ReportWire

Tag: activism

  • NYC nursing walkout ends as last striking nurses approve new contract

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    NEW YORK — Nurses at a big New York hospital system approved a new contract Saturday, voting to end a major nursing strike after more than a month.

    More than 4,000 nurses in the privately run NewYork-Presbyterian system went on strike Jan. 12. They are now due to start returning to work in the coming week. The union, called the New York State Nurses Association, said 93% of its members at NewYork-Presbyterian voted to ratify the three-year contract.

    Two other big private hospital systems, Montefiore and Mount Sinai, ended their nurses’ walkout earlier this month by inking contract agreements with the same union.

    “We are so happy with the wins we achieved, and now the fight to enforce these contracts and hold our employers accountable begins,” union President Nancy Hagans said in a statement Saturday.

    NewYork-Presbyterian said that it looked forward to its nurses’ return and that the contract “reflects our respect for our nurses and the critical role they play as part of our exceptional care teams.”

    Both sides had said Friday that they had reached a tentative deal. Union members voted on it Friday and Saturday.

    Provisions included staffing improvements, raises topping 12% over three years and safeguards on the use of artificial intelligence, according to the union.

    The union has said the strike initially involved about 15,000 nurses overall at Montefiore, Mount Sinai and NewYork-Presbyterian. It affected only some facilities within the three systems and didn’t involve any city-run hospitals.

    During the strike, Montefiore, Mount Sinai and NewYork-Presbyterian brought on thousands of temporary nurses, transferred some patients and canceled some procedures. The hospitals insisted they were smoothly delivering care, including complex surgeries. But some vulnerable patients and their families said some routine tasks took longer.

    The strikers complained of unmanageable workloads and accused the hospitals of trying to chip away at health benefits. The hospitals contested those claims and said the union’s demands were exorbitant.

    Nurses at some Mount Sinai and Montefiore hospitals also walked out in 2023. That strike ended in three days.

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  • US military strikes another alleged drug boat in eastern Pacific, killing 3

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    WASHINGTON — The U.S. military said Friday that it has carried out another deadly strike on a vessel accused of trafficking drugs in the Eastern Pacific Ocean.

    U.S. Southern Command said on social media that the boat “was transiting along known narco-trafficking routes in the Eastern Pacific and was engaged in narco-trafficking operations.” It said the strike killed three people. A video linked to the post shows a boat floating in the water before bursting into flames.

    Friday’s attack raises the death toll from the Trump administration’s strikes on alleged drug boats to at least 148 people in at least 43 attacks carried out since early September in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean.

    President Donald Trump has said the U.S. is in “armed conflict” with cartels in Latin America and has justified the attacks as a necessary escalation to stem the flow of drugs. But his administration has offered little evidence to support its claims of killing “narcoterrorists.”

    Critics have questioned the overall legality of the strikes as well as their effectiveness, in part because the fentanyl behind many fatal overdoses is typically trafficked to the U.S. over land from Mexico, where it is produced with chemicals imported from China and India.

    The boat strikes also drew intense criticism following the revelation that the military killed survivors of the very first boat attack with a follow-up strike. The Trump administration and many Republican lawmakers said it was legal and necessary, while Democratic lawmakers and legal experts said the killings were murder, if not a war crime.

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  • Hard hats and dummy plates: Reports of ICE ruses add to fears in Minnesota

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    MINNEAPOLIS — For days, Luis Ramirez had an uneasy feeling about the men dressed as utility workers he’d seen outside his family’s Mexican restaurant in suburban Minneapolis.

    They wore high-visibility vests and spotless white hard hats, he noticed, even while parked in their vehicle. His search for the Wisconsin-based electrician advertised on the car’s doors returned no results.

    On Tuesday, when their Nissan returned to the lot outside his restaurant, Ramirez, 31, filmed his confrontation with the two men, who hide their faces as he approaches and appear to be wearing heavy tactical gear beneath their yellow vests.

    “This is what our taxpayer money goes to: renting these vehicles with fake tags to come sit here and watch my business,” Ramirez shouts in the video.

    A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not respond to inquiries about whether the men were federal immigration officers. But encounters like Ramirez’s have become increasingly common.

    As the sweeping immigration crackdown in Minnesota continues, legal observers and officials say they have received a growing number of reports of federal agents impersonating construction workers, delivery drivers and in some cases anti-ICE activists.

    Not all of those incidents have been verified, but they have heightened fears in a state already on edge, adding to legal groups’ concerns about the Trump administration’s dramatic reshaping of immigration enforcement tactics nationwide.

    “If you have people afraid that the electrical worker outside their house might be ICE, you’re inviting public distrust and confusion on a much more dangerous level,” said Naureen Shah, the director of immigration advocacy at the American Civil Liberties Union. “This is what you do if you’re trying to control a populace, not trying to do routine, professional law enforcement.”

    In the past, immigration authorities have sometimes used disguises and other deceptions, which they call ruses, to gain entry into homes without a warrant.

    The tactics became more common during President Donald Trump’s first term, attorneys said, prompting an ACLU lawsuit accusing immigration agents of violating the U.S. Constitution by posing as local law enforcement during home raids. A recent settlement restricted the practice in Los Angeles. But ICE deceptions remain legal elsewhere in the country.

    Still, the undercover operations reported in Minnesota would appear to be a “more extreme degree than we’ve seen in the past,” said Shah, in part because they seem to be happening in plain sight.

    Where past ruses were aimed at deceiving immigration targets, the current tactics may also be a response to the Minnesota’s sprawling networks of citizen observers that have sought to call attention to federal agents before they make arrests.

    At the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building in Minneapolis, the city’s central hub of ICE activity, activists told The Associated Press they had seen agents leaving in vehicles with stuffed animals on their dashboards or Mexican flag decals on their bumpers. Pickups with lumber or tools in their beds were also frequently spotted.

    In recent weeks, federal agents have repeatedly shown up to construction sites dressed as workers, according to Jose Alvillar, a lead organizer for the local immigrant rights group, Unidos MN.

    “We’ve seen an increase in the cowboy tactics,” he said, though he noted the raids had not resulted in arrests. “Construction workers are good at identifying who is a real construction worker and who is dressing up as one.”

    Since the start of the operation in Minnesota, local officials, including Democratic Gov. Tim Walz, have said ICE agents had been seen swapping license plates or using bogus ones, a violation of state law.

    Candice Metrailer, an antiques dealer in south Minneapolis, believes she witnessed such an attempt firsthand.

    On Jan. 13, she received a call from a man who identified himself as a collector, asking if her store sold license plates. She said it did. A few minutes later, two men in street clothes entered the shop and began looking through her collection of vintage plates.

    “One of them says, ‘Hey, do you have any recent ones?’” Metrailer recalled. “Immediately, an alarm bell went off in my head.”

    Metrailer stepped outside while the men continued browsing. A few doors down from the shop, she saw an idling Ford Explorer with blacked out windows. She memorized its license plate, then quickly plugged it into a crowdsourced database used by local activists to track vehicles linked to immigration enforcement.

    The database shows an identical Ford with the same plates had been photographed leaving the Whipple building seven times and reported at the scene of an immigration arrest weeks earlier.

    When one of the men approached the register holding a white Minnesota plate, Metrailer said she told him that the store had a new policy against selling the items.

    Metrailer said she had reported the incident to Minnesota’s attorney general. A spokesperson for DHS did not respond to a request for comment.

    Supporters of the immigration crackdown say the volunteer army of ICE-tracking activists in Minneapolis has forced federal agents to adopt new methods of avoiding detection.

    “Of course agents are adapting their tactics so that they’re a step ahead,” said Scott Mechkowski, former deputy director of ICE enforcement and operations in New York City. “We’ve never seen this level of obstruction and interference.”

    In nearly three decades in immigration enforcement, Mechkowski said he also hadn’t seen ICE agent disguising themselves as uniformed workers in the course of making arrests.

    Earlier this summer, a spokesperson for DHS confirmed a man wearing a high-visibility construction vest was an ICE agent conducting surveillance. In Oregon, a natural gas company published guidance last month on how customers could identify their employees after reports of federal impersonators.

    In the days since his encounter, Ramirez, the restaurant worker, said he has been on high alert for undercover agents. He recently stopped a locksmith who he feared might be a federal agent, before quickly realizing he was a local resident.

    “Everybody is on edge about these guys, man,” Ramirez said. “It feels like they’re everywhere.”

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  • A Theology of Immigration

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    When I was working with refugees in Lebanon and Turkey and the Iraqi crisis, Rwanda, other places—you know, when everything’s taken away from you, God is all you have left. So we need a way to speak about who God is and who we are before God, and I think theology gives us a way of doing that.

    I’ve noticed something similar in debates around homelessness and immigration: the church does enormous amounts of work on the ground, but theological questions seem to have been pushed out of the broader public discourse.

    I did my graduate work at Berkeley, so when I was in California, I can remember one day I woke up and, literally, on the other side of the bed where I slept, outside the window, was a homeless person. And for me that began a long journey of trying to understand theology from the other side of the wall—not just from the perspective of a library or a room but from the streets and from the people who are living on the edge.

    What you see in the church’s teachings called the seamless garment of life runs through homelessness, runs through immigration, runs through the elderly, runs through all other life issues. When I spend time speaking to migrants at borders around the world, I often ask them, What is it that you would want people to hear? Or if you could preach on Sunday, what would you want people to know? And often it’s about dignity. It’s about saying, We’re human beings here, and you’re treating us like we’re dogs.

    The issue is these people have become nonpersons. I mean, they’re just not even seen. And I think part of the work of the church is saying, Actually, these people belong in a human community, and they belong to be seen, and therefore they belong in the discourse as well.

    You make this core argument that all people are created in the image of God, Imago Dei. That’s something that many people would say they believe. But when you see the news right now, the horrific videos coming out, the responses to them—do you feel that idea is in crisis?

    What we’ve also included in that understanding is that in the fall, we lost the likeness, but we never lose the image. There’s a deep core within us that’s indestructible—our worth and our value before God.

    One of the things I often say is that if we can’t see in the immigrant or in the homeless or in people who are considered different from us something of ourselves, we’ve lost touch with our humanity. So I think that’s what’s at stake. We’ve deported our own soul, if we’ve really lost touch with our own humanity.

    You argue that every person should have everything necessary for living a truly human life. What does that look like in practice if it’s not simply open borders?

    The church recognizes that nations have the right to control their borders, but it’s not an absolute right. It’s subjugated to a larger sense of what’s called the universal destination of all goods. And what does the church mean by that? In practice, that everything belongs to God, and when we die, we’re gonna have to give up everything anyway. So there’s a way in which we’re, at best, stewards in this life, not owners of anything in an absolute way. And even our nationalities and our national identities have only a relative importance in light of a larger vision of what the kingdom of God is about.

    The question is, what’s the narrative that shapes our consciousness on this? If the narrative is, This is my stuff, this is my country, this is where I belong, this is what I own, and I have to defend it and protect it—that’s one way of understanding it. But if the narrative is, Everything I have is a gift, and when I die, I’m going to give everything up, that I’m a steward and not an owner, and I can be judged by how I use what I’ve been given—that’s a different way of inhabiting the world. If the narrative is about how do we move closer to communion with God, and in closer connection with each other, with a life and a faith that does justice, in terms of caring for one another, that’s a very different way of inhabiting the world.

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    Jay Caspian Kang

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  • What We Expect Athletes to Say Now

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    Just a few years ago, what athletes had to say about social issues reverberated beyond sports. Under some pressure—not only from events of the day but, it appeared, from the dominant culture—athletes were talking more and more about using their “platform” to fight injustice. Until this month, the last time a game had been postponed for reasons that intersected so directly with politics was in 2020, inside the N.B.A.’s bubble during the coronavirus pandemic, when members of the Milwaukee Bucks led a wildcat strike to protest police violence. That interruption had felt bold and clarifying—an extraordinary disruption of ordinary rituals, which seemed certain to have some effect. But that didn’t turn out to be the case. If anything changed, it was the perceived risk in making, and not making, political statements.

    These days, many athletes are slower to talk about politics, and leagues are more circumspect. Social media, it turns out, does not represent the views of the larger public, and it has become increasingly toxic. The platforms are mostly for performance. Even many progressives now seem to feel that professional athletes—who tend to be young, devote themselves single-mindedly to their sports, and as a rule loathe public distractions—don’t have any special authority or obligation to weigh in on world events. Anthony Edwards is a charismatic, hyper-talented basketball player who once posted a blatantly homophobic video on Instagram. He has been accused of pressuring a woman he impregnated to get an abortion. (In a subsequent statement, Edwards said, “I made comments in the heat of a moment that are not me, and are not aligned with what I believe and who I want to be as a man.”) He is not the person to look to for civic leadership or a discussion of federal policies.

    In some sense, athletes are freer to say what they really think—though, given the current government and corporate climate, there may be real costs to saying what’s on their minds. There are basketball players who spoke out about the killings in Minneapolis. Victor Wembanyama gave a passionate answer about how horrified he was by the news. Tyrese Haliburton plainly labelled Pretti’s death a murder. Larry Nance, Jr., wore an anti-ICE T-shirt, and the Players Association put out a statement in defense of civil liberties. Breanna Stewart carried an “Abolish ICE” sign during player introductions before an Unrivaled game (and many other women’s basketball players, as usual, waded more directly into political matters than their male counterparts did). But these were exceptions. The N.B.A. was silent, and so were many of its stars. At the end of last week, LeBron James, who once took a lead among athletes in decrying injustice, spoke out for the first time, sort of: he posted a new song by Bruce Springsteen, called “Streets of Minneapolis,” on Instagram. Despite his huge following, and however he feels, whether he denounces the actions of ICE or not probably makes little practical difference on the streets of Minneapolis. James knows, like the rest of us, that Donald Trump made it back to the White House even after James labelled him a clown.

    None of this means, of course, that the players and staff weren’t affected by what was happening in their city. On Sunday, Minnesota’s head coach, Chris Finch, talked about how heartbroken the team was, and said he was glad that they hadn’t played on the night of Pretti’s death. The N.B.A. did not present the postponement of the game as an act of protest; the league said it was done “to prioritize the security and safety of the Minnesota community.” Either way, Finch said, “playing basketball just didn’t feel like the right thing to do.” Sports seemed beside the point.

    In times of turmoil, what is the point of sports? I know plenty of people who would say there’s none—that professional sports are a bloated form of entertainment, a waste of time. An excuse to eat nachos and gamble. Are they merely an escape? Maybe. People want distractions from bad news. They want rituals. They want an occasion to drink beer and argue with strangers and friends. They want the reassuring rhythms of a long baseball season. They want examples of excellence. Some of them even want to watch the New York Jets. Of course, they don’t necessarily think about these things in terms of wanting. They don’t need sports to have a point. They care because they cared when they were young.

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    Louisa Thomas

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  • Columbia Taps University of Wisconsin Chancellor to Lead School After 2 Years of Turmoil

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    NEW YORK (AP) — Columbia University has named Jennifer Mnookin, the chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, as its next president as it tries to move forward from two years of turmoil that included campus protests over the Israel-Hamas war and President Donald Trump’s subsequent campaign to squelch student activism and force changes at the Ivy League school.

    Mnookin’s appointment was announced Sunday night. She will assume her new post on July 1, becoming Columbia’s fifth leader in the past four years.

    The Trump administration took aim at Columbia shortly after he took office last year, making it his first target in what became a broader campaign to influence how elite U.S. universities dealt with protests, which students they admitted and what they taught in classrooms.

    Immigration enforcement agents imprisoned some Columbia students who had participated in pro-Palestinian protests in 2024. The administration canceled $400 million in research grants at the school and its affiliated hospital system in the name of combating antisemitism on campus, and threatened to withhold billions of dollars more in government support.

    Mnookin’s predecessor, Nemat Shafik, resigned in August 2024 following scrutiny of her handling of the protests and campus divisions. The university named Katrina Armstrong, the chief executive of its medical school, but she resigned last March, days after Columba agreed to the settlement. The board of trustees then appointed their co-chair, Claire Shipman, as acting president while they searched for a permanent leader.

