Headlines May 27, 2026 from Democracy Now!

The Trump administration is pushing a new nondisclosure agreement that would apply to all federal workers. The Office of Personnel Management posted a draft to the Federal Register on Tuesday, prohibiting employees from disclosing nonpublic, confidential or proprietary information. It would also bar them from sharing sensitive internal materials not currently available to the public. The draft goes beyond standard classified and unclassified categories of information. The new rule targets leaks to news outlets and would broaden nondisclosure agreements already in place at the Pentagon and other federal agencies. Esha Bhandari, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, said, “Such broad gag orders would leave the public in the dark about how the government works, preventing the kind of informed debate that is critical to democratic accountability. The government can’t shroud itself in secrecy in a democracy.”

President Trump on Tuesday blasted U.S. media outlets, saying on Truth Social that if Iran surrendered, they would portray it as a “masterful and brilliant victory over the United States.” It comes as Iranian officials signal that negotiations to reach a ceasefire deal are ongoing. Tehran’s top negotiator, Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of Iran’s parliament, returned from Qatar Tuesday. According to Iranian officials, Ghalibaf’s visit to Qatar aimed to secure the release of $24 billion, a quarter of Iranian funds frozen abroad. This comes as Iranian authorities partially restored internet access after a nationwide blackout that lasted for nearly three months.

Israel said Wednesday it had killed Mohammed Odeh, Hamas’s newly appointed armed wing chief, in an operation in Gaza on Tuesday. A family statement said he was killed along with his wife and son. Gaza health officials said six people, including at least one woman, were killed and more than 20 others wounded in the same Israeli strike, which destroyed an upper floor of an apartment building in Gaza City. Since last October’s so-called U.S.-brokered ceasefire, Israel has killed some 900 Palestinians in Gaza. This is a resident of Gaza City describing Israel’s airstrike on Tuesday.

Gaza City resident: “There was a sudden airstrike by Israeli warplanes. It was a surprise. They hit a rooftop apartment in a building with three missiles, and they weren’t simple missiles, they were heavy ones. … There is no ceasefire. Day and night, there is shelling. The shelling is constant here. They say there is a ceasefire, but there is no ceasefire for us. This is the Eid atmosphere, as you can see. It is Eid now.”

Israeli strikes in southern Lebanon killed at least 31 people and wounded 40 on Tuesday, according to Lebanon’s Health Ministry. Israel launched more than 120 airstrikes on Tuesday alone, one of the heaviest days of bombing in weeks. An Israeli military official confirmed that troops had begun operating beyond the so-called Yellow Line, which is a boundary running roughly 10 kilometers inside Lebanon. The escalation comes despite a U.S.-brokered ceasefire in place since mid-April. Since March 2, over a million Lebanese have been forced to flee their homes, and more than 3,100 people have been killed in Israeli attacks. This is a resident of Tyre.

Mohammed Al-Shaar: “Kids, women and elderly people all sitting here. Suddenly, the Israelis send evacuation warnings, and these people get thrown into chaos. They pick themselves up and leave. Half an hour, 45 minutes later, look what happens.”

The U.S. military carried out another strike Tuesday on a vessel in the eastern Pacific Ocean, killing one person and leaving two survivors. The Trump administration once again claimed the vessel was carrying drugs without providing any evidence. Since September, the Pentagon says it has killed nearly 200 people in strikes on boats in the Caribbean and Pacific. The attacks have been widely condemned as illegal.

Hundreds of immigrants detained at the ICE jail known as Delaney Hall in Newark, New Jersey, are continuing their hunger and labor strike to protest inhumane conditions and call for their release. Delaney Hall is operated by the private prison company GEO Group. Outside the thousand-bed jail, ICE agents clashed with protesters, pepper-spraying them. Three people have been arrested during the dayslong standoff. Even as the Department of Homeland Security denies that there’s an ongoing hunger strike, so-called border czar Tom Homan vowed to force-feed the immigrants on hunger strike if the situation at Delaney Hall “gets bad enough.” Newark is a sanctuary city. DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin has threatened to halt international flights and stop processing travelers to Newark International Airport and other major U.S. airports in sanctuary cities. We’ll have more on this story after headlines.

