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by Yossi Melman and Dan Raviv for ProPublica ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as theyre published. David Barnea, the director of the Mossad for some of the most remarkable successes in its storied history, never intended to be an intelligence officer. As a young man, he served as a team leader in the Israeli militarys most elite commando unit and then came to New York to study for a career in business.After earning a masters degree in finance at Pace University, he took jobs at an Israeli investment bank and then a brokerage firm, the first steps toward a career in which the biggest danger was an unexpected shift in the worlds financial markets.Barneas world was jolted in November 1995 when an extremist right-wing Israeli assassinated Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin at a peace rally. Rabin had signed the 1993 Oslo Accords with Yasser Arafat, leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization, and was pushing for a two-state solution to decades of conflict between Arabs and Jews. The Rabin assassination shocked him like many other Israelis, recalled David Meidan, a retired senior Mossad operative considered Barneas mentor. He said the killing prompted Barnea, at age 30, to rethink everything and look for some meaning in his life. A friend suggested he apply to the Mossad, and after passing the required physical and psychological tests, he was accepted into the agencys trainee program.Barnea showed a knack for spotting, recruiting and running agents who would work for the Mossad inside countries hostile to Israel. A year after he joined the spy agency, he became a case officer in its Tzomet, or Junction, division.Meidan said Barnea had the qualities essential for success in the role: emotional intelligence and empathy. His foreign postings included years in a European capital, where Mossad colleagues said he proved to be charming, focused and determined.The latter qualities were evident from an early age. Barnea was born in Ashkelon, Israel, in 1965. His father, Yosef Brunner, left Hitlers Germany in 1933 for British-ruled Palestine and eventually served as a lieutenant colonel in the early years of the Israel Defense Forces. At age 14, Barneas parents enrolled him in a military boarding school. He became a fitness fanatic and still runs or cycles when he has the chance. When it came time to do his required military service, Barnea won a coveted spot in the Sayeret Matkal, an elite commando unit frequently dispatched across Israels borders to collect intelligence or carry out covert attacks or sabotage.In the 1990s, when he began his career as a spy, the Mossads main focus was on Palestinian terrorism. Barnea, who speaks Arabic, proved adept at running agents in and around the PLO and other organizations.He rose through the ranks and was part of the Mossads leadership when it decided to make gathering intelligence on Iran its top priority in 2002. The shift reflected growing concern about Irans secretive nuclear program and its ties with powerful regional proxies such as Hezbollah.In 2019, Barnea was named deputy head of the Mossad and chief of its operations directorate. Within the agency, he stood out as an advocate of aggressive operations aimed at Iranian scientists, nuclear sites and Irans growing arsenal of missiles that could reach Israel.In November 2020, Barnea oversaw the operation that assassinated Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, a physicist and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps general who was in charge of the military aspects of Irans nuclear program. After months of surveillance by non-Israeli agents, the Mossad was able to figure out Fakhrizadehs travel patterns. A plan was hatched to park a Nissan pickup truck by the side of the road and install a unique remote-controlled machine gun on its bed. The weapon had a sophisticated camera and artificial intelligence software that would identify Fakhrizadeh and shoot only at him.The operation was controlled from Mossad headquarters, north of Tel Aviv, where Barnea was joined in the command center by his boss, agency director Yossi Cohen. They could see the nuclear physicists car approaching, and then the gun opened fire, hitting Fakhrizadeh several times while sparing his wife, who was sitting next to him.Seven months later, Barnea was appointed head of the Mossad by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He is the 13th man to hold the job.In the years that followed, Barnea built on the strengths of the Fakhrizadeh operation, recruiting scores of non-Israeli agents for operations inside Iran. Those agents played crucial roles in the June airstrikes against Irans nuclear program, identifying the locations of nuclear scientists homes and knocking out Irans air defenses.A colleague in the Mossads top ranks, Haim Tomer, said that Barnea may not be as strategic, charismatic or flamboyant as some of his predecessors, but he has proved himself to be a top-tier operator.The Mossads successes under Barnea include the exploding pagers that decimated Hezbollah, the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists and a Hamas political leader who was visiting Tehran, and the commando raids that destroyed Irans air defenses and allowed Israel to strike the nuclear facilities without losing a plane.Those missions represent a remarkable turnaround for Israelis in the intelligence community, many of whom felt they had failed the nation after the Oct. 7, 2023, attack in which Hamas killed more than 1,200 Israelis and kidnapped 251. That sense of shame was felt in every agency, even ones like the Mossad that were not chiefly responsible for monitoring Hamas.The Mossads directors generally serve for five years, and so Barnea, or Dadi as he is known to his staff, may be replaced by the middle of 2026; but his term could be extended as recognition of his successes.These are historic days for the people of Israel, Barnea told a gathering of operatives at Mossad headquarters after the brief war in June, where he referred to his close cooperation with the CIA. The Iranian threat, which has endangered our security for decades, has been significantly thwarted thanks to extraordinary cooperation between the Israel Defense Forces, which led the campaign, and the Mossad, which operated alongside together with the support of our ally, the United States. Yossi Melman is a commentator on Israeli intelligence and a documentary filmmaker. Dan Raviv is a former CBS correspondent and host of The Mossad Files podcast. They are the co-authors of Spies Against Armageddon: Inside Israels Secret Wars.