    Mnookin, 58, previously served as the dean of the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law before being named to her current post at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in August 2022. She received her bachelor’s degree from Harvard University, her law degree from Yale Law School, and her doctorate in history and social study of science and technology from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

    Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

    Photos You Should See – January 2026

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    Associated Press

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  • Free Starlink access for Iran seen as game changer for demonstrators

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    BANGKOK — Iranian demonstrators’ ability to get details of bloody nationwide protests out to the world has been given a strong boost, with SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet service dropping its fees to allow more people to circumvent the Tehran government’s strongest attempt ever to prevent information from spilling outside its borders, activists said Wednesday.

    The move by the American aerospace company run by Elon Musk follows the complete shutdown of telecommunications and internet access to Iran’s 85 million people on Jan. 8, as protests expanded over the Islamic Republic’s faltering economy and the collapse of its currency.

    SpaceX has not officially announced the decision and did not respond to request for comment, but activists told The Associated Press that Starlink has been available for free to anyone in Iran with the receivers since Tuesday.

    “Starlink has been crucial,” said Mehdi Yahyanejad, an Iranian whose nonprofit Net Freedom Pioneers has helped smuggle units into Iran, pointing to video that emerged Sunday showing rows of bodies at a forensic medical center near Tehran.

    “That showed a few hundred bodies on the ground, that came out because of Starlink,” he said in an interview from Los Angeles. “I think that those videos from the center pretty much changed everyone’s understanding of what’s happening because they saw it with their own eyes.”

    Since the outbreak of demonstrations Dec. 28, the death toll has risen to more than 2,500 people, primarily protesters but also security personnel, according to the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency.

    Starlink is banned in Iran by telecommunication regulations, as the country never authorized the importation, sale or use of the devices. Activists fear they could be accused of helping the U.S. or Israel by using Starlink and charged with espionage, which can carry the death penalty.

    The first units were smuggled into Iran in 2022 during protests over the country’s mandatory headscarf law, after Musk got the Biden administration to exempt the Starlink service from Iran sanctions.

    Since then, more than 50,000 units are estimated to have been sneaked in, with people going through great lengths to conceal them, using virtual private networks while on the system to hide IP addresses and taking other precautions, said Ahmad Ahmadian, the executive director of Holistic Resilience, a Los Angeles-based organization that was responsible for getting some of the first Starlink units into Iran.

    Starlink is a global internet network that relies on some 10,000 satellites orbiting Earth. Subscribers need to have equipment, including an antenna requires a line of site to the satellite, so must be deployed in the open, where it could be spotted by authorities. Many Iranians disguise them as solar panels, Ahmadian said.

    After efforts to shut down communications during the 12-day war with Israel in June proved to be not terribly effective, Iranian security services have taken more “extreme tactics” now to both jam Starlink’s radio signals and GPS systems, Ahmadian said in a phone interview. After Holistic Resilience passed on reports to SpaceX, Ahmadian said, the company pushed a firmware update that helped circumvent the new countermeasures.

    Security services also rely on informers to tell them who might be using Starlink, search internet and social media traffic for signs it has been used, and there have been reports they have raided apartments with satellite dishes.

    “There has always been a cat-and-mouse game,” said Ahmadian, who fled Iran himself in 2012, after serving time in prison for student activism. “The government is using every tool in its toolbox.”

    Still, Ahmadian noted that the government jamming attempts had only been effective in certain urban areas, suggesting that security services lack the resources to block Starlink more broadly.

    Iran did begin to allow people to call out internationally on Tuesday via their mobile phones, but calls from outside the country into Iran remain blocked.

    Compared to protests in 2019, when lesser measures by the government were able to effectively stifle information reaching the rest of the world for more than a week, Ahmadian said the proliferation of Starlink has made it impossible to prevent communications He said the flow could increase now that the service has been made free.

    “This time around they really shut it down, even fixed landlines were not working,” he said. “But despite this, the information was coming out and it also shows how distributed this community of Starlink users is in the country.”

    Musk has made Starlink free for use during several natural disasters, and Ukraine has relied heavily on the service since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022. It was initially funded by SpaceX and later through an American government contract.

    Musk raised concerns over the power of such a system being in the hands of one person, after he refused to extend Ukraine’s Starlink coverage to support a planned Ukrainian counterattack in Russian-occupied Crimea.

    As a proponent of Starlink for Iran, Ahmadian said the Crimea decision was a wake-up call for him, but that he couldn’t see any reason why Musk might be inclined to act similarly in Iran.

    “Looking at the political Elon, I think he would have more interest … in a free Iran as a new market,” he said.

    Julia Voo, who heads the International Institute for Strategic Studies’ Cyber Power and Future Conflict Program in Singapore, said there is a risk in becoming reliant on one company as a lifeline, as it “creates a single point of failure,” though currently there are no comparable alternatives.

    China has already been exploring ways to hunt and destroy Starlink satellites, and Voo said the more effective Starlink proves itself at penetrating “government-mandated terrestrial blackouts, the more states will be observing.”

    “It’s just going to result in more efforts to broaden controls over various ways of communication, for those in Iran and everywhere else watching,” she said.

    ___

    Associated Press writers Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates and Melanie Lidman in Tel Aviv, Israel contributed to this report.

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  • Can activists ban foie gras in Denver? Here’s how their last campaign went

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    Politics

    Voters will decide in November whether force-fed ducks and geese can be raised or sold in Denver.

    Anne Fulton (from left) and Justin Clark canvass in support of ballot measures to ban slaughterhouses and fur sales in Colorado, during the annual Tennyson Street Fall Festival. Oct. 19, 2024.

    Kevin J. Beaty/Denverite

    Denver voters will decide in November 2026 whether to ban the production and sale of foie gras in the city.

    Animal rights advocates with the advocacy group Pro-Animal Colorado turned in more than 16,000 signatures — just over 11,000 of which were valid — to put the question on the Denver ballot. The same group previously made unsuccessful attempts to ban fur sales and slaughterhouses in 2024.

    This time, the advocates’ aim is more niche: banning the sale and production of fatty fowl liver, better known by its French name, foie gras.

    Foie gras is the liver meat produced by force-feeding ducks and geese. The French delicacy has a reputation among some consumers as delectably rich and buttery, and among animal rights advocates as utterly inhumane.

    Denver voters will consider a proposal that would prohibit individuals from force-feeding birds to enlarge their livers beyond normal size or hiring someone to do so. Additionally, restaurants, grocery distributors and others could no longer sell foie gras. 

    “Eliminating the production and sale of force-fed products from the marketplace is in our city’s interest and authority to reduce animal cruelty, unsustainable environmental practices, and spread of zoonotic disease, and to uphold our city’s values of humane animal treatment, public health, and environmental stewardship,” the measure states. 

    The proposal condemns the practice of injecting excess feed down a bird’s esophagus, declares foie gras as a danger to workers and the environment, and states that foie gras is a health hazard for humans. 

    Those who violate the rules would be fined between $1,000 and $5,000, and each violation would be deemed a separate offense. Businesses that violated the ban repeatedly could lose their license for up to six months. 

    If voters approve the ban, it would go into effect on July 1, 2027.

    Olivia Hammond, a spokesperson for Pro-Animal Colorado, previously said that Denver doesn’t have any factories or farms that force-feed birds, but added that the proposal’s language would ban any facilities from opening in the future. Meanwhile, she said, up to 15 restaurants in Denver serve products derived from force-feeding, depending on the season.

    Here’s how the last campaign went:

    In 2024, the group fell short of its goals of banning fur sales and slaughterhouses in the city.

    • The fur vote failed 42 percent to 57 percent. 
    • The slaughterhouse vote failed 36 percent to 63 percent. 
    • Pro-Animal Denver (as the group was known at the time) raised $352,045. Fur and slaughterhouse supporters raised more than $2 million.

    Several countries, including Brazil, the United Kingdom and Germany, ban either force-feeding or the production of foie gras. California lawmakers passed a bill to ban force-feeding and foie gras in 2004, which has been constantly challenged in courts.

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    Kyle Harris

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  • US Drops Plan to Deport Chinese National Who Exposed Xinjiang Abuses, Rights Activists Say

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    WASHINGTON (AP) — The Department of Homeland Security has dropped its plan to deport a Chinese national who entered the country illegally, two rights activists said Monday, after his plight raised public concerns that the man, if deported, would be punished by Beijing for helping expose human rights abuses in China’s Xinjiang region.