The Trump administration is expediting the use of mass immigration hearings in order to issue more deportations. NPR reports immigrants are now being scheduled to appear in front of what’s known as master calendar hearings with an unprecedented 100 or more people at a time. For many immigrants, this is the first time they would appear in immigration court to plead their case. Immigrants without legal representation have been disproportionately targeted for these new hearings. Lawyers told NPR the practice is already underway in cities like Chicago and Boston.

The Supreme Court has sided with the Trump administration in blocking a free speech lawsuit involving federal immigration judges. The conservative-majority justices overturned a lower court ruling that had allowed the challenge to proceed. In 2020, a group of immigration judges filed the lawsuit over a federal government rule that limits their ability to speak out on public policy. The National Association of Immigration Judges said in a statement, “Justice cannot endure when judges are intimidated into silence, nor can a nation remain free when the rule of law is subordinate to the whims of political ambition.”

Mass protests have continued in Bolivia for nearly a month as thousands take to the streets demanding the resignation of President Rodrigo Paz. Lawmakers this week moved to approve the possible deployment of armed forces to suppress the mobilizations. Farmers, teachers and others have joined the protests calling on Paz’s government to roll back austerity measures amid soaring living costs.

Angela Aguirre: “We want the government to solve this problem, to fix it once and for all, and to do so wholeheartedly. The babies are starving. We can’t afford to buy food. We seniors no longer have the money to buy food, and I have my granddaughters, who are orphans. I’m asking for a solution.”

The Trump administration is reportedly preparing to deploy public health officials to Kenya in an effort to quickly staff a potential quarantine center to send U.S. citizens who have been exposed to Ebola. That’s according to The Wall Street Journal, which said some members of the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps have received deployment notices to Kenya.
The World Health Organization says there have been more than 900 suspected Ebola cases in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and over 200 suspected deaths, in just under two weeks since the outbreak was first announced. This comes as healthcare workers gathered in the eastern DRC city of Bunia Tuesday for the burial of a doctor who died while treating Ebola patients. This is the president of the Ituri Medical Association.

Dr. Robert Unenu: “We are indeed afraid. We’re seriously afraid, because all of us are supposed to take care for the sick. Today, there are sick people coming in. Tomorrow, there’ll be more sick people coming. We’re afraid. We’re really afraid. But we cannot abandon the sick because we’re afraid. We’ve taken an oath. We will treat them. We will treat them, but while respecting the preventative measures.”

A federal court blocked Alabama from using its new congressional map in this year’s midterm elections, ruling that it intentionally discriminates against Black voters. The three-judge panel wrote in their ruling, “We cannot see our way clear to requiring Alabamians to cast their votes in the 2026 elections under a districting plan tainted by intentional race-based discrimination.” More than one in four residents of Alabama are Black. Alabama’s attorney general vowed to appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court, which last month struck down Louisiana’s majority-Black congressional districts.

Meanwhile, in South Carolina, the state Senate wrapped up its session Tuesday without voting on a new congressional map that would have dismantled the state’s only majority-Black district. South Carolina’s lawmakers quietly defied pressure from President Trump and the GOP to join the ongoing redistricting battle ahead of the midterm elections.

In Texas, the state’s Attorney General Ken Paxton, backed by President Trump, defeated four-term incumbent Senator John Cornyn in the Republican Senate primary runoff Tuesday. Paxton has previously been indicted on charges of felony securities fraud and was impeached from office on allegations of bribery, dereliction of duty, obstruction of justice and abuse of public trust. Paxton is the first primary challenger to defeat an incumbent U.S. senator from Texas since at least 1980. The GOP candidates spent nearly $130 million, making it the most expensive Senate primary in U.S. history. Paxton faces Democratic nominee and state Representative James Talarico in the general election in November.