Headlines July 15, 2025 from Democracy Now!

In other news from Gaza, the news outlet +972 has revealed Israel is increasingly using grenade-firing drones to enforce evacuation orders. Israeli soldiers admitted to +972 that they deliberately targeted civilians so others will “learn” not to return to their homes. One soldier said using drones to target Palestinians was “like a video game.”

In news from Syria, a ceasefire has been declared in the southern province of Suwayda, where fighting between local Sunni Bedouin tribes and Druze armed groups killed as many as 100. On Monday, Israel launched airstrikes on Syrian forces being sent into the region. Under the pretext of protecting the Druze, Israel has repeatedly bombed Syria in recent months.

On Monday, Israel bombed areas of the Beqaa Valley in eastern Lebanon. Israel targeted what it claimed to be Hezbollah training camps.

During a meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, President Trump formally announced plans to send billions of dollars’ worth of weapons to Ukraine, including Patriot missiles. Trump said the U.S. would sell the missiles and weapons to NATO members, which would then send them to Ukraine.
Trump also threatened new sanctions and tariffs against Russia if it did not agree to a peace deal.

President Donald Trump: “But we’re very, very unhappy with them, and we’re going to be doing very severe tariffs if we don’t have a deal in 50 days, tariffs at about 100%. You’d call them secondary tariffs. You know what that means. But today we’re going to talk about something else. And as you know, we’ve spent $350 billion approximately on this war with Russia and Ukraine, and we’d like to see it end.”

In Sudan, a human rights group is accusing the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces of killing some 300 people, including children and pregnant women, when they raided and burned villages in the state of North Kordofan over the weekend. The devastating conflict in Sudan has displaced 13 million people and killed at least 40,000 people, though some estimates put that number at more than 150,000. Earlier this year, the Sudanese Doctors Syndicate said over half a million infants have died in Sudan due to malnutrition since the war broke out in April 2023.

Attorney General Pam Bondi on Friday fired the Justice Department’s top ethics lawyer, as well as at least 20 other Justice Department staffers that were linked to former special counsel Jack Smith’s investigations into Trump. Joseph Tirrell had been at the Department for 16 years and oversaw the ethics staff. He said he was not given a reason for his removal. Tirrell was tasked with advising Bondi, FBI Director Kash Patel and other top officials on conflicts of interest, disclosures and gifts.

Meanwhile, Reuters reports 69 lawyers, or roughly two-thirds of the Justice Department unit charged with defending Trump administration policies in court, have quit. Some lawyers told Reuters they could not go ahead with defending policies that were not “legally justifiable.”

The Pentagon has announced multimillion-dollar contracts with a number of AI companies, including a $200 million contract with Elon Musk’s xAI. The deal comes just days after Musk’s chatbot Grok unleashed antisemitic rants praising Hitler.

On Monday, activists gathered to protest in front of Palantir offices in multiple cities, including Seattle, Palo Alto, Denver and here in New York. NYPD arrested six people as demonstrators called out the tech giant for “turbocharging ICE deportations, complicity in the genocide of Palestinians, and expanding surveillance of every U.S. resident.” In Denver, former Palantir employee Juan Sebastián Pinto addressed a crowd in front of the company’s Colorado headquarters.

Juan Sebastián Pinto: “Francesca Albanese, an incredible representative for human rights at the U.N., an independent observer, who recently released a report accusing multiple American companies of participating in the prolongation of genocide in Palestine for profit. Now they are turning inwards. These are companies like — not only like Palantir, but IBM and Google, Meta” —

Audience member: “Cisco.”

Juan Sebastián Pinto: “Cisco.”

Audience member: “Amazon.”

Juan Sebastián Pinto: “Amazon, all of them contributing to creating these enormous dragnets that allow people to be targeted for their personal data, for their family connections, for their beliefs, in ways they don’t even understand. And they’re bringing these same kinds of targeting technologies here to America.”

We’ll hear voices from the New York City Palantir protest later in the broadcast.

On Monday, faith leaders including Bishop William Barber led demonstrations in 11 southern states to protest President Trump’s so-called big, beautiful budget. Protesters carried caskets to the local offices of Republican lawmakers to represent the tens of thousands of people who could die as a result of the bill’s cuts to Medicaid and other programs. Bishop Barber spoke in Memphis.

Bishop William Barber II: “This is the largest transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich since chattel slavery. … This slashing of services is going to cause economic insecurity and preventable deaths.”

The New York Times has revealed that UnitedHealth has launched an aggressive campaign to silence critics following the assassination of its chief executive, Brian Thompson, last year. In recent months, the health insurance company has targeted news outlets, journalists, a filmmaker, a doctor and others. In one instance, Amazon and Vimeo removed a documentary critical of the health insurance industry. UnitedHealth also reportedly threatened legal action against a Texas doctor who posted a TikTok video describing how she had to interrupt a surgery to take a call from the company about the patient’s insurance coverage.

Disgraced former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has formally announced he will run for mayor on a third-party ticket after losing to Zohran Mamdani in the Democratic primary. Mamdani, who is a Democratic Socialist, shocked the political establishment by receiving more votes than any other mayoral candidate in New York City primary election history. On Monday, Zohran Mamdani posted a link seeking donations under Cuomo’s announcement on X. Mamdani’s post quickly outpaced the number of likes and reshares on Cuomo’s original post. Current New York City Mayor Eric Adams is also running in November as an independent in what could be a five-way race.