    Rayhan Asat, a human rights lawyer who assisted in the case, said Guan Heng’s lawyer received a letter from DHS stating its decision to withdraw its request to send Guan to Uganda. Asat said she now expects Guan’s asylum case to “proceed smoothly and favorably.”

    Zhou Fengsuo, executive director of the advocacy group Human Rights in China, also confirmed the administration’s decision not to deport Guan. “We’re really happy,” Zhou said.

    The Department of Homeland Security didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s database lists Guan, 38, as a detainee.

    His legal team is working to secure his release from an ICE detention facility in New York on bond, both Zhou and Asat said.

    Guan in 2020 secretly filmed detention facilities in Xinjiang, which activists say have been used to lock up as many as 1 million members of ethnic minorities in the region, especially the Uyghurs. Beijing has denied allegations of rights abuses and says it has run vocational training programs to help local residents learn employable skills while rooting out radical thoughts.

    Knowing he could not release the video footage while in China, Guan left the mainland in 2021 for Hong Kong and then flew to Ecuador, which at the time did not require visas for Chinese nationals. He then traveled to the Bahamas, where he bought a small inflatable boat and an outboard motor before setting off for Florida, according to the nongovernmental organization Human Rights in China.

    After nearly 23 hours at sea, Guan reached the coastline of Florida, according to the group, and his video footage of the detention facilities was released on YouTube, providing further evidence of rights abuse in Xinjiang, the rights group said.

    But Guan was soon doxxed, and his family back in China was summoned by state security authorities, the group said.

    Guan sought asylum and moved to a small town outside Albany, New York, where he tried to live a quieter life, the group said, until he was detained by ICE agents in August.

    Public support for Guan, including in Congress, has swelled in recent weeks after Zhou’s group publicized his case. Before Guan appeared in court earlier this month, U.S. lawmakers called for providing him with a safe haven.

    “Guan Heng put himself at risk to document concentration camps in Xinjiang, part of the CCP’s genocide against Uyghurs,” the congressional Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission wrote on X.com, referring to the Chinese Communist Party by its acronym. “Now in the United States, he faces deportation to China, where he would likely be persecuted. He should be given every opportunity to stay in a place of refuge.”

    Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi of Illinois, the top Democrat on the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, wrote to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, urging her to release Guan and approve his asylum request.

    The U.S. “has a moral responsibility to stand up for victims of human rights abuses in Xinjiang, as well as the brave individuals who take immense personal risks to expose these abuses to the world,” Krishnamoorthi wrote.

    Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

    Photos You Should See – December 2025

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    Associated Press

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  • Amazon Workers Issue Warning About Company’s ‘All-Costs-Justified’ Approach to AI Development

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    Over 1,000 Amazon employees have anonymously signed an open letter warning that the company’s allegedly “all-costs-justified, warp-speed approach to AI development” could cause “staggering damage to democracy, to our jobs, and to the earth,” an internal advocacy group announced on Wednesday.

    Four members of Amazon Employees for Climate Justice tell WIRED that they began asking workers to sign the letter last month. After reaching their initial goal, the group published on Wednesday the job titles of the Amazon employees who signed and disclosed that more than 2,400 supporters from other organizations, including Google and Apple, have also joined in.

    Backers inside Amazon include high-ranking engineers, senior product leaders, marketing managers, and warehouse staff spanning many divisions of the company. A senior engineering manager with over 20 years at Amazon says they signed because they believe a manufactured “race” to build the best AI has empowered executives to trample workers and the environment.

    “The current generation of AI has become almost like a drug that companies like Amazon obsess over, use as a cover to lay people off, and use the savings to pay for data centers for AI products no one is paying for,” says the employee, who like others in this story, asked to remain anonymous because they feared retaliation from their bosses.

    Amazon, along with other big tech companies, is in the midst of investing billions of dollars to construct new data centers to train and run generative AI systems. This includes tools helping workers write code and consumer-facing services such as Amazon’s shopping chatbot, Rufus. It’s easy to see why Amazon is pursuing AI. Last month, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy announced that Rufus was on track to increase Amazon’s sales by $10 billion annually. It “is continuing to get better and better,” he said.

    AI systems demand significant power, which has forced utility companies to turn to coal plants and other carbon-emitting sources of energy to support the data center boom. The open letter demands that Amazon abandon carbon fuel sources at its data centers, bar its AI technologies from being used to carry out surveillance and mass deportation, and stop forcing employees to use AI in their work. “We, the undersigned Amazon employees, have serious concerns about this aggressive rollout during the global rise of authoritarianism and our most important years to reverse the climate crisis,” the letter states.

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    Paresh Dave

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  • OpenAI Locks Down San Francisco Offices Following Alleged Threat From Activist

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    OpenAI employees in San Francisco were told to stay inside the office on Friday afternoon after the company purportedly received a threat from an individual who was previously associated with the Stop AI activist group.

    “Our information indicates that [name] from StopAI has expressed interest in causing physical harm to OpenAI employees,” a member of the internal communications team wrote on Slack. “He has previously been on site at our San Francisco facilities.”

    Just before 11 am, San Francisco police received a 911 call about a man allegedly making threats and intending to harm others at 550 Terry Francois Boulevard, which is near OpenAI’s offices in the Mission Bay neighborhood, according to data tracked by the crime app Citizen. A police scanner recording archived on the app describes the suspect by name and alleges he may have purchased weapons with the intention of targeting additional OpenAI locations.

    Hours before the incident on Friday, the individual who police flagged as allegedly making the threat said he was no longer part of Stop AI in a post on social media.

    WIRED reached out to the man in question but did not immediately receive a response. San Francisco police also did not immediately respond to a request for comment. OpenAI did not provide a statement prior to publication.

    On Slack, the internal communications team provided three images of the man suspected of making the threat. Later, a high-ranking member of the global security team said “At this time, there is no indication of active threat activity, the situation remains ongoing and we’re taking measured precautions as the assessment continues.” Employees were told to remove their badges when exiting the building and to avoid wearing clothing items with the OpenAI logo.

    Over the past couple of years, protestors affiliated with groups calling themselves Stop AI, No AGI, and Pause AI have held demonstrations outside the San Francisco offices of several AI companies, including OpenAI and Anthropic, over concerns that the unfettered development of advanced AI could harm humanity. In February, protestors were arrested for locking the front doors to OpenAI’s Mission Bay office. Earlier this month, StopAI claimed its public defender was the man who jumped onstage to subpoena OpenAI CEO Sam Altman during an onstage interview in San Francisco.

    In a Pause AI press release from last year, the individual who police said was alleged to have made the threat against OpenAI staffers is described as an organizer and quoted as saying that he would find “life not worth living” if AI technologies were to replace humans in making scientific discoveries and taking over jobs. “Pause AI may be viewed as radical amongst AI people and techies,” he said. “But it is not radical amongst the general public, and neither is stopping AGI development altogether.”

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    Zoë Schiffer, Maxwell Zeff, Paresh Dave

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  • New play looking at friendship between AIDS activist Larry Kramer and Anthony Fauci in the works

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    NEW YORK — A new play exploring the complex relationship between playwright and AIDS activist Larry Kramer and Dr. Anthony Fauci, the longtime top U.S. infectious disease expert, will make its premiere early next year in New York under the direction of Tony Award-winner Daniel Fish.

    “Kramer/Fauci” will star Tony-winner Will Brill from “Stereophonic” and Thomas Jay Ryan, who starred in the film “Henry Fool.” It will play The Jack H. Skirball Center for the Performing Arts between Feb. 11-21, The AP has learned.

    Fish, whose 2019 production of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Oklahoma!” won the Tony Award for best musical revival, is using the transcript of a 1993 C-Span face-off between the two men as the text of the play, which included call-ins from across the country.

    “I’m looking at a particular moment in time, at a particular exchange that has resonances into their relationship, has resonances into the politics and culture of the time, and seeing what happens when we do that now. That’s really where I’m coming from,” said Fish.

    Kramer and Fauci went from adversaries to friends as they confronted the AIDS crisis from different sides in the 1980s and ’90s. Kramer, who wrote “The Normal Heart” and founded the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, or ACT UP, demanded the government do more and faster for those with symptoms.

