Democracy Now!

Workers around the world rallied Wednesday to mark May Day, with many calling on the labor movement to stand in solidarity with the Palestinian cause. In New York, Democracy Now! spoke to demonstrators who demanded that U.S. unions apply political pressure for a ceasefire in Gaza and to stop their government's arms trade with Israel. Workers do have the power to shape the world," said Palestinian researcher Riya Al'sanah, who was among thousands gathered at a May Day rally in Manhattan.

A new report from Amnesty International finds the sale of U.S.weapons to Israel for use in its indiscriminate assault in Gaza is in violation of U.S. and international law. We speak to Budour Hassan, a Palestinian writer and contributing researcher to the report, who says the U.S. is complicit in the commission of war crimes" and must halt all arms transfer to Israel as long as Israel continues to fail to comply with international humanitarian law and international human rights law." We also discuss Israel's detention of thousands of Palestinians without charge, the inadequacy of U.S. human rights investigations into the Israeli military, and Israel's threatened ground invasion of Rafah.

We look at how university administrators have responded to Palestine solidarity protests by students with Frederick Lawrence, former president of Brandeis University and now the CEO of the Phi Beta Kappa Society and a lecturer at Georgetown Law School. Brandeis was founded in 1948 by the American Jewish community in the wake of the Holocaust and named after the first Jewish Supreme Court justice, the celebrated free speech advocate Louis Brandeis. Lawrence says the nationwide university crackdown on student protesters is a worrying violation of the principles of academic freedom. Provoking people, challenging people, asking difficult questions, making people uncomfortable, that's part of the price of living in a democracy," he says. He also notes that what constitutes a threat to campus safety should be narrowly defined. You are not entitled to be intellectually safe. You are entitled to be physically safe."

We get an update from the University of California, Los Angeles, where police in riot gear began dismantling a pro-Palestinian encampment early Thursday, using flashbang grenades, rubber bullets and tear gas, and arresting dozens of students. The raid came just over a day after pro-Israel counterprotesters armed with sticks, metal rods and fireworks attacked students at the encampment. The Real News Network reporter Mel Buer was on the scene during the attack. She describes seeing counterprotesters provoke students, yelling slurs and bludgeoning them with parts of the encampment's barricade, and says the attack lasted several hours without police or security intervention. "UCLA is complicit in violence inflicted upon protesters," wrote the editorial board of UCLA's campus newspaper, the Daily Bruin, the next day. Four of the paper's student journalists were targeted and assaulted by counterprotesters while covering the protests. We speak with Shaanth Kodialam Nanguneri, one of the student journalists, who says one of their colleagues was hospitalized over the assault, while campus security officers were nowhere to be found." Meanwhile, UCLA's chapter of Faculty for Justice in Palestine has called on faculty to refuse university labor Thursday in protest of the administration's failure to protect students from what it termed Zionist mobs." Professor Gaye Theresa Johnson, a member of UCLA Faculty for Justice in Palestine, denounces the administration's response to nonviolent protest and says she sees the events as part of a major sea change in the politicization of American youth. This is a movement. It cannot be unseen. It cannot be put back in the box."

Police Violently Crack Down on Gaza Campus Protests at UCLA, Dartmouth, UW and Others, This Is the Conscience of a Nation": Columbia Faculty Back Students as Campus Movement Continues, House Passes Antisemitism Bill, Which Critics Blast as Chilling", Catastrophe on Top of Catastrophe": Fears Mount over Rafah Invasion as Israel Refuses to Retreat, U.S. Cities, Hawaii Vote for Ceasefire Resolutions as Washington Continues to Support Israel, U.S. and Saudi Arabia Reportedly Close to Finalizing Security Pact, Colombia Cuts Diplomatic Ties with Israel as Global May Day Protests Foreground Gaza Genocide, Police Crack Down on Intensifying Protests Against Georgia's Foreign Influence Bill, Kenya Floods Claim Nearly 200 Lives as Mass Evacuations Ordered, Another Boeing Whistleblower Has Died, Arizona Senate Votes to Repeal 1864 Abortion Ban, United Methodist Church Overturns 4-Decade Ban on LGBTQ Clergy, Biden Cancels Another $6 Billion in Student Loans for Borrowers Enrolled at Shuttered Art Institutes

The Biden administration is claiming the International Criminal Court has no jurisdiction to charge Israeli officials for war crimes. This comes after rumors that the ICC may be close to issuing arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli officials over possible crimes in Gaza. The International Court of Justice has rejected a request by Nicaragua to order Germany to halt exporting arms to Israel, but the court declined to throw out the case. For more, we speak with human rights attorney and war crimes prosecutor Reed Brody, who says ICC charges would be a huge" development. Since Nuremberg, no international tribunal has issued an arrest warrant for a Western official. For decades, we've had this double standard where international justice has only been effective for crimes committed by leaders of developing countries or by enemies of the U.S. like Vladimir Putin," says Brody.

