In December 2023, I spent half a minute with Charlie Kirk in the bowels of the Phoenix Convention Center. Turning Point USA, the youth organization that he founded in 2012 and built into a right-wing juggernaut, was holding its annual convention in the city that the Chicago-born Kirk had made his home. Tall and dark-haired, he was moving quickly with a group of aides through a crowd of admirers.
Whether the senior Hamas officials Israel tried to kill in a surprise missile strike in Doha yesterday are still alive is an open question. But the U.S.-brokered peace deal they were meeting to consider is almost certainly dead.
The diplomatic calculation is not difficult.
“When one party bombs the negotiating team of the other party, it’s hard to see a path forward,” Dana Shell Smith, the former U.S. ambassador to Qatar, told us.
The assassination of Charlie Kirk, the high-profile conservative activist, is apparently the latest in a string of terrifying acts of political violence in the United States. Real America’s Voice, which aired Kirk’s show, announced his death. He was 31.
Kirk was shot during an appearance at Utah Valley University, just north of Provo, Utah.
Early this morning, Russia sent a swarm of drones into Poland. The crisis of the NATO alliance that people on both sides of the Atlantic have been denying or trying to put off is now here: This is the moment when the world finds out whether the United States remains committed to the defense of its allies.
Ever since he began running for president, Donald Trump has been equivocal at best about America’s security commitments to Europe.
Layoffs are spreading and unemployment is rising—and one kind of worker is being hit the hardest.
As the Trump administration grows increasingly hostile to renewable energy, we speak with acclaimed environmentalist Bill McKibben about his new book, Here Comes the Sun, in which he lays out a hopeful vision for the future that includes avoiding climate catastrophe, reshaping the economy and saving democracy. He says the key to unlock that future is fully embracing renewable energy over the fierce opposition of the fossil fuel industry and its political enablers.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has reportedly ordered authorities to reexamine the case of Alaa Abd El-Fattah and six others on humanitarian grounds. Abd El-Fattah, who came to national prominence during the so-called Arab Spring protests of 2011, has been imprisoned for years on charges of “spreading false news,” but his family and supporters say he has been targeted for his pro-democracy activism.
Global condemnation is mounting after Israel bombed Qatar’s capital Doha, attempting to take out senior Hamas leaders who had gathered to consider a U.S. proposal for a Gaza ceasefire. Hamas leadership survived the strike, which killed six. We speak with Jeremy Scahill, co-founder of Drop Site News, who has reported extensively on Gaza ceasefire negotiations and is one of the few Western journalists to be in regular contact with senior members of Hamas.
A trillion dollars will come in handy if you want to colonize Mars.
Despite what Gov. Ron DeSantis says, his fight against street art has little to do with public safety.
Not even your favorite sweater is safe from the trade war.
David Gelles joins Felix Salmon to discuss his new book Dirtbag Billionaire.
The president said many think the shots he helped develop are ‘amazing’ a day after senators criticized new restrictions imposed by his health secretary, RFK Jr.
The health secretary’s statements came amid heated exchanges with some senators.
The Waves also discusses the Riverside Church controversy and the case of Sarah Milov.
What we say matters, especially depending on whom we say it to.
The Waves also discusses the case against Jeffrey Epstein and Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s Fleishman Is in Trouble.
Bill Beach said the president’s suggestions that the jobs report was rigged betrayed a misunderstanding in how those numbers are assembled.
The monthly jobs report showed just 73,000 jobs in July, with big reductions to May’s and June’s numbers
The celebrated psychiatrist and author Robert Jay Lifton has died at the age of 99. His studies on the effects of nuclear war, terrorism and genocide, including the books Death in Life: Survivors of Hiroshima and The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide, shaped psychological understandings of the effects of mass violence. He appeared on Democracy Now! several times, including in 2017 to discuss Trump during his first term.
This weekend marked the first anniversary of the killing of Turkish American activist Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi by Israeli forces as she took part in a weekly nonviolent protest against illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. Her death is being investigated by the Turkish government, but despite requests from Eygi’s family, the U.S. has refused to conduct its own independent investigation. Israeli soldiers and settlers have killed at least 10 U.S.
Looking back, I don’t know what exactly I was expecting when I opened “Request No. 1,” the PDF file containing the contents of Jeffrey Epstein’s 50th-birthday book. Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s former girlfriend and co-conspirator, created the book in 2003 by soliciting tributes from the financier’s friends and associates. Given the crimes Epstein was convicted of, I steeled myself before scrolling. Somehow, my internet-addled imagination failed me. This book is a nightmare.
The administration is planning to take regulatory action to require companies to include more drug information
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You there. Stop what you’re doing. Take off that tool belt and hard hat—let’s see some ID. Why? Because we don’t think you’re a citizen. Now show us your papers.
This kind of behavior by government officials is now legal in the United States.
Trump supporters who oppose Kennedy’s agenda have forced the health secretary to back off.
Today, Israel attacked Hamas, apparently targeting its lead negotiator, Khalil al-Hayya, in Doha, the capital of Qatar. This tactic is not endorsed in Getting to Yes or in any other guide to negotiation or international law. It is, however, consistent with the stated view of Israel’s leadership, which is that avowed members of a group engaged in ongoing acts of terror are valid targets wherever they happen to be.
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For nearly a decade, the immunologist and biochemist William Parker has tried, with little success, to persuade other scientists to take seriously his theory that acetaminophen—better known by the brand name Tylenol—is the primary cause of autism.
The disintegration of a democracy is a deceptively quiet affair. For a while, everything looks the same. Each authoritarian milestone—the first political prisoner, the first closure of an opposition media outlet—is anticipated with fear. Then the milestone goes by, and after a brief period of outrage, life continues as before. You begin to wonder if things will be so bad after all.