by Yossi Melman and Dan Raviv for ProPublica ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as theyre published. In the early morning hours of June 13, a commando team led by a young Iranian, S.T., settled into position on the outskirts of Tehran. The target was an anti-aircraft battery, part of the umbrella of radars and missiles set up to protect the capital and its military installations from aerial attack.Across the country, teams of Israeli-trained commandos recruited from Iran and neighboring nations were preparing to attack Iranian defenses from within.As described by their handlers, their motives were a mix of personal and political. Some were seeking revenge against a repressive, clerical regime that had imposed strict limits on political expression and daily life. Others were enticed by cash, the promise of medical care for family members or opportunities to attend college overseas.The attack had been planned for more than a year by the Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service. Just nine months earlier, the spy agency had shocked the world with its technical prowess executing a plot hatched in 2014 by its director at the time, Tamir Pardo, that crippled Hezbollah by detonating pagers booby-trapped with tiny but lethal amounts of explosives. According to Hezbollah, the blasts killed 30 fighters and 12 civilians, including two children, and injured more than 3,500. At 3 a.m. on June 13, S.T. and a foreign legion of roughly 70 commandos opened fire with drones and missiles on a carefully chosen list of anti-aircraft batteries and ballistic missile launchers. (His handlers in the Mossad would only tell us his initials.) The next day, another group of Iranians and others recruited from the region launched a second wave of attacks inside Iran.In detailed interviews, 10 present and former Israeli intelligence officials described the commando raids and a wealth of previously undisclosed details of the countrys decadeslong covert effort to prevent Iran from building a nuclear bomb. They requested anonymity so they could speak freely.The officials said the commando attacks were pivotal in Junes airstrikes, allowing Israels air force to carry out wave after wave of bombing runs without losing a single plane. Informed by intelligence gathered by the Mossads agents on the ground, Israeli warplanes pounded nuclear facilities, destroyed around half of Irans 3,000 ballistic missiles and 80% of its launchers, and fired missiles at the bedrooms of Iranian nuclear scientists and military commanders.As they had with the pagers, Israeli spies took advantage of their ability to penetrate their adversarys communications systems. Early in the aerial attack, Israeli cyberwarriors sent a fake message to Irans top military leaders, luring them to a phantom meeting in an underground bunker that was then demolished in a precision strike. Twenty were killed, including three chiefs of staff.The strategic map of the region has been dramatically redrawn since the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks in which Hamas killed more than 1,200 Israelis and took 251 hostages. Public attention, particularly in recent weeks, has focused on Israels retaliation against Gaza, which has caused scores of thousands of deaths and a deepening famine that has been globally condemned. The secret war between Israel and Iran has attracted far less public attention but has also played a significant role in the regions changing balance of power.In 2018, Israeli-trained operatives broke into an unguarded Tehran warehouse and used high-temperature plasma cutters to crack safes containing drawings, data, computer disks and planning books. The material, weighing over 1,000 pounds, was loaded onto two trucks and driven into neighboring Azerbaijan. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu displayed the material at a press conference in Tel Aviv and said it proved Iran had been lying about its nuclear intentions.Two years later, the Mossad killed one of Irans top physicists, using artificial intelligence-enhanced facial recognition to direct a remotely operated machine gun parked on a roadside near his weekend house.In the lead-up to Junes air attacks, according to Israeli planners, they arranged for unwitting truck drivers to smuggle into Iran tons of metallic equipment the parts for the weapons used by the commando teams.Israeli officials said these operations reflect a fundamental shift in the Mossads approach that began about 15 years ago. The agents in Iran who broke into the safes, set up the machine guns, blasted the air defenses and watched the scientists apartments were not Israelis. All were either Iranians or citizens of third countries, according to senior Israeli officials with direct knowledge of the operations. For years, such missions in Iran had been the exclusive work of Israeli field operatives. But officials said the growing unpopularity of the Iranian regime has made it much easier to attract agents.S.T. was one of them. Israeli officials said he grew up in a working-class family in a small town near Tehran. He enrolled in college and was living a seemingly ordinary student life, when he and several classmates were arrested by Irans feared Basij militia and taken to a detention center where they were tortured with electric shocks and brutally beaten.S.T. and his friends were ultimately released, but the experience left him enraged and eager for revenge. Soon after, a relative living overseas provided his name to an Israeli spy whose job was to identify disaffected Iranians. Messages were exchanged via an encrypted phone app, and S.T. accepted a free trip to a neighboring country.A case officer from the Mossad invited him to work as a covert operative against Iran. He agreed, asking only that Israel pledge to take care of his family if anything went wrong. (Iran summarily executes anyone caught spying for foreign countries, especially Israel.)He was trained for months outside of Iran by Israeli weapons specialists. Just before the attack was to begin, he and his small team slipped back into the country to play their role in one of the biggest and most complex military operations in Israels history.The Origins of a Secret WarThe Mossad made Iran its top priority in 1993 after Israelis and Palestinians signed the Oslo Accords on the White House lawn, seemingly ending decades of conflict. Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, center-right flanked by, from left, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, Israeli negotiator Joel Singer, President Bill Clinton and Yasser Arafat, chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization signs the Oslo Accords in 1993. The agreement sought to end decades of conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians. (J. David Ake/AFP via Getty Images) Israel had long had a complicated relationship with Iran. For decades, it maintained a strategic alliance with the shah of Iran. But Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and the Islamists who overthrew the monarch in 1979 described the Jewish state as a cancerous tumor that should be excised from the Middle East.Israels strategy is, in effect, to protect its nuclear monopoly in the region. It does not publicly acknowledge its arsenal, estimated at more than 90 warheads. The Israeli air force destroyed Iraqs nuclear reactor in 1981 and a Syrian reactor under construction in 2007.After the Iraq airstrike, Israels prime minister, Menachem Begin, declared that his country had a right to prevent neighbors from building their own bomb. We cannot allow a second Holocaust, he said. Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, left, in 1981 with Ariel Sharon, who at the time was the defense minister and would become prime minister in 2001. Begin said that his country had a right to prevent its neighbors from building a nuclear bomb. (STF/AFP via Getty Images) A few years later, Iran began researching nuclear weapons, drawing on the expertise of a Pakistani engineer, Abdul Qadeer Khan, who had once worked for a Dutch company that produced enriched uranium.Shabtai Shavit, the Mossad director whose term ended in 1996, said Israel was aware of Khans travels in the region but did not initially detect his crucial role in Irans program. We didnt fully understand his intentions, Shavit told us in an interview before his death in 2023. If we had known, I would have ordered my combatants to kill him. I believe that could have reversed the course of history.According to United Nations nuclear inspectors, the Iranians used blueprints provided by Khan to begin building the centrifuges needed to enrich uranium they purchased from Pakistan, China and South Africa.In 2000, Shavits successor drew up plans for the Mossads special missions unit known as Kidon Hebrew for bayonet to assassinate Khan while he was visiting what one official described as a Southeast Asian country. The mission was shelved when Pakistans president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, told President Bill Clinton he would rein in Khans global activities. Iran turned to Abdul Qadeer Khan, a Pakistani engineer who had worked for a Dutch company that produced enriched uranium, as Iran began