As protests continue on campuses across North America, we go to the University of Southern California, where the union representing about 3,000 graduate student workers at USC has filed an unfair labor practice charge against the school to end campus militarization and drop charges against students and faculty. The rampant violence that they inflicted on our workers" violates the National Labor Relations Act, says Margaret Davis, president of UAW Local 872. It was a clear act of retaliation because people were engaging in pro-Palestinian free speech, which they have a right to."

Tuesday's raid on Columbia University came 56 years to the day that police raided Hamilton Hall, arresting 700 students protesting racism and the Vietnam War. Democracy Now! co-host Juan Gonzalez, who was a student leader at the historic 1968 protest, says the violent crackdown on Columbia University and other campuses across the United States has refocused national attention on an unjust war," carried out by Israel with U.S. backing. No commencement in America will occur in the next month where the war in Gaza is not a burning issue," he says. He adds that the more diverse makeup of the protests today - led primarily by Palestinian, Muslim and Arab students - may have made school officials and police much more willing to crack down" than when it was a mostly white protest movement.

New York police in full riot gear stormed Columbia University and the City College of New York Tuesday night, arresting over 300 students to break up Gaza solidarity encampments on the two campuses. The police raid began at the request of Columbia President Minouche Shafik, who has also asked the police to remain a presence on campus until at least May 17 to ensure solidarity encampments are not reestablished before the end of the term. Police also raided CUNY after the administration made a similar call for the police to enter campus. Democracy Now! was on the streets outside Columbia on Tuesday night and spoke with people who were out in support of the student protests as police were making arrests. We also speak with two Columbia University students who witnessed the police crackdown. When the police arrived, they were extremely efficient in removing all eyewitnesses, including legal observers," says journalism student Gillian Goodman, who has been covering the protests for weeks and who says she and others slept on campus in order to be able to continue coverage and avoid being locked out. We also hear from Cameron Jones, a Columbia College student with Jewish Voice for Peace, who responds to claims of antisemitism, saying, There is a large anti-Zionist Jewish voice on campus, and it's also important to recognize the difference between anti-Zionism and antisemitism."

NYPD Raid Columbia & City College, Arresting 200+ Pro-Palestinian Protesters, Pro-Israel Counterprotesters Violently Attack Student Encampment at UCLA, U.N. Decries Widening Police Crackdown on Student Protests in U.S., Netanyahu Vows to Invade Rafah With or Without a Ceasefire Deal, ICJ Refuses to Order Germany to Halt Exporting Arms to Israel, Career Diplomat Resigns from State Department over Biden's Gaza Policy, Haiti's Transitional Council Picks Little-Known Ex-Sports Minister to Be New PM, Judge Holds Trump in Contempt of Court, Fines Him $9,000 for Violating Gag Order, It Depends": Trump Refuses to Rule Out Political Violence If He Loses Election, Florida's Six-Week Abortion Goes into Effect, Justice Department Moves to Reclassify Marijuana, U.S. Rowing Rescinds Honors for Olympic Legend Ted Nash over Sex Abuse, May Day: U.K. Workers Block Gov't Building to Demand Gaza Ceasefire

An Israeli airstrike in Gaza City on Friday killed the eldest daughter and the infant grandson of the prominent Palestinian poet and past Democracy Now! guest Refaat Alareer, who himself was killed in an Israeli airstrike in December. Shaima Refaat Alareer was killed along with her husband and 2-month-old son while sheltering in the building of international relief charity Global Communities. Shaima had recently lamented on Facebook that her father never got to meet his grandson, writing, I never imagined that I would lose you early even before you see him." Why is the state of Israel and its military targeting the families and relatives of those it has already assassinated and murdered?" asks Jehad Abusalim, a scholar, policy analyst and friend of Refaat Alareer and his family. Israel seeks to eradicate, to destroy the social environment that fosters resistance and defiance. This environment produced figures like Refaat."

As Biden administration and U.S. college and university administrators increasingly accuse peaceful pro-Palestinian protesters on school campuses of antisemitism, we speak with Brown University professor of Holocaust and genocide studies Omer Bartov, who visited the student Gaza solidarity encampment at UPenn alongside fellow Israeli historian Raz Segal. There was absolutely no sign of any violence, of any antisemitism at all," says Bartov, who warns antisemitism is being used to silence speech about Israel. There's politics, and there's prejudice. And if we don't make a distinction between the two, then what we are actually doing is enforcing a kind of silence over the policies that have been conducted by the Israeli government for a long time that ultimately culminated now in the utter destruction of Gaza."

