Episodes

Law and Disorder co-hosts Heidi Boghosian and Stephen Rohde discuss Israel’s continued assault on Gaza and the West Bank and the Trump administration doubles down—backing military aid to Israel while cracking down on pro-Palestinian voices at home. Student visas are being revoked, protests labeled “antisemitic,” and university funding slashed. Historian and Jewish Voice for Peace board member Barry Trachtenberg joins them to explore the dangerous implications for academic freedom, dissent, and ...

Co-hosts Michael Smith and Jim Lafferty get a closer look at the latest U.S. negotiations with Iran and Israel's demand to dismantle Iran's nuclear energy program. Richard Becker will join hosts. He's the Western Regional Coordinator of the ANSWER Act Now to Stop War and End Racism explains in detail what is at stake. Hosts then speak with Nadia Ben-Youssef, the Advocacy Director at the Center for Constitutional Rights about a new report submitted by four human rights groups denouncing the acce...

A Constitutional Crisis In The United States America is in the midst of a constitutional crisis. More than 200 lawsuits have been filed against the Trump administration during his first 100 days in office, resulting in more than 100 injunctions and stays, as he lays waste to fundamental constitutional protections and laws passed by Congress. On the first day of his second term, Donald Trump had the audacity to sign an executive order claiming he was "restoring freedom of speech." Instead, his ...

Chris Hedges: Trump 2.0 Trump 2.0 is qualitatively different from his first term in office. This time Trump and his allies have brought down a tsunami on us, creating fear and chaos.Tens of thousands of government workers have been fired. Thousands have been deported, some to a torture prison in El Salvador. Due process was ignored. The court orders challenging this have been ignored, as well. With his extreme tariff measures, Trump has damaged our economy, and it looks like there may be a rec...

Radio Documentary – It Was Genocide: Armenian Survivor Stories Around the world, April 24 marks the observance of the Armenian Genocide. On that day in 1915 the Interior Minister of the Ottoman Empire ordered the arrest and hangings of Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in Constantinople. It was the beginning of a systematic and well-documented plan to eliminate the Armenians, who were Christian, and who had been under Ottoman rule and treated as second class citizens since the 15th c...

Oligarchs, Billionaires And Reshaping The Economic-Political Landscape We’re living at a time of profound changes in the institutions that previously governed our society. One hundred years ago V.I Lenin, the leader of the Russian Revolution, observed that sometimes nothing changes for decades and at other times decades-long changes occur within several days. This is what is happening now in America as the old institutions, the Democratic Party, the Republican Party, the universities, the medi...

The Dangerous Militarization of AI and the Profiteering Behind It A recent exposé by investigative journalist Peter Byrne, titled One Ring to Rule them All, and published by Project Censored, reveals the unsettling extent of Silicon Valley's deepening ties to the military-industrial complex. Byrne traces the rise of Palantir Technologies—founded with seed money from the CIA and ominously named after the all-seeing stone in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. Today, Palantir stands as a $200-billion po...

The Silencing of Genocide Critics The International Court of Justice, known as the World Court, found it plausible that Israel was committing genocide against the Palestinian people living in Gaza. Thereafter the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his defense minister Yoav Gallant. Since October 8, 2023 Israel has murdered, on an industrial scale, upwards of 70,000 people and reduced most of the Gaza strip to a pile of rubble...

James Goodale: Fighting for the Press and Freedom of Speech Donald Trump has wasted no time in his second term attacking free speech and freedom of the press. He arrested Mahmoud Khalil, a permanent US resident with a green card and a student visa, and is trying to deport him (until restrained by a federal judge) because Khalil led pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University. He has threatened to deport other students for their pro-Palestinian protests. Trump banned the Associated Press fro...

Weak Opposition Strengthened Capitalist Order We, as ordinary people, are experiencing a profound change in the nature of who holds power in America today. Our constitutional democracy, however limited by race and class, is being replaced by an oligarchy, that is to say, the rule by the super rich few over the many. The separation of powers between the Congress, the Executive, and the Supreme Court has all but been eliminated. We are getting what the oligarchs wish for, “a unitary executive” wh...

