democracy-now

Private healthcare companies are facing increased scrutiny following the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson over what appears to be dissatisfaction with the company’s exploitative policies and frequent denials of care. Recent investigations from ProPublica and reporter Annie Waldman find that UnitedHealthcare is aggressively trying to limit mental health coverage and treatment for thousands of children with autism in its latest effort to cut costs and curtail care.

As the official death toll in Gaza tops 45,000 and Israel’s wars throughout the Middle East continue, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is in court for a long-awaited corruption trial, making him the country’s first sitting leader to face criminal charges. He is charged with fraud, breach of trust and accepting bribes in three separate cases.

We speak with organizer Astra Taylor of the Debt Collective, which is urging President Joe Biden to cancel more student debt, including for older debtors, before the end of his term. According to the White House, the administration has approved $175 billion in student debt relief for nearly 5 million borrowers over the past four years, but advocates say Biden can still do more in his final weeks as president. “This is a Titanic moment for the Biden administration.

President Joe Biden’s decision to grant clemency to a corrupt former judge has sparked widespread outrage, including from members of his own party. Biden announced nearly 1,500 commutations and pardons last week in what the White House described as the largest single-day act of clemency from a president, but among those whose sentences were reduced is former Pennsylvania Judge Michael Conahan — one of two judges in the notorious “kids for cash” scandal. In 2011, Conahan was sentenced to 17.

Private healthcare companies are facing increased scrutiny following the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson over what appears to be dissatisfaction with the company’s exploitative policies and frequent denials of care. Recent investigations from ProPublica and reporter Annie Waldman find that UnitedHealthcare is aggressively trying to limit mental health coverage and treatment for thousands of children with autism in its latest effort to cut costs and curtail care.

Investigative journalist Ken Klippenstein joins us to discuss the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson as he walked to a shareholders conference in New York City earlier this month, and his accused killer, 26-year-old Luigi Mangione. Thompson’s vigilante-inflected death has inflamed public discourse over the predatory practices of the private healthcare industry. “People working these call centers are themselves upset at having to deny claims,” says Klippenstein.

The South Korean National Assembly voted Saturday to impeach President Yoon Suk Yeol, 10 days after his ill-fated attempt to declare martial law in the country. Yoon had falsely accused political rivals of North Korean sympathies in his declaration, invoking previous eras of military dictatorship on the Korean Peninsula in the years following its partition. For more on what to expect from the upcoming judicial vote over Yoon’s removal, we speak to Korean activist Dae-Han Song.

Israel is continuing to bomb Syria a week after longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad was ousted from power. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, Israeli forces have launched over 800 strikes on Syria over the past week. Meanwhile, the Israeli government has approved a plan to expand illegal settlements in the occupied Golan Heights. “Israel is setting new precedents in the Middle East,” says Al Jazeera senior political analyst Marwan Bishara.

Three activists with the Uhuru Movement will be sentenced by a Florida judge Monday as part of a legal saga that began when the FBI raided the group in 2022, accusing the antiwar Black liberation group of working as Russian agents. The “Uhuru 3” are Omali Yeshitela, chair of the African People’s Socialist Party, and white solidarity activists Penny Hess and Jesse Nevel.

Laila Soueif is on the 75th day of a hunger strike calling for the U.K. government to push for the release of her son, jailed Egyptian British author and activist Alaa Abd El-Fattah. Charged with spreading false news, Alaa remains imprisoned in Egypt despite having completed his sentence in September. Human rights group say he has been subjected to torture, beatings and horrific treatment while in prison.

We go live to Damascus for the first time since the fall of longtime authoritarian President Bashar al-Assad, where the country’s populace is still reeling from the power struggle that forcibly displaced more than a million people over the last months.

President-elect Trump, himself found liable in court for sexual abuse, has picked a striking number of suspected sexual predators for key positions in his incoming administration. Trump’s early pick of former Florida Congressmember Matt Gaetz for attorney general was shot down amid a firestorm over sexual misconduct allegations. Now Trump is pushing hard to keep the rest of his picks on track, including Fox host Pete Hegseth for defense secretary and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Three activists with the Uhuru Movement will be sentenced by a Florida judge Monday as part of a legal saga that began when the FBI raided the group in 2022, accusing the antiwar Black liberation group of working as Russian agents. The “Uhuru 3” are Omali Yeshitela, chair of the African People’s Socialist Party, and white solidarity activists Penny Hess and Jesse Nevel.

Laila Soueif is on the 75th day of a hunger strike calling for the U.K. government to push for the release of her son, jailed Egyptian British author and activist Alaa Abd El-Fattah. Charged with spreading false news, Alaa remains imprisoned in Egypt despite having completed his sentence in September. Human rights group say he has been subjected to torture, beatings and horrific treatment while in prison.

We go live to Damascus for the first time since the fall of longtime authoritarian President Bashar al-Assad, where the country’s populace is still reeling from the power struggle that forcibly displaced more than a million people over the last months.