researching nuclear weapons. (Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images) That promise wasnt kept.That same year, the Mossad discovered that the Iranians were building a secret enrichment plant near Natanz, a city about 200 miles south of Tehran. The spy agency tipped off an Iranian dissident group, which went public with the revelation two years later.Mossad veterans said that operatives likely Israelis posing as Europeans installing or servicing equipment walked around Natanz wearing shoes with double soles that collected dust and soil samples. Testing eventually revealed that the Iranian-made centrifuges were enriching uranium well beyond the 5% level needed for a nuclear power plant. (Medical isotopes use 20% enriched uranium; bombs need 90%.)In 2001, Israel elected Gen. Ariel Sharon, famous for his belligerent toughness, as prime minister. The following year, Sharon named one of his favorite generals, Meir Dagan, as director of the Mossad. Both had a reputation for pushing boundaries and defying norms.Dagan, who led the Mossad from 2002 to 2011, decided to make stopping Irans nuclear program the spy agencys main goal.Like Begin, who was born in Poland, Dagan was haunted by the Holocaust. Heads of foreign intelligence agencies recalled visiting his office and seeing a photograph of Nazi soldiers brutalizing Dagans grandfather on the wall. Explaining the photos meaning at an anti-Netanyahu rally in 2015, he said: I swore that that would never happen again. I hope and believe that I have done everything in my power to keep that promise. Meir Dagan, who led the Mossad from 2002 to 2011, had this photograph of Nazi soldiers brutalizing his grandfather on the wall of his office. He explained its meaning in 2015: I swore that that would never happen again. I hope and believe that I have done everything in my power to keep that promise. (Yad Vashem) Under Dagans leadership, the Mossad organized an array of covert operations to slow the Iranian program. Israeli agents began assassinating Irans nuclear scientists, sending operatives on motorcycles to attach small bombs to cars in traffic.The Art of RecruitmentDagan took pride in the Mossads growing ability to recruit Iranians and others for covert operations inside Iran.One key to the spy agencys success is the ethnic composition of Iran. Israeli officials noted in interviews that roughly 40% of the countrys population of 90 million is made up of ethnic minorities: Arabs, Azeris, Baluchis, Kurds and others.Shortly before he died in 2016, Dagan told us that the best pool for recruiting agents inside Iran lies within the countrys ethnic and human mosaic. Many of them oppose the regime. Some even hate it.Present and former officials said Dagan championed the shift to relying on foreign-born agents. In the early years of the effort to penetrate Iran, the spy agency had relied mostly on Israelis, known to Mossad insiders as blue and white a reference to the colors of Israels flag.Under Dagan, the Mossads leadership came to believe they could find highly effective agents in Iran or among Iranian exiles and others living in one of the seven countries that border it. Meir Dagan, seen in an undated photograph, was a proponent of using foreign-born agents for the Mossads missions against Iran. (Yaakov Saar/GPO/Getty Images) Present and former officials said the recruits fell into two categories. Some gravitated to the realm of traditional espionage, gathering intelligence and passing it on to their handler. Others expressed a willingness to carry out violent operations, including attacks on nuclear scientists.Not surprisingly, given the risk of summary execution, many had initial doubts.Convincing someone to betray their country is no small feat, said a former senior Mossad officer who oversaw units handling foreign agents. Its a process of gradual erosion. You start with a minor request, an insignificant task. Then another. These are trial runs. If they perform well, you assign them something larger, more meaningful. And if they refuse well, by then you have leverage: pressure, threats, even blackmail.Spymasters, he said, try to avoid threats or coercion. Its better to guide them to a place where they act willingly where they take the first step themselves, the former officer said.The most critical element is trust. Your agent must be loyal and emotionally tied to you. Like a soldier who charges forward despite the danger, trusting his comrades, so it is with agents. He goes on the mission because he trusts his handler and feels a deep sense of responsibility toward him.Most of the people who agreed to work for Israel expected payment for the risks they were taking. But the present and former officials said the driving force for people who agree to spy on their own country is often more primal.Financial reward is, of course, important, the former Mossad officer said. But people are also driven by emotion hatred, love, dependence, revenge. Yet it always helps when the recruits motives are supported by some kind of tangible benefit: not necessarily a direct payment but some type of indirect help.This is how S.T. was recruited.His handlers said he was consumed by hatred toward the regime and what had been done to him by the Basij militia. But what finally pushed him to cooperate was the Mossads offer to arrange medical treatment unavailable in Iran for a relative.For decades, medical care has been one of the Mossads signature recruitment methods. Israeli intelligence has links with doctors and clinics in several countries, and arranging surgery and various therapies was also used to penetrate Palestinian extremist groups. It has featured even more in approaches to Iranians, in the hope of persuading them to help Israel.The Mossad also uses the internet to attract agents, creating websites and publishing social media posts aimed at Iranians that offer to help people suffering from life-threatening illnesses such as cancer. These posts include phone numbers or encrypted contact options.Israeli intelligence can mobilize its international network to find trusted doctors or clinics places that wont ask too many questions. The Mossad typically pays the bills directly and discreetly.Another incentive used to entice potential spies is higher education in a foreign country. Based on years of research and experience, Mossad recruiters know that Iranians crave access to quality education. Even the fundamentalist religious regime of the current supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, encourages academic advancement. This makes offers of placement in Western universities, or boarding schools for teenagers, an especially compelling tool.Once a candidate is identified, the Mossad sets up an initial meeting in an accessible location often in neighboring countries such as Turkey, Armenia or Azerbaijan, which are relatively easy for Iranians to enter. Other options include destinations in Southeast Asia like Thailand and India that allow Iranian citizens to apply online for business, medical or tourist visas.Candidates undergo a series of meetings and psychological evaluations. Psychologists observe their behavior, often from behind one-way mirrors. They fill out detailed questionnaires about their personal history, including intimate details about their family life, and are questioned by a polygraph examiner.Agents are regularly retested after they begin working in the field. Every action, whether minor or major, is followed by another lie detector test to confirm continued loyalty.They receive extensive training and supervision. To avoid arousing suspicion, they are told what to wear, where to buy their clothing, what cars to drive, and even how, when and where to deposit the money they receive.The agent-handler relationship is critical, as a former Mossad operative who ran agents explained. In many cases, the handler is simultaneously confessor, babysitter, psychologist, spiritual mentor and surrogate family member.The goal is to build a bond so strong that the agent feels safe and supported comfortable enough to share even their deepest personal secrets, including their sexual relationships.Any and all information about the agent can be valuable to the Mossad, either as a red flag marking a potential vulnerability to Irans secret police or another aspect of the agents life that the handlers can put to use. Among the key questions: Whos in the persons social circle? Can he or she use that relationship to the Mossads benefit?The operatives who were assigned to assassinate nuclear scientists on the street received extensive training from Mossad case officers. They were taught to ride motorcycles and either shoot their targets at close range or plant explosives on their vehicles.The intent was both to deprive the Iranian program of expertise and to discourage promising scientists from working on nuclear weapons. From 2010 to 2012 the Israelis killed at least four scientists and barely missed another.The operations were managed by Israelis, down to the smallest details, often from nearby countries or directly from Mossad headquarters north of Tel Aviv, and occasionally by Israeli intelligence officers who briefly entered Iran.Operation Rising LionOver the years, the Mossad and