Columbia University students began occupying Hamilton Hall shortly after midnight Tuesday as the university moved to suspend students who joined Gaza solidarity protests, and renamed it Hind's Hall, after Hind Rajab, a 6-year-old Palestinian girl killed by Israeli soldiers in Gaza in January. We look at how it was 56 years ago today, on April 30, 1968, that the hall was also the site of the historic student occupation by students who renamed the building Nat Turner Hall at Malcolm X University." We feature an archival newsreel about the 1968 occupation and our interviews with campus activists on the 40th anniversary of the action about how they were protesting Columbia's connections to the military-industrial complex and racist development policies in Harlem.

Nearly 300 peaceful protesters were arrested over the weekend as student-led Gaza solidarity encampments across U.S. university and college campuses face an intensifying crackdown. Democracy Now! spoke with Columbia University professors and students Monday as they were threatened with suspension but voted to continue the Gaza Solidarity Encampment, which began almost two weeks ago. Hundreds of our students have been disciplined in the past six months on unfair premises," said Sueda Polat, a Columbia student organizer who is studying human rights. We are willing to put a lot on the line for this cause. My right to education shouldn't come before the right to education of Gazans."

Columbia Students Occupy Hamilton Hall After School Suspends Students over Gaza Encampment, 100 Arrested at UT Austin Encampment as Campus Protests over Gaza Continue to Spread, Hamas Criticizes Blinken After He Claimed Israel Made Extraordinarily Generous" Ceasefire Proposal, Palestinians Worry Negotiations Are in Vain as Israel Continues to Attack Gaza, Coalition of Lawyers Call on Biden to Halt Military Aid to Israel, Biden Administration Claims ICC Can't Prosecute Israel for War Crimes, Journalism Professors Urge New York Times to Conduct Review of Reporting on Oct. 7 Attack, Russia Strikes Harry Potter Castle" in Ukraine, Killing 5, U.S. Warns Large-Scale Massacre" Could Occur in Sudanese City of El Fasher, Washington Post Reveals Indian Spy Agency Plotted to Assassinate Sikh Activist in NYC, Temperatures Reach 118 in Burma as Unprecedented Heat Wave Continues in Southeast Asia, Four Officers Killed in Charlotte as U.S. Marshals Attempt to Serve Warrant, UAW Reach Deal with Daimler Truck, Averting Strike

A new film about the once-thriving Palestinian city of Lyd, now known as the Israeli city Lod and home to Ben Gurion Airport, has begun screening in the United States. The film is a science fiction documentary" that depicts the Palestinian city both with and without the 1948 Nakba, when over 750,000 Palestinians were driven from their homes and villages. In Lyd, Israeli soldiers massacred hundreds of Palestinians in Dahmash Mosque during their takeover of the city. We use the story of Lyd to symbolize the story of the Nakba, the Palestinian Nakba, the demolition and expulsion of over 600 villages all across Palestine," explains Rami Younis, a descendant of Nakba survivors from Lyd. Younis and Sarah Ema Friedland, the co-directors of Lyd, join Democracy Now! to share excerpts from their film and discuss the vision behind their project.

Israeli police arrested seven rabbis and Israeli activists Friday at the Gaza border during an action that accused Israel of using starvation as a weapon of war against Palestinians. The delegation of Rabbis for Ceasefire carried bags of food to the Erez crossing between Israel and northern Gaza amid reports that famine is imminent for more than 1 million Palestinians in Gaza. It is incredibly important that those of us who have privilege use that privilege to call attention to this ongoing catastrophe," says Ayelet Waldman, one of the seven people arrested Friday. Waldman emphasizes that her mildly uncomfortable" arrest pales in comparison to the violence and repression encountered daily by Palestinian detainees. Right now what matters is stopping the starvation and murder of millions of people in Gaza," she says. The action was planned to mark the tradition of Passover, which celebrates the Jewish exodus from slavery in biblical Egypt. What does it mean to sit around a table and celebrate freedom when in our names a forced starvation and a mass murder is taking place?" asks our other guest, Rabbi Alissa Wise, a founder and organizer with Rabbis for Ceasefire and the former co-executive director of Jewish Voice for Peace.

Hundreds of activists aboard the Gaza Freedom Flotilla were blocked in Turkey on Saturday as they attempted to set sail for the besieged Palestinian territory with 5,500 tons of aid. Organizers say Guinea-Bissau withdrew its flagged ships under pressure from Israel and the United States. The Gaza Freedom Flotilla brings together a cross-section of humanity" in hundreds of community leaders from all walks of life to raise awareness of Israel's blockade of Gaza and rally support for its end. We are determined to stop this by direct action" where international governments have sadly failed," says one of the organizers of the Freedom Flotilla, the Palestinian American human rights attorney Huwaida Arraf. This is not the end. We are pursuing this legally and politically," she says about this latest minor setback." Arraf was part of the previous iteration of the 2010 Gaza Freedom Flotilla, in which 10 participants were killed in an attack from the Israeli Navy when it raided the ships in international waters.

