Episodes

Raiding the Genome: How the United States Government Is Abusing its Immigration Powers to Amass DNA for Future Policing Around the world, governments are quietly stockpiling one of the most intimate forms of personal data imaginable: our DNA. What began as a tool for identifying suspects and reuniting families has become a global infrastructure for surveillance—an invisible archive of our genetic code, stored and searchable. In 2024, Georgetown Law’s Center on Privacy & Technology sounded the ...

We’re Coming for You and Your Whole Rotten System Tens of thousands of socialists, union members, and working people fought alongside Kshama Sawant and her city council office to win historic victories, like the $15 an hour minimum wage, Amazon tax on businesses, renter rights and more. Long before AOC and Bernie Sanders became household names, Kshama won elections as a socialist to the office of city council in Seattle in 2013. Twelve years ago the demand for $15 an hour was dismissed as utopi...

From The Flag To The Cross: Fascism American Style: Live Event From The Flag To The Cross: Fascism American Style is the title of a newly published book edited by Zachary Sklar and our own Michael Smith. The book draws from seven key interviews with prominent socialist thinkers in the United States and Canada. They include Margaret Kimberly, Henry Giroux, Dianne Feeley and Bill Mullen. Last month publishers OR books held a live book launch event taking place at Live On Avenue C in the East Vill...

Non Citizens And Free Speech Rights: AAUP v Rubio On September 30, 2025 a federal judge in Boston issued one of the most important decisions that has been rendered during the 9 months of Donald Trump's second term. Following a nine-day trial in July that included the testimony of 15 witnesses and the admission of scores of documents, US District Judge William G. Young of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts ruled that the Trump administration’s policy of arresting, detainin...

Court Watchers Monitor Deportation Cases In New York City, a quiet act of resistance is taking place every week inside the federal immigration courts. Members of the Professional Staff Congress—the union representing faculty and staff across the City University of New York—have been showing up not as lawyers or law enforcement, but as witnesses. They call themselves court watchers. Their goal: to stand beside immigrants facing possible deportation, document abuses, and assert the public’s right...

Taxpayers Against Genocide and the National Lawyers Guild Submit Petition To UN Eighty years ago, after 2 world wars claimed millions of lives, nations worldwide — including the United States — came together and established the UN system “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war.” The UN Charter requires that all states settle their disputes peacefully and refrain from the use of armed force, except in self-defense after an armed attack against a UN state by another state, or when...

The Library Freedom Project Soon after the attacks of September 11, 2001, when federal agents demanded library circulation records under the USA Patriot Act, librarians became unlikely whistleblowers for democracy. The “Connecticut Four” successfully sued the FBI in 2005 over secret National Security Letters that sought patron data and imposed gag orders. They reminded the nation that a book borrowed in silence should never be grounds for suspicion. The Library Freedom Project was born in this ...

Corporate Media Coverage Analysis of NYC Mayoral Race The majority campaign of Zohran Mamdani in New York City is the most hopeful development on the left in America today. Mamdani is a charismatic 33 year-old Uganda born one time state legislator and a wholehearted supporter and member of the Democratic Socialists of America. He is challenging former governor Andrew Como, who was recently forced to resign in disgrace after being credibly accused by 13 women of sexual harassment. Cuomo represe...

Defending My Enemy: Skokie and the Legacy of Free Speech in America At the heart of Trump's blizzard of chaotic, cruel, and corrupt attacks on our democracy is one of the most turbulent, disruptive, and consequential assaults on freedom of speech in American history. Trump and his obedient underlings have enlisted the full force of the federal government’s overwhelming criminal, civil, administrative, immigration, and national security apparatus to illegally crush protest, dissent, and free spe...

From The Flag To The Cross: Fascism American Style From The Flag To The Cross: Fascism American Style is the title of the recently published anthology edited by Zachary Sklar and our own Michael Smith. Co-host Jim Lafferty had written the introduction. The book draws from seven key interviews with prominent socialist thinkers in the United States and Canada. They include Margaret Kimberly, Henry Giroux, Dianne Feeley and Bill Mullen. Bill will also be joining Michael and Jim in the guest seat, ...

Paul Le Blanc On Democratic Socialist Trend In a remarkable come from behind victory in the Democratic primary over disgraced former New York governor Andrew Cuomo, the Democratic Socialist Zorhan Mamdani is likely to become the next mayor of New York City in November when he wins the election. This comes a decade after the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) exploded onto the stage of US politics. The organization is full of vibrant campaigns, discussion, and experimentation. How can democr...

The First Amendment Heavily Tested Under Trump Administration The First Amendment is being tested in many arenas not only in response to various Executive Orders which Donald Trump has issued in his second term, but also in state legislatures which are experimenting with how far the government can go in restricting freedom of speech. In Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton, the US Supreme Court upheld a Texas law requiring age verification for access to Internet porn sites. In 2024, Mississippi ena...