Israels military repeatedly drew up plans to halt Irans nuclear program by bombing its key facilities. Israels political leaders always drew back under pressure from American presidents who feared an attack would trigger a regional war, destabilizing the Middle East. Hezbollah, Irans proxy in Lebanon, had stockpiled tens of thousands of missiles, enough to overwhelm Israels air defenses and hit its largest cities.Those calculations shifted dramatically in the past year.In April and October of 2024, Iran fired missiles and drones directly at Israel. Nearly all were shot down with the help of the United States and allies. The Israeli air force responded with airstrikes that destroyed much of Irans air defenses. The remains of an Iranian missile ended up near the Dead Sea in Israel on Oct. 2, 2024. (Erik Marmor/Getty Images) The Israeli military had begun planning a bombing campaign against Iran in mid-2024 that it hoped would be ready within a year. With Donald Trumps victory in the November election, and Hezbollah neutralized, Israeli officials saw a window of opportunity.Israels American-trained pilots had been secretly flying over Iran since 2016 learning the landscape and exploring various routes to minimize the chances of detection.One nuclear target in Iran, however, was considered so formidable that the Israeli air force had no plan for destroying it. The Iranians had built a uranium-enrichment facility at Fordo and buried it inside a mountain nearly 300 feet beneath the surface. Iran tried to keep Fordo a secret, but the Mossad and American and British intelligence were able to track movements in and out of the mountain. President Barack Obama disclosed its existence in 2009, and United Nations inspectors who visited the site soon after found that Iran was planning for up to 3,000 highly advanced centrifuges to enrich uranium. A 2013 satellite image shows a uranium-enrichment facility in Fordo, Iran. (DigitalGlobe via Getty Images) Only the United States had a bomb powerful enough to pierce a mountain: the GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator, the worlds largest conventional bomb known as a bunker buster.And so Israeli military planners drew up a plan for a highly risky ground operation, details of which are disclosed here for the first time. Under the plan, elite commandos were to be smuggled to the Fordo site without being detected. Then they would storm the building, taking advantage of the element of surprise. Once inside, their mission would be to blow up the centrifuges, grab Irans enriched uranium and escape.The new head of the Mossad was skeptical. David Barnea, known as Dadi, had long pushed for aggressive actions against Iran. He had overseen the remote-machine gun attack in 2020 just before being promoted to the top job. Yet he thought the plans for a commando attack on Fordo were far too risky. Barnea worried that some of Israels best soldiers and spies would be killed or taken hostage, a nightmare for Israelis already deeply pained by the ordeal of Israeli hostages held by Hamas in Gaza since the attack of Oct. 7, 2023.Barnea and other Israeli officials came to believe that the Trump administration might join an Israeli attack on Iran, with U.S. warplanes dropping the massive bunker busters on Fordo. Trump had repeatedly and publicly declared that he would not allow Iran to obtain a nuclear bomb. To prepare for what would be dubbed Operation Rising Lion, the Mossad and the military intelligence agency, Aman, stepped up their tracking of Irans military leaders and nuclear teams. Several of the operations planners said that Barnea significantly expanded the Mossads Tzomet, or Junction, division, which recruits and trains non-Israeli agents. The decision was made to entrust this foreign legion with Israels most sophisticated equipment for paramilitary operations and communications. The cover stories for each agent, known as their legends, were checked and rechecked for inconsistencies.The Mossads espionage efforts were helped by a geographic fact. Iran is bordered by Iraq, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Pakistan, Turkmenistan and Afghanistan. Smuggling is a way of life in the region, as thousands of people earn their living using donkeys, camels, cars and trucks to carry drugs, fuel and electronics across the borders.The Mossad had developed contacts with smugglers and often with the government intelligence agencies in all seven nations.Bringing equipment in and out is relatively easy, said an Israeli who has worked with Mossad on logistics, and the Mossad also used front companies that legally shipped boxes and crates by sea and on trucks driven legitimately through border crossings.The material was delivered to infrastructure agents, Mossad operatives inside Iran who store the material until its needed. Mossad veterans said the gear can be hidden in safe houses for years, updated as technology evolves or maintenance is needed.Officials said the Mossad trained the non-Israeli agents who would attack Iranian targets for about five months. Some were brought to Israel, where models had been built to enable practice runs. Others rehearsed their missions in third countries where they met Israeli experts.There were two groups of commandos, each with 14 teams of four to six members. Some already lived in Iran. Others were anti-regime exiles who slipped into the country on the eve of the attack.Each had their instructions, but they were also in touch with Israeli planners who could change or update the attack plan. Most of the teams were tasked with striking Iranian air defenses from a list of targets provided by the Israeli air force.The Mossad had code names for each of the teams and their assignments, which were based on combinations of musical notes.On the night of June 12, the teams arrived at their positions as orchestrated. The Israelis in charge of the covert operations directed the agents to leave little or no equipment behind. (Iranian media reports after the attack asserted that the infiltrators had missed their targets and fled without their gear; Israeli officials said what the Iranians found were insignificant components the equivalent of gum wrappers.)One hundred percent of the anti-aircraft batteries marked for the Mossad by the air force were destroyed, a senior Israeli intelligence official said. Most were near Tehran in areas where the Israeli air force had not previously operated.In the first hours of the war, one of the commando teams struck an Iranian ballistic missile launcher. Israeli analysts believe this mission had a disproportionate impact, causing Iran to delay its retaliatory salvo against Israel out of fear that other missile launchers were vulnerable to attacks from inside Iran.Officials emphasized that the military logistics of the plan were the work of Aman and the Israeli air force, which hit more than a thousand targets over the 11 days of airstrikes. But officials agree that the Mossad contributed key intelligence for one aspect of Rising Lion: the assassinations of senior Iranian commanders and nuclear scientists.The Mossad compiled detailed information on the habits and whereabouts of 11 Iranian nuclear scientists. The dossiers even mapped the locations of the bedrooms in the mens homes. On the morning of June 13, Israeli air force warplanes fired air-to-ground missiles at those coordinates, killing all 11.After a delay, Iran retaliated with a barrage of missiles. Most were intercepted, but the ones that got through did considerable damage. Israel reported 30 civilian deaths and estimated its reconstruction costs at $12 billion. Irans state media put the death toll in their country at more than 600. An aerial view of the destruction after an Iranian ballistic missile hit Ramat Gan near Tel Aviv, Israel, on June 14. (Yair Palti/Anadolu via Getty Images) The question of how much Irans nuclear efforts were set back remains in dispute. Trump has insisted the American airstrikes on Fordo, Natanz and Isfahan obliterated Irans program. Analysts in Israeli and American intelligence have been more restrained.This war significantly set them back, said a former head of Aman, Gen. Tamir Hayman. Iran is no longer a nuclear threshold state, as it was on the eve of the war. It could be able to return to threshold status in one or two years at the earliest, assuming a decision by the Supreme Leader to break out toward a bomb.Hayman, who now heads the Institute for National Security Studies in Israel, said its possible the assault might have the opposite of its intended effect, if Iran becomes even more eager to build a bomb that could deter future Israeli attacks. Yossi Melman is a commentator on Israeli intelligence and a documentary filmmaker. Dan Raviv is a former CBS correspondent and host of The Mossad Files podcast. They are the co-authors of Spies Against Armageddon: Inside Israels Secret Wars.

A summit between President Trump and President Vladimir V. Putin would come as the United States has urged Russia to agree to a cease-fire in Ukraine or face new sanctions.

Tariffs were an urgent necessity. Theyre already working.

Whichever books you choose, and however you choose them, may your summer reading be satisfying, and your curating ruthless.