Ceasefire Talks Resume Amid Expected Israeli Ground Invasion of Rafah, Israeli Airstrike Kills Daughter, Grandson and Son-in-Law of Acclaimed Poet Refaat Alareer, Police Arrest 275+ Campus Protesters as Student Uprising for Gaza Shows No Sign of Slowing Down, Protesters Outside Lavish WH Correspondents' Association Dinner Highlight Massacre of Gaza Reporters, U.S. Decides Not to Sanction Israeli Military as Officials Warn Blinken U.S. Weapons Used Unlawfully, NYT: ICC Could Order Arrest of Netanyahu for Israeli Crimes Against Gaza, Israel Arrests Rabbis Attempting to Bring Aid into Gaza; Gaza Freedom Flotilla Stalled in Turkey, Ukrainian Troops Retreat from East as Russia Escalates Attacks During Lull in Weapons Transfer, Arizona GOP Appoints Indicted Fake Elector" for RNC Post, Ohio Officials Investigating Police Killing of Frank Tyson, Who Died Days After Prison Release, Ex-Paramedic Involved in 2019 Killing of Elijah McClain Sentenced to 4 Years' Probation, Protesters March Across Australia to Demand an End to Epidemic" of Violence Against Women

We speak with journalist and author Ari Berman about his new book, Minority Rule, which details how the United States has since its founding privileged the rights and interests of a small elite over the needs of the majority. He outlines how, for the first time in U.S. history, five of six conservative justices on the Supreme Court were appointed by Republican presidents who lost the popular vote, and confirmed by senators elected by a minority of Americans. Berman says the court's makeup is the product of two skewed institutions: how we elect our presidents through the Electoral College and how we appoint U.S. senators - both of which are flawed because they violate one person, one vote, violating the principle of equal representation, and empowering white, rural, conservative and wealthy citizens at the expense of more diverse and progressive parts of the country. Our institutions are so antiquated, so undemocratic, that we need fundamental reform to change them, to democratize them," Berman says.

The Supreme Court heard arguments this week about the legality of Idaho's near-total abortion ban, which criminalizes the procedure in all circumstances unless the life of the parent is at risk. It's the first such case to reach the high court since the conservative majority overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. A key issue is whether a state ban can take precedence over the federal right to receive emergency care, including an abortion. The Biden administration argued that Idaho's law violates the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, or EMTALA. If the justices side with Idaho, it could have major implications for reproductive care and worsen racial disparities for healthcare in at least half a dozen other states with similar bans. People are going to die," warns Karen Thompson, legal director of the nonprofit advocacy group Pregnancy Justice. They are going to be bleeding out in hospital rooms. They're going to be dying from sepsis because doctors are not going to be able to make the choices that they need to make to give people the care that will save their lives in these emergency situations."

As a wave of student protests against Israel's war on Gaza continues to spread from coast to coast, schools and law enforcement have responded with increasing brutality to campus encampments. One of the most violent police crackdowns took place at Emory University in Atlanta on Thursday, when local and state police swept onto the campus just hours after students had set up tents on the quad in protest against Israel's war on Gaza as well as the planned police training center known as Cop City. Police used tear gas and stun guns to break up the encampment as they wrestled people to the ground, and are accused of using rubber bullets. Among those arrested were a few faculty members. We hear from two of the arrested professors: Noelle McAfee, chair of the philosophy department, and Emil' Keme, professor of English and Indigenous studies. We also speak with Palestinian American organizer and medical student Umaymah Mohammad, who describes how Emory has repeatedly suppressed activism on campus since the start of the war in October, and says law enforcement in Georgia work closely with Israeli authorities as part of a police training exchange. We no longer accept our tuition dollars and our tax money going to fund an active genocide," she says.

USC Cancels Commencement Ceremony Amid Mounting Campus Unrest, Police Crackdown on Emory and Other Schools Won't Deter Students Protesting for Palestinian Rights, Rafah Under Incessant Israeli Attacks Ahead of Anticipated Ground Invasion, New York Court Overturns Harvey Weinstein's 2020 Rape Conviction, SCOTUS Hears Arguments in Trump Presidential Immunity Case, Though Resolution Could Come After Nov., David Pecker Testifies He Helped Kill" Stories That Could Damage Trump Campaign, HRW Finds U.S.-Trained Forces in Burkina Faso Summarily Executed" 223 People, Haiti's Unelected Prime Minister Steps Down as Transitional Council Prepares to Rule, Indigenous Leaders Fight for Land Rights and Their Survival in Brasilia, Heat Wave Leads to School Closures Across South & Southeast Asia, EPA Finalizes Rules Curbing Power Plant Emissions, But Climate Groups Slam Carbon Capture Fantasy", FCC Restores Net Neutrality

