Democracy Now

We speak with a Greenlandic member of the Danish Parliament, Aaja Chemnitz, about incoming U.S. President Donald Trump’s plans to make America larger, in part by taking ownership of Greenland, which is controlled by Denmark. Greenland’s prime minister rejected the idea this week, saying, “We are not for sale and will never be for sale.” Trump’s statement on Greenland was made as he announced he was picking PayPal co-founder Ken Howery as his pick for United States ambassador to Denmark. “We’re open for business. We’re not for sale,” says Chemnitz. “The decision on what should happen with the future of Greenland is up to the Greenlandic people.”

In northern Gaza, the director of the besieged Kamal Adwan Hospital says five medical workers were among 50 people killed in Israeli strikes near the hospital. Israeli forces then stormed the hospital and forced hundreds, including patients, into the streets. This all comes as The New York Times has confirmed past reporting by +972 Magazine that on October 7, 2023, Israel loosened military rules meant to protect noncombatants in Gaza. Award-winning Israeli journalist Gideon Levy decries the moral decay of Israel, which has gone so far as to open a luxurious rest area for soldiers in northern Gaza: “It’s the same moral blindness to what’s going on around you.” Levy also discusses his latest piece, headlined “The IDF’s Own Sickening 'Zone of Interest' in the Heart of Gaza.”

• Israel Forces Evacuation of Northern Gaza Hospital After Attack That Killed 50
• Watchdog Finds 75,000 in Gaza at Risk of Famine, Buries Report After U.S. Ambassador to Israel Objects
• Israel Bombs Yemeni Capital and Port City of Hodeidah, Killing 6 and Wounding Dozens
• Famine Spreads as Fighting Escalates in Sudan, Prompting Exodus of Refugees
• More Than 10,000 Asylum Seekers Have Died at Sea Attempting to Reach Spain in 2024
• CDC Warns Sample of First Severely Ill U.S. Bird Flu Patient Contains Troublesome Mutations
• South Korean Parliament Impeaches Acting President 2 Weeks After Former President's Ouster
• New York Gov. Signs Bill to Hold Climate Polluters Accountable But Vetoes Anti-Deforestation Bill
• L.A. Deputy Who Beat Trans Man Fired Along with 7 Others Amid FBI Probe

More than 3,100 Indigenous students died at boarding schools in the United States between 1828 and 1970 — three times the number of deaths reported earlier this year by the Department of Interior, according to a new investigation by The Washington Post. Many of the students had been forcibly removed from their families and tribes as part of a government policy of cultural eradication and assimilation. The new report was led by Dana Hedgpeth, an enrolled member of the Haliwa-Saponi Tribe of North Carolina, and expanded its reach beyond federal records to achieve a full public accounting of the death toll of what many scholars and survivors have described as “prison camps,” not schools. Hedgpeth shares how some tribes have now been able to recover the remains of children who had been buried at the boarding schools and return them for traditional burials in their ancestral homelands. “The impact of these schools is still being felt in many ways,” she says.

We go to Damascus for an update on the state of affairs in Syria after the surprise collapse of the long-reigning Assad regime, with BBC Middle East correspondent Lina Sinjab. She is reporting in Syria for the first time in over a decade, after she was forced to flee the country in 2013. She relays the “sense of freedom and joy” now present on the streets of Damascus, where ordinary Syrians, for the first time in generations, “feel that they are liberated and they are proud of where they are today.” Current estimates put the number of forced disappearances under the Assad government at 300,000 likely tortured in prisons and buried in mass graves. We discuss Syria’s new transitional government, led by the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, and whether it can fulfill its promises of inclusion and accountability for all Syrians. “There’s no way for peace and stability to happen in Syria without a prosecution, without a legal system that will hold those who have blood on their hands accountable, for the sake of reconciliation in the country,” says Sinjab.

After a 15-year career in the Foreign Service, Michael Casey resigned from the State Department in July over U.S. policy on Gaza and is now speaking out publicly for the first time. He was deputy political counselor at the United States Office for Palestinian Affairs in Jerusalem for four years before he left. Casey says he resigned after “getting no action from Washington” for his recommendations on humanitarian actions for Palestinians and toward a workable two-state solution. “We don’t believe Palestinian sources of information,” Casey says about U.S. policymakers. “We will accept the Israeli narrative over all others, even if we know it’s not correct.” He also discusses what to expect for Gaza under the incoming Trump administration.

• Israeli Strikes on Gaza Kill Dozens, Including Five Journalists; Three Babies Freeze to Death
• Russia Launches Massive Christmas Attack on Ukraine's Energy Grid
• Azerbaijani Airlines Crash in Kazakhstan Leaves Behind 38 Dead, 29 Survivors
• Turkey's Erdoğan Threatens to "Bury" Syrian Kurds Unless They Lay Down Arms
• Dozens Killed in Violence Across Mozambique Following Disputed Election Result
• Gunmen Kill 2 Haitian Journalists Covering Reopening of Port-au-Prince Hospital
• Judge Voids Arkansas Law Criminalizing Booksellers and Librarians Providing "Harmful" Books to Minors

His name might not be familiar to many, but his songs are sung by millions around the world. Today, we take a journey through the life and work of Yip Harburg, the Broadway lyricist who wrote such hits as “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” and who put the music into The Wizard of Oz, the movie that inspired the hit Broadway musical and now Hollywood blockbuster, Wicked. Born into poverty on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, Harburg always included a strong social and political component to his work, fighting racism and poverty. A lifelong socialist, Harburg was blacklisted and hounded throughout much of his life. We speak with Harburg’s son, Ernie Harburg, about the music and politics of his father. Then we take an in-depth look at The Wizard of Oz, and hear a medley of Harburg’s Broadway songs and the politics of the times in which they were created.

