Headlines for August 5, 2025 Eight More Palestinians Starve to Death as Netanyahu Plans to Fully Occupy Gaza Strip, Mike Johnson Visits Illegal West Bank Settlement After Israeli Forces Kill Another U.S. Citizen, Netanyahu’s Government Votes Unanimously to Remove Attorney General Prosecuting Corruption, Over 40 Arrested Outside Trump International Hotel in NYC Protesting Israel’s Starvation of Gaza, Activists from 44 Countries Plan Largest-Ever Gaza Aid Flotilla in September, Sudan’s Army Repels Attack on North Darfur’s Capital as Civil War Leads to “Protracted Famine”, Over 1 Million Afghans Expelled from Iran Face Torture and Famine Exacerbated by U.S. Aid Cuts, Texas Republicans Approve Arrest Warrants for Democrats Who Fled State to Halt Gerrymandering, “We Are At War”: New York Gov. Hochul to Abandon Nonpartisan Redistricting, Purdue Student Yeonsoo Go Released from ICE Custody; L.A. Plaintiff Details Abuse in ICE Jail, Former Prison Guard Sentenced to 15 Years for Fatal Beating of Robert Brooks, “Political Warfare”: Jeffrey Epstein Survivors Blast Trump over DOJ Files, Millions Face Air Quality Alerts as Wildfire Smoke Covers Swaths of North America, Global Plastic Pollution Found Responsible for $1.5 Trillion in Damages Annually http://www.democracynow.org/2025/8/5/headlines

Texas Showdown: Dem. Lawmakers Flee State to Stop Gerrymandering, Warn Trump Will Try It Again More than 50 Democrats in the Texas Legislature have left the state to block the passage of a new congressional map, which was gerrymandered to give Republicans five extra seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. The new map would especially harm Latino and Black representation in Congress, but President Trump is pushing for it in order to retain a Republican majority in the 2026 midterm election. “Texas is essentially just going to be the guinea pig. Once Trump is able to get what he needs out of Texas, he’s essentially just going to do it in other states, and we cannot allow that,” says Texas state Representative Cassandra Garcia Hernandez, who joins us from Illinois. Because Republicans hold the majority in both chambers of the Texas Legislature, state Democrats have fled Texas to other U.S. states to prevent the Legislature from making quorum, or the minimum number of legislators required to conduct a legislative session. The process, known as quorum-breaking, has rarely been used before, but, says Hernandez, “We are in unprecedented times.” http://www.democracynow.org/2025/8/5/texas_gerrymandering

Headlines for July 25, 2025 Israeli Attacks Kill 62 Palestinians Across Gaza as Malnutrition Cases Soar, U.N.: Over 1,000 Palestinians Killed Trying to Access Food, France to Formally Recognize Palestine as a State, Cambodia Claims Thailand Is Committing War Crimes in Border Clashes, Venezuelan Immigrant Sent to CECOT Sues U.S. for $1.3M, WaPo: ICE Directs Agents to Increase Use of GPS Ankle Monitors, CBP Says Immigrants Should Carry Green Cards and Proof of Immigration Status, Senate Advances Nomination of Emil Bove to Lifetime Appointment on Federal Court, Trump Signs Rescission Bill Clawing Back $9B for Foreign Aid and Public Broadcasting, Trump Administration Approves $8B Merger Between Paramount and Skydance http://www.democracynow.org/2025/7/25/headlines

Rep. Rashida Tlaib on Gaza Siege, American Killed by Israeli Settlers & Epstein's Financial Network Democratic Congressmember Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, the only Palestinian American member of Congress, responds to the Gaza Freedom Flotilla’s latest attempt to break the Israeli siege on Gaza, the lethal beating of a U.S. citizen by Israeli civilians in the occupied West Bank and the Trump administration’s attempt to conceal information related to the federal criminal case against Jeffrey Epstein. On the killings of Palestinian American Sayfollah “Saif” Musallet and Palestinian Mohammad Razek Hussein Al-Shalabi by settlers, Tlaib excoriates both the U.S. government, for “doing absolutely nothing, as per usual,” and the Israeli government, for sanctioning daily settler violence. “The goal here is, and the Knesset told us,” says Tlaib, referencing a recent motion passed by the Israeli legislature to annex the West Bank, “to ethnically cleanse anyone who is Palestinian.” http://www.democracynow.org/2025/7/25/rashida_tlaib

Israel Waging "Fastest Starvation Campaign" in Modern History in Gaza: U.N. Special Rapporteur on Food “The world needs to impose wide-scale sanctions against the state of Israel to force it to end the starvation and genocide of civilians.” More than 100 humanitarian organizations are demanding action to end Israel’s siege of Gaza, warning mass starvation is spreading across the Palestinian territory. Michael Fakhri, the U.N. special rapporteur on the right to food, says Israel’s 78-day-long extreme blockade of Gaza constitutes “the fastest starvation campaign we’ve seen in modern history.” Fakhri says the mass suffering has been both “preventable” and “predictable,” thanks to the impunity Israel has received from the international community, and calls on the United Nations to impose sanctions on Israel and ensure humanitarian aid delivery into Gaza. http://www.democracynow.org/2025/7/23/israel_siege_gaza

Former EPA Official on Trump Gutting Science Research Office: "People Are Not Going to Be Protected" The Trump administration has shuttered the Environmental Protection Agency’s scientific arm, the EPA Office of Research and Development. Hundreds of chemists, biologists, toxicologists and other scientists will lose their jobs under the administration’s plan to aggressively tear down environmental regulations and defund the EPA. Jennifer Orme-Zavaleta, a former top administrator in the Office of Research and Development, says the loss of the division means the loss of essential services like air and water quality monitoring that protects public health. “We are losing a treasure trove of historical knowledge, of scientific expertise, and really it’s going to limit what information, what science would be available for the agency to consider in protecting our health and our environment,” she says. http://www.democracynow.org/2025/7/21/epa

"Farmworkers’ Voices Are Not Being Heard": UFW President Teresa Romero on ICE Raids & Workers’ Lives The Trump administration’s mass deportation machine continues to shatter families and communities with violent, indiscriminate raids on schools, homes and workplaces. Farms are a particular target of its brutal, racist crackdown; around two-thirds of U.S. farmworkers are immigrants, largely from Mexico. Earlier this month, a raid on a farm in California turned fatal when 57-year-old Jaime Alanís died after falling from the roof of a greenhouse. Dozens of his fellow workers were rounded up and loaded onto buses destined for a detention center. Many of the targeted farmworkers are members of the United Farm Workers, the nation’s oldest farmworkers’ union. Its president, Teresa Romero, a longtime labor leader who is the first Latina and first immigrant to head the organization, says “farmworkers are terrified.” She says that “replacing people who are experienced, who are professional, who have been in agriculture, working sometimes for decades, [is] not how we should repay them for the sacrifice and hard work,” and adds that “sooner or later, the agriculture industry is going to suffer.” http://www.democracynow.org/2025/7/16/farmworkers_trump_immigration_crackdown_ufw_union

Headlines for July 8, 2025 Netanyahu and Trump Promote Plan to Expel Palestinians from Gaza, As Trump Hosts Netanyahu, Protesters Rally at White House Gates to Oppose Gaza Slaughter, Israel Continues Slaughter of Palestinians at Gaza Aid Sites, Homes and Schools, Death Toll from Texas Floods Tops 100 as Hope Fades for Missing Victims, Trump Administration Cancels Protected Status for Honduran and Nicaraguan Immigrants, Armed and Masked Federal Agents Descend on L.A.'s MacArthur Park, “Your Silence Won't Save You”: L.A. Activists Urge Communities Nationwide to Rise Up Against Fascism, 11 Killed in Kenya Protests Marking Anniversary of 1990 Pro-Democracy Uprising, Russian Attacks in Ukraine Target Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia and Odesa, Trump Sending More Weapons to Ukraine Because He’s “Not Happy with Putin”, Trump Revives Tariffs Threat on 14 Countries Unless They Make a Deal with U.S. by Aug. 1, BRICS Meeting Kicks Off in Rio as Trump Escalates Tariff Threat on Global South Bloc, Judge Temporarily Blocks Ban on Medicaid Funding for Planned Parenthood http://www.democracynow.org/2025/7/8/headlines

What Is the Trump Doctrine? John Bellamy Foster on U.S. Foreign Policy & the "New MAGA Imperialism" What is MAGA imperialism? *Monthly Review* editor John Bellamy Foster says that, despite its feints toward anti-imperialist isolationism, President Donald Trump’s foreign policy has coalesced into a “hyper-nationalist” form of populism that rejects the U.S.'s post-WWII adherence to liberal internationalism and promotes dominance over other countries via military power rather than through economic globalization. Foster explains that this “Trump doctrine is opposed to multi-ethnic empires and multi-ethnic nations,” operating under a “racial definition of foreign policy, with the notion that the United States is a white country and other ethnicities don't belong.” And while some analyses of the Trump coalition locate its base in the “white working class,” in reality this ideology is rooted in the lower middle class, which owns more property and is less opposed to the wealthy capitalist class. “If you go back to the 1930s, to Italy and Germany, it’s the same constituency that drove the fascist movement, but it’s a result of an alliance between big capital … and the lower middle class.” http://www.democracynow.org/2025/7/8/trump_doctrine_maga_imperialism