Student protests calling for university divestment from Israel and the U.S. arms industry have rocked campuses from coast to coast. The nonviolent protests, which have been characterized as antisemitic" for their criticism of Israel, have been met with an intensifying police crackdown as university administrators threaten academic discipline and arrests. On Wednesday, local and state troopers violently arrested dozens at the University of Texas at Austin. Meanwhile, Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson visited Columbia University in New York City, the site of a high-profile student encampment and one of the first to be met with police action, where he called on university president Minouche Shafik to resign. We hear from two Jewish students involved in protests at their schools. Joshua Sklar, a graduate student at the University of Texas at Austin and an organizer with Jewish Voice of Peace Austin, says concern over campus antisemitism is insincere, and that, in fact, The people who are being targeted are Muslim students, Arab students, and especially Palestinian students." Sklar and Sarah King, a member of Columbia University Apartheid Divest who was arrested at the campus's Gaza Solidarity Encampment, also point out that a large percentage of protesters are Jewish anti-Zionists concerned about their safety from state repression. The threat is really coming from Columbia University, which has set the police on hundreds of its students who are entrusted to its care," says King.

Amnesty International has released its annual report assessing human rights in 155 countries. The report highlights Israel's assault on Gaza with evidence of war crimes continuing to mount, as well as U.S. failures to denounce rights violations committed by Israel. It also points to Russia's ongoing aggression against Ukraine, and the rise of authoritarianism and massive rights violations in Sudan, Ethiopia and Myanmar. We speak to Agnes Callamard, the organization's secretary general, who warns the international system is on the brink of collapse" and decries the failure of rights mechanisms and Israel's top ally, the United States, to rein in its unprecedented" assault on Gaza.

At least 320 bodies have been discovered buried in a mass grave at the destroyed Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis, just weeks after a similar mass grave containing up to 400 bodies was discovered amid the ruins of Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. Some of the bodies, which include children, medical staff and patients, appear to have been executed or buried alive. Meanwhile, Israel continues its bombardment of Gaza as its assault of the beleaguered enclave surpasses 200 days. Every single body that is being unearthed, you find tens of people rushing for the sake of identifying whether those are their relatives," says Akram al-Satarri, a journalist based in Gaza. Some of the people were tied. Some of the people had medical accessories on their hands, like the cannulas. And when they were unearthed from the ground, it was apparent that they were buried alive. Some people were tortured. Some of the bodies were extremely mutilated, which means that those bodies, some of their organs were taken by the Israeli occupation."

Biden Signs $95B in Foreign Aid, as New Report Details U.S. Weapons Transfer Violates Int'l Law, WFP Renews Famine Warning in Gaza, Where 70% of North Faces Catastrophic Hunger, Aid Groups Warns Lebanon on Brink of Imploding" After Months of Cross-Border Attacks, USC Students Continue Protest Despite Mass Arrests, Inspired by Gazans' Spirit of Resistance", Police Move In on Peaceful Gaza Solidarity Protests at UT Austin, Princeton, Emerson and More, House Speaker Mike Johnson Faces Heckling at Columbia After Calling for National Guard on Campus, SCOTUS Hears Case on Idaho Abortion Ban, Which Only Allows Emergency Care If Patient Risks Death, Three Arizona Republicans Join Democrats to Repeal 1864 Abortion Ban in State House, Arizona Grand Jury Indicts Mark Meadows, Rudy Giuliani in Fake Electors" Case, Iran Sentences Rapper Toomaj Salehi to Death for Supporting Popular Protests, TikTok Vows to Challenge Law Forcing It to Ban or Divest", 33 Climate Activists Arrested After Shutting Down Citigroup HQ

We speak with Carlos Fernandez de Cossio, Cuba's deputy minister of foreign affairs, about high-level U.S.-Cuban migration talks held last week in Washington. He says U.S. policies that expedite permanent residency for Cubans in the United States play a major role in the movement of people between the two countries, but adds that the main driver of migration is the decadeslong U.S. embargo. The economic conditions of the people of Cuba push them to migrate, and an important fact in provoking those conditions are U.S. deliberate policies of destroying the Cuban economy and make it unworkable." Fernandez de Cossio also discusses the 2024 election and policy overlap between the Trump and Biden administrations, Cuba's position on the U.S.-backed Israeli war on Gaza, recent protests inside Cuba over living conditions and more.

Hundreds of climate activists gathered at the global headquarters of Citigroup in New York on Wednesday to demand the banking giant stop financing fossil fuel companies. The protests come on the heels of a first-of-its-kind Earth Day hearing where environmental activists from around the world gathered in New York this week to condemn what they call Citigroup's environmental racism. Citibank is the world's second-largest funder of coal, oil and gas. They always say, 'We care about the planet.' ... But actions speak louder than words," says Alice Hu, climate campaigner for New York Communities for Change. Citibank has poured over $332 billion into fossil fuels since the Paris Agreements were signed in 2015." We also speak with Roishetta Ozane, a Black environmental leader from Sulphur, Louisiana, who has been leading the fight against the expansion of Citigroup-funded liquified natural gas projects in her community. She says she has seen the health impacts of such projects on her own family. I'm fighting not only for myself and my community, but for my children. And by fighting for my children, I'm fighting for everyone's children," says Ozane.

