This post was originally published on Democracy Now!.

This post was originally published on Democracy Now!.

This post was originally published on Democracy Now!.

This post was originally published on Democracy Now!.

Democratic lawmakers repeatedly called on Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to resign as they confronted her on Trump’s immigration crackdown during a heated House Homeland Security Committee hearing Thursday. We speak with Congressmember Delia Ramirez, who reiterated her call during the hearing for Noem to resign and announced that she would begin taking steps for her impeachment.

The Department of Homeland Security is “operating as a criminal organization” under Noem’s leadership, Ramirez tells Democracy Now! “She thinks that she is above the law as long as Republicans are in leadership. … We can’t allow her to think this is a laughable matter as people are dying under her watch.”

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As the Trump administration expands its immigration crackdown nationwide, President Trump is simultaneously creating new pathways for wealthy noncitizens to obtain U.S. visas. Earlier this week, Trump officially launched a program allowing affluent visitors to fast-track permission to live and work in the United States. For a $1 million payment, applicants can receive a so-called Trump Gold Card, which promises to speed up U.S. residency applications “in record time.” The administration says it will also soon offer a $5 million “Trump Platinum Card” that would allow participants to avoid paying some U.S. taxes. The announcement comes as new rules published this week would require visitors from 42 countries in the visa waiver program to submit up to five years of social media history, along with phone numbers, email addresses and biometric data.

Shev Dalal-Dheini, director of government relations at the American Immigration Lawyers Association, says the changes show that “if you’re wealthy, if you can pay to play, then you’re welcome to come to the United States. But if you’re not — if you’re coming as a tourist, or you’re coming to seek humanitarian protection — then we’re going to make it much tougher for you to come here and really put a lot of hurdles along the way in the guise of security and vetting.”

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Award-winning Palestinian reporter Mohammed Mhawish, who left Gaza last year, joins us to discuss his new piece for New York magazine about Israel’s surveillance practices. It describes how Palestinians throughout the genocide in Gaza have been watched, tracked and often killed by Israeli forces who have access to their most intimate details, including phone and text records, social relations, drone footage, biometric data and artificial intelligence tools.

This all-encompassing surveillance system is “reshaping how people speak, how they’re moving, how they’re even thinking,” says Mhawish. “It manufactured behavior for people, so they shrink their lives to reduce risk, they rehearse what version of themselves feels safest to present, and that creates an enormous psychological burden.”

Mhawish also describes the terror of when his family’s house was bombed, killing two of his cousins and two neighbors in an attack he says was linked to Israeli surveillance of his reporting activities. “I was being watched and tracked,” he says.

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As Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. dramatically reshapes U.S. immunization policy, we speak with Dr. Fiona Havers, a former top vaccine expert at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who resigned in June.

Last week, Kennedy’s handpicked advisers on a federal vaccine panel voted against universal hepatitis B shots for newborns, reversing 35 years of CDC guidance that all newborns receive the vaccine within 24 hours of birth. The Trump administration also recently altered the CDC’s website to include false claims linking autism and vaccines, in keeping with Kennedy’s spreading of vaccine misinformation going back decades. CNN is reporting the FDA is also considering putting a “black box” warning on COVID-19 vaccines.

“This administration is causing a lot of confusion and is using, basically, the CDC to spread misinformation now about vaccines,” says Dr. Havers. She also discusses her decision to resign from the CDC and the chaos the Trump administration has caused at the agency, calling RFK Jr.’s changes a “hostile takeover” to advance “anti-science views.”

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Democracy Now! 2025-12-12 Friday

• Headlines for December 12, 2025
• From COVID to Hepatitis to Measles, RFK Jr. Is Gutting Vaccine Science: An Ex-CDC Expert Speaks Out
• "Watched, Tracked & Targeted": Gaza Writer Mohammed Mhawish on Life Under Israeli Surveillance
• Trump Gold/Platinum Card: Amid Immigrant Crackdown, U.S. Sells Visas for Up to $5 Million
• "A Force of Terror": Rep. Delia Ramirez on ICE Abuses & Her Push to Impeach DHS Chief Kristi Noem

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This post was originally published on Democracy Now! Video.

Democracy Now! 2025-12-12 Friday

• Headlines for December 12, 2025
• From COVID to Hepatitis to Measles, RFK Jr. Is Gutting Vaccine Science: An Ex-CDC Expert Speaks Out
• "Watched, Tracked & Targeted": Gaza Writer Mohammed Mhawish on Life Under Israeli Surveillance
• Trump Gold/Platinum Card: Amid Immigrant Crackdown, U.S. Sells Visas for Up to $5 Million
• "A Force of Terror": Rep. Delia Ramirez on ICE Abuses & Her Push to Impeach DHS Chief Kristi Noem

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This post was originally published on Democracy Now! Audio.

