Mahmoud Khalil writes: Yaba Deen,* it has been two weeks since you were born, and these are my first words to you. In the early hours of 21 April, I waited on the other end of a phone as your mother labored to bring you into this world. I listened to her pained breaths and tried to speak comforting words into her ear over the crackling line. During your first moments, I buried my face in my arms and kept…
John Nichols writes: Pope Leo XIII, the leader of the Catholic Church from 1878 to 1903, came to be known as ”The Pope of the Workers” because of his groundbreaking 1891 encyclical on the Rights and Duties of Capital and Labor, which provided the outline for modern Catholic social justice teaching. Taking its name, Rerum Novarum, from the Latin phrase for “of revolutionary change,” the encyclical recognized that a “remedy must be found quickly for the misery and wretchedness pressing…
Steven Levitsky, Lucan Way and Daniel Ziblatt write: Authoritarianism is harder to recognize than it used to be. Most 21st-century autocrats are elected. Rather than violently suppress opposition like Castro or Pinochet, today’s autocrats convert public institutions into political weapons, using law enforcement, tax and regulatory agencies to punish opponents and bully the media and civil society onto the sidelines. We call this competitive authoritarianism — a system in which parties compete in elections but the systematic abuse of an…
As the Israeli military kills two more Palestinian journalists in Gaza, a new documentary by Zeteo has uncovered critical details about Israel’s killing three years ago of the acclaimed Palestinian-American Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh. The film identifies for the first time the Israeli soldier who allegedly shot Abu Akleh. We get response when we speak with two members of Abu Akleh’s family — her brother Anton and her niece Lina — as well as the documentary’s executive…
The Guardian reports: Bill Gates announced plans on Thursday to shutter the Gates Foundation in 2045 and also strongly criticized Elon Musk for slashing funding to the US Agency for International Development (USAID), accusing the Tesla CEO of “killing the world’s poorest children” in new interviews. In an interview with the Financial Times published on Thursday, Gates condemned the sudden funding cuts to USAID by Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge), saying the cuts had led to life-saving food…
The New York Times reports: The Trump administration is planning to transport a group of immigrants to Libya on a U.S. military plane, according to U.S. officials, another sharp escalation in a deportation program that has sparked widespread legal challenges and intense political debate. The nationalities of the migrants were not immediately clear, but a flight to Libya carrying the deportees could leave as soon as Wednesday, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they…
The Washington Post reports: The message from Secretary of State Marco Rubio to El Salvador’s Foreign Ministry outlined an audacious plan: The United States would be sending as many as 500 Venezuelan gang members to the Central American nation, and it planned to do so within 24 hours. The March 13 communication was part of secretive negotiations with Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele and served as Rubio’s formal notice that the Trump administration was sending the Venezuelans to be imprisoned there…
Nelson Rauda Zablah writes: In May 2020, during the height of Covid, El Salvador was under a military-enforced lockdown. At a news conference, I asked President Nayib Bukele a straightforward question about meeting with the business community about reopening the economy. Mr. Bukele bristled and criticized the founder of El Faro, the news outlet where I work. Afterward, I received death threats from Mr. Bukele’s supporters. One that still stands out was written on Twitter by someone outside the country:…
The Associated Press reports: Malnutrition and hunger are becoming increasingly prevalent in the Gaza Strip as Israel’s total blockade enters its third month. A shortage of food and supplies has driven the territory toward starvation, according to aid agencies. Supplies to treat and prevent malnutrition are depleted and quickly running out as documented cases of malnutrition rise. The price of what little food is still available in the market is unaffordable for most in Gaza, where the United Nations says…
Mohsen Mahdawi writes: On April 14, 2025, I was detained during what should have been my citizenship naturalization interview. After more than two weeks of unjust imprisonment, a federal judge ruled in favor of releasing me. In a major victory for democracy, I may be the first of the many student activists who have been detained by the Trump administration to be freed from detention. The Department of Homeland Security had effectively orchestrated a trap. It dangled the prospect of…
Aaron Blake writes: Amid all the controversy over the Trump administration’s deportations, it’s always important to emphasize where these undocumented migrants are being sent. It’s not just that the administration has deported people without legal due process; it’s that it has deported people without legal due process to a brutal prison in El Salvador. The administration says these are gang members and even “terrorists.” But its evidence has been suspect. It has made established mistakes. And a “60 Minutes” report…
Isaac Chotiner writes: In mid-January, Israel and Hamas agreed to a ceasefire, putting a temporary stop to the war in Gaza, which began after the attacks of October 7, 2023, and which has killed more than fifty thousand Palestinians. (The combined Israeli death toll from the Hamas attack and the ensuing war is around three thousand people.) Throughout the first fifteen months of the conflict, Israel’s behavior, specifically in refusing to allow sufficient amounts of aid into Gaza, drew international…
CNN reports: The Trump administration has discussed with Libya and Rwanda the possibility of sending migrants who have criminal records and are in the United States to those two countries, according to multiple sources familiar with the talks. The proposals mark a dramatic escalation in the administration’s push to deter people journeying to the United States and remove some of those already here to countries thousands of miles away, some of which have checkered pasts. President Donald Trump signed an…
The Guardian reports: Neiyerver Rengel’s captors came one sunny spring morning, lurking outside the apartment he shared with his girlfriend and pouncing as soon as he emerged. The three government agents announced the young Venezuelan man had “charges to answer” and was being detained. “Everything’s going to be OK,” the man’s girlfriend, Richely Alejandra Uzcátegui Gutiérrez, remembers the handcuffed 27-year-old reassuring her as she gave him one last hug. Then Rengel was put in a vehicle and vanished into thin…
The Guardian reports: Soaring prices of basic foodstuffs, diminishing stocks of medical supplies and sharp cuts to aid distribution threaten newly catastrophic conditions across Gaza, Palestinians and international aid officials in the battered territory are warning. Humanitarian organisations including the World Food Programme and Unwra, which supplies food and services to more than 2 million Palestinians across Gaza, have now distributed the last of their stocks of flour and other foodstuffs to the dozens of community kitchens in the territory…
NBC News reports: Even in death, Pope Francis’ moral voice rang out across the world. With 40,000 packed into Vatican City’s St. Peter’s Square, another 250,000 in the surrounding streets and millions more watching on TV and online, world leaders, including President Donald Trump, were reminded of Francis’ central messages during his funeral Saturday. “‘Build bridges, not walls’ was an exhortation he repeated many times,” Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re said during the homily for the late pope. “His gestures and…