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 ... continua

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“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 ... continua

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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 ... continua

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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 ... continua

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Israel is continuing to bomb Syria a week after longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad was ousted from power. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, Israeli forces have launched over 800 strikes on Syria over the past week. Meanwhile, the Israeli government has approved a plan to expand illegal settlements in the occupied Golan Heights. “Israel is setting new precedents in the Middle East,” says Al Jazeera senior political analyst Marwan Bishara. “It’s acting so lawlessly against Syria, as a rogue state basically.” Bishara also discusses Israel’s ... continua

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We go live to Damascus for the first time since the fall of longtime authoritarian President Bashar al-Assad, where the country’s populace is still reeling from the power struggle that forcibly displaced more than a million people over the last months. Investigative reporter Sarah El Deeb joins Democracy Now! while looking over the joyous scenes in the city, but reports there is a marked “contrast between the sense of relief over the departure of Bashar al-Assad but then the sadness and the concern and no answers for where the loved ones have gone.” El Deeb ... continua

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The fall of the Assad regime in Syria continues to reshape the country and the greater Middle East. In Damascus, leaders of the armed group HTS have retained most services of the civilian government but vowed to dissolve Assad’s security forces and shut down Assad’s notorious prisons. “People have this sense of regained freedom,” says Syrian architect and writer Marwa al-Sabouni in Homs. Still, she warns oppression in the country has left the populace weakened and vulnerable. “Syria is up for grabs now. … We are completely disarmed.” In northeast Syria, ... continua

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President-elect Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened to abolish birthright citizenship, which he cannot do unilaterally because it is enshrined in the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. But his rhetoric has still alarmed immigrant rights advocates who are concerned about Trump’s mass deportation plans and how they would impact mixed-status families. Trump and his “border czar” Tom Homan have both suggested deporting the U.S. citizen children of parents who are undocumented. “No one is safe under Donald Trump,” says Illinois Congressmember Delia ... continua

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As Syrians celebrate the fall of the Assad regime after more than five decades of iron rule, many are grappling with the enormity of what has happened to their country, with nearly 14 years of war leaving much of the country in ruins, killing over 350,000 people and displacing 14 million more. Meanwhile, foreign powers, including Israel, Turkey and the United States, have carried out strikes across parts of the country, and Israel has invaded and occupied additional land in the Golan Heights. For more on the monumental changes underway, we speak with Syrian American ... continua

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“We needed to turn this page. … We’ve been under this inhuman condition for 54 years.” Following a lightning 12-day offensive, armed opposition groups have overthrown President Bashar al-Assad’s regime and his family’s five-decade rule in Syria. Assad has fled to Russia, where he has been granted asylum, while tens of thousands of political prisoners have been freed. The uprising was led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, a Turkish-backed group listed as a terrorist organization by the United States and the United Nations. The release of prisoners from ... continua

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