Subscribe nowOn Tuesday, the Federal Bureau of Investigation released its latest findings looking at reported crimes in the U.S. in 2024. Here are five key findings that affect the LGBTQ community:There was an overall drop in hate crimes against LGBTQ people in 2024.The law enforcement agencies that share data with the FBI reported 2,278 single-bias hate crimes based on sexual orientation and 527 based on gender identity.Sexual orientation-motivated crimes decreased by 5% from 2023s tally of 2,402.Gender identity-motivated crimes decreased by 3% from 2023s tally of 547.These numbers probably dont accurately reflect the state of anti-LGBTQ hate.Just 19% of the participating 16,419 agencies reported hate crimes to the FBI.The remaining 81% of agencies reported that no hate crimes* occurred in their jurisdictions.*Is it just me or does the fact that 81% of agencies reported zero hate crimes feel like a story unto itself?Hate crimes based on sexual orientation were the third most common of any category.17.2% of all single-bias incidents were based on sexual orientation, making it the third-largest category, following race/ethnicity/ancestry and religious biases.Gay men were the most likely victims of hate crimes based on sexual orientation.51.8% of the incidents were against gay men, compared to 8.1% against lesbians, 2% against bisexual people and 1% against heterosexual people.Hate crimes based on gender identity made up 4.1% of all incidents and were the fourth most common category.72.5% of these crimes were against the transgender community.29.2% of these crimes took place at residences and homes, and 19.4% of them happened on highways, roads, alleys, streets and sidewalks.9.1% took place at schools and colleges.Despite the slight drop in reported hate crimes, Human Rights Campaign President Kelley Robinson said in a statement that these numbers reveal a national emergency hiding in plain sight.Everyone deserves to be safe in this country and have the chance to thrive. But anti-equality politicians continue to spread lies about LGBTQ+ people, trying to push us out of more and more corners of society, Robinson said. Those smears come with a cost. The FBI has exposed a chilling reality: our community remains a target of violence.Subscribe for LGBTQ-focused, accountability journalism.Subscribe nowWe are looking for partnerships with other news outlets! If interested in learning more, email me: Spencer@unclosetedmedia.com. And if you see a story of ours that youd like on your outlet, you are free to republish it! Please just follow our republishing guidelines here. Thank you to Trint, the fantastic transcribing service, and their CEO Jeff Kofman for kindly donating their services to us for a second year. We are so grateful for their support. Our team loves it, and its an excellent transcription service for any journalistic org, large or small!Karoline Leavitt Says the President Plans to Extort Schools Into Ending Gender-Affirming Care (LGBTQ Nation)She says the president wants to end "antisemitism," "chemical castration," and "discrimination" in schools. None of that is true.California, Other States Sue Trump Over Order Threatening Gender-Affirming Care Providers (Los Angeles Times)The lawsuit by California and other states challenges a Jan. 28 executive order by President Trump that denounced gender-affirming care as mutilation.Marjorie Taylor Greene Asks for George Santoss Sentence to Be Commuted (New York Times)Ms. Greene, the hard-right House Republican from Georgia, called her former colleagues seven-year sentence excessive in a letter to the U.S. pardon attorney.GOP Senator Who Said Trans People Put Girls at Risk Just Helped a Relative Who Raped a 13-Year-Old (LGBTQ Nation)Sen. Adams helped change state law around child rape then helped his relative use the new law to avoid jail.New Immigration Policy Bans Visas for Trans Athletes: Not in the National Interest (LGBTQ Nation)A spokesperson said the administration "is standing up for the silent majority who've long been victims of leftist policies that defy common sense."Over the next week, be on the lookout for new Uncloseted reporting: Back in April, Uncloseted Media documented every move President Donald Trump has made on LGBTQ issues in his first 100 days and uncovered a relentless and unprecedented attack against the community. That attack has only intensified. This week, be on the lookout for Nico DiAlessandros complete track record from days 101-200. Queer boys are vulnerable to sex trafficking due to increased risk of homelessness, family rejection and lack of education. In fact, boys make up one-third of survivors of trafficking. Why dont they have any resources? Sam Donndelinger investigates.Thanks for reading! Feel free to email me with questions, complaints and story ideas! Spencer Macnaughton, Editor-In-Chief spencer@unclosetedmedia.comIf objective, nonpartisan, rigorous, LGBTQ-focused journalism is important to you, please consider making a tax-deductible donation through our fiscal sponsor, Resource Impact, by clicking this button:Donate to Uncloseted Media

by Rob Davis ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week. This is how misinformation gets accepted as fact.A year after Oregon endures its most destructive fire season on record in 2020, state lawmakers order a map estimating the wildfire risk for every property in the state. Its the kind of rating now available on real estate sites like Zillow. The state wants to use the results to decide where it will apply forthcoming codes for fire-resistant construction and protections around homes.Around the same time, insurance companies start dropping Oregon homeowners policies and raising premiums to limit future losses, much as they have done in other disaster-prone states. Insurers have their own sophisticated risk maps to guide them, but some brokers instead tell homeowners the blame lies with the map the state produced. The belief gets treated as fact both on social media and in mainstream news even though insurers and regulators say its not true.The anger quickly spreads. Not only is Oregons map seen as at fault for higher insurance premiums, one conservative talk radio host calls it an attempt to depopulate rural areas. People in an anti-map Facebook group start musing about Agenda 21, a conspiracy theory implicating the United Nations in an effort to force people into cities so they can be more easily controlled.By the time the state pulls back the map and starts over, the myths about it have gained so much momentum theres no stopping them. Oregons hotter, drier climate isnt the problem; the map is.Christine Drazan, the Oregon House Republican leader, joins more than a dozen other Republicans in February 2025 behind a sign that says REPEAL THE WILDFIRE HAZARD MAP. She calls the states map faulty, defective, harmful and says it, along with related fire-safe building and landscaping rules that are in the works, is a heavy-handed bureaucratic takeover thats kept rural residents from insuring or selling homes.This map is destroying their property values, she says.In the end, whats most remarkable about the campaign against Oregons wildfire map isnt that misinformation found an audience.Its that it worked. A melted sign hangs from a fence in Lyons, Oregon, in 2020. (Nathan Howard/Getty Images) Chris Dunn, a wildfire risk scientist at Oregon State University and a former wildland firefighter, thought Oregon had a chance to be a national model for adapting to wildfire risks when he was asked to make the statewide map in 2021.Oregon adopted a unique set of land use laws in the late 1960s and 1970s that helped curb urban sprawl. A coalition of farmers and conservationists formulated the legislation to preserve farmland and keep cities compact. To Dunn, protecting homes seemed within reach because the state had maintained agricultural buffers around cities, helping to serve as firebreaks.At the time, Zillow hadnt yet come out with risk ratings. By building its own map, Oregon could use local input and make adjustments as it went along.The map results would help Oregon decide where to require a tool proven to save homes from wind-driven wildfires: defensible space. Owners would have to prune trees up and away from their houses; they would need to keep their roofs clear of leaves, needles and other dead vegetation. The idea was to deny wind-borne embers fuel that can burn down dwellings a problem fresh on lawmakers minds after Oregons devastating 2020 fire season destroyed more than 2,000 homes.Dunn knew public communication would be important. Before the map was released, a private property rights group had warned its members in a letter that the map and its rules were worrisome. Gov. Kate Browns wildfire council, advising state leaders about the maps rollout, knew about the letter and the potential for pushback, according to emails Dunn provided to ProPublica.Dunn said he was clear with Browns wildfire director, Doug Grafe, and others on the council that the map needed a significant, coordinated and effective communications campaign starting months before its release. Dunn said all the state developed was a one-page document on the roles of each government agency.