Democracy Now

Anti-trans attacks are a key part of Donald Trump’s campaign message, and Republicans are spending tens of millions of dollars in the last stretch of the presidential race to flood the airwaves and social media with political ads that focus on transgender rights. “Transphobia is not just a plank but a key pillar of the Republican Party,” says journalist Imara Jones of TransLash Media. “The Republican Party has become an extremist movement.” Jones is host of the investigative podcast The Anti-Trans Hate Machine, which just launched a new season about how paramilitary groups have weaponized transphobia to forge ties to Republicans and stoke political violence. “Being anti-trans is a signal for extremists as to who is on their side, and that signal then allows them to work together to push the country more and more to its extremes,” she says.

Vice President Kamala Harris made her closing argument Tuesday in a major speech at the Ellipse in Washington, D.C., scene of the Trump rally in 2021 that led to the Capitol riot. Harris described Trump as a tyrant who would shred the rule of law if given another four years in office. The Republican campaign, meanwhile, is still dealing with fallout from Sunday’s rally at Madison Square Garden in New York, where speakers made a series of racist and dehumanizing remarks about Puerto Ricans, Black people, Palestinians and more. For more on the state of the race with less than a week to go before Election Day, we speak with journalist, author and academic Marc Lamont Hill, who says despite Kamala Harris’s flaws, her message to voters is clear: “Donald Trump is worse.” Hill also discusses President Joe Biden’s role in the Democratic campaign, the exaggerated migration of Black men to the Republican camp and the threat of violence if Trump loses again. “No one is safe in a Trump presidency. No one is safe the day after a Trump loss,” says Hill.

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• Kamala Harris Rallies Tens of Thousands as She Delivers "Closing Arguments" of 2024 Campaign 
• Trump Insists Hate-Filled New York City Rally Was a "Lovefest"
• Kamala Harris Wins Endorsement of Dozens of Nobel Prize Winners, 1,000+ Religious Leaders
• Steve Bannon Is Released from Prison Ahead of December Trial for Defrauding Donors
• Floods in Spain Kill Dozens After a Month's Rain Falls Within 24 Hours
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The Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post announced that they would not be endorsing anyone in the U.S. presidential election this year, breaking decades of precedent and overriding planned endorsements of Kamala Harris. The decisions were ordered by the outlets’ multibillionaire owners, Patrick Soon-Shiong and Jeff Bezos. We speak with the Los Angeles Times editorials editor Mariel Garza, who quit when the paper killed the endorsement of Harris, and veteran Washington Post reporter David Hoffman, who stepped down from the paper’s editorial board in response. “We are right on the doorstep of the most consequential election in our lifetimes. To pull the plug on the endorsement, to go silent against Trump days before the election, that to me was just unconscionable,” says Hoffman. “This is not a time in American history when anyone can remain silent or neutral,” adds Garza.

We take a close look at Donald Trump’s campaign and racist rally at Madison Square Garden with filmmaker Marshall Curry, who attended the rally and also directed the short film A Night at the Garden, about the 1939 Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden, and notes, “The demagogues in 1939 used the same tactics that we see today.”

We speak with Ruth Ben-Ghiat, an expert on fascism and authoritarianism, who argues that Trump’s use of the hallmarks of “fascism and violence,” including dehumanizing rhetoric, profane and crude discriminatory language and threats to the “enemy within,” echoes the rise of midcentury fascist rulers like Francisco Franco and Adolf Hitler.

In the final week ahead of the presidential election, Republican Donald Trump’s campaign is facing widespread backlash after his rally Sunday at Madison Square Garden, where conservative comedian Tony Hinchcliffe called Puerto Rico “an island of garbage” and others leaned into racist and anti-immigrant rhetoric. We speak to journalist Jean Guerrero, who has published books on Trump’s white nationalist agenda and her own Latina and Puerto Rican identity. Trump is “seeking to restrict the notion of what it means to be American,” says Guerrero. Trump and his supporters are not only othering immigrants and people of color, she argues, but anyone who does not fit a narrow, right-wing view of citizenship. “If you are a liberal, if you believe in compassion and equality and freedom for all, you do not belong in Donald Trump’s America.”

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• Israeli Attacks on Lebanon Flatten Homes in Tyre and Kill at Least 60 in Beqaa Valley
• South Africa Files Documents with ICJ Providing Evidence of Israel's Genocide in Gaza
• Israelis Protest Outside Knesset to Call for Hostage Deal
• 1,000+ Writers Sign On to Israeli Boycott Pledge over Gaza Genocide, Occupation of Palestine
• Trump to Rally in Majority-Latinx Allentown Amid Fallout over Comic's Racist Puerto Rico "Jokes"
• CNN Bans Right-Wing Pundit After He Tells Mehdi Hasan "I Hope Your Beeper Doesn't Go Off"
• Philadelphia DA Larry Krasner Sues Elon Musk over $1M Swing State Giveaway
• FBI Investigating Arson Attacks on Ballot Boxes in Washington and Portland
• World Meteorological Association Warns Humans Running Out of Time on Climate

