New York Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani and Vermont independent Senator Bernie Sanders joined striking Starbucks workers on the picket line Monday to demand the coffee giant reach a fair contract with its unionized workforce after years of delay tactics.
Speaking outside a store in Brooklyn, Mamdani said New York is a “union town,” and vowed to continue joining pickets even after he is sworn in as mayor on January 1.

As bipartisan criticism intensifies over U.S. attacks on alleged “drug boats” in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, the White House is defending a September 2 operation that killed 11 people. The Washington Post reports Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered a second attack to kill two survivors of an initial strike, an order that legal experts say would constitute a war crime.

Rahmanullah Lakanwal, the man who authorities say shot two National Guardsmen outside the White House, had previously worked in a CIA-backed “Zero Unit” in Afghanistan, often called “death squads” by human rights groups.

We look at President Trump’s call to pause all asylum decisions after an Afghan man who once worked for the CIA opened fire near the White House last Wednesday, shooting two National Guard members, killing one. Rahmanullah Lakanwal entered the United States in 2021 through Operation Allies Welcome, a program that saw the U.S. evacuate thousands of Afghans who faced reprisals from the Taliban over their work with the U.S. and the former U.S.-backed government.

Democracy Now! speaks with journalist Spencer Ackerman about the Trump administration’s deadly, ongoing attacks on alleged “drug boats” amid reports President Trump is preparing to attack Venezuela, with all airspace surrounding Venezuela now closed. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and others are “turning the military into a criminal operation,” says Ackerman. “This shows the moral degeneracy that the ‘war on terror’ has left as a legacy in the U.S. military.