• U.S. Tightens Sanctions on Venezuela and Plans to Seize More Oil Tankers as Trump Threatens War
• Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer Won't Rule Out Regime Change in Venezuela
• 12 Die in Gaza Strip Amid Winter Storm and Israeli Ceasefire Violations
• Health Insurance Costs Are Set to Explode After Republicans Reject Extended Tax Credits
• Hundreds Quarantined in South Carolina as Measles Spreads Rapidly in Unvaccinated Communities
• Rep. Haley Stevens Seeks Impeachment of Health Secretary: "RFK Jr. Has Turned His Back on Science"
• Indiana Republicans Revolt Against Trump's Demand to Gerrymander Congressional Map
• Kilmar Ábrego García Reunites with Family After Judge Orders His Release from ICE Jail
• ICE Agents in Minneapolis Racially Profile and Violently Arrest Somali American U.S. Citizen
• "You Lied on the Record": House Democrats Grill Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem
• Justice Department Fails for Second Time to Win Grand Jury Indictment of New York AG Letitia James
• House Republicans Cross Aisle to Advance Bill Restoring Federal Workers' Union Rights
• Disney Agrees to Allow OpenAI's Sora App to Make Videos Using Copyrighted Characters
• Trump Signs Executive Order Blocking States from Regulating AI

This post was originally published on Democracy Now!.

This post was originally published on Democracy Now!.

This post was originally published on Democracy Now!.

This post was originally published on Democracy Now!.

This post was originally published on Democracy Now!.

This post was originally published on Democracy Now!.

This post was originally published on Democracy Now!.

This post was originally published on Democracy Now!.

Palestinians were battered with rain and freezing temperatures overnight as winter storm Byron hit the Gaza Strip. Soaked tents and makeshift shelters flooded, causing some mattresses to float and improvised roofs to blow away. An 8-month-old baby girl, Rahaf Abu Jazar, died from hypothermia. Moureen Kaki, an aid worker living in Gaza, says conditions at hospitals have not improved since the announcement of the so-called ceasefire. “It is not really a ceasefire,” she says. “It’s just a slower form of death.”

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The acclaimed academic and writer Mahmood Mamdani speaks with Democracy Now! about the rise of his son, New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani. The professor cites Zohran’s “refusal to budge, to soften his critique of the state of Israel” as a critical aspect of his rise to power. “His refusal to change his stance told the electorate that this was a man of principle, that affordability was not just merely rhetoric, that he could be taken seriously at his word,” Mahmood says.

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We speak with the acclaimed academic and writer Mahmood Mamdani, who has just released a new book, Slow Poison: Idi Amin, Yoweri Museveni, and the Making of the Ugandan State. Mamdani, who has taught at Columbia for decades, was raised in Uganda and first came to the United States in the 1960s to study. He and his family were later expelled from Uganda during Idi Amin’s dictatorship. The book “is about the reversal of the anti-colonial movement” in Uganda, says Mamdani. “The anti-colonial movement fought to create a nation out of a fragmented country … and I speak of slow poison as a gradual, piecemeal, step-by-step cutting up of the country so that you no longer have a single citizenship.”

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U.S. troops seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela on Wednesday, a major escalation that the Venezuelan government called “international piracy.” We speak with New York University professor Alejandro Velasco about the Trump administration’s intentions in the country, which has the world’s largest known oil reserves. Though the Pentagon has claimed the conflict is aimed at combating narcoterrorism, Velasco says the violence is actually an effort “to get rid of leftist governments in the region.”

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• Caracas Condemns U.S. Seizure of Oil Tanker Off Venezuela's Coast as "International Piracy"
• "He'd Better Wise Up, or He'll Be Next": Trump Threatens Colombian President Gustavo Petro
• Child Freezes to Death as Torrential Rains Flood Tents of Gaza's Displaced Palestinians
• Five Palestine Action Supporters Hospitalized While on Hunger Strike to Protest Imprisonment
• House of Representatives Passes $901 Billion National Defense Authorization Act
• NTSB Chair Says New Military Bill Would Make Washington, D.C., Airspace Less Safe 
• Federal Reserve Votes to Cut Interest Rates by Quarter Point
• 200+ Environmental Groups Demand Halt to Construction of New U.S. Data Centers
• Report: Wealthiest 0.001% Hold Three Times More Wealth Than the Poorest Half of Humanity
• Federal Judge Orders Trump Administration to End Deployment of Troops to Los Angeles
• Trump Launches "Trump Gold Card" Visa Program for Wealthy Noncitizens
• Trump Administration Abruptly Cancels Naturalization Ceremonies for Immigrants from 19 Nations
• At Least 33 People Killed After Myanmar Military Bombs Hospital
• Bolivia's Former President Luis Arce Arrested over Alleged Graft

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Democracy Now! 2025-12-11 Thursday

• Headlines for December 11, 2025
• Is War Next? U.S. Seizes Venezuelan Oil Tanker as Anti-Maduro Campaign Escalates
• "Slow Poison": Scholar Mahmood Mamdani on New Book About Uganda, Decolonization & More
• "My Advice to Parents Is Learn from Your Kids": Mahmood Mamdani on Raising Zohran, NYC's Next Mayor
• "Slower Form of Death": Despite Ceasefire, Israel Keeps Killing in Gaza as Winter Storm Floods Tents

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