Months ago, a State Department panel urged the Biden administration to disqualify multiple Israeli military and police units from receiving U.S. aid over serious human rights abuses, including rape and torture. According to ProPublica, Secretary of State Blinken received the recommendation in December but has still not taken any action. [Israeli] Prime Minister Netanyahu, Benny Gantz, they have been publicly and fiercely lobbying against any proposed sanctions," says ProPublica reporter Brett Murphy. Gantz said he called Blinken personally and they talked about it. They want him to reverse course."

Thousands of Jewish Americans and allies gathered in Brooklyn on Tuesday for a Seder in the Streets to Stop Arming Israel" on the second night of Passover, held just a block from the home of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, to protest ongoing U.S. support for the Israeli assault on Gaza. Too many of our people are worshiping a false idol," said award-winning author and activist Naomi Klein, one of several speakers at Tuesday's rally. They are enraptured by it. They are drunk on it. They are profaned by it. And that false idol is called Zionism."

Hundreds of protesters were arrested in Brooklyn on Tuesday when Jewish New Yorkers and allies gathered for what they called a Seder in the Streets to Stop Arming Israel" on the second night of Passover. The demonstration, held one block away from the home of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, came just hours before the Senate overwhelmingly approved a $95 billion foreign aid package that includes about $17 billion in arms and security funding to Israel. At the core of the Passover story is that we cannot be free until all people are free," Beth Miller, the political director of Jewish Voice for Peace, told Democracy Now! The Israeli government and the United States government are carrying out a genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, over 34,000 people killed in six months in the name of Jewish safety, in the false name of Jewish freedom."

Senate OKs $95 Billion for Ukraine, Israel & Taiwan, U.S. Refuses to Back U.N. Calls for Probe into Mass Graves at Gaza Hospitals, Seder in the Streets: Hundreds Arrested in Brooklyn Protesting U.S. Arming of Israel, Crackdown Continues on College Campuses Against Pro-Palestinian Students, National Enquirer Publisher Admits to Catch and Kill" Effort to Help Trump Win in 2016, Supreme Court to Hear Arguments on Idaho's Near-Total Abortion Ban, Rep. Summer Lee Wins Primary: Opposing Genocide Is Good Politics and Good Policy", Ahead of Blinken Visit, China Condemns U.S. for Placing Missile Launchers in the Philippines, Argentina: Hundreds of Thousands Protest Milei's Plans to Cut Education Spending, Indian Elections: Modi Accused of Hate Speech After Describing Muslims as Infiltrators", FTC Bans Most Noncompete Clauses, Blood on Your Hands!": Protesters Decry Tennessee Vote to Arm Teachers, Justice Dept. to Pay $139 Million to Gymnasts over Mishandling of Abuse Claims Against Dr. Larry Nassar, Mumia Abu-Jamal Turns 70; Supporters to Rally in Philadelphia

Democracy Now! speaks with the great labor organizer and writer Jane McAlevey about the historic victory for Volkswagen employees at a Chattanooga, Tennessee, factory who voted overwhelmingly to join the United Auto Workers union. The plant will become the first foreign-owned car factory in the South to unionize. This win wasn't just a win - it was what we would call a beatdown," says McAlevey, who says the UAW's recent success is a result of direct democracy and smart, strategic organizing that could lead to the unionizing of Mercedes workers in Alabama. It'll be a massive change in the U.S. South." We also speak with McAlevey about her terminal cancer diagnosis and why she's going to fight until the last dying minute, because that's what American workers deserve."

Fifty-six years ago today, hundreds of students at Columbia University in New York started a revolt on campus, occupying school buildings and disrupting class to protest the school's ties to the Vietnam War and racism in New York. Democracy Now! co-host Juan Gonzalez, who participated in the 1968 protests when hundreds of students were injured by police and arrested, speaks about the rebellion and how it compares to Columbia's crackdown on pro-Palestinian protesters occupying campus today. What really strikes me about this response is the total flouting of any kind of democratic process by the current administration compared to what happened in 1968," says Gonzalez. These students are protesting a genocide that is occurring before the eyes of the entire world and that is being funded by U.S. arms. And if anyone has the right to rebel and to stand up against injustice, these students do."

