Episodes

Understanding Trump Era Capitalism Just prior to the 2024 presidential election, we interviewed 7 leading socialist thinkers and activists on whether, and if so to what degree, they were fearful that if Trump was elected to a second term Americas already weakened democracy would be further weaken and if so, to that extent. And did they think Trump was essentially a would-be fascistic, authoritarian president. Our guests over a number of weeks were Chris Hedges, Dianne Feeley, Henry Giroux, Bill...

The FACE Act Cited As Religious Protection Against Protesters Of Israeli Land Sale In Palestine Passed in 1994 in response to violent and obstructive protests at reproductive-health clinics, the federal FACE Act (Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act) also protects people exercising their First Amendment right to religious freedom at places of worship. The law has now become the latest battleground over protest and free speech. The Party for Socialism and Liberation New Jersey, or PSL-NJ, ...

Jews No Longer Identifying With Israel Phil Weiss started Mondoweiss 20 years ago to provide a critique of Zionism and the suppression of Palestinians, which in those days was very much minority view. Today, Mondoweiss is widely read and respected for accurate reporting. Things have changed. A great number of Jews no longer identify with Israel. This is especially true of young people. Israel, because of its continuous genocide against the Palestine people in Gaza, it’s ethnic cleansing in the ...

Exceptional Hatred: Antisemitism And The Fight Over Free Speech In Modern America Today in America, "we proclaim our commitment to fighting hatred while applying it selectively. We champion free speech until confronted with speech we despise - and minimize the claims of those wounded by words." American democracy "stands at a precipice, besieged by authoritarian politics, resurgent nativism, and populist demagoguery. These forces, once relegated to history, now threaten our pluralistic society ...

The Conviction Machine: Prosecutors, Politicians and Police Violence in Chicago The comedian Lenny Bruce used to joke that Chicago was so corrupt. It was thrilling. He had no idea. Bruce was referring to run of the mill bribery of a traffic cop or a police officer taking your floor mats in lieu of a ticket or a pay off from a local bar owner. The corruption in Chicago ran much deeper. It went from the prosecutors who were actually in the police station, listening to the screams of men being tort...

Reviewing Key SCOTUS and Lower Court Cases Last month co-host Stephen Rohde reviewed the conservative legal doctrine known as the Unitary Executive Theory as the US Supreme Court ended its term further entrenching the reactionary Republican agenda. As legal battles mount across every tier of the judiciary, basic constitutional rights continue to be tested in the courtroom. We'll highlight key cases that impact immigration, voting rights, freedom of speech and freedom of press. Guest – Stephen ...

Analysis Of A Transformation Our country is going through a great transformation. We are no longer the constitutional democracy we once were. Its reported that Elon Musk, the world‘s first trillionaire, gave Trump and his MAGA organization $200 million in the last election. Miriam Adelson, the widow of a casino magnate gave another $100 million. Trump bragged about her ready access to the White House. Musk took a wrecking ball to federal jobs. Other institutions such as law firms, the Supreme C...

Transgender Community Legal Protection, LGBTQ Rights and SCOTUS The transgender community is the whipping boy of the Republican Party. Conservatives never miss a chance to try to inflame voters with scary stories about transgender people invading public bathrooms and women’s sports. Transphobia has now reached the US Supreme Court which has handed down a series of regressive decisions seriously impairing trans rights.To help us understand what’s going on and how decent people can stand in solid...

Ordinary People, Extraordinary Times - A Guide for All of Us: How to Reclaim Your Power, Fight for Freedom, and Reimagine Democracy We're joined by Skye Perryman, the author of a new book, Ordinary People, Extraordinary Times - A Guide for All of Us: How to Reclaim Your Power, Fight for Freedom, and Reimagine Democracy. Skye opens her book this way: “I know how you feel - because I’ve been there to ... On a bad day, and there are many bad days, our nation’s backslide from democracy into autocra...

Cuba: The Capital of 21st Century Communism On July 20th, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the State Department released a 100-page McCarthyite propaganda report. It is a document that seeks to serve as the ideological justification for an escalating assault on Cuba, the Cuba solidarity movement and all political dissent on the left. The report casts a wide net of unfounded accusations, maliciously painting over 40 left-leaning social movement organizations and individuals as purported Cuban ...

Challenges To The Trump Administration's Executive Orders The legal system is straining as it tries to hold the Trump administration accountable for its unprecedented assault on our constitutional rights. Close to a thousand lawsuits have been filed challenging Trump’s Executive Orders and their implementation, plus more than ten thousand separate habeas corpus petitions filed by people targeted by Trump’s immigration crackdown. We take a deeper look at some of these legal and political develo...

Unitary Executive Theory The US Supreme Court just ended a momentous term further entrenching the reactionary Republican agenda. Our sometimes consideration of relevant court cases and other legal developments, today includes a review of the conservative legal doctrine known as the Unitary Executive Theory, now favored by the conservative majority on the Supreme Court, and the conservative doctrine of Originalism. Well also look at a new opinion poll of Americans showing that at least half of A...