    Fauci, the longtime director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, insisted on a pragmatic approach. He would became a lightning rod again as leader of the national response to the coronavirus pandemic in 2020.

    The exchange in 1993 was heated and illuminating, with Kramer acknowledging their complex relationship: “He is a man, an ordinary man, who is being asked to play God,” Kramer said at the time. “And he is being punished because he cannot be God. And that is a terrible position to be in.”

    After Kramer’s death in 2020, Fish stumbled across the C-Span exchange. “I just thought it was really compelling and it kind of just stayed with me,” he said. “And after a while I thought, ‘I wonder what would happen if we made a performance out of this?’”

    Fish doesn’t want to mount a literal recreation of the exchange, instead reaching for something more theatrical. In 1993, Kramer was beamed in from New York while Fauci was in the C-Span studio in Washington, D.C. For the play, Fish will put the two — plus the moderator — in the same room on stage.

    “There’s a moment where Kramer at one point says, ‘You know, I love Tony Fauci,’ and later on he says, ‘Tony, when you talk like that, I hate you.’ And Fauci says, ‘I know you do, Larry.’”

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  • Once a Shadowy Dealmaker, One-Time Zelenskyy Associate Is Accused in Ukrainian Corruption Scandal

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    KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Before the revelation of a multi-million dollar embezzlement and kickbacks scandal involving Ukraine’s state nuclear energy company brought his name to the forefront, Tymur Mindich was a shadowy presence — navigating deals and moving behind the scenes with unseen influence, known to many, yet rarely spoken of.

    Mindich was linked to growing fears over his expanding influence within the country’s lucrative industries, his access facilitated by his ties to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The two were once business partners and Mindich’s influence had expanded under Zelenskyy’s tenure.

    Mindich has fled the country, with any criminal proceedings against him likely to be carried out in absentia. Two top government ministers have resigned.

    Ukrainian officials, experts and activists contend Mindich’s rise to power is closely tied to his privileged relationship with the president and Zelenskyy’s inner circle.

    “What we were hearing only as rumors now has some evidence,” said activist Tetiana Shevchuk, of Ukraine’s Anti-Corruption Action Center. “For a long time we have heard that Tymur Mindich is a shadow controller of the energy sector.”

    Until Zelenskyy’s presidency, Mindich, 46, was just one among many wealthy Ukrainian entertainment industry entrepreneurs.

    Mindich was a co-owner of Zelenskyy’s production company Kvartal 95, named for the comedy troupe that helped catapult the Ukrainian president to fame as a comedian before he entered politics. Zelenskyy transferred his stake in the company to his partners after he was elected.

    Despite expanding his business portfolio since Zelenskyy’s election, Mindich maintained ties to the entertainment world. Until the corruption probe was exposed this week, he was a producer of the comedy show “Stadium Family” on YouTube. In light of the scandal and his tarnished reputation, the show’s owners shut it down this week.

    He is also a relative of Leonid Mindich, who was arrested by Ukraine’s anti-corruption watchdogs in June when he was trying to flee the country, according to local reports; he was charged with embezzling $16 million from an electric power company.

    Zelenskyy and Mindich’s close friendship is documented. The president used Mindich’s armored car during the final stretch of his presidential campaign in 2019. In January 2021, Zelenskyy celebrated his birthday in Mindich’s apartment during COVID. The two own apartments in the same building.

    After Zelenskyy’s 2019 presidential win, Mindich’s political ties grew.

    He was a close business associate of Ukrainian oligarch Ihor Kolomoysky, who backed Zelenskyy’s presidential campaign. Zelenskyy later cut ties with the billionaire and in 2023 Kolomoysky was arrested by Ukrainian security services on fraud and money-laundering charges.

    Businesses once associated with Kolomoysky began claiming that Mindich was now their beneficiary. “Gradually, in three years, he became, not an oligarch, but a known businessman with an interest in a lot of businesses,” said Shevchuk, the anti-corruption activist.

    They include agricultural enterprises and the nationalized SENSE bank. But, his name appeared most often in association with state energy companies, according to current and former Ukrainian officials, activists and experts.

    Ukrainian activists contend that without his close association with Zelenskyy, it would have been impossible for Mindich to cement his rise.

    Mindich “would have never been in politics, never been in a position of power or business without his connection to Zelenskyy, and this magnitude is worse because it’s happening during war time, and it is related to energy infrastructure at a time when Ukrainians don’t have electricity in their homes,” Shevchuk said.

    The case against Mindich rests on 1,000 hours of wiretaps revealing his significant influence over Herman Haluschenko, Ukraine’s energy minister from 2021-2025 until he was named justice minister in July. Haluschenko resigned that post after the investigation became public this week.

    While rarely named as a direct beneficiary in official documents, investigators cite extensive wire-tapping evidence they allege shows Mindich exerted control over a network of loyalists who pressured contractors for Energoatom, the state nuclear power company, demanding kickbacks of up to 15% to bypass bureaucratic obstacles and do business smoothly.

    Investigators allege the illicit funds were siphoned off, laundered through shell companies and funneled into Mindich’s pockets and those of his associates.

    These findings collected by the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine, known as NABU, and Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office, or SAPO will be central to any future court proceedings.

    NABU is also conducting an investigation into Mindich’s alleged dealings with Ukraine’s top drone manufacturer, Fire Point, but has not yet revealed its findings. Fire Point, which develops deep-strike drones capable of hitting targets inside Russian territory, has denied any such dealings.

    Ukraine’s domestic drone industry has seen a swift and remarkable rise, fueled by wartime innovation and urgent military demands. What was once a niche sector quickly evolved into a formidable technological force within just a few years.

    Fire Point is among local companies and startups that have rapidly developed advanced drones for reconnaissance, surveillance and combat operations, supported by growing investments. The NABU investigation is looking into whether Mindich is the ultimate beneficiary of the company.

    Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

    Photos You Should See – Oct. 2025

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  • Opinion | What Does ‘White Guilt’ Mean in 2025?

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    Victim politics gave us pro-Hamas activism and a powerful reaction in the form of Donald Trump, argue Shelby Steele and his son, Eli.

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    Tunku Varadarajan

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  • Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell Faces a Hard Reelection Fight Against Progressive Activist Katie Wilson

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    SEATTLE (AP) — Democratic Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell faces a tough reelection fight against progressive activist Katie Wilson as voters in the liberal city recoil from President Donald Trump’s second term and question whether the incumbent has done enough to address public safety, homelessness and affordability.

    Harrell, an attorney who previously served three terms on the City Council, was elected mayor in 2021 following the chaos of the COVID-19 pandemic and racial justice protests over George Floyd’s murder by Minneapolis police.

    With crime falling, more police being hired, less visible drug use and many homeless encampments removed from city parks, the business-backed Harrell seemed likely to cruise to re-election at this time last year. He’s been endorsed by Democratic Gov. Bob Ferguson, Attorney General Nick Brown and former U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.

    But Trump’s return to office has helped reawaken Seattle’s progressive voters. The lesser-known Wilson, a democratic socialist running a campaign that echoes some of the themes of progressive mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani in New York, trounced Harrell by nearly 10 percentage points in the August primary.

    “Voters in places like Seattle are frustrated with the status quo, particularly in the context of Trump’s attacks on blue cities,” said Sandeep Kaushik, a Seattle political consultant who is not involved in the race. “They’re kind of moving back into their progressive bunker and are much more inclined to say, ‘Yeah, we should go our own way with our own bold progressive solutions.’ That all that plays into Katie’s hands.”

    Wilson, 43, studied at Oxford College but did not graduate. She founded the small nonprofit Transit Riders Union in 2011 and has led campaigns for better public transportation, higher minimum wages, stronger renter protections and more affordable housing. She herself is a renter, living in a one-bedroom apartment in the city’s Capitol Hill neighborhood, and says that has shaped her understanding of Seattle’s affordability crisis.

    Wilson has criticized Harrell as doing too little to provide more shelter and said his encampment sweeps have been cosmetic, merely pushing unhoused people around the city. Wilson also paints him as a city hall fixture who bears responsibility for the status quo.