Palestinian solidarity protests and encampments are appearing on college campuses from Massachusetts to California to protest Israel's attacks on Gaza and to call for divestment from Israeli apartheid. This week, police have raided encampments and arrested students at Yale and New York University. Palestinian American scholar and New York University professor Helga Tawil-Souri describes forming a faculty buffer to protect students, negotiating with police, and the ensuing crackdown that led to over 100 arrests Monday night. Uptown in New York City, the encampment at Columbia University is entering its seventh day despite mass arrests of protesters last week. In my opinion, the NYPD were called in under false pretenses by the president of the university," says Joseph Slaughter, professor at Columbia University. The university is being run as a sort of ad-hocracy at this point, the senior administration making up policies and procedures and prohibitions on the fly, changing them in the middle of the night."

More Bodies Uncovered at Nasser Hospital Grave as U.N. Warns of Intergenerational Trauma in Gaza, U.N. Commission Says Israel Still Has Not Provided Evidence of Oct. 7 Allegations Against UNRWA, Gaza Solidarity Encampments and Protests Burgeon Across College Campuses Amid Police Crackdown, PEN America Forced to Cancel Awards Ceremony Amid Fallout over Gaza Stance, Google Fires Another 20 Employees in Retaliation for Project Nimbus Protest, Prosecution and Defense Offer Opening Arguments in Trump's Hush Money Trial, Liberal Justices Challenge Oregon City's Homelessness Ban as SCOTUS Considers Key Case, U.K. Rams Through Plan to Deport Asylum Seekers to Rwanda Despite Major Legal and Rights Concerns, Two Mexican Mayoral Candidates Killed in One Day, Less Than 2 Months Away from Elections, Biden Administration Issues Rule Protecting Privacy of Reproductive Healthcare, Biden Announces $7B Solar Energy Plan, Including Thousands of American Climate Corps Jobs, Black and Indigenous Climate Leaders Organize Against Citigroup's Funding of Fossil Fuels, Students File Complaints Against Universities' Ties to Fossil Fuel Industry, South Korean Youth Activists Take Government to Court over Climate Crisis

President Biden has signed legislation to reauthorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act despite years of protest from rights groups and privacy experts who say the law is routinely used to conduct warrantless surveillance on millions of American citizens. The Senate approved the FISA bill on Friday in a 60-34 vote, and critics say it not only reauthorizes domestic spying but also dramatically expands its scope. It's an enormous amount of data that they're collecting and very few rules" limiting its collection, says investigative journalist James Bamford. He warns that personal information collected by U.S. intelligence is also shared with Israel, which uses the data to target people in Gaza. The U.S. has got to stop supplying all this data and the targeting materials," he says. Bamford's new article for The Nation is headlined The NSA Wants Carte Blanche for Warrantless Surveillance."

As the death toll in Gaza tops 34,000 Palestinians killed since October 7, Israeli forces and settlers have continued to ramp up violence in the occupied West Bank. The army killed at least 14 people during a two-day raid on the Nur Shams refugee camp near the city of Tulkarm over the weekend, and separately killed a Palestinian ambulance driver near Nablus as he was trying to reach Palestinians injured in an attack by Jewish settlers. Ramallah-based writer Mariam Barghouti says the Israeli military and armed settlers are trying to continue the illegal annexation of lands in the West Bank" and says Israel is deliberately targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure, just as in Gaza, to make life unbearable. She also responds to reports that the Biden administration is preparing to sanction the Netzah Yehuda battalion, a notorious unit within the Israeli military composed of ultra-Orthodox soldiers that is accused of carrying out human rights violations against Palestinians in the West Bank. It should not be against a select few. This entire regime is engaging in crimes against humanity, and it is U.S.-sponsored. It is being paid for by American tax dollars."

We speak with Mahmood Mamdani, a professor of government at Columbia who has spoken with many of the pro-Palestine protesters camping out on school grounds to show solidarity with Gaza and demand the school divest from Israel. He says there is growing outrage from faculty after the school's leadership called in the police to raid the Gaza Solidarity Encampment and conduct mass arrests, while administrators have started suspending and evicting some students. There has been no due process on the Columbia campus," says Mamdani.

Columbia University canceled in-person classes Monday as campus protests over the war in Gaza enter a sixth day. The protests have swelled after the school administration called in the police to clear a student encampment last week, resulting in over 100 arrests. Solidarity protests and encampments have now sprouted up on campuses across the country, including at Yale, MIT, Tufts, NYU, The New School and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Palestinian reporter Jude Taha, a journalism student at Columbia University, describes events on campus as an unprecedented act of solidarity" that student organizers are modeling on antiwar protests in 1968. She says Columbia University President Minouche Shafik's claims of an unsafe environment on campus are contradicted by the generally calm and productive atmosphere among the protesters, adding that the school's heavy-handed response, including suspensions and evictions, is being seen as an intimidation tactic" by organizers.