As foreign powers look to shape Syria’s political landscape after the toppling of the Assad regime, the country’s Kurdish population is in the spotlight. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan continues to threaten the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia, which Turkey regards as an extension of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party militants who have fought an insurgency against the Turkish state for 40 years. Turkey’s foreign minister recently traveled to Damascus to meet with Syria’s new de facto ruler Ahmed al-Sharaa, the head of the Islamist group HTS. “Turkey is a major threat to Kurds and to democratic experiments that Kurds have been implementing in the region starting in 2014,” says Ozlem Goner, steering committee member of the Emergency Committee for Rojava, who details the persecution of Kurds, the targeting of journalists, and which powerful countries are looking to control the region. “Turkey, Israel and the U.S. collectively are trying to carve out this land, and Kurds are under threat.”

The U.S. House Ethics Committee has released its damning report on former Republican Representative Matt Gaetz, whom Trump had picked to be his attorney general before the Florida politician was forced to withdraw from consideration. The bipartisan committee’s report found Gaetz “regularly paid women for engaging in sexual activity with him” and possessed illegal drugs, including cocaine and ecstasy, on “multiple different occasions.” The report also found Gaetz had violated Florida’s statutory rape law by paying a 17-year-old high school student for sex in 2017. The Ethics Committee also investigated a trip Gaetz made in 2018 to the Bahamas where he accepted transportation and lodging in violation of the House rules and laws on gifts. “The report is detailed. There are extensive records showing these payments,” says Naomi Feinstein, staff writer at Miami New Times.

President Biden has spared the lives of 37 of 40 federal death row prisoners by commuting their sentences to life in prison. This comes just weeks before President-elect Donald Trump is set to return to the White House with a promise to restart and expand federal executions. “Death is in no way decreasing violence or is in no way giving anybody closure,” says Herman Lindsey, who spent three years on death row before being exonerated in 2009 and condemns politicians like Trump who use executions as a “political tool.” “Most politicians use that to put the fear into people and use it as a voting tool.” President Biden’s action comes after years of advocacy by civil rights and Catholic groups. Last week, he had a phone call with Pope Francis, who reportedly called for the sentences of death row prisoners to be commuted. “He shares that faith and put it into action in a pretty courageous way, to speak out about the needs of healing the criminal justice system, that too often is wrong,” says Sister Simone Campbell, the former executive director of the Network Lobby for Catholic Social Justice.

• Israel Attacks Two Hospitals in Northern Gaza
• Israel Detains 100 in West Bank; Palestinian Authority Clashes with Palestinian Fighters in Jenin
• Israel Confirms It Assassinated Haniyeh as It Threatens to Kill Houthi Leaders Next
• Greenland Is Not for Sale: PM Responds to Donald Trump's Remark
• El Salvador: Lawmakers Vote to Overturn Ban on Mineral Mining
• Mass Protest in Cuba Denounces U.S. Sanctions
• House Ethics Report Finds Matt Gaetz Spent Tens of Thousands of Dollars on Sex and Drugs
• Family of Rep. Kay Granger Reveals She Has Dementia; Texas Republican Has Missed Every Vote Since July
• Amazon Accused of Trying to Flood Picket Lines of Striking Workers in Queens, NYC
• Starbucks Strikes Expands to Three More Cities
• Missouri Governor Commutes Sentence of White Cop Who Killed Cameron Lamb
• Family of Slain Cop City Protester Tortuguita Sues Three Police Officers
• D.C. Police Officer Convicted of Tipping Off Proud Boys Leader
• Taxpayers Against Genocide Sue Two California Democrats for Funding Israeli Military

Christmas celebrations are canceled in the West Bank and the city of Bethlehem, Jesus Christ’s birthplace, for the second year in a row in response to Israel’s genocidal attack on Gaza and ethnic cleansing of the Occupied Palestinian Territories. We feature an excerpt of the Christmas sermon of Reverend Munther Isaac of the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem, titled “Christ Is Still in the Rubble,” referencing a sermon he gave at this time last year titled “Christ in the Rubble,” about the loss of Palestinian life to Israel’s assault of Gaza. We also go to Bethlehem to speak with Reverend Isaac. He shares his message to the U.S. and the rest of the world. “Our fear here in Bethlehem is that there is no one who’s going to hold Israel accountable,” he says. “We’re tired and sick of these wars, which are enabled by American tax money and American politics.”