    She has been endorsed by several Democratic organizations as well as by U.S. Rep. Pramila Jayapal, the former chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

    Harrell, 67, played on the Rose Bowl champion University of Washington football team in 1978 before going to law school. His father, who was Black, came to Seattle from the segregated Jim Crow South, and his mother, a Japanese American, was incarcerated at an internment camp in Minidoka, Idaho, during World War II after officials seized her family’s Seattle flower shop — experiences that fostered his understanding of the importance of civil rights and inclusivity.

    Harrell has said Wilson, who has no traditional management experience, isn’t ready to lead a city with more than 13,000 employees and a budget of nearly $9 billion. He also has criticized her for supporting efforts to slash the city’s police budget amid the 2020 racial justice protests.

    Wilson has said that proposal was based on some fundamental misunderstandings and that she since has learned a lot about how the police department works. She says she supports having a department that is adequately staffed, responsive and accountable to the community.

    Both Harrell and Wilson have touted plans for affordable housing, combatting crime and attempting to Trump-proof the city, which receives about $150 million a year in federal funding. Both want to protect Seattle’s sanctuary city status.

    Wilson has proposed a city-level capital gains tax to help offset federal funding the city might lose and to pay for housing; Harrell says that’s ineffective because a city capital gains tax could easily be avoided by those who would be required to pay it.

    Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

    Photos You Should See – Oct. 2025

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  • Israel and Hamas have a ceasefire deal. But college protesters say activism won’t stop

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    At California universities Monday, the ceasefire in Gaza — and the accompanying hostage and prisoner exchange — emerged as an inflection point for the future of a student-led protest movement that for two years has roiled campuses.

    The activism, along with its contentious aftermath, continues to reverberate as pro-Palestinian organizers and Jewish community leaders reckon with the tumult touched off by Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.

    For months in 2024 — shortly after the onset of the deadliest and most destructive war between Israelis and Palestinians in history — college campuses in the U.S. convulsed in often confrontational protests. Pro-Palestinian demonstrations surged in the spring of that year with encampments where activists demanded campus policy changes, including U.S. university divestment of billions of dollars from weapons companies.

    On this front, their activism largely foundered. In California, not one major university agreed to full divestment demands, which included boycotts of partnerships with Israeli universities. And campus policies did change — with university officials cracking down on protests and enforcing zero-tolerance policies against rule-breaking.

    But David N. Myers, a UCLA professor of Jewish history, said student protesters appear to have helped change American views on Palestinians and Israel.

    “Is the protest movement a failure? Well, if the measure is universities have cracked down, maybe,” Myers said. “But if the measure is general trend lines in American public opinion, I’m not so sure. And that should be a wake-up call to the pro-Israel movement.”

    Amid the protests, allegations of antisemitism surged on campuses and Jewish students and faculty protested violations of their civil rights. Their complaints have prompted aggressive investigations by the Trump administration that are at the center of his goal to overhaul higher education to adhere to a sweeping conservative agenda that goes far beyond protections for Jewish communities.

    Pro-Palestinian activists vow to continue

    In interviews, pro-Palestinian students who participated in last year’s encampments and protests this year said the ceasefire was welcome news, but only fulfilled part of what led them to take to campus greens.

    “While the news of a ceasefire is welcome, nothing fundamentally changes at UCLA or colleges in general,” said Dylan Kupsh, a doctoral computer science student at UCLA who was part of an encampment last year that was attacked by pro-Israel vigilantes.

    “Our university is still invested in the oppression of Palestine. Students won’t rest until the university divests,” said Kupsh, who has faced student discipline procedures for participating in actions that the university alleges violated campus policies.

    Student organizers in California said the ceasefire will infuse new energy into their activism, which has been accused of minimizing the plight of Israeli hostages and being antisemitic.

    “We can momentarily feel a little bit of happiness, there is at least momentary end to the genocide,” said Ryan Witt, president of Students for Justice in Palestine at Cal State Channel Islands, which held a campus protest and vigil in support of Palestinians last week.

    “There have been pictures of children in Gaza celebrating. I’m not dismissing that. But also recognizing that we need to keep fighting,” said Witt, who is Jewish.

    Amanda, a student at USC who participated in pro-Palestinian encampments, said concerns remain on her campus.

    “We see that our school, like all the others, is very worried about being seen as antisemitic by the government, so they are even stricter about protests and speech than they used to be,” she said.

    Graeme Blair, a professor of political science at UCLA, said the climate for pro-Palestinian activism on campuses had worsened, and the government now aggressively treats pro-Palestinian speech as being antisemitic.

    “The Trump administration is using every federal lever from the Justice Department to the Education Department to the State Department to crack down on antisemitism,” Blair said. “Universities like UCLA are, on their own and because of Trump pressure, continuing to arrest, discipline and fire people speaking out.”

    For Jews on campus, ‘a chapter is ending’

    Myers, who is Jewish, said the release of Israeli hostages felt like “the door to a very dark chamber has been opened and light has begun to peek out. At the same time, I can’t help but think of the next frame, which is the frame of pictures of Gaza, which is in a state of complete and total devastation.”

    Among pro-Israel Jewish communities on campuses nationwide, there is also a sense of relief.

    Jewish student groups had regularly gathered on campuses, including last week, for candlelight vigils, songs and prayer services to honor dead and living hostages in Gaza and their families two years after the Oct. 7 attack.

    Many Jewish students have ties to Israel, whether from visiting or through family members who lived there and knew victims of the Hamas attack that killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took roughly 250 hostages. About 20 living hostages were back in Israel this week, while Israel released roughly 1,900 Palestinian prisoners. According to the Gaza Health Ministry, more than 67,000 Palestinians were killed during Israel’s war.

    Sophia Toubian, an information studies graduate student at UCLA, said she hoped the hostages’ release is “actually a chapter ending.”

    “I hope that it is a long-lasting peace, and it doesn’t just start right back up again — and that that translates into our experience here, both at school and just in the world.”

    Toubian, who is Jewish and pro-Israel, said the pro-Palestinian protest movement had achieved at least some of its objectives.

    “Every building that I go into on campus … without fail, I’m seeing something up on the wall about Palestine — supportive of Palestine,” she said.

    “It wasn’t there before, and … it’s kind of up there in a way, like, ‘Yeah, of course, we all agree that this is the way that this should be, and so we’re going to show support of this thing.’ In that sense, it does feel like a success.”

    And yet, UCLA senior Gal Cohavy, who is pro-Israel, said the tenor in Westwood has improved in recent months.

    Cohavy said he hoped that the hostages’ release and the stop in fighting could allow people across the ideological spectrum to find common ground.

    “I wouldn’t be surprised to see more real conversation going on, and perhaps bridging a gap between the two sides and seeing cultural progress,” he said.

    In a statement, Ha’Am, a Jewish student-run publication at UCLA, said now the “atmosphere has changed.”

    “Since October 7, 2023, Jewish spaces have been places of grief, quiet, and emotional support for a community in turmoil. Today, as we enter those same spaces, the atmosphere has changed. There is a genuine sigh of relief in the air, a collective exhale, and the comforting knowledge that our brothers and sisters on the other side of the world are finally safe once again,” it said.

    Lasting consequences among students

    While pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel students expressed approval over the events in the Middle East, both have faced lasting consequences of divisions on campus.

    Reports of antisemitism as well as anti-Muslim and anti-Arab incidents have increased at colleges since 2023. Arrests, suspensions and expulsions of pro-Palestinian students and groups have also grown, though the vast majority of Los Angeles students detained by police during last year’s protests did not face criminal charges.

    At UCLA, two Students for Justice in Palestine groups were banned this year for vandalizing the Brentwood home of a UC Board of Regents member who is Jewish with imagery that Jewish community leaders said used antisemitic tropes.

    Among California universities, Stanford endured one of the more charged episodes.

    A group of pro-Palestinian students there face felony vandalism and trespassing charges after they were accused of breaking into and vandalizing the university president’s office during a 2024 protest. This month, a Santa Clara County grand jury indicted the remaining 11 students, which pushes the case toward a trial.

    Staff writer Karen Garcia contributed to this report.

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    Jaweed Kaleem, Daniel Miller

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  • The Volunteers Tracking ICE in Los Angeles

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    On a crisp September morning in Los Angeles, Elijah Chiland, Victor Maldonado, and four other volunteers of the Harbor Area Peace Patrol gathered at Wilmington Waterfront Park, just outside the city’s port. “If you would have told me at the beginning of the summer that, three months into this, we would be waking up at ungodly hours to fight fascism, I wouldn’t have believed you,” Maldonado said.

