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• EPA Head Scott Pruitt Resigns Amid Mounting Corruption Scandals
• Former Coal Lobbyist Andrew Wheeler Named Acting EPA Administrator
• HHS Administrator Says "Under 3,000" Separated Children in U.S. Custody
• Guatemalan Immigrant Mother Reunites with Daughter After 55 Days
• U.S. Army Discharges Immigrants Promised a Path to Citizenship
• Statue of Liberty Climber on Protest: "I Went as High as I Could"
• Bill Shine Named WH Comms Director Despite Fox News Sex Harassment Record
• Trump Mocks Sen. Elizabeth Warren as "Pocahontas," Attacks #MeToo
• China Retaliates as U.S. Imposes $34 Billion in Tariffs on Chinese Goods
• South Korean Peace Activists Call for Removal of THAAD Missiles
• U.N. Envoy to Yemen Hopeful over Peace Talks
• Trump Administration Extends TPS for Yemenis But Won't End Travel Ban
• Thai Diver Dies Amid Effort to Rescue Boys Trapped in Cave
• Fourth Ohio State Wrestler Says Rep. Jim Jordan Failed to Stop Sexual Abuse
• Ed Schultz, Longtime Liberal TV News Host, Dies at 64
• British Columbia: Greenpeace Ends 35-Hour Blockade of Oil Tanker
• London Mayor Approves "Trump Baby" Blimp at July 13 Protest

Has the Trump administration set up concentration camps in Texas for migrants? The answer is yes, according to at least one expert: Andrea Pitzer, the author of “One Long Night: A Global History of Concentration Camps.” In one of her latest articles, Pitzer writes, “While writing a book on camp history, I defined concentration camps as the mass detention of civilians without trial, usually on the basis of race, religion, national origin, citizenship, or political party, rather than anything a given individual has done. By this definition, the new child camp established in Tornillo, Texas, is a concentration camp.” We speak with Andrea Pitzer in Washington, D.C.

While the government struggles to reunite families who have been separated at the border under President Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy, one detained Honduran woman has been organizing mothers behind bars to help find their children. The New Yorker reports that Mabel Gonzales has carefully documented the cases of mothers who have been separated from their children at a detention facility in El Paso, Texas, where she is currently jailed. Gonzales herself was separated from her two teenage sons eight months before the Trump administration announced its “zero tolerance” policy. She records the details of other separated mothers despite not being allowed to have a notebook while detained. She then shares the information with the Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center in El Paso to help separated mothers locate their children. We speak with Linda Rivas, executive director and lead attorney of Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center.

The Department of Health and Human Services still has not disclosed how many migrant children they are holding who have been separated from their parents at the border. Last week, HHS Secretary Alex Azar said 2,047 separated minors were still in the care of the Office of Refugee Resettlement. But the department has refused to give updated numbers, even though the Trump administration is facing a July 10 court-imposed deadline to reunite all separated children under the age of 5 with their parents. Meanwhile, CNN is reporting the Department of Homeland Security has been taking DNA samples of immigrant children. Immigration officials have reportedly been swabbing DNA from the cheeks of children as young as 2 months old, without consent, ostensibly in a bid to later reunite children with their parents. Rights groups have condemned the move, saying it could allow the federal government to track young immigrants for the rest of their lives. We speak with Linda Rivas, executive director and lead attorney of Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center, an organization working with asylum seekers along the U.S.-Mexico border.

A federal judge has ruled that the Trump administration may not arbitrarily detain people seeking asylum. U.S. District Judge James Boasberg ruled asylum seekers who have passed a credible fear interview should be given humanitarian parole, not indefinite detention. The suit was brought by the American Civil Liberties Union, Human Rights First and the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies. We speak with Eunice Lee, co-legal director at the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies.

