Democracy Now

• Israel's Genocide in Gaza Claims 77 Palestinian Lives Over Past Day
• Israeli Settlers Vandalize West Bank Mosque Amid Continuing Israeli Attacks Across Occupied Territory
• U.S. Officials in Damascus as Syrian Kurds Seek to Fend Off Possible Turkish Incursion
• Syrian Youth, Women Gather to Demand Respect for Human Rights from Incoming Gov't
• Striking Amazon Workers in NYC Met with Police Crackdown as Labor Action Spreads Across U.S.
• Starbucks Workers Launch Escalating Strike Action
• U.S. Gov't Inches Closer to Shutdown After House Rejects New, Trump-Endorsed Spending Bill
• Fulton County DA Fani Willis Barred from Georgia's Election Subversion Case Against Trump
• Luigi Mangione Faces Federal Murder Charges for Shooting Death of UnitedHealthcare CEO
• Another Member of NYC Mayor Eric Adams's Inner Circle Is Indicted
• Biden Sets Out Goal to Reduce Emissions by Up to 66% by 2035
• EPA, Energy Dept. Workers Condemn Biden Admin for Funding Bombs Over Climate Crisis
• Three WFP Workers Killed in Sudan Air Attack as Agency Warns 1.7 Million People Facing Famine
• Macron Met with Angry Crowds as He Toured Cyclone-Devastated Mayotte, Where Aid Has Been Scarce
• Crowd Crush at Nigerian School Fair Kills 35 Children
• Ecuador Successfully Completes Debt-for-Nature Swap as Part of Amazon Preservation Effort

“When you’re in prison, the retaliation starts. … I don’t think my judge sentenced me to go through this.” The U.S. government has agreed to pay a record-breaking amount of nearly $116 million to settle lawsuits brought by 103 people who survived sexual abuse and assault at a federal women’s prison in California. The facility, FCI Dublin, was shuttered earlier this year. Its former warden is now himself imprisoned after being convicted of sexually abusing incarcerated people under his care. Aimee Chavira, who was formerly incarcerated at FCI Dublin and is part of the class-action sexual abuse lawsuit against the Bureau of Prisons, says the settlement, while welcomed, “doesn’t change anything. No amount of money will change what was done to us and what did happen.” Community organizer Courtney Hanson helped advocate for survivors with the Dublin Prison Solidarity Coalition. She calls for “policy changes to ensure that this type of staff sexual abuse stops happening” in prisons across the country.

Human Rights Watch is accusing Israel of committing acts of extermination and genocide by deliberately restricting safe water for drinking and sanitation to the Gaza Strip. The report details how Israel has cut off water and blocked fuel, food and humanitarian aid from entering the Gaza Strip, and deliberately destroyed or damaged water and sanitation infrastructure and water repair materials. We speak to one of the report’s editors, Bill Van Esveld, the acting Israel and Palestine associate director at Human Rights Watch, who describes “a clear state policy of depriving people in Gaza of water,” that HRW is, for the first time in the current Israeli assault on Gaza, characterizing as a genocidal act.

“We were not prepared for what we were going to see,” says Human Rights Watch researcher Hiba Zayadin, who recently visited one mass execution site turned mass grave in Syria, following the sudden fall of the authoritarian Assad family from power. More than 150,000 Syrians remain unaccounted for after being held in Assad’s prisons, and many are believed to be buried in mass graves. We speak to Zayadin about what’s been uncovered so far and the struggle to preserve evidence, particularly in the face of a new regime that has not prioritized tracking records of the Assad government’s crimes, and of Israel’s ongoing shelling of crucial sites. “Every minute that passes where there is inaction, where these documents, these sites are not being preserved, are not being secured, is just one more family possibly never knowing what happened to their loved ones,” she says.