PEN America Writer’s Organization President Resigns Amid Controversy Last week, on July 9, a long-simmering controversy burst into the headlines pitting allies of robust freedom of expression against each other over how writers, publishers and literary agents should respond to Israel’s genocide in Gaza. The dispute came down to a fundamental question: Should a boycott be imposed on Israeli writers? The dispute was so divisive that Professor Dinaw Mengestu resigned as president of the free expre...

[display_podcast] Billionaires and Trillionaires When Donald Trump came back to resume the office of presidency a year and a half ago the kind of government we were living under was unclear. It was a government where billionaires dominated our mass media, corporations, universities, courts, and government. Was this oligarchy authoritarianism or was it fascism American style? Last month, the media treated us to the spectacle of Elon Musk becoming the world‘s first trillionaire. One trillion is ...

U.S. Supreme Court Decisions July 2026 Last week, the US Supreme Court ended its 2025-2026 Term with a barrage of long-awaiting blockbuster decisions altering the entire structure of the American government and seriously undermining the crucial separation of powers between Congress, the President, and the courts. The Supreme Court, which is dominated by a conservative super-majority of Republican justices - including 3 justices appointed by Donald Trump - confronted such important issues as Bir...

U.S. Supreme Court Decisions Resetting Precedent There have been several major U.S. Supreme Court decisions issued under the leadership of Chief Justice John Roberts.These decisions include abortion rights cases, anti-immigrant cases, cases enhancing administrative or executive power and, of course, voting rights cases. Well also learn about the role of the shadow docket. This is known as the emergency docket with a range of uses such as for routine procedural matters and last-minute requests. ...

Communities Nationwide Unite Against Data Center Resource Grab Across the nation, communities are becoming ground zero in a growing fight over data centers. The explosive growth of AI, cloud computing, and cryptocurrency has triggered a massive boom in their construction. These sprawling facilities often cover hundreds of acres and consume enormous amounts of electricity and water. Residents from Virginia to Pennsylvania, Georgia to Arizona, are asking a simple question: who benefits, and who p...

The Future of Cuba When the Cuban revolution succeeded on January 1, 1959, it drove the American supported Batista dictator out of their country. One of the first things that the revolution government did was to create a law " which is very popular because a lot of people would have fought on the side of the revolution and benefited directly from it " to initiate a comprehensive land reform. Previously, large tracks of land had been owned by American corporations. The average peasant worked pa...

Cities Cancel Flock Camera Agreements After Brazen Privacy Breaches In 2025, something shifted in the long, largely one-sided battle over surveillance technology in American cities. The Atlanta-based company Flock Safety sells AI-powered license plate readers, or ALPRs, to thousands of police departments. Last year, they started losing. At least two dozen cities and counties cancelled, rejected, or terminated Flock contracts after local communities organized and said no. In Austin, more than 3...

The Complicit Lens: US Media Coverage of Israels Genocide in Gaza For more than two years, the world has witnessed not only a devastating war in Gaza, but also a fierce battle over how that war has been covered in the media. Weve seen headlines repeated before facts were verified. Weve seen civilian deaths described in passive language that obscures responsibility. Weve watched journalists, students, doctors, and even U.N. officials dismissed or marginalized when their accounts challenged offic...

Guilty of Genocide For decades, activists in the United States have argued that racial violence, political repression, and systemic inequality are not simply domestic issues. They’re also violations of international human rights law. A new collection, Guilty of Genocide, revisits that argument through the lens of the 2021 International Tribunal on U.S. Human Rights Abuses Against Black, Brown, and Indigenous Peoples. The book gathers testimony, legal analysis, poetry, artwork, and organizing do...

War And Debt Economy We are experiencing a great transformation in who holds economic, and therefore political power in America. This transformation is going on for the last 50 some years. There are now approximately 1000 billionaires in America. Our constitutional form of government, the government of checks and balances has been transformed. The three branches of government, the legislative, the judicial, and the executive were designed to hold each other in check and that is no longer the ca...

Strange People on the Hill: How Extremism Tore Apart a Small Town Investigative reporter Michael Edison Hayden has spent years on the front lines documenting extremism in America. In his new book, Strange People on the Hill: How Extremism Tore Apart a Small Town, Hayden tells the story of a quiet West Virginia town thrust into turmoil when a white nationalist organization moves its headquarters to a nearby 19th century castle. At the center of the story are the neighbors who suddenly find thei...

Donald Trump vs History The article is titled, Donald Trump vs History: The Trump School of Falsification and it is not about Trump’s personal difficulties with telling the truth. The first paragraph of the article reads: “The rise to power of Donald Trump and his minions has sanctified and energized a campaign to revive the kind of triumphalist, exceptionalist version of U.S. history that reigned over both academic and public culture from the late 1940s through the early 1960s." The article g...