• Trump Administration Halts Obama-Era Affirmative Action Policies
• Immigration Agents Taking DNA Samples from Separated Children
• Trump Defends ICE Amid Furor over Anti-Immigrant Policies
• Protesters Drop "Abolish ICE" Banner from Statue of Liberty
• Migrant Ship Docks in Spain After Denial by Italy and Malta
• Syria, Russia Press Offensive as Ceasefire Talks Collapse
• Israeli Troops Assault Palestinians Ahead of Village Demolition
• Britain: Scotland Yard Says Couple Poisoned by Russian Nerve Agent
• Poland: Judges Defy Retirement Order as Former President Warns of "Civil War"
• AP: Donald Trump Pressed for Invasion of Venezuela in 2017
• Wildfires Grow in Colorado, California Amid Drought Conditions
• Heat Records Broken Globally, with 2018 Among the Hottest Years Ever
• Indonesia: 34 Drown in Ferry Boat Disaster
• Chile: 15-Year Sentences for Officers Who Killed Singer Víctor Jara

Yale University law professor and writer James Forman Jr. won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize in the general nonfiction category for his new book, “Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America.” The prize committee praised the book for its “examination of the historical roots of contemporary criminal justice in the U.S., based on vast experience and deep knowledge of the legal system, and its often-devastating consequences for citizens and communities of color.” Forman is the son of civil rights activists James Forman Sr. and Constancia Romilly, who met in the 1960s while organizing with SNCC, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.

In a Fourth of July holiday special, we begin with the words of Frederick Douglass. Born into slavery around 1818, Douglass became a key leader of the abolitionist movement. On July 5, 1852, in Rochester, New York, he gave one of his most famous speeches, “The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro.” He was addressing the Rochester Ladies Antislavery Society. This is actor James Earl Jones reading the speech during a performance of historian Howard Zinn’s acclaimed book, “Voices of a People’s History of the United States.” He was introduced by Zinn.

While reporting from the U.S.-Mexico border, Democracy Now! saw firsthand how migrant children separated from their parents are being sent around the country. We spoke with an airport worker who described children being brought in early in the morning in order to be flown out to other states, and raised concerns about how they are being treated. “The oldest I have seen is 10 or 11 years old. … The youngest is maybe 5,” he says. “They are sitting there silently. … I feel kind of heartbroken. They are very, very young kids.”

As the Trump administration accuses migrants of illegally entering the United States, Democracy Now! went to the international bridge in Brownsville, Texas, and found asylum seekers waiting for days in the hot sun after being told the United States was full. We are guided by Christina Patiño Houle, director of the Rio Grande Valley Equal Voice Network, and Michael Seifert of the ACLU. We also speak with Juanita Valdez-Cox, longtime farmworker organizer and executive director of La Unión del Pueblo Entero (LUPE), about the separation of families at the border, and attempt to interview an official at Case Padre, the Southwest Key detention center housed in a former Walmart.

In a landslide, voters have elected Andrés Manuel López Obrador to be Mexico’s next president. The former mayor of Mexico City—who is known as AMLO—will become Mexico’s first leftist president in decades. On Monday, López Obrador and President Donald Trump discussed immigration and trade in a phone call. Trump called on Mexico’s president-elect to collaborate on border security and NAFTA, telling reporters, “I think he’s going to try and help us with the border. We have unbelievably bad border laws, immigration laws, the weakest in the world, laughed at by everybody in the world. And Mexico has very strong immigration laws, so they can help us.” We speak with John Ackerman and Irma Sandoval in Mexico City. Irma Sandoval is a professor and director of the Center for the Study of Corruption at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. She is set to become comptroller general in President-elect Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s government. John Ackerman is the editor of the Mexican Law Review and a professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. He is also a columnist for Proceso magazine and La Jornada newspaper.

• Pompeo to Head to North Korea for Third Time
• U.N. Urges Jordan to Open Border as 270,000 Syrians Flee Fighting in Daraa
• Federal Judge: U.S. Can't Arbitrarily Detain Asylum Seekers
• HHS Refuses to Say How Many Separated Children Remain in Custody
• 18 Arrested in Los Angeles at ICE Protest
• 3-Year-Old Ethiopian Refugee Dies After Stabbing at Birthday Party in Idaho
• Trump Refuses to Lower Flags for Victims of Capital Gazette Shooting
• Rhode Island Files Landmark Lawsuit Against 21 Oil Companies
• EPA Chief Scott Pruitt Keeps Secret Calendar to Hide Meetings with Industry Figures
• "I Urge You to Resign": A Mother Confronts Pruitt at Restaurant
• Trump Meets with Four Possible Supreme Court Nominees
• Michael Cohen Indicates He Will Work with Prosecutors
• Trump Urges NATO Allies to Increase Military Spending
• New Charges Against Harvey Weinstein Could Result in Life Sentence
• Thailand Races to Rescue Youth Soccer Team Trapped in Cave
• Report: Melania Trump Made Over $100K in Royalties from Photos Licensed to Media