(Brown and Grafe did not respond to ProPublicas questions. Grafe told Oregon Public Broadcasting in 2022 that we are committed to ensuring people understand what they can do to increase the likelihood their homes and properties will survive wildfires.)Without state outreach, many homeowners learned their homes were in extreme risk zones from a July 2022 letter in the mail. It gave them 60 days to appeal the designation or face complying with new building and defensible-space codes the state was developing. The wildfire hazard map and online user interface, created by Chris Dunn, a wildfire scientist at Oregon State University, shows high hazard areas in orange and those with moderate hazards in purple. (Screenshot by ProPublica of the Oregon Statewide Wildfire Hazard Map) Dunn could see that an uproar was building around his work. One community meeting where he was scheduled to present was canceled after state officials received threats of violence.On Facebook, more than 6,000 people joined a private group, ODF Wildfire Risk Map Support, a base of opposition. ODF stands for the Oregon Department of Forestry, the state agency overseeing the maps creation.One member warned that state officials would snoop around their rural properties to tell owners what to do.Guys this is a agenda 21, said the member, referencing the conspiracy theory promoted in part by former Fox News talk show host Glenn Beck.Along with 31 thumbs-ups, eight angry faces and several other emojis, the post got 24 comments. This insane bill out of Salem is crazy! Every designation was decided by an algorithm by politicians in Salem who don't a clue about our property, our house, our lifestyles! If you think its not their agenda to destroy rural property owners, think again. (10 likes)The UN Sustainable Development Goals are driving this push to eliminate rural living. Look into ICLEI and see how the UN infiltrates state and local governments and influences policy and legislation. https://iclei.org (6 likes)I learned about this when I first became involved in conservative politics. Back when globalist-backed Agenda 21 and now Agenda 2030 were still thought of as conspiracy theories. (6 likes, 1 sad reaction)These Facebook comments have been excerpted to preserve anonymity. Oregon cant stop firestorms with regulations, conservative talk show host Bill Meyer told listeners, unless you just get people off the land, and people wonder if thats what the intent of all of this is ultimately. Invoking a phrase associated with the Agenda 21 conspiracy, Meyer said rural residents would wind up having to move into stack-and-pack housing in Oregons cities. (Meyer did not respond to ProPublicas emails.)State officials lack of communication with the public led to really significant challenges, Dunn told ProPublica. We dont know if we could have well-communicated and sort of avoided those conspiracy theories and misinformation. But it was just so propagated in the media that it just took over.Jeff Golden, the Democratic state senator who helped draft the bill creating the map, said rural residents were understandably upset. The impacts of climate change were abstract to many people, Golden said, until they started getting those letters at the same time insurance companies were dumping them.Its a really hard adjustment, said Golden, chairperson of the Senates Natural Resources and Wildfire Committee. This is a very big chicken coming home to roost. Misinformation stoked peoples anger. It makes a conversation that would have been difficult at best almost impossible, Golden said.State officials withdrew the map just over a month after its 2022 release, saying that while they had met the legislative deadline for delivering it, there wasnt enough time to allow for the type of local outreach and engagement that people wanted, needed and deserved. Oregon state Sen. Jeff Golden helped draft the bill creating the wildfire risk map. (Jenny Kane/AP Photo) After homeowners blamed the newly released risk map for insurance cancellations and premium increases, Oregons insurance regulator formally asked insurers: Did you use the state risk map?Companies filed statements, required by law to be answered truthfully, saying they had not. Oregons then-insurance commissioner, Andrew Stolfi, announced the industrys response publicly at the time.Insurance companies have been using their own risk maps and other robust risk management tools to assess wildfire risk for years in making rating and underwriting decisions, Stolfi said in a news release.Stolfi told consumers to submit any documentation they received from insurance companies showing that the states map had been used to influence underwriting or rating decisions. Jason Horton, a spokesperson for Oregons insurance regulator, told ProPublica the agency has not substantiated any complaints.For good measure, lawmakers in 2023 passed a bill explicitly banning insurers from using the map to set rates.But as Dunn reworked the map, the cloud of misinformation continued to swirl on social media.After Zillow and other real estate sites began posting wildfire risk ratings on properties nationwide last year, participants in the anti-map Facebook group alleged the state was behind it.Who would decide to move out here after seeing that? one asked.Zillow uses data from the research firm First Street, a Zillow spokesperson told ProPublica. A First Street spokesperson also said the group doesnt use Oregons map.Andrew DeVigal, a University of Oregon journalism professor who has studied news ecosystems around the state, said places where news outlets have shrunk or closed down have grown particularly reliant on such Facebook groups. These community watercoolers help confirm participants biases. You surround yourself with people who think like you, so youre in your space, he said.A ProPublica reporter identified himself to the groups participants, asking in June for evidence that theyd been harmed by the states map. None provided definitive proof. Some acknowledged that they couldnt demonstrate that the map had affected them but said they suspected it lowered their homes values or their insurability.Among the respondents was Chris Dalton, who lives in La Pine, south of Bend. Dalton described spending about $2,000 trimming trees and another $500 putting down gravel to create defensible space.However, Dalton said, the houses location had been designated as being at moderate risk. That means it was not subject to the states defensible-space requirements. And even if Daltons property had been designated as high enough risk to be governed by the new regulations, they had not been finalized at that point and were not being enforced.I guess you could say we used common sense to get ahead of future problems, Dalton said. The Darlene Fire burned more than 3,000 acres around La Pine, Oregon, in June 2024. (Deschutes County Sheriffs Office) Watch video Oregon officials decided to give the map another try last year.They re-released it, this time doing more outreach. Following Californias lead and aiming to make the map less confusing, Oregon also changed its nomenclature. Properties werent in risk classes, they were in hazard zones. The highest rating was no longer extreme, it was high. Dunn, the Oregon State scientist, said he thought the map had survived the effort to kill it.But the backlash continued. Of the 106,000 properties found to face the highest hazard, more than 6,000 landowners filed appeals. At least one county appealed the designation on behalf of every high-hazard property in its borders more than 20,000 of them.In January, a new Oregon legislative session kicked off and wildfire preparedness was once again a top priority for the bodys Democratic leadership. Gov. Tina Kotek ordered a pause on decisions about homeowners appeals until the session ended, giving lawmakers a chance to decide what to do with the map.Drazan, the House minority leader, led fellow Republicans in opposition.She told ProPublica she cant know for sure that the map caused homeowners to lose insurance or have trouble