Headlines for August 6, 2025 5 More Palestinians Die of Starvation in Gaza as Israel Continues Deadly Attacks on Aid Seekers, Texas Governor Seeks to Remove Democratic Caucus Chair Amid Lawmakers’ Exodus to Block GOP Maps, Rwanda Agrees to Receive “Third Country” Immigrants Deported from the U.S., Cuban Immigrant on Hunger Strike for Over 14 Days to Protest His Detention at ICE Jails, Senate Investigation Finds Hundreds of Human Rights Violations at Immigration Jails, Advocates Launch Protest Camp Outside New York City Immigration Offices, Trump Administration Pilot Program Will Require Some Visa Applicants to Pay $15,000 Bonds, RFK Jr. Cancels $500M in Contracts and Funding for mRNA Vaccines, Federal Judge Blocks Trump Administration’s Plan to Raid FEMA Disaster Relief Funds, EPA to Terminate $7B in Federal Grants for Rooftop Solar Energy, Top Trump Officials to Huddle at VP Vance’s Home to Discuss White House’s Epstein Strategy, Tennessee Executes Prisoner with Implanted Heart Device Despite Concerns of Painful Shocks, Trump Administration to Restore Confederate Monuments, Including Statue Toppled by Protesters, U.S. Envoy Meets Putin at Kremlin Ahead of Trump’s Deadline for a Ukraine Ceasefire, NASA Plans to Place Nuclear Reactor on the Moon, Japan Marks 80th Anniversary of U.S. Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima http://www.democracynow.org/2025/8/6/headlines

Trump's War on the Truth: Robert Reich on Firing of BLS Head & Push to Replace Fed Chair We speak to former Labor Secretary Robert Reich about how President Trump’s firing of the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, hours after the agency released a weaker-than-expected jobs report, undermines a key agency. Trump claimed, without offering any evidence, that the numbers were “rigged” in order to make him look bad. The BLS report showed just 73,000 jobs were added in July and that far fewer jobs had been created in May and June than previously estimated. Trump’s dismissal of Erika McEntarfer is another sign of growing authoritarianism in the United States, says Reich, who served as labor secretary in the Clinton administration. “This is another example of Trump basically riding roughshod over our democratic institutions and truth,” says Reich. http://www.democracynow.org/2025/8/6/robert_reich_bls

"Coming Up Short": Robert Reich on His Memoir, Rising U.S. Inequality & Fighting Against Bullies We speak with former Labor Secretary Robert Reich about his new memoir, *Coming Up Short*, which tells his life story alongside the growth of inequality in America. Reich was born in 1946 as part of the baby-boom generation that enjoyed unprecedented levels of prosperity and social mobility in the decades after World War II. But he says those conditions were squandered as wealth concentration grew worse, labor unions were gutted and wages stagnated — helping to give rise to Donald Trump’s brand of authoritarianism. “We allowed big money to take over,” says Reich. “We, the baby boomers, although we did a lot of good things, we took for granted what we were given. … And Donald Trump is kind of the essence of what you do when you take your eyes off the prize.” http://www.democracynow.org/2025/8/6/robert_reich_memoir

80 Years After Hiroshima & Nagasaki, U.S. Keeps Covering Up Horrors of Atomic Bombing: Greg Mitchell This week marks 80 years since the first use of nuclear weapons in war, when the United States dropped a pair of atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, 1945. Hundreds of thousands of civilians were killed in the bombings. Many died instantly, and many others died more slowly from severe burns and radiation sickness. Some estimates put the combined death toll over 250,000 killed. We speak with veteran journalist Greg Mitchell, whose new documentary, [streaming at PBS.org][1] and airing on PBS, reexamines a remarkable episode in the U.S. occupation of Japan after the end of World War II, when the U.S. military held an all-star football game in the ruins of Nagasaki, reflecting what Mitchell calls a “careless” and “heartless” U.S. attitude. *The Atomic Bowl* is “horrifying history” that is worth reexamining, says Mitchell, because “there is not a real taboo on using nuclear weapons, because so many historians, so many in the media continue to support the use of the atomic bomb against Hiroshima and even Nagasaki.” [1]: https://www.pbs.org/video/the-atomic-bowl-football-at-ground-zero-and-nuclear-peril-today-smqa3o/ http://www.democracynow.org/2025/8/6/hiroshima