At least 2,000 migrant children remain separated from their parents, after the families were forcibly separated by immigration officials under President Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy. A federal judge has ordered all these children must be reunited with their parents within 30 days—but immigration advocates say the administration does not have a clear plan for how to reunite the families. In McAllen, Texas, immigration lawyers are scrambling to help their clients find and reunite with their children. Attorney Efrén Olivares is director of the Racial and Economic Justice Program for the Texas Civil Rights Project.

In New York City Saturday, more than 10,000 people marched across the Brooklyn Bridge to protest the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown and to demand the reunification of all migrant children separated from their parents during the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” crackdown.

Tens of thousands of protesters marched in cities across the United States on Saturday for a “Families Belong Together” rally to demand the Trump administration comply with a federal judge’s ruling that all migrant children separated from their parents must be reunited. The Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy led to the forcible separation of more than 2,000 children from their parents, some of whom have already been deported. The protests came 24 hours after the Trump administration said in a court filing on Friday that it has the right to hold children in detention with their parents for the duration of their immigration proceedings, which can take months or years. Current law prevents children from being held for more than 20 days. Democracy Now! was in the streets of Washington, D.C., where tens of thousands rallied.

In Mexico, leftist politician Andrés Manuel López Obrador, known as AMLO, has claimed victory after winning Sunday’s presidential election by a landslide, vowing to transform Mexico by reducing corruption and violence. Preliminary election results show López Obrador, the former mayor of Mexico City, capturing 53 percent of the vote—more than twice that of his closest rival. His three main rival candidates have already conceded. His victory comes after the most violent electoral season in modern Mexican history. At least 136 politicians have been assassinated in Mexico since September. For more, we speak with Christy Thornton, assistant professor of sociology and Latin American studies at Johns Hopkins University. She was an election observer for the Scholar and Citizen Network for Democracy. She is currently writing a book about Mexican economic history.

• In Mexico, López Obrador Will Become First Leftist President in Decades
• Coast to Coast, Tens of Thousands Protest Separation of Migrant Families
• Trump to Announce Supreme Court Nominee on July 9
• At Deutsche Bank, Justice Anthony Kennedy's Son Loaned Trump $1 Billion
• Afghanistan: Sikhs & Hindus Killed in Suicide Bombing in Jalalabad
• Gaza: Thousands Gather for Funeral of Child Killed by Israeli Sniper During Protests
• Syria: 150,000 Displaced by Syrian & Russian Daraa Offensive
• Pentagon Admits to Killing 40 Civilians in Bombing in Raqqa, Syria, Last Year
• Judge Blocks End of FEMA Housing for Puerto Ricans Displaced by Hurricane Maria
• Far-Right & Anti-Fascist Protesters Clash in Portland, Oregon
• Seattle Becomes First U.S. City to Ban Plastic Straws & Utensils

In Washington, D.C., 630 women were arrested Thursday during a massive nonviolent civil disobedience action on Capitol Hill protesting the Trump administration’s immigration policies. Protesters, chanting “We care” and “Abolish ICE,” and wearing mylar emergency blankets like those given to immigrants imprisoned in U.S. detention centers, flooded the Hart Senate Office Building for a sit-in protest demanding that immigrant children be released from U.S. custody and reunited with their families. Protesters included the actress Susan Sarandon and Linda Sarsour, co-organizer of the Women’s March on Washington.

Thursday’s Families Belong Together rally at the federal courthouse in Brownsville, Texas, culminated with people marching across the street to the federal courthouse, where migrants apprehended under the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy have been prosecuted in mass trials.

At Thursday’s protest in Brownsville a group of children took the stage to condemn the Trump administration for separating other children from their families. Ten-year-old Joana Aldape said, “These kids are human beings, not animals to be put in cages like those at the zoo.”