selling, as shed asserted at Februarys news conference. I am reflecting what we were told, she said.Regardless, she said, the mandates on protecting properties went too far. Were not looking for the state to be the president of our homeowners association and tell us what color our paint can be, Drazan said.Even Golden, whod helped shepherd the original bill mandating a map, began to waver.Golden described conversations with homeowners who struggled to understand why work theyd done to protect their properties from fires didnt lower their state risk rating. He said the map couldnt account for the specific characteristics of each property, ultimately making it clear to him that it couldnt work.I got tired of trying to convince people that the model was smarter than they were, Golden said.Dunn told ProPublica that the map was not intended to reflect all the changing conditions at a particular property, only the hazards that the surrounding topography, climate, weather and vegetation create. It wasnt about whether homeowners had cleared defensible space just whether they should. The work they do makes their individual homes less vulnerable, he said, but it doesnt eliminate the broader threats around them. Neighbors walk through their destroyed neighborhood in Phoenix, Oregon, in 2020. Hundreds of homes in the area were destroyed. (Mason Trinca for The Washington Post via Getty Images) Fire retardant coats a playground in a neighborhood largely destroyed by a wildfire in Talent, Oregon, in 2020. Climate change has increased the risk of wildfires in the state. (David Ryder/Getty Images) By April, the map was on its way out.The state Senate voted unanimously, Golden included, to repeal the states defensible-space and home-hardening requirements as well as the map that showed where they would apply.Ahead of a 50-1 vote in the House to kill the map, familiar claims got repeated including from a legislative leaders office.Virgle Osborne, the House Republican whip, lamented in a May press release: These wildfire maps have cost people property values, insurance increases, and many heartaches.Osborne told ProPublica he stood behind his comment even though he had no evidence for it. Osborne said he believed Oregons maps helped insurance companies justify rate increases and policy cancellations.I cant give you, you know, heres the perfect example of somebody that, you know, did it, but no insurance company is that foolish, Osborne said. Theyre not going to write a statement that would put them in jeopardy. But common sense is going to tell you, when the state is on your side, the insurance companies are going to bail out. And they have.With or without a map, former California insurance commissioner Dave Jones said, Oregon lawmakers could require insurers to provide incentives for homeowners to protect their properties. Colorado, for instance, ordered insurers this year to account for risk-reduction efforts in models used to decide who can obtain insurance and at what price.Jones nonetheless called Oregons decision to kill the wildfire map very unfortunate.One of the biggest public health and safety challenges states are facing are climate-driven, severe-weather-related events, Jones said. Not giving people useful information to make decisions on that, to me, is not a path to public health and safety.During the June vote in the Oregon House, the lone person who voted to preserve Oregons wildfire map and its associated mandates was Dacia Grayber, a Democrat from the Portland area whos a longtime firefighter and worked a brush rig during the 2020 wildfires.She told ProPublica that by training, the first things she looks for while defending homes in wildland fires are the types of hazards the state intended to target: firewood under the deck, cedar shake siding, flammable juniper bushes growing close to homes.Grayber said she was disturbed by the sentiment in the Capitol as the repeal vote neared. The decision to kill the map and eliminate home-hardening requirements, she said, had become a feel-good, bipartisan vote.We are walking away from a very clear decision to build safer, more resilient communities, Grayber said.The tragedy of it, she said, is that it was 100% based in misinformation.Kotek, Oregons Democratic governor, signed the repeal on July 24. Oregon Rep. Dacia Grayber is the sole legislator who voted to keep the wildfire hazard map alive. (Jenny Kane/AP Photo)

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When Amylah Majors and Jamaria Gaskins, a married Black lesbian couple in their early 20s, ran over some debris while driving in rural Spotsylvania County, Virginia, around 6:30 p.m. on July 20, they began hearing a thumping sound from their vehicle, so they pulled over to inspect. Little did they realize that theyd soon be running for their lives.They turned on their hazard lights, exited their car, and saw a white man exit a nearby home and give them a thumbs up sign. But instead of helping, he and two other white people allegedly approached the women and began shouting racist slurs one of the people, a white woman, brandished a gun at the couple, the Fredericksburg Free Press reported. Related Anti-LGBTQ+ hate crimes in the U.S. remain high even as overall crime decreases Over half of sexual orientation-based hate crimes involved anti-gay male bias. Two of them physically attacked my wife while screaming threats, Gaskins wrote. They called us n***ers, told us we didnt belong there, and one of them even exposed himself while screaming hate and slurs at us. The entire time, my wife was on the phone with the police, actively reporting everything as it escalated.When the women got back into their vehicle and attempted to drive off, the three white people jumped into their vehicles and chased them down the road, Gaskins added. Never Miss a Beat Subscribe to our newsletter to stay ahead of the latest LGBTQ+ political news and insights. Subscribe to our Newsletter today One of them rode up beside us on a 4-wheeler and aimed a gun directly at my head through the drivers window, she continued. In that moment, we truly believed we werent going to make it out alive.While fleeing in a panic, the women accidentally crashed their car, ejecting Majors from their vehicle. She woke up in the hospital with a fractured spine, broken clavicle, broken rib, severe concussion, and multiple head injuries that required a staple. Gaskins also suffered from a concussion. I am beyond grateful to be alive, she said.Two of the alleged assailants, Elizabeth Wolfrey, 32, and Mark Goodman, 59, are now facing separate criminal charges. Wolfrey faces one count of pointing and brandishing a firearm, and Goodman faces a charge of indecent exposure after video of the incident showed him exposing his buttocks to the couple. Both have been released on bail and are expected in court on November 20. The third alleged assailant has not yet been charged with any crimes.However, the local prosecutor is considering pursuing hate crime charges, Spotsylvania Sheriffs Office Major Delbert Myricksaid. We dont want racism. We dont want hate in our community. We want a happy community where everybody gets along, Myrick said. He noted that police didnt release a statement about the alleged attack until July 30 in an attempt to protect the victims, as Majors was still hospitalized and could have faced further intimidation following a statement.The big thing were trying to express is we understand the communitys outrage, or concerns or anxiety over this incident and similar incidents that have arisen in the community, Myrick said. At the sheriffs office, we ensure them that were taking it seriously and we will examine this or thoroughly investigate this crime and present it to the Commonwealth Attorneys office to make sure due diligence and justice is done.Moe Petway, president of the Spotsylvania NAACP, also said his racial justice organization is monitoring the investigation and will speak to the couple for more information. Gaskins launched a GoFundMe account to help pay for overwhelming medical bills, trauma therapy, legal assistance, lost income, and the cost of rebuilding our lives, she wrote. As of Thursday morning, the crowdfunding campaign has raised $4,850 of its $125,000 goal.My wife walked away with minor physical injuries, but we were both assaulted, traumatized, and nearly killed, Gaskins wrote. This was not just an accident this was an attempted act of violence meant to harm and silence us.We will not be silent, she said.Subscribe to theLGBTQ Nation newsletterand be the first to know about the latest headlines shaping LGBTQ+ communities worldwide.