Oscar-Winning Director Demands Israel Return Body of Palestinian Activist After Settler Killed Him We get an update from the occupied West Bank, where U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson led a delegation to an illegal settlement amid escalating settler violence against Palestinians. Israel is refusing to release the body of Palestinian activist Odeh Hadalin, who was shot to death by an Israeli settler a week ago. Eyewitness Ty Kavanaugh, a former U.S. Navy medic who is volunteering with Palestinian health organizations in the occupied West Bank, says Israeli soldiers worked with settlers, including the shooter, to identify both Palestinian villagers and international allies to arrest in the aftermath of the shooting. “It seemed like they were trying to pen everybody in just to antagonize people. They want them to throw rocks. … And they were trying to find excuses to arrest international observers or volunteers or the people who happened to be there,” says Kavanaugh. Multiple members of Hadalin’s family continue to languish in jail, even as the shooter, Yinon Levi, has been released from house arrest and now walks free. Levi owns both an illegal farming outpost in the West Bank and a demolition company that contracts with the Israeli military. “This is not [a] random attack … This is a state policy,” says Basel Adra, a close friend of Hadalin’s who worked with him on the Oscar-winning documentary *No Other Land*. He remembers Hadalin as a “voice of the community” who dedicated his life to advocating for Palestinian rights and existence. http://www.democracynow.org/2025/8/5/odeh_hadalin

"End the Starvation": Jewish Rabbis & Allies Outside NY Trump Hotel Call for U.S. to Stop Arming Israel Police arrested over 40 people outside the Trump International Hotel in New York City as hundreds gathered for a peaceful action led by Jewish leaders calling for the end to Israel’s starvation and ethnic cleansing of Gaza. *Democracy Now!* was at the demonstration and spoke to some of the protesters, including Motaz Azaiza, renowned photojournalist from Gaza, and Rabbi Ari Lev Fornari, who was arrested. “We’re here to say, 'Let Gaza live,' to risk everything to say, 'Never again,'” says Fornari. http://www.democracynow.org/2025/8/5/if_not_now

Labor Leader Chris Smalls Describes Israeli Arrest & Assault After Military Raids Gaza Flotilla Former Amazon Labor Union President Chris Smalls joins us for one of his first interviews since he returned to the United States after he was beaten, arrested and detained by the Israeli military for attempting to bring aid to starving Palestinians in Gaza. Smalls calls Israel’s assault and starvation of Gaza a “working-class issue,” and was the only Black member of the Freedom Flotilla Coalition’s latest attempt to break Israel’s near-total blockade of Gaza. He describes his assault by Israeli soldiers, who “attacked me out of the 21 volunteers because of the color of my skin.” Smalls was later one of the last to be released from Israel’s Givon Prison, where he contracted scabies. “I can tell you right now, from my own experience, that Palestinians and people of color are not safe amongst the Israeli government,” he says. http://www.democracynow.org/2025/8/5/chris_smalls

Headlines for August 4, 2025 Six More Palestinians Die of Starvation in Gaza; Hamas and Islamic Jihad Release Videos Showing Two Emaciated Hostages, 600 Retired Israeli Security Officials Urge Trump to Pressure Israel to End War in Gaza, 60 Palestinian Women on Hunger Strike, Demanding the Body of Slain Activist Odeh Hadalin, Far-Right Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir Leads Prayers at Al-Aqsa Mosque, Sparking Outrage, As Many As 300K People March Across Sydney Harbour Bridge to Protest Israel’s Genocide, Texas Gov. Abbott Threatens to Remove Democratic State Legislators Who Fled the State to Block GOP Congressional Map, Trump Fires Head of Bureau of Labor Statistics Over Weaker-Than-Expected Jobs Report, Corporation for Public Broadcasting to Shut Down After Trump Clawed Back $1.1B in Funding, At Least 68 Migrants Die, 74 Others Missing After Boat Capsizes Off the Coast of Yemen, Former Colombian President Álvaro Uribe Sentenced to 12 Years of House Arrest, Office of Special Counsel Launches Investigation into Former Trump Prosecutor Jack Smith, Federal Judge Blocks Trump Administration’s Deportations of Immigrants with Parole Status, More Than a Dozen States File Lawsuit to Block Trump Admin from Probing Gender-Affirming Care to Minors, Ghislaine Maxwell Transferred to Minimum-Security Prison After Meeting with Deputy U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche, Thousands of Boeing Workers Who Build Fighter Jets Begin Strike http://www.democracynow.org/2025/8/4/headlines