Day Laborer Dies Fleeing <span class="caps">ICE</span>: Family Mourns, Community Demands Answers
Family and community members are mourning 52-year-old Roberto Carlos Montoya Valdez, a father and grandfather from Guatemala who died while attempting to escape an anti-immigrant raid at a Home Depot in California last week. Montoya, a day laborer who had lived and worked in the United States for about three years, was struck and killed by a car while fleeing across a nearby freeway. Democracy Now! speaks with Montoya’s wife and daughter, Ana María Vásquez and Ana Victoria Montoya, at their home in Guatemala. “We want people to remember my dad in the same way we will remember him: as a loving, respectful, brave man,” says Ana Victoria. “He died because of these injustices, this persecution.”
At least two men have now died while attempting to flee the Trump administration’s massive expansion of federal immigration enforcement. Authorities have yet to confirm which agencies or groups were behind the raid. “If it was indeed a fact that Roberto Carlos was being chased by an individual into the highway, the community, the family, needs to know the truth. We need to, most of all, bring justice,” says Pablo Alvarado, the co-executive director of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network. NDLON is calling on Home Depot to release any video footage it has, and demanding an immediate and full investigation of the events that led to Montoya’s death.
Headlines for August 22, 2025
U.N. Declares a Famine in Gaza, Where Over 500,000 Face “Starvation, Destitution and Death”; Netanyahu Says He’ll Restart Ceasefire Talks While Proceeding with Gaza City Invasion; California to Hold Special Election for Redrawn Maps to Counter Texas GOP Gerrymander; Trump Praises Troops and Officers over Federal Takeover of D.C. Law Enforcement; ICE Agents in D.C. Coordinate with Police to Target Immigrants in Moped Traffic Stops; Federal Judge Halts Expansion of “Alligator Alcatraz” over Environmental Violations; State Department Is Vetting 55 Million U.S. Visa Holders for “Deportable” Offenses; Kremlin Rules Out European Troops in Ukraine, Casts Doubts on Putin-Zelensky Summit; Ukrainian Man Accused of Sabotaging Nord Stream Pipelines Is Arrested in Italy; SCOTUS Clears Path for Trump to Cancel Nearly $800 Million in NIH Research Grants; Trump Administration Ignores Congressional Directive to Fully Fund HIV/AIDS Program; Trump Administration Cancels Grants for Sex Education, English as a Second Language; Court Rules Alina Habba Has Been Unlawfully Serving as U.S. Prosecutor for New Jersey; New York Appeals Court Voids “Excessive” Civil Fraud Judgment Against Trump Organization; Eric Adams Adviser Indicted on Fresh Bribery Charges; Another Adviser Attempts to Bribe Reporter; FBI Raids Home of Trump’s Former National Security Adviser John Bolton
EXCLUSIVE: Fired State Dept. Official Speaks Out, Suggested Condolences for Killed Gaza Journalists http://www.democracynow.org/2025/8/22/state_dept
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<span class="caps">EXCLUSIVE</span>: Fired State Dept. Official Speaks Out, Suggested Condolences for Killed Gaza Journalists
Shahed Ghoreishi was fired from his position as a press officer for Israeli-Palestinian affairs at the U.S. State Department earlier this week. While no official explanation was given, Ghoreishi was involved in multiple departmental disputes over how to characterize U.S. positions on Israel’s forced expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza and the killings of Palestinian journalists. In a TV broadcast exclusive, Ghoreishi speaks to Democracy Now! about his firing and what it may tell us about the Trump administration’s future policy in Israel and Palestine.
“Commander-in-Cheat”: After Texas, Trump’s Redistricting Push Goes National
Democrats and Republicans are locked in a historic battle over congressional representation as Texas Republicans gerrymander the state’s district maps to flip five Democratic seats, at the request of President Trump. California Governor Gavin Newsom says he is fighting “fire with fire,” signing legislation to hold special elections for the public to approve a new gerrymandered map of their own. David Daley, a voting rights expert and the author of Antidemocratic: Inside the Far Right’s 50-Year Plot to Control American Elections, calls this a “gerrymandering Armageddon” that threatens to spread nationwide. “Donald Trump does not want to have an election fair and square,” says Texas state legislator Trey Martinez Fischer, a Democrat representing San Antonio. “He wants to be the 'commander-in-cheat.' He wants to cheat on America, cheat on democracy, steal these congressional seats.”
Smithsonian Head Lonnie Bunch in 2020 on Telling "Unvarnished" History, Meeting Trump & More
Doctor Denied Entry to Gaza as Friend Sends Desperate Starvation Messages
Top U.S. & World Headlines — August 21, 2025
Smithsonian Head Lonnie Bunch in 2020 on Telling “Unvarnished” History, Meeting Trump & More
President Trump said Tuesday the Smithsonian Institution was too narrowly focused on negative aspects of U.S. history, including “how bad slavery was.” Trump’s social media post minimizing the horrors of chattel slavery came after the White House ordered a far-reaching review of Smithsonian museum exhibitions in order to ensure they align with Trump’s interpretation of U.S. history.
In early 2020, Democracy Now! spoke with the newly appointed secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, Lonnie G. Bunch III, in Washington, D.C. Bunch was previously the founding director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. He shares stories of the work of building the museum and its collections, and the time when President Trump made a visit during his first term. “The museum has become a pilgrimage site, a site of resistance, a site of remembering what America could be and a site to engage new generations,” said Bunch.
“The West Bank Is the Prize”: Israel Approves New Settlements to “Bury” Palestinian State
Israel gave final approval Wednesday for a controversial settlement project in the occupied West Bank, sabotaging efforts at creating a future Palestinian state. The project has been on hold for over 20 years, largely due to pressure from previous U.S. administrations. The “E-1” settlement would see the construction of about 3,400 new housing units and would sever one of the last remaining territorial links between major Palestinian cities like Ramallah in the northern West Bank and southern cities including Bethlehem, as well as cut off East Jerusalem. “The West Bank is nearly 6,000 kilometers squared in size, and it has been the prize for Israel,” says Mariam Barghouti, Palestinian writer and journalist based in Ramallah. Barghouti says Israeli officials have blatantly expressed their intent to bury the prospect of a Palestinian state. “Israel is not engaging in just a war on Gaza,” she says. “It is engaging in a war of annihilation of Palestinians.”
Headlines for August 21, 2025
Israel Calls Up 60,000 Reservists as It Begins Gaza City Invasion; Israel Approves Settlement Splitting West Bank in Two and Further Dooming Palestinian State; State Department Fires Officer Who Expressed Condolences for Journalists Killed by Israel in Gaza; State Department Sanctions More ICC Officials for Investigating U.S. and Israeli War Crimes; Russia Escalates Attacks on Ukraine, Casting Doubt on Trump’s Call for a Putin-Zelensky Summit; Colombia’s President Warns U.S. Against Invading Venezuela; Texas House Approves Congressional Map Gerrymandered to Help GOP in 2026 Midterms; Appeals Court Clears Path for Trump to End TPS for Immigrants from Honduras, Nepal and Nicaragua; Trump Administration Officials Visit National Guard Troops in D.C., Drawing Jeers and Protests ; Trump Calls on Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook to Resign; Judge Rejects DOJ Request to Unseal Grand Jury Transcripts Related to Jeffrey Epstein; Missouri Community Defeats Secretive Project to Build Massive AI Data Center; “No Azure for Apartheid”: 18 Arrested at Protest of Microsoft’s Work with Israel’s Military
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