    At 6 A.M., they piled into two cars and drove over Vincent Thomas Bridge onto Terminal Island, a bulk of reclaimed land in the middle of the harbor, passing vast shipping-container yards and small ramshackle buildings left over from the port’s cannery days. From there, they turned onto Seaside Avenue, a narrow road that leads to a memorial of Furusato—the Japanese American fishing village that was destroyed during the period of Japanese internment—near the island’s southern tip. About a hundred yards past the monument, a manned checkpoint marks the entrance to a small peninsula of federal land that houses a U.S. Coast Guard base and a prison. Seaside Avenue is its sole access point. The unique location of this complex makes it ideal for federal agents looking for a protected staging ground out of public view, while also allowing anyone to monitor the movements of those agents as they enter and exit the facility.

    Back in June, Chiland, a Los Angeles public-school teacher, heard rumors that National Guard troops were being marshalled on Terminal Island in preparation to arrest anti-ICE demonstrators across the city. This inspired Chiland and his wife, Maya Suzuki Daniels, to co-found the Harbor Area Peace Patrol, a group of community activists that track the movements of immigration authorities around Los Angeles. “I came down here to check on that, because we wanted to let people know,” Chiland told me. He didn’t find any National Guard members that day, but “what I did see was a convoy of eleven vehicles”—some labelled Border Patrol, others unmarked, with tinted windows—leaving the federal complex and heading for the city. The next morning, another member of the newly established Peace Patrol returned to check if the Border Patrol convoys were back. They were. “We’ve been seeing them every day since,” he said. Today was day ninety-one.

    By six-thirty, the Peace Patrollers were standing along the shoulder of Seaside Avenue. Maldonado, a Los Angeles-area workers-compensation hearing representative, distributed green reflective vests (“so they can’t say they didn’t see us”), and the group got to work. Four of the Patrollers whipped out their cellphones to photograph each passing vehicle, while Chiland managed the Peace Patrol’s Instagram account—a vital tool for broadcasting information and communicating with the public. Maldonado held tally clickers in each hand (one for inbound traffic to the federal complex, one for outbound) and counted the flow of vehicles. “We’ll get around a hundred to a hundred and thirty cars per day,” he told me. An S.U.V. and a sedan drove by. Click. Click. “If we get an influx of cars, that lets me know that there’s a lot of activity going on in L.A.” The busiest day since the Patrol started recording was in August, when three hundred and five vehicles passed through. He laughed: “We’ll tell our grandkids that we defeated fascism with six-dollar clickers.”

    With the images they capture at Terminal Island, the Peace Patrol and Unión del Barrio, an affiliated community-activist organization, compare vehicles with those that appear at immigration raids throughout the region. Some vehicles logged at Terminal Island by the group have been spotted as far away as Ventura, and even Sacramento. Once a license plate has been confirmed as that of a federal agent by appearing both at Terminal Island and at an immigration-enforcement raid, the Peace Patrol will post an image of the plate and the vehicle to the group’s Instagram account. In a few instances, “we’ve seen one license plate on two different vehicles,” Maldonado said. Other times, a temporary paper license plate has been used to obscure known plates.

    “Exposure is not something that ICE wants,” Tim McOsker, a Los Angeles City Council member whose district covers Terminal Island, explained to me in a phone call. McOsker has been a valuable resource for the Patrollers, and his wife has volunteered with the group. “When you are engaged in a systematic, unconstitutional activity where you’re trying to grab as many people in your net as possible, you do not want cameras.” The agents flowing through Terminal Island seem to agree. According to the Peace Patrol, after three months and dozens of confirmed vehicles and plates, certain cars are known to the Patrollers and have nicknames, like Christopher Columbus, Big Red, and Jammer. The federal agents have become aware of the Patrollers, too. Some agents will attempt to hide their faces as they pass—what the patrollers have dubbed the shy shoulder. Others will try to disguise their unmarked cars with things like a “COEXIST” bumper sticker (nickname: “Captain Coexist”) or Teddy bears on the dashboard. Still others will get aggressive. “We’ve been swerved at, we’ve had cars rip down the street at seventy, eighty miles per hour,” said Cait Bartlett, another former L.A. public-school teacher. Not long after, a large pickup truck known to the group rolled by, its horn blaring at the patrollers as the driver flashed his middle finger. “They’re trying to be intimidating,” Bartlett continued. “So, there is a little bit of nervousness attached to it, but I know the work that we’re doing is important.”

    A month earlier, that intimidation had boiled over. On the morning of August 8th, two masked men leaving the federal complex exited their vehicle and targeted one of the Patrollers, Amanda Trebach, who was photographing cars and holding a protest sign. She was pinned to the ground, handcuffed, and thrown into a van. Then, as Trebach recounts, the agents drove her into the complex, where she was detained for several hours. Later, she was moved into a second vehicle by masked, armed men (including one of the men who had arrested her), where a special agent from the Department of Homeland Security questioned her. From there, Trebach was moved to a federal detention facility in downtown Los Angeles, where she was held until later the next day.

    When reached for comment, Tricia McLaughlin, the D.H.S. Assistant Secretary for public affairs, alleged that Trebach jumped in front of a Border Patrol vehicle leaving the federal complex, causing the driver to swerve, then “hit the car with her signs and fists while yelling obscenities at agents.” McLaughlin further alleged that Trebach blocked agents of Customs and Border Protection from carrying out their duties, and that led to her arrest. (Trebach has not been charged with a crime.)

    “None of that happened,” Trebach told me, when reached by phone. D.H.S. is “very frustrated and angry that we’re out there filming them, but we’re standing on public property.” She also said that her cellphone was confiscated while in detention, and it remains in the possession of D.H.S. As a result, Trebach, an I.C.U. nurse, worries about the additional personal information that agents may have accessed and could use to continue targeting her. “I’m scared every night when I come home that they’re going to take me away,” she said.

    For Suzuki Daniels, the Peace Patrol co-founder, video of Trebach’s arrest is still challenging to watch. “I have a physical reaction to it,” she said. “The only reason that it’s not getting national outcry is that, right now, we’re being inundated with so many crimes in our communities and across the United States. I think we’re kind of stunned, and in a freeze-trauma response.”

    Roughly two hours after Trebach was taken away, a group of masked agents returned to her unlocked car, rummaged through her belongings, “and held three of our Patrollers at gunpoint,” Maldonado, who was present that morning, recalled. In the Peace Patrol’s video of the confrontation, a Port Police cruiser is visible passing by, twice. Maldonado still doesn’t understand why they didn’t stop and intervene: “The federal agents never identified themselves. They’re masked. You don’t know if they’re vigilantes. You don’t know who they are. Port Police just cruised by and pretended they didn’t see it at all.”

    I reached out to Thomas Gazsi, the chief of the Los Angeles Port Police, about the incident, and about the role of his department in upholding the rights of the Peace Patrollers to assemble on a public road. Gazsi confirmed that someone from his department was present the morning Trebach was detained, but clarified that it was a port-security civilian officer, not a police officer. Still, should the security officer have, at the very least, stopped to witness the incident with the gunmen, and called it in to the department? “She reported to her supervisors, which was reported to our department,” Gazsi responded. “By the time our police officers arrived out there, everybody was gone.”

    The incident highlights the hollowness of the anti-Trump rhetoric of local politicians in Los Angeles. The city’s mayor, Karen Bass, has repeatedly decried the federal government’s incursion into the city (calling it an “assault” and “un-American”), and saying ICE’s relentless immigration raids are a “reign of terror” that must end. In July, she issued an executive directive that bolstered a 2017 city ordinance prohibiting city resources, including the L.A.P.D., from being used in immigration-enforcement activities, “unless required by federal or state law.” Yet, in multiple videos supplied to me by Unión del Barrio, the L.A.P.D. is present at immigration-enforcement activities, not impeding the federal agents but in what appears to be an accessory role.