President-elect Trump, himself found liable in court for sexual abuse, has picked a striking number of suspected sexual predators for key positions in his incoming administration. Trump’s early pick of former Florida Congressmember Matt Gaetz for attorney general was shot down amid a firestorm over sexual misconduct allegations. Now Trump is pushing hard to keep the rest of his picks on track, including Fox host Pete Hegseth for defense secretary and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

President-elect Trump, himself found liable in court for sexual abuse, has picked a striking number of suspected sexual predators for key positions in his incoming administration. Trump’s early pick of former Florida Congressmember Matt Gaetz for attorney general was shot down amid a firestorm over sexual misconduct allegations. Now Trump is pushing hard to keep the rest of his picks on track, including Fox host Pete Hegseth for defense secretary and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Three activists with the Uhuru Movement will be sentenced by a Florida judge Monday as part of a legal saga that began when the FBI raided the group in 2022, accusing the antiwar Black liberation group of working as Russian agents. The “Uhuru 3” are Omali Yeshitela, chair of the African People’s Socialist Party, and white solidarity activists Penny Hess and Jesse Nevel.

Laila Soueif is on the 75th day of a hunger strike calling for the U.K. government to push for the release of her son, jailed Egyptian British author and activist Alaa Abd El-Fattah. Charged with spreading false news, Alaa remains imprisoned in Egypt despite having completed his sentence in September. Human rights group say he has been subjected to torture, beatings and horrific treatment while in prison.

We go live to Damascus for the first time since the fall of longtime authoritarian President Bashar al-Assad, where the country’s populace is still reeling from the power struggle that forcibly displaced more than a million people over the last months.

We continue our look at the tragic deaths of two Black men who were killed while experiencing mental health crises. Award-winning piano virtuoso Herman Whitfield III died in 2022 after he was repeatedly tasered, handcuffed and pinned to the ground by Indianapolis police officers.

President-elect Trump, himself found liable in court for sexual abuse, has picked a striking number of suspected sexual predators for key positions in his incoming administration. Trump’s early pick of former Florida Congressmember Matt Gaetz for attorney general was shot down amid a firestorm over sexual misconduct allegations. Now Trump is pushing hard to keep the rest of his picks on track, including Fox host Pete Hegseth for defense secretary and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

International humanitarian leader Jan Egeland joins Democracy Now! to discuss aiding civilians in war-torn areas of Ukraine, Syria, Sudan and Gaza. In Ukraine, residents are bracing for another winter of war as a Russian offensive reaches within two miles of the key eastern Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk. “The population is exhausted, so imagine how it is in the trenches with those soldiers.

The fall of the Assad regime in Syria continues to reshape the country and the greater Middle East. In Damascus, leaders of the armed group HTS have retained most services of the civilian government but vowed to dissolve Assad’s security forces and shut down Assad’s notorious prisons. “People have this sense of regained freedom,” says Syrian architect and writer Marwa al-Sabouni in Homs. Still, she warns oppression in the country has left the populace weakened and vulnerable.

We continue our look at the tragic deaths of two Black men who were killed while experiencing mental health crises. Award-winning piano virtuoso Herman Whitfield III died in 2022 after he was repeatedly tasered, handcuffed and pinned to the ground by Indianapolis police officers.

We speak with the uncle of Jordan Neely after a New York jury on Monday acquitted veteran Daniel Penny in the death of the beloved New York street performer on a Manhattan subway train last year. Penny was found not guilty of criminally negligent homicide. The judge dismissed a more serious manslaughter charge. Penny will not face any prison time for the killing.

Nearly 200 Haitians in Port-au-Prince were killed over the weekend on the orders of a powerful gang leader who reportedly targeted elderly practitioners of voodoo because he blamed them for sickening his son. The massacre is the latest chapter in Haiti’s ongoing political crisis, with gangs now controlling much of the capital despite a Kenyan-led security mission to stabilize the country and support the U.S.-backed Transitional Presidential Council.

President-elect Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened to abolish birthright citizenship, which he cannot do unilaterally because it is enshrined in the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. But his rhetoric has still alarmed immigrant rights advocates who are concerned about Trump’s mass deportation plans and how they would impact mixed-status families. Trump and his “border czar” Tom Homan have both suggested deporting the U.S. citizen children of parents who are undocumented.

“Whatever’s coming next, I don’t believe at all that [it] would be worse than what we’ve been through, what we lived through,” says Syrian activist and filmmaker Waad Al-Kateab as she celebrates the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s dictatorship to Syrian opposition groups. Al-Kateab, who was forced to flee her hometown of Aleppo with her family in 2016 and now resides in the United Kingdom, says the end of Assad’s rule has reignited the “dream of a free Syria.

New York prosecutors have charged a suspect with murder for the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, who was gunned down in Midtown Manhattan on December 4. The suspect has been identified as 26-year-old Luigi Mangione, who was captured in Pennsylvania on Monday after a five-day nationwide search. Police say Mangione was found with a handwritten manifesto, which they have not released.