuko Thurlow, a survivor of the U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima and an anti-nuclear activist, and get response from Joseph Gerson, president of the Campaign for Peace, Disarmament and Common Security, a U.

As the Israeli military continues its assaults on Gaza and Lebanon, which have included the targeting of hospitals and ambulances and the killing of medical personnel, among other violations of international law, we speak to a doctor currently volunteering in Beirut. Dr. Bing Li is an emergency medicine physician and U.S. Army veteran who also volunteered at Indonesian Hospital in northern Gaza earlier this year.

We look at the Coalition of Immokalee Workers in southwest Florida, which runs a radio station called Radio Conciencia that helped immigrant farmworkers prepare for Hurricane Milton and other storms. Established in 2003, the community radio station broadcasts in Spanish, Creole and other languages to share crucial information during natural disasters. “This is always scary for us whenever a hurricane hits in our area,” says organizer Gerardo Reyes Chavez.

As many as 28,000 people incarcerated in central and southern Florida jails and prisons were in mandatory evacuation zones for Hurricane Milton, but many officials reportedly refused to evacuate them. Some who were moved to more secure facilities ahead of the storm report having been left in lockdown with no power, updates or access to prison staff.

As we continue to cover the aftermath of Hurricane Milton, we speak with Manuel Ivan Guerrero, a freshman at the University of Central Florida and an organizer with the Sunrise Movement, who says young people are extremely worried about the impact of the climate crisis on their communities. “This just has me more scared for what the future’s going to look like in Florida,” he says. “We’re having these thousand-year storms every three, four years now.

More than 3 million people in Florida are without power after Hurricane Milton made landfall in Sarasota County on Wednesday as a Category 3 storm, pummeling the area with torrential rains and winds of up to 120 miles an hour.