    In a video from June 24th, immigration agents are seen actively detaining individuals on the street, while L.A.P.D. officers stand in front of them, hands perched over their gun holsters or wielding batons, as they push back a crowd that has formed to intervene. In another video, from August 13th, an L.A.P.D. officer stands a few yards from an active Homeland Security Investigations operation as a person off camera asks “why L.A.P.D. is working with Homeland Security.” The officer responds that L.A.P.D. “provides security” for the agency, and that the department has worked with H.S.I. on “many occasions.”

    This difference between what politicians promise and what actually happens has become more pronounced, of late, for anyone aligned with the Democratic Party. For Suzuki Daniels, the failure of Democrats to stand up against rising right-wing authoritarianism has left her feeling jaded about the entire political system. “No politician is going to save us,” she said. After years of canvassing for political candidates, signing petitions, and making phone calls for campaigns, “everything I do for the next four years is going to be direct action and mutual aid,” she said. “I am not pleading with politicians to save me or save the people I care about. There are masked men riding around my town trying to kidnap people.”

    This ethos harks back to another era of resistance in the Los Angeles harbor. Back on Terminal Island, a little after 7 A.M., Gina, another member of the group, who declined to give her last name, asked if she could show me the statue in the middle of the Japanese fishing-village memorial. She told me that her grandfather had been a Sicilian immigrant who fished in San Pedro Bay, and that he had learned how to catch tuna with longline poles—a technique introduced by Japanese immigrants, many of whom had lived on Terminal Island. During the Second World War, as the U.S. government razed Furusato, “there was a lot of protection” from the non-Japanese community, Gina, said. “There was a lot of backlash, because what [the government] did was such a dirty thing.” She choked up as she continued, “This is white supremacy, once again, trying to take a foothold—it’s full fascism. Just like what happened to the Japanese Americans.” She turned to show me the statue of two Japanese fishermen, one looking out at Los Angeles, the other staring back at the federal complex, “watching them come and go,” as if they were part of their own peace patrol. ♦

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    Oren Peleg

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  • George and Amal Clooney’s star-studded The Albies event honoured campaigners

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    Taylor Hill/Getty Images

    “At The Albies, the sacrifices and courageous commitments to justice and human rights take centre stage,” George and Amal, who are also co-Founders of the Clooney Foundation for Justice, have said. “This is a celebration of the individuals whose lives and careers have come to embody those values that form the cornerstone of our foundation’s global work.”

    Graham Norton hosted the evening’s proceedings, while presenters included Thompson, Streep, Ahern and Downton Abbey actor Hugh Bonneville. There were also performances from both John Legend and Brandi Carlile.

    George and Amal Clooney's starstudded The Albies awards honoured campaigners

    Taylor Hill/Getty Images

    George and Amal Clooney's starstudded The Albies awards honoured campaigners

    Jeff Spicer/Getty Images

    Previous awards ceremonies have been held at the New York Public Library, but this year London had the honour, partially because Amal is due to introduce a partnership at Oxford University focusing on using artificial intelligence to enhance access to justice and the advancement of international law.

    Jacinda Ardern described the evening as “a moment in time to be able to acknowledge the work that often goes on quietly, but is incredibly important. Some of the people being honoured tonight, they’ve been working for decades.”

    George and Amal Clooney's starstudded The Albies awards honoured campaigners

    Taylor Hill/Getty Images

    George and Amal Clooney's starstudded The Albies awards honoured campaigners

    Taylor Hill/Getty Images

    The Albies cover multiple award categories, including a justice for women award – Iranian journalists Niloofar Hamedi and Elahe Mohammadi were previous recipients.

    The Clooney Foundation for Justice provides free legal aid in defence of free speech and women’s rights, so we know that as well as throwing a five-star celebrity soirée, empowering women is at the centre of the Clooney mission.

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    Charley Ross

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  • Israeli Navy Intercepts Some Flotilla Boats but Others Are Nearing the Coast of Gaza, Activists Say

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    Supporters of the flotilla took to the streets in several European cities — including Rome, Naples, Barcelona and Athens — to decry Israeli actions and the ongoing Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip. Italy’s largest union called for a one-day general strike on Friday, which is expected to block all the main sectors, including transportation and schools.

    The Global Sumud Flotilla, with nearly 50 boats and 500 activists, was carrying a symbolic amount of humanitarian aid to Gaza.

    It has been streaming its voyage online via live cameras aboard different boats, though several connections were lost as Israeli authorities began intercepting them in international waters on Wednesday evening.

    The flotilla’s live tracker showed at least 20 boats were intercepted while others were sailing on and appeared to be only a few miles away from Gaza, and one boat appeared to have crossed into the strip’s territorial waters, according to the activists’ tracker.

    Israeli soldiers detained and removed dozens of activists — including Greta Thunberg, former mayor of Barcelona Ada Colau, European parliament member Rima Hassan and others — from the flotilla.

    Israel’s Foreign Ministry posted photos and videos of the activists, saying in a statement on X that they were “safe and in good health” and would be transferred to Israel for deportation procedures to Europe.

    Earlier, live broadcasts overnight from the activists, showed Israeli boats approaching their vessels, spraying them with water canons and flashing bright lights before soldiers boarded the flotilla.

    Anticipating the interceptions, activists wearing life jackets sat in circles and raised their hands in the air. Some managed to stream the moment live from their cell phones before tossing their devices into the sea.

    The night-long operation that carried on as the sun rose appeared to be largely peaceful.

    Turkey’s Foreign Ministry strongly condemned the Israeli navy’s action, describing it as an “act of terrorism” and a severe breach of international law in a statement late Wednesday. The ministry said it was working to ensure the immediate release of Turkish citizens and other activists detained by Israeli forces.

    Brito reported from Barcelona, Spain.

    Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

    Photos You Should See – Sept. 2025

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  • Activists From Sudan, Myanmar, Pacific Islands, and Taiwan Receive Human Rights Award

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    STOCKHOLM (AP) — The Right Livelihood Award was awarded Wednesday to activists from Sudan and Myanmar, where military and political violence devastates communities, to the Pacific Islands, where climate disaster threatens entire nations, and to Taiwan, which is the frequent target of threats and disinformation.

    “As authoritarianism and division rise globally, the 2025 Right Livelihood Laureates are charting a different course: one rooted in collective action, resilience and democracy to create a livable future for all,” the Stockholm-based foundation said about the winners. It considered 159 nominees from 67 countries this year.

    The youth-led organization Pacific Island Students Fighting Climate Change and Julian Aguon were awarded the prize “for carrying the call for climate justice to the world’s highest court, turning survival into a matter of rights and climate action into a legal responsibility.”

    Justice for Myanmar was awarded “for their courage and their pioneering investigative methods in exposing and eroding the international support to Myanmar’s corrupt military.” The covert group of activists is working to expose the financial architecture and global corporate complicity sustaining the military government, Right Livelihood said.

    Audrey Tang from Taiwan won the prize “for advancing the social use of digital technology to empower citizens, renew democracy and heal divides.” Tang is a “civic hacker and technologist who rewires systems for the public good,” the organization said.

    In Sudan, the Emergency Response Rooms network was awarded for “for building a resilient model of mutual aid amid war and state collapse that sustains millions of people with dignity.” The Sudanese community-led network has become the backbone of the country’s humanitarian response amid war, displacement and state collapse. They helps includes health care, food assistance, and education, where many international aid organizations cannot reach, according to the foundation.

    Created in 1980, the annual Right Livelihood Award honors efforts that the prize founder, Swedish-German philanthropist Jakob von Uexkull, felt were being ignored by the Nobel Prizes.

    “At a time when violence, polarization and climate disasters are tearing communities apart, the 2025 Right Livelihood Laureates remind us that joining hands in collective action is humanity’s most powerful response,” said Ole von Uexkull, the nephew of the prize founder and the organization’s executive director.

    “Their courage and vision create a tapestry of hope and show that a more just and livable future is possible,” he added.

    Previous winners include Ukrainian human rights defender Oleksandra Matviichuk, Congolese surgeon Denis Mukwege and Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg. Matviichuk and Mukwege received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022 and 2018, respectively.

    The Right Livelihood Award comes just a week before the Nobel Prizes. The 2025 laureates will be given their awards on Dec. 2 in Stockholm. The size of the prize amount was not announced.

    Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

    Photos You Should See – Sept. 2025

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    Associated Press

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