Though Cornel West is best known for being a tireless racial justice activist, he has also advocated for LGBTQ+ rights and the dignity of all marginalized communities during his recent presidential campaign. He supports marriage equality and anti-discrimination protections, but he has expressed some hesitation about transgender athletes competing against cisgender opponents. Nevertheless, he has styled himself as a champion for underdogs, especially in this modern age of income inequality and economic exploitation.Cornel West At a GlanceLocation: New York City, New YorkParty Affiliation: Green PartyRace/Ethnicity: African-AmericanGender Identity: MaleSexual Orientation: StraightPronouns: He/HisLGBTQ+ Ally: YesSocial Media Insights for the LGBTQ+ community Subscribe to our briefing for insights into how politics impacts the LGBTQ+ community and more. Subscribe to our Newsletter today Facebook:DrCornelWestTwitter:CornelWestInstagram:@BrotherCornelWestWebsite:CornelWest2024.com BiographyBorn in Tulsa, Oklahoma on June 2, 1953 and raised in Sacramento, California, West graduated from Harvard College with a degree in Near Eastern languages and civilization in 1973, and from Princeton University with a philosophy Ph.D. in 1980.West began teaching as an assistant professor at New York Citys Union Theological Seminary in 1977. He taught at Yale Divinity School in 1984 and at the University of Paris in 1987. After returning to Union Theological Seminary for a year, he began teaching religion and African-American studies classes at Princeton University from 1988 to 1994. Afterward, he taught at Harvard University and Harvard Divinity School until 2001, at which point he resumed teaching at Union Theological Seminary.While Wests work has focused largely on race, he has also criticized oppressive social systems and mainstream politics of both Democrats and Republicans, often incorporating aspects of Black liberation theology, democratic socialism, and left-wing populism into his critiques. He has done activist work in the fields of racial justice, economic inequality, animal cruelty, modernized slavery, human trafficking, peace, environmentalism, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.West appeared as a council member in transgender directors Lilly and Lana Wachowskis 2003 sci-fi sequels The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions. He has also appeared on the political talk show Real Time with Bill Maher, the TV comedy series 30 Rock, and made appearances in various other TV shows, movies, and political documentaries. He has published over 20 books including Race Matters in 1993 and Democracy Matters in 2004 and released three spoken-word albums.West announced his 2024 presidential campaign in June 2023. Wests stance on LGBTQ+ issuesWests consistent advocacy for the dignity of marginalized people has been the foundation for his support of LGBTQ+ equality. While he hasnt articulated a clear approach to the issue of trans people in sports, he has criticized policies that exclude and endanger marginalized people of all genders. Same-sex marriageIn a July 2012 Facebook post, West criticized then-President Barack Obama for using marriage equality in his re-election campaign when we have the highest level of poverty rates, decrepit schools, AIDS/HIV devastation, high unemployment, and so on.Sad, he wrote. We have a profound crisis of Black leadership. However, in a February 2014 interview, West stated that he was with and for same-sex marriage activism. When they (Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton) came out for same-sex marriage, I was for that, West said. I think it should have been a federal affair, not just an affair of the states. So, for sure, Im for that. Trans children in sportsIn a July interview with Fox News hostess Laura Ingraham, Ingraham asked West about his stance on biological men competing against women in womens sports, particularly in professional sports (as opposed to children on school teams).West replied, I am committed to the dignity of precious trans folk because they are so vulnerable, and I just hate to see them insulted and attacked. When Ingraham commented that he sounded like he was siding with trans people, West said, I am willing to learn and listen to any argument because I think it depends on case-to-case and context-to-context. I just want to make sure that the most vulnerable are never ever trashed.When asked about the same issue in an August interview on The Karen West Show, West responded, For me, I think its probably best to have three different categories so you make sure you have fairness in terms of the competition. You want to make sure that you treat everybody with dignity thats very important. Dont say gay/LGBTQ+ discussions in schoolsIts unclear whether West has commented specifically on laws banning instructions on LGBTQ+ issues in schools. However, in a September interview on The Stephen A. Smith Show, West criticized the education policies of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R).Wests criticisms were in response to DeSantis education department stating that slavery helped Black slaves develop beneficial skills, What [DeSantis] is dealing with, with the culture wars and all of this, its not nuanced. Its just flat-footed. Its not dealing with the deeper issue: that a lot of students, some of them not even interested in reading, dont make no difference what books you have. And we know that the educational curriculum that was in place, they never told the full truth anyway. So hes just adding more lies to some of the lies that had already been there. But he cant even say that. Hes got to pit one group against the other. Transgender access to public bathroomsIn February 2017, a reporter from the celebrity and entertainment news site TMZ asked West if then-President Donald Trumps repeal of Obama-era protections for trans people using bathrooms matching their gender identity was part of our modern struggle for civil rights.West responded, I think its even more intense (than the original Civil Rights movement) because Trump is ushering in a neo-fascist era that affects everybody. In the 1960s, we had to struggle against American apartheid, Jim Crow, but it really primarily affected Black people. Trump has a violation of rights, immigrants rights, across the board. So its much more ugly in that sense because it affects the whole country. We have to be very clear about our language. Neo-fascism can be very real in America. We dont think it can be, but it can be very real. Discrimination protectionsIn his September 2017 talk at the University of Virginia, West said, There have been patriarchal attacks on women; attempts to strip lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people of their humanity. He added that he was an old-style Christian who believes we are all made in the image of God.In a July interview with Fox News hostess Laura Ingraham, West said, The two-party system stands in the way for the empowerment of precious poor people and precious working people. And I am fundamentally committed to the plight of the least of these, not just here but around the world. Im against the routinized indifference to the vulnerable, no matter what color they are, no matter what gender, no matter what sexual orientation. I dont downplay the vicious attacks on my gay brothers and lesbian sisters and trans. Wests careerGraduated from Harvard College with degree in Near Eastern languages and civilization in 1973Graduated from Princeton University with philosophy Ph.D. in 1980Taught at Yale Divinity School in 1984Taught at University of Paris in 1987Taught at Princeton University from 1988 to 1994Taught at Harvard University and Harvard Divinity School until 2001Appeared in various films and TV shows throughout early 2000sReleased several books and spoken word albums In conclusionDespite Wests uncertainty about trans athletes in competitive sports, he has spent his career advocating for marginalized people to have access to social spaces and democratic institutions that could help spur equal rights and lasting change for all.Related articles Related AIDS 2012: Keep the Promise march draws more than 2,000 More than 2,000 HIV/AIDS activists from around the world took part in the Make the Promise march through downtown Washington on Sunday.

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