• Israeli's Attacks Continue Across Gaza Despite Talks of Nearing Ceasefire
• Twin Palestinian Sisters Killed by Israeli Attack as They Attempted to Leave Gaza
• Haaretz: Israeli Soldiers Arbitrarily Kill Palestinians, Then Declare Them Terrorists
• Israel Bombs Yemen, Killing at Least 9
• Senate Passes $895B Pentagon Bill, Includes Ban on Healthcare for Military Trans Family Members
• Government Shutdown Looms After House Republicans Reject Compromise Spending Deal
• GOP Introduces DOGE Act to Slash Billions from Social Programs
• House Ethics Committee to Release Report on Matt Gaetz's Sex Trafficking and Drug Use
• Trump Appoints Failed Senate Candidate and Ex-NFL Star Herschel Walker as U.S. Ambassador to Bahamas
• Gisèle Pelicot’s Ex-Husband Is Found Guilty of Mass Rape, Sentenced to 20 Years
• U.S. to Pay $116 Million to "Rape Club" Survivors at Federal Women's Prison in California
• Texas Father Fights to Reunite Family After ICE Deports Mother and Children to Mexico
• "We Just Do What the Israelis Want Us to Do": State Department Official Quits over U.S. Policy on Gaza
• Supreme Court Will Hear Challenge to Potential Ban on Social Media App TikTok
• Indiana Carries Out First Execution in 15 Years, Killing Joseph Corcoran
• Thousands of Amazon Workers Begin Strike for Union Recognition

We speak with The Nation's Chris Lehmann about President-elect Donald Trump's escalating attacks on the press and how major media figures and institutions are “capitulating preemptively” to the pressure. ABC News recently settled a defamation suit brought by Trump by making a $15 million donation to his future presidential library, despite experts saying the case was easily winnable. Trump is also suing The Des Moines Register for publishing a poll before the election that showed him losing to Vice President Kamala Harris. “What’s happening is a very clear pattern in Trump’s public life,” says Lehmann. “This is a show of power.”

We speak with the husband and sister of Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi, the 26-year-old Turkish American activist killed by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank in September, who have criticized the Biden administration for failing to independently investigate her death. The recent University of Washington graduate was fatally shot in the head after taking part in a weekly protest against illegal Israeli settlements in the town of Beita, which she attended as an international observer. Witnesses say she was shot by an Israeli sniper after the demonstration had already dispersed. Members of Eygi’s family spoke with Secretary of State Antony Blinken earlier this week but left the meeting with little hope the U.S. would hold Israel accountable. “Accountability starts with an investigation by the U.S. of the killing of one of its own citizens by an ally,” says Eygi’s husband Hamid Ali. “The answer to the question of why my wife is not getting justice is because Israel enjoys this level of impunity throughout its existence that no other country, no other state in the world enjoys.”

A new lawsuit accuses the State Department of failing to ever sanction Israeli military units under the Leahy Law, which was passed in 1997 to prevent the United States from funding foreign military units credibly implicated in gross human rights violations. The case was brought by five Palestinians in Gaza, the occupied West Bank and the United States and is supported by the human rights group DAWN. Former State Department official Charles Blaha, who served as director of the human rights office tasked with implementing the Leahy Law, says there is a mountain of evidence of Israel carrying out torture, extrajudicial killings, rape, enforced disappearances and other abuses. “Despite all that, the State Department has never once held any Israeli unit ineligible for assistance under the Leahy Law,” says Blaha, now a senior adviser at DAWN. We also speak with Palestinian American writer Ahmed Moor, one of the plaintiffs in the suit, who has family in Gaza and says the last year of genocide has made the lawsuit more urgent. “The conditions of basic life are not being met. Gaza is unlivable,” says Moor.

• Israeli Attacks Kill Dozens of Palestinians Amid Signs of Breakthrough in Gaza Ceasefire Talks
• Israeli Forces Kill Two More Palestinians in Occupied West Bank
• U.N. Envoy Warns Syria's War "Has Not Ended" as Turkish-Backed Forces Challenge Kurdish Fighters
• Netanyahu Vows Israeli Forces Will Remain in Syria Indefinitely
• Haaretz: Israel and Saudi Arabia Reach Breakthrough in Talks to Normalize Ties
• Human Rights Groups Condemn FIFA's Selection of Saudi Arabia to Host 2034 World Cup
• U.S. to Transfer 3 More Prisoners from Guantánamo Bay
• Trump Sues Iowa Pollster and Des Moines Register for "Brazen Election Interference"
• Democrats Select Gerry Connolly Over AOC as Ranking Member of House Oversight Committee
• Macron to Visit Cyclone-Ravaged Mayotte Amid Anger over Slow Response to Crisis
• CNN Admits It Misidentified Assad Intelligence Officer as Freed Syrian Prisoner 
• Manhattan DA Charges Alleged UnitedHealthcare CEO Assassin with Murder and Terrorism
• Ocean Defender Paul Watson Freed from Prison as Denmark Rejects Japan's Extradition Bid

As the official death toll in Gaza tops 45,000 and Israel’s wars throughout the Middle East continue, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is in court for a long-awaited corruption trial, making him the country’s first sitting leader to face criminal charges. He is charged with fraud, breach of trust and accepting bribes in three separate cases. For more on this extraordinary case, we speak with acclaimed filmmaker Alex Gibney, whose latest documentary The Bibi Files features leaked behind-the-scenes footage of police interrogations of Netanyahu, his wife and those accused of bribing him. The film has been banned in Israel, and Netanyahu even tried unsuccessfully to stop it from screening at the Toronto International Film Festival, but Gibney says it is being widely shared inside Israel through unofficial channels. “Strictly speaking, this is a film about corruption,” Gibney tells Democracy Now! “It starts with petty corruption — being bribed with gifts and cigars, champagne, jewelry — but then the ultimate corruption is how he’s tried to elude a reckoning for his misdeeds, and in so doing, he wraps himself in the mantle of prime minister and then wages endless war.”

We speak with organizer Astra Taylor of the Debt Collective, which is urging President Joe Biden to cancel more student debt, including for older debtors, before the end of his term. According to the White House, the administration has approved $175 billion in student debt relief for nearly 5 million borrowers over the past four years, but advocates say Biden can still do more in his final weeks as president. “This is a Titanic moment for the Biden administration. They have crashed into the authoritarian iceberg of the Trump administration, and it is their duty to fill as many lifeboats as possible,” says Taylor. She faults the administration for insisting on a case-by-case approach to debt relief instead of canceling debt for larger swaths of debtors, including many with “ironclad claims,” urging the White House to use all the legal tools at its disposal.

President Joe Biden’s decision to grant clemency to a corrupt former judge has sparked widespread outrage, including from members of his own party. Biden announced nearly 1,500 commutations and pardons last week in what the White House described as the largest single-day act of clemency from a president, but among those whose sentences were reduced is former Pennsylvania Judge Michael Conahan — one of two judges in the notorious “kids for cash” scandal. In 2011, Conahan was sentenced to 17.5 years for accepting nearly $3 million in kickbacks for sending 2,300 children, some as young as 8 years old, to for-profit prisons on false charges. His co-conspirator, former Judge Mark Ciavarella, remains in prison. We speak with filmmaker Robert May, director of the Kids for Cash documentary, and Sandy Fonzo, mother of Edward Kenzakoski, who was incarcerated as a teenager as part of the kickback scheme and later died by suicide. “It’s just reopening wounds that have never healed,” Fonzo says of the commutation. She describes her son as “strong” and “proud” before his time in detention, but says “he came out broken” and never fully recovered. “It stole his youth, his childhood.”

• Israeli Forces Attack Gaza "Safe Zone" and Again Assault Kamal Adwan Hospital
• Family Asks Blinken to Launch Independent Probe of Israel's Killing of Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi
• "Nobody Is Going to Silence Ireland": Irish PM Blasts Israel's Closure of Dublin Embassy
• U.S. Officials Warn Turkey Is Preparing Invasion of Syrian Kurdish Autonomous Region
• Rights Groups Warn Mass Graves in Syria Could Hold Over 100,000 Victims of Assad Family
• Kyiv Says It Killed Russian General Responsible for Chemical Weapons Attacks in Ukraine
• 15-Year-Old Girl Guns Down Student and Teacher Before Killing Herself at Madison School
• HRW: 1,360 Children Ripped from Their Families at Border Under Trump's 1st Term Were Never Reunited
• NY Judge Rejects Trump's Attempt to Throw Out Felony Conviction
• Justin Trudeau Faces Deepening Political Turmoil After Finance Minister Quits 
• German Chancellor Olaf Scholz Loses No-Confidence Vote, Setting Up Early Elections
• Brazil Arrests Jair Bolsonaro's 2022 Running Mate as Coup Investigation Advances
• Amazon Workers in 3 Cities Could Be on Verge of Historic Strike
• "Uhuru 3" Receive 3 Years' Probation, Avoiding Prison, over "Russian Influence" Legal Saga