University Capitulates To Censorship Policies VI. Lenin, the leader of the Russian Revolution, observed that sometimes decades go by without very much happening and other times decades happen within weeks. In a sense we are living through such a time. It is comparable to the great transformation several centuries ago, when feudalism was finally subdued and capitalism flowered. The obligations of the master to the serf were severed and workers were left on their own in the new ruthless capitalis...

The Trump Administration and ACLU Legal Counteraction Strategy The very day President Donald Trump returned to the White House on January 20, 2025, the American Civil Liberties Union celebrated the beginning of its 106th year. Based on its long experience combating repressive governments, the ACLU had been carefully planning for the possibility of Trump's reelection. That day it announced that it was fully prepared for the threat Trump posed to our constitutional democracy. The ACLU recalled t...

The Dual State: A Contribution to Theory of Dictatorship. The German Jewish lawyer Ernst Fraenkel escaped from fascist Germany and settled in the United States. In 1941 he wrote an extremely important book which were going to discuss today. The book is titled The Dual State: A Contribution to Theory of Dictatorship. The book explains how Hitler availed himself of two systems of law. The first Fraenkel called the normative state. This is your traditional law that regulates things like contracts...

AI Generated Police Reports Police departments across the U.S. are beginning to use artificial intelligence tools like Axon's “Draft One” to automate the writing of police reports based on body-worn camera audio. While the goal is to save time and reduce paperwork, digital rights advocates are raising serious concerns. The Electronic Frontier Foundation warns that Draft One lacks transparency, making it hard to tell whether errors or biases in reports come from the AI or the officer. They argue...

Checks, Balances And Separation Of Powers This half-hour, we continue our ongoing effort to understand in real time, the upheavals taking place within our US government, as well as the blitz of attacks on the rule of law – and that includes attacks on judges, lawyers, academics, students, and virtually anyone else who is critical of the Trump Administration’s policies and actions. Today, we’ll be particularly focused on recent Supreme Court decisions that have paved the way for Trump to disman...

American Association of University Professors v. Rubio Sadly, listeners to Law & Disorder are all too familiar with how the Trump administration has systematically created a climate of repression and fear on our university campuses. Federal agencies are attempting to deport multiple individuals for their pro-Palestinian advocacy, including Mahmoud Khalil, a leader of the pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University. These actions have sent chills through the community of noncitizen students ...

Trump v Casa : Presidential Immunity On June 27, the last day of the Supreme Court's official term, the 6-member ultra-conservative majority issued one of the most dangerous decisions in its history, which the 3 dissenting judges called "shameful" and a "grave attack on our system of law." In three lawsuits consolidated as Trump v, CASA Inc, 22 state attorneys general, several pregnant women who are not American citizens, and a variety of civil rights organizations challenged Donald Trump's Ex...

Dangerous Threshold: Long Range Implications Of Bombing Iran's Nuclear Facilities In a dangerous escalation of U.S. foreign policy, Donald Trump announced on June 22 that the U.S. had bombed 13 Iranian nuclear facilities in support of Israel. The Israeli-Iranian conflict has already left hundreds dead—including scores of civilians—and now risks igniting a wider regional, if not global, war. While Trump claimed to broker a ceasefire, Israeli missiles struck Iranian targets just hours later. Ira...

Law Firms Targeted By Trump Administration Trump and the MAGA movement behind him have taken huge steps to upend and overturn the kind of democracy, however limited by race and class, that we have lived with since our independence from England some 250 years ago. In order to secure their rule, these fascists, like those in the Hitler movement 90 years ago, attempted to get control of the various apparatuses of our society. They aimed at the major media, the universities, the states like Califor...

Leadership Failure Within The Democratic Party The unfolding events in Los Angeles after Donald Trump called up the National Guard in violation of federal law and his threat to invoke the Insurrection Act are but his latest assault on democracy and the Constitution. Lawyers, social justice organizations, and watchdog groups are fighting back in over 245 lawsuits against the Trump administration winning over 180 injunctions. Last Saturday, thousands of NO KINGS rallies were held in every state o...

A Genocide Foretold: Reporting on Survival and Resistance in Occupied Palestine. The world looks on in horror as Israel continues its genocidal assault on the Palestinian people. According to Benjamin Netanyahu, the only inevitable outcome will be the wish of Gazans to emigrate outside of the Gaza Strip, he told this to lawmakers at a leaked closed-door meeting. But our main problem is finding countries to take them in. According to our guest today, Chris Hedges, the Israeli war in Gaza marks t...

Placeless: Homelessness in the New Gilded Age Homelessness in the USA has reached catastrophic proportions. In New York City alone 125,000 people are homeless. One out of eight children in public school are homeless. Shelters for homeless people are overflowing. Many sleep outside or in the subway system. Their conditions of life have driven many of these people over the edge.The problem is long-standing and quite evident. There’s a lack of affordable housing. Why? Because building affordable h...