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The Gaza Collective Photo Essay project, organized by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), collected work from 14 Palestinian photographers who were each asked to share one image that captured the devastation of the Gaza Strip over the last six months. We speak with Charlotte Cans, head of photography at OCHA, about the project. It's one thing to say there's a war and it's horrible, and it's another thing to see an image of a child being pulled out from the rubble. It really hits you differently," Cans says of the motivation behind the project. It was really important to elevate the stories coming from Palestinian photojournalists, who are the only window into what is going on in Gaza."

As Israel continues bombarding the Gaza Strip, we speak with a Palestinian photographer who recently fled the territory with his family. Ahmed Zakot has been documenting Gaza for the last 25 years, and two of his photographs were just featured in a project by the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and published by Rolling Stone earlier this month in a piece titled Gaza's Carnage Through the Eyes of Palestinian Photojournalists." One of Zakot's photos shows a Gaza neighborhood lit up by Israeli airstrikes at night, while the second is of thousands of Palestinians fleeing their homes with their belongings in a scene reminiscent of the 1948 Nakba that displaced some 700,000 Palestinians from their homes. It reminds me [of] what my grandfather told me about this displacement. It's the same [that] happened since 1948 - now we are in 2024," Zakot says.

Columbia University President Nemat Minouche" Shafik on Thursday called on New York police to forcibly clear a student occupation on the lawn of the school, which had been dubbed the Gaza Solidarity Encampment, resulting in over 100 arrests. The protesters were demanding the Ivy League school divest from firms and institutions that profit from the Israeli occupation of Palestine, but Shafik ordered the raid a day after being questioned on Capitol Hill about ongoing pro-Palestinian protests on campus. The move caused outrage among students and many faculty, who decried it as censorship and a violation of academic freedom. The renowned professor and presidential candidate Cornel West, chair of the Columbia-affiliated Union Theological Seminary, joined students Thursday in solidarity with their protest and told Democracy Now! they represent the best ... of the human spirit," and lauded them for fighting in the face of domination and occupation and subjugation, and doing it with tremendous determination."

Israeli police arrested the internationally renowned feminist Palestinian academic Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian at her home in Jerusalem on Thursday on charges of incitement to violence. Shalhoub-Kevorkian, who holds both Israeli and U.S. citizenship, was suspended by Hebrew University last month after saying in an interview Israel was committing genocide in Gaza, though the university later reinstated her. We speak with anthropologist Sarah Ihmoud, who describes Shalhoub-Kevorkian as a mentor and inspiration to her and many others. We hold the Hebrew University of Jerusalem responsible for the arrest and detention because of its persistent and public repression of her academic freedom, which led directly to yesterday's arrest," says Ihmoud, who teaches at College of the Holy Cross and is co-founder of the Palestinian Feminist Collective. We see this as yet another example of Israel attacking Palestinians wherever they are, whoever they are. It underscores that no Palestinian is safe under Israel's racist apartheid rule."

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New reporting indicates that the Biden administration has approved Israel's plan to attack Rafah in exchange for Israel not launching counterstrikes on Iran. Israel is almost certainly going to respond to the Iranian strike in some way," says Mairav Zonszein, a senior Israel analyst for the International Crisis Group. Now it has the benefit of being able to dangle both threats": an invasion on Rafah that would heavily increase the death toll of Palestinians in Gaza, or an attack on Iran that would likely spark a wider regional war. While Israeli approval of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has drastically waned, Zonszein suggests that its military campaign shows no signs of stopping. Israeli society is largely a right-wing society. It is a society that has not spoken about or thought about Palestinians or the occupation except when it's forced to. And it's a society that has gotten used to acting with impunity."

Students at Columbia University and Barnard College in New York have set up dozens of tents to occupy the South Lawn of the campus to create a Gaza Solidarity Encampment. Democracy Now! spoke to some of the student-activists, who say they are occupying the space, despite the administration's threats of suspension and disciplinary action, as part of a demand that the Ivy League school divest from companies and institutions that profit from Israeli occupation. It seems like the repression is only getting worse and worse," says Maryam Alwan, a student-activist with Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine.

In nearly four hours of grueling congressional testimony before the Republican-led Committee on Education and the Workforce, the president of Columbia University, Nemat Minouche" Shafik, said she had taken serious action against accusations of antisemitism on campus in recent months amid Israel's assault on Gaza, including dismissing or removing five faculty members from the classroom, suspending 15 students and suspending two student groups - Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace. Shafik's visit to Capitol Hill is the latest in a series of hearings on alleged antisemitism at elite U.S. private schools. In December, similar hearings led to the resignations of the presidents of Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania. Our guests Nara Milanich and Rebecca Jordan-Young, both professors at Barnard College and Columbia University, respond to the televised hearings. What happened at those hearings yesterday should be of grave concern to everybody," warns Jordan-Young. What we got was a live performance [of President Shafik] throwing the entire university system under the bus." Adds Milanich, Antisemitism here is being used as a wedge. It's being used as a Trojan horse for a very different political agenda."