While Democratic candidates suffered major losses in this year’s U.S. elections, elsewhere on the ballot voters supported liberal positions. In the wake of tightening federal and state restrictions on abortion, historic ballot measures enshrining the right to an abortion passed in seven states, while other initiatives to raise the minimum wage and codify marriage equality also won by wide majorities. We’re joined by Chris Melody Fields Figueredo of the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center to examine the role of ballot measures, a form of direct democracy, in elections, and why this “powerful tool” may be at risk as conservatives flood elected office. “Because we are resisting, we are winning on these progressive issues, they are trying to take that power away from us.”

Shortly after Donald Trump was announced as the winner of the U.S. presidential election, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took to social media to enthusiastically congratulate him. Meanwhile, the Israeli military continued its violent assault on Gaza, killing multiple Palestinians in strikes on apartment buildings and homes. We speak to Palestinian American journalist Rami Khouri about what we know of Trump’s pro-Israel policies and how Trump beat Kamala Harris for the presidency. “Trump out-dramatized Harris, and that’s how he won,” he says.

Donald Trump’s performance in the 2024 election surpassed expectations, with the candidate winning the key battleground states of Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Georgia and picking up larger shares of more diverse segments of the electorate, including Black and Latino male voters. Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, a professor of African American studies at Princeton University, says the blame lies squarely on the Harris campaign, which refused to differentiate itself from unpopular incumbent President Joe Biden. “The problem here is with the leadership of the Democratic Party,” adds John Nichols, national affairs correspondent for The Nation. Nichols and Taylor discuss how Democrats “demobilized” young voters and grassroots organizers, to their electoral detriment. “Donald Trump, as a president who has very few guardrails, has the potential to take horrific actions,” says Nichols. For those seeking to oppose him, says Taylor, “There’s a lot of rebuilding that has to be done.”

In the Arab American-majority city of Dearborn, Michigan, Donald Trump beat Kamala Harris by over six percentage points, with third-party candidate Jill Stein capturing nearly one-fifth of the vote. During the primary elections, a majority of Democratic voters in Dearborn selected “uncommitted” over then-presumptive nominee Joe Biden, citing disapproval of the president’s handling of Israel’s aggression in the Middle East. “Uncommitted” voters continued to press the Harris campaign to shift its Israel policy as the election went on, but were routinely ignored. Democrats “made a calculation that they did not need Arab American, Muslim American and Palestinian American voters,” says Palestinian American organizer Linda Sarsour, who was in Dearborn on election night. We speak to Sarsour about the Harris campaign’s failure to secure the support of a previously key part of the Democratic base. “We are going to be in big trouble, and I blame that solely on the Democratic Party and one of the worst campaigns I have seen in my 23 years in organizing.”

When Donald Trump reenters the White House, he will be met with a newly Republican-controlled Senate, consolidating power in the hands of a party now dominated by supporters of Trump. We take a look at the results of down-ballot races for the Senate and House, and the possibilities for congressional opposition to Trump’s agenda with John Nichols, The Nation’s national affairs correspondent. Nichols notes that losing Democratic Senate candidates missed opportunities to highlight working-class voters and economic issues, likely to their detriment.

“This is a collapse of the Democratic Party.” Consumer advocate, corporate critic and former presidential candidate Ralph Nader comments on the reelection of Donald Trump and the failures of the Democratic challenge against him. Despite attempts by left-wing segments of the Democratic base to shift the party’s messaging toward populist, anti-corporate and progressive policies, says Nader, Democrats “didn’t listen.” Under Trump, continues Nader, “We’re in for huge turmoil.”

Donald Trump has been reelected president of the United States. Ahead of Kamala Harris’s expected concession speech, we speak to professors Carol Anderson and Michele Goodwin to discuss Harris’s historic campaign — and historic loss. “The Confederacy won,” says Anderson, a professor of African American studies at Emory University. “It paints a picture of what Americans are willing to embrace,” says Goodwin, a professor of constitutional law at Georgetown and an expert on healthcare law, who warns of the public health dangers of a second Trump administration and discusses the election’s implications for reproductive rights.