In France, sentences have been handed down in the trial of Dominique Pelicot and 51 other men convicted of rape against Pelicot’s ex-wife, Gisèle. Dominique Pelicot had repeatedly and systematically drugged and facilitated the rape of Gisèle Pelicot, approaching other men online to visit their home and assault her over a period of 10 years. Pelicot waived anonymity and fought for a public trial in the historic case, a decision that shaped the public discourse on sexual violence and the prevalence of chemical submission and drug-assisted sexual assault. “We were all here to wait for Gisèle, but also we were all here for one another,” says Diane de Vignemont, a French journalist who reported on the Pelicot trial and found a “sisterhood” that formed among women attendees to the trial, many of whom shared their own experiences with sexual assault.

After the Republican-led Congress passes a government spending bill but rejects a last-minute demand for a debt limit suspension from President-elect Donald Trump and his billionaire adviser Elon Musk, we look at the richest man in the world’s growing influence, with The American Prospect editor Robert Kuttner. “At the end of the day, Musk got exactly what he wanted,” says Kuttner, referring to Musk’s influence in the removal of an anti-China trade provision in the bill. “It’s a classic case of Musk rolling Trump. … I don’t think this is going to end well.”

• Biden Commutes Sentences of 37 Men on Federal Death Row
• UNRWA Warns "World Must Not Become Numb" to Israel's Escalating Attacks on Gaza
• Doctor at Kamal Adwan Decries Israeli Attacks on Hospital in Northern Gaza
• "This Is Cruelty. This Is Not War." Pope Francis Condemns Israel on Gaza
• Syria: Diplomats from U.S., Turkey, Jordan and Qatar Meet with HTS Leader
• Congress Passes Spending Bill to Avert Government Shutdown
• House Ethics Report Finds Gaetz Committed Statutory Rape
• Panama Rejects Trump's Threat to Retake Panama Canal
• Trump Says U.S. Ownership of Greenland Is "An Absolute Necessity"
• Five Die in Germany as Car Drives Into Christmas Market
• Int'l Court Rules Against El Salvador's Strict Abortion Ban
• U'wa Indigenous People in Colombia Win Major Victory at Inter-American Court of Human Rights
• Washington Post: 3,100 Indigenous Students Died at U.S. Boarding Schools
• Top NYPD Uniformed Officer Resigns Under Investigation for Sexual Misconduct
• Report: Netanyahu to Skip Auschwitz Event to Avoid Being Arrested for War Crimes

We speak with Yale historian and author Timothy Snyder, an expert on authoritarianism, about how corporate America has responded to Donald Trump’s reelection. Snyder’s 2017 book On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century came out just a month after Trump began his first term, and opened with the warning: “Do Not Obey in Advance.” That message has been widely cited following ABC News’s decision to settle a Trump defamation case by donating $15 million to his future presidential library. Major tech leaders have also cozied up to the president-elect in recent days, including with major donations to Trump’s inauguration. “There is a problem when the people who have the most money set the example of yielding to power first,” says Snyder. “It’s textbook anticipatory obedience.”

We continue to look at the U.S. health insurance industry and how patients can fight back against their providers with advocate Elisabeth Benjamin, vice president of health initiatives at the Community Service Society of New York and co-founder of the Health Care for All New York campaign. She says her advice for patients is to always appeal denials and to seek outside help when possible, including advocacy groups like hers and external review boards. She also stresses that much of the chaos of the U.S. health system is due to corporate greed. “Everyone has an incentive to charge more,” says Benjamin. “If we had Medicare for All, we wouldn’t be paying as much, and we would probably have much better health outcomes.”

Luigi Mangione, the suspect in the shooting death of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, has been charged with first-degree murder and second-degree murder as an act of terrorism. Thompson’s assassination has brought renewed attention to the practices of the health industry and especially UnitedHealth Group, which reported $22 billion in profits last year. For more, we speak with Kevin Dwyer, who has firsthand experience with UnitedHealthcare denying him lifesaving medication for cystic fibrosis. “The thought of getting this medication that could stop my decline was everything to me. And it was devastating when I got the denial,” says Dwyer, who only got approved after his case became a national news story. “It shouldn’t take this, but unfortunately it does,” says Elisabeth Benjamin, vice president of health initiatives at the Community Service Society of New York and co-founder of the Health Care for All New York campaign.

Thousands of Amazon workers on Thursday launched the largest strike against the retail giant in U.S. history, pressuring the company at the height of the holiday period to follow the law and bargain with those who have organized with the Teamsters union. The strike includes warehouse workers and drivers at seven distribution centers in some of Amazon’s largest markets, including New York, Atlanta and San Francisco; Teamsters have also set up picket lines at many other warehouses nationwide. “We’re engaging in a coordinated action to try to put the pressure on Amazon to stop breaking the law, come to the table,” says Connor Spence, president of Amazon Labor Union-IBT Local 1, which represents workers in New York. “This is an unfair labor practice strike over their refusal to bargain.” We also speak with Ronald Sewell, an Amazon associate in Georgia, who says workplace safety is a major driver of worker discontent, including insufficient access to water and overheating. “The danger is real. It’s not something that we’re making up,” says Sewell.