‘Palestinians face far worse consequences every day,’ says Brad Lander after release from IDF custody
This story originally appeared in Common Dreams on Oct. 21, 2026. It is shared here under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license.
Democratic US congressional candidate Brad Lander said Wednesday that he was released by Israeli forces with a “warning” after he and dozens of others were detained while helping Palestinians harvest olives in the illegally occupied West Bank.
“Several dozen rabbis and participants harvesting olives with me are still in detention,” Lander, who is Jewish, wrote on social media. “They should all be released immediately. To be clear: Palestinians face far worse consequences every day. These detentions by the IDF are one more attempt to undermine Palestinians’ right to harvest their olive groves, travel on their roads, and live in their homes.”
Prior to his release, Lander posted a video from a bus that he said was “taking us away for processing” after settler security called the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) on the group harvesting olives.
“Let’s be clear: Occupation is a crime under international law,” said Lander, who is running to represent New York’s 10th Congressional District in the US House of Representatives. “Harvesting olives is not a crime under any law.”
I’ve been released from IDF custody with a “warning,” apparently because of my public profile (I told them I wasn’t even a congressmember yet, just a nominee).But several dozen rabbis & participants harvesting olives with me are still in detention.— Brad Lander (@bradlander.bsky.social) 2026-10-21T13:34:39.826Z
Lander was part of a group of around 80 American and Israeli rabbis and activists who were detained by the IDF on Wednesday as they helped Palestinians harvest olives from a grove near an Israeli settlement in the West
Supreme Court rejects Trump bid to halt care for incarcerated trans people
This article was originally published by Truthout on Oct. 21, 2026. It is shared here under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) license.
The U.S. Supreme Court has denied an emergency petition from the Trump administration, which sought a stay on a lower court’s injunction on a policy that would have denied gender-affirming care to federally incarcerated transgender people.
That policy was implemented by the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) after President Donald Trump signed an executive order in January 2025 that denied the existence of transgender people. The order also directed federal agencies to take steps that would be consistent with that view, and included specific instructions for the BOP.
“The Attorney General shall ensure that the Bureau of Prisons revises its policies concerning medical care to be consistent with this order, and shall ensure that no Federal funds are expended for any medical procedure, treatment, or drug for the purpose of conforming an inmate’s appearance to that of the opposite sex,” the order reads.
After the BOP conformed to the order, a group of incarcerated trans people who had been receiving gender-affirming care sued the administration. The group is being represented by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which argued that their Eighth Amendment protections against cruel and unusual punishment were being infringed upon.
A federal judge agreed, and, in August, ordered the policy to be blocked. The Trump administration challenged that finding, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld it, prompting Solicitor General John Sauer to submit an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court.
The court has regularly ruled against transgender people, allowing state bans on trans athletes’
Brazil’s Lula wins ‘historic victory’ against right-wing Trump ally Flávio Bolsonaro
‘Good day for Democracy’: Lula’s win in Brazil and Serbia ousting Vučić show strength of ‘people power’
This story originally appeared in Common Dreams on Oct. 26, 2026. It is shared here under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license.
“There is nothing inevitable about the far right,” said one former Obama administration official Sunday night as supporters of the left-wing Student List in Serbia poured into the streets of Belgrade and other cities across the Balkan country, celebrating their defeat of right-wing President Aleksandar Vučić, who has led the nation for nearly a decade and has been accused of corruption and autocratic rule.
The Student List’s victory coincided with that of Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who was also backed by a student-led movement that marched through Rio de Janeiro and other cities in recent weeks, as US President Donald Trump was accused of election interference on behalf of right-wing Sen. Flávio Bolsonaro, Lula’s opponent.
Both countries reported high voter turnout in the pivotal elections, proving, as journalist Anne Applebaum said, “that voters can alter what feels like a historical shift.”
In years of genocidehope came from the youngIn Serbia2 yrs of youth-led protest -integrity, unity, perseverance- brought changeToday that hope is a rainbowits far end in BrazilMay it shinewherever wounds run deepand the young are fighting the oldHumanity will prevail pic.twitter.com/jKA6n4EmFR— Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt (@FranceskAlbs) October 26, 2026
In Serbia, Vučić said it was “clear that we have lost the election,” as results showed his Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) had won about 105 seats while the Student List had won at least 135.
The Student List movement, officially registered by the Republic Electoral Commission as “Studentska lista—Studenti pobeđuju” (Student List—Students Win) began in November 2024 after the concrete
The one thing we know won’t happen on election day
It’s been 4,154 days since Donald Trump came down that golden escalator in 2015 to announce he was running to be president of the United States of America. Looking back, I think it’s safe to say that none of us fully understood then all that was coming our way.
After the 2016 election, we knew that the world as we knew it then was going to change, but I don’t think any of us knew how much. None of us grasped at the time how much of ourselves and our society we would lose over the next decade; if we had, I gotta believe we would have done more to avoid ending up where we’ve ended up now, but I could be wrong.
More than anything—as a journalist and media pundit, as TRNN’s editor-in-chief, but also just as a person in the world—these last 10 years have taught me the hard way to be extremely humble when it comes to making predictions about our political future.
From Trump 1.0 to Trump 2.0; from Covid-19 to January 6; from the war in Ukraine and the genocide in Gaza to the invasion of Venezuela; from the techno-fascists and (wannabe) trillionaire oligarchs taking everything over and shoving AI down our throats to the total, gangsterish dismantling of the administrative state and the rule of law in the USA; from ICE’s war of terror on the public to the US-Israeli war on Iran; anyone who tells you they saw all this coming is lying (to you and to themselves). And so is anyone who tells you they know exactly how things are going to shake out with