In the swing state of Arizona, President Biden formally apologized Friday for U.S. government-run Native American boarding schools, which sought to exterminate Indigenous culture by forcibly removing children from their families and placing them in institutions where their languages and customs were suppressed. “If the Democrats want the vote of Indian people, we want them to stand with us, not only on issues like the apology around boarding schools, but we also want them to stand with us in the solidarity that we have calling for a ceasefire in Palestine,” says Nick Tilsen, founder and CEO of the Indigenous-led NDN Collective. He says that while Biden’s apology could be the start of an “era of repair” between Indigenous peoples and the U.S. government, the apology must be followed by action. Among the NDN Collective’s demands is major investment in preserving Indigenous languages, the rescinding of military honors for U.S. soldiers who took part in the 1890 Wounded Knee Massacre and clemency for imprisoned activist Leonard Peltier. “America’s longest-living Indigenous political prisoner, who’s incarcerated right now at the age of 80 years old in a maximum-security prison, is actually a boarding school survivor,” Tilsen says of Peltier.

We speak with Iranian American policy analyst Trita Parsi about Israel’s latest attack on Iran on Saturday, when it bombed military facilities and air defense systems in the country. Iran said four soldiers were killed in the attack. Israel also struck air defense batteries and radars in Syria and Iraq. Israel’s assault this weekend came about four weeks after Iran launched a missile attack on Israeli military sites in response to Israel’s war on Lebanon and Israel’s assassination of Hezbollah and Hamas leaders, part of a series of actions between the two countries since the outbreak of the war on Gaza last year. “The Israelis are just continuously escalating the situation,” says Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. He warns that Iran’s relatively restrained responses to Israeli actions could encourage decision-makers in both Israel and the United States to “go all the way” and strike Iranian nuclear sites and other major targets. “This, unfortunately, is leading — much thanks to the approach of the Biden administration — towards a much larger escalation.”

More than 3,000 Israelis have signed an open letter urging “global pressure on Israel to force an immediate ceasefire.” The signatories say they are motivated by patriotic duty to stop the country’s war crimes in Gaza and beyond, but say the lack of sanctions from other countries has allowed Israel to continue to pursue war, abandon the hostages still held in Gaza, ignore domestic opposition and persecute Palestinian citizens of Israel without real cost. “Unfortunately, the majority of Israelis support the continuation of the war and massacres, and a change from within is not currently feasible. The state of Israel is on a suicidal path and sows destruction and devastation that increase day by day,” reads the letter. For more, we speak with Neve Gordon, professor of international law and human rights at Queen Mary University of London, one of the signatories of the open letter, who says international powers including allies like the United States need to “put their leg down and say enough is enough.” We also speak with him about Israel’s well-documented history of using Palestinians as human shields, including in its current war on Gaza.

Israel’s three-week siege of northern Gaza has killed at least 1,000 Palestinians. Most of the dead are women and children. On Saturday, Israeli forces withdrew from Kamal Adwan Hospital just one day after storming it, with health officials saying that soldiers detained dozens of male medical staffers and some of the patients. This comes as the Israeli government has banned six medical NGOs from entering Gaza despite the dire humanitarian crisis stemming from repeated displacements of the population, widespread disease, injuries from Israeli attacks, hunger and more. Some 43,000 Palestinians have been killed since Israel launched its war on Gaza last October, according to local officials, although the true toll is likely far higher. “The healthcare infrastructure is destroyed. Many of the local doctors have been either killed or kidnapped. The patients are left stranded; no one is providing any help to them,” says Mosab Nasser, CEO of FAJR Scientific, one of the six medical aid groups banned by Israel.

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• DOJ Lawyers Call on Merrick Garland to Investigate Israeli Killings of U.S. Citizens
• Israel Strikes Tyre, Killing at Least 7, as It Continues Its Assault on Lebanon
• Microsoft Fires Employees, Harvard Suspends Professors & Students over Gaza Solidarity Protests
• Trump's NYC Rally Filled with Explicitly Racist Attacks, Threats to Trump Critics
• Kamala Harris Appears with Beyoncé, Michelle Obama as She Rallies Voters Ahead of Nov. 5
• WaPo and L.A. Times Face Backlash as Billionaire Owners Block Editorial Push to Endorse Kamala Harris
• Virginia Judge Blocks GOP Voter Purge Less Than 2 Weeks Before Election
• "Atrocious Crimes": U.N. Warns of Mounting Bloodshed in Sudan's Gezira State
• Uruguay Headed to Runoff After Center-Left Candidate Orsi Falls Short of 50% of Votes
• Evo Morales Blames Bolivian President Luis Arce for Apparent Assassination Attempt
• Biden Apologizes for U.S.-Run Boarding Schools That Abused and Killed Native Children