Contributing Writers

Civil rights leader Bishop William Barber joins us to discuss his calls for more awareness and justice for disabled people after he was kicked out of a Greenville, North Carolina, AMC movie theater last week when he went to see The Color Purple with his 90-year-old mother. Barber was threatened with trespassing and police forcibly removed him from the theater when the manager refused to allow him to use a specialized chair he carries to assist with an arthritic condition.

As Ukraine and Russia complete an exchange of nearly 500 prisoners amid ongoing hostilities, American news outlets are reporting that Russian President Vladimir Putin may be open to ceasefire talks behind the scenes. But in Moscow, “That’s not how we see it,” says Nina Khrushcheva, a professor of international affairs at the New School and the great-granddaughter of former Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev.

Twin explosions in the Iranian province of Kerman killed dozens and injured hundreds Wednesday at a memorial for top Revolutionary Guards general Qassem Soleimani, who was assassinated in a U.S. drone strike four years ago in Iraq. No one has yet claimed responsibility for the attack, but Iran has placed blame on Israel and the U.S, while U.S. officials and regional experts have suggested ISIS as the culprit.

Dutch Palestinian policy analyst Mouin Rabbani says Israel is using the Hamas attack of October 7 as a pretext to carry out its “long-standing ambition” to push Palestinians out of the Gaza Strip. He notes Israeli officials started proposing mass displacement of civilians to Egypt and other countries almost immediately after fighting began, and that this reflects Zionist policy since even before the founding of the state of Israel.

A top Hamas official was assassinated in a suburb of Beirut on Tuesday amid growing fears that Israel’s war on Gaza could entangle Lebanon and other countries in the region. Hamas’s deputy leader Saleh al-Arouri was killed in a suspected Israeli drone strike that also killed six other members of Hamas, though Israel has not confirmed its involvement.

Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley is facing backlash after she failed to cite slavery as a cause of the Civil War during a town hall event in New Hampshire last week. She later clarified that “of course the Civil War was about slavery,” but her initial reluctance to say so is indicative of how Republican leaders have long avoided reckoning with the country’s past, says Harvard historian Khalil Gibran Muhammad.

We look at the resignation of Harvard University President Claudine Gay, the first African American and second woman to lead the Ivy League school, after conservative-led allegations of plagiarism and backlash over her testimony at a congressional hearing on antisemitism that is part of a broader effort to censor pro-Palestinian speech on college campuses.

In a New Year’s Day special broadcast, we air highlights from the Belmarsh Tribunal held last month in Washington, D.C., where journalists, lawyers, activists and other expert witnesses made the case to free Julian Assange from prison in the United Kingdom. The WikiLeaks founder has been jailed at London’s Belmarsh prison since 2019, awaiting possible extradition to the United States on espionage charges for publishing documents that revealed U.S.

On Thursday, the state of Maine joined Colorado in barring Donald Trump from the Republican primary ballot over his role in the January 6 insurrection. Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows issued a written decision saying the insurrection clause in the 14th Amendment makes the former president ineligible to run for public office again.

As we begin a pivotal election year in the United States, we look at the powerful U.S. lobby group AIPAC, which is set to spend more than $100 million to defeat progressives who are critical of Israeli human rights violations in Palestine. That includes Michigan’s Rashida Tlaib, the only Palestinian American member of Congress.

South Africa has filed a case at the main judicial body for the United Nations, the International Court of Justice in The Hague, accusing Israel of committing genocide in Gaza.