Federal Court Challenges to Trump Administration Arguments The number of active lawsuits in federal courts challenging Trump administration arguments has now topped 100. In 21 of those cases, judges have already issued temporary restraining orders or preliminary injunctions, effectively stopping, at least for now, parts of Trumps agenda. For example, as reported in the New York Times this past Sunday, trial court judges have blocked for now Trumps mass firings of civil servants, Musks access t...

Emphasis On Christian Nationalism Several recent developments in the United States have highlighted an increased emphasis on Christian Nationalism within government policies, raising concerns about the separation of church and state and its impact on daily life. This heretical form of Christianity is being forced upon us. It is super masculine, misogynist, nationalist, homophobic, white, supremacist, and racist. It is Christian in name only. The religion of egalitarian Jesus, who preached the ...

Lawyers Defending American Democracy The early days of the Trump administration have ushered in a series of assertive executive orders that are rapidly reshaping the federal landscape. While new administrations typically bring change, most Americans expect such shifts to respect the rule of law. Project 2025, however, diverges from legal norms, challenging birthright citizenship, dismantling crucial federal agencies like USAID without congressional approval, and attempting to criminalize suppor...

Trump Executive Orders Erasing Protections For Underclass This is the first week of Black History Month, and we at the Law and Disorder show are eager to celebrate it. But that's not what's happening in the Trump administration. The Defense Department under the headline "Identity Months Dead at DoD" has eliminated various Heritage Months, including Black History Month. Meanwhile, the Defense Intelligence Agency has "paused" the recognition of Black History Month. Even more alarming is Trump’s ...

A Golden Age of Oligarchs Last month, Elon Musk said something about the Trump election with which we agree. He said “this was no ordinary victory. This was a fork in the road of human civilization.“ How true. Now our democracy, however, restricted by class and race, is in the process of being replaced by a super wealthy oligarchy. There are more than 800 billionaires in the United States. They are now in the saddle. The Citizens United Supreme Court case of 2010 eased the process. Trump was e...

Dismantling Progress, Deportation And Sanctuary Cities On Law and Disorder, we're celebrating Black History Month. We remember and honor the ongoing struggle of Black Americans and their allies to achieve equality, justice and fairness. But the forces of white supremacy have opposed that struggle at every turn. Today, the President of the United States and his enablers are at the forefront of not only dismantling the progress that has been made but creating new obstacles to impede further progr...

The First Amendment And TikTok On January 17, for the first time in modern American history, a unanimous US Supreme Court upheld a sweeping prior restraint on free speech imposed by Congress banning over 170 million users in the United States from having access to the popular social media platform TikTok that the Court itself admitted allows users to create, publish, view, share, and interact with short videos overlaid with audio and text. In 2023 alone, U. S. TikTok users uploaded more than 5....

Malcolm X Shabazz et al. v. USA A groundbreaking legal case seeks justice for the family of most iconic civil rights leaders, Malcolm X. In an unprecedented lawsuit filed by his daughters, the Shabazz family is challenging the U.S. government, the City of New York, and several high-ranking law enforcement agencies. At the heart of the case is the claim that state actors, including the FBI and NYPD, played an active role in the assassination of Malcolm X on February 22, 1965, and that this invol...

Remembering The Legacy of Jimmy Carter Jimmy Carter passed away on December 29, 2024, at the age of 100. His legacy in human rights has left an indelible mark on global diplomacy. Elected in 1977 as the 39th President of the United States, Carter made human rights a central theme of his administration. He believed that as a global power, the US had a responsibility to champion freedom, dignity, and justice for all people, regardless of nationality or political system. This vision led to the int...

We Are the Union: How Worker to Worker Organizing Is Revitalizing Labor and Winning Big. The bank robber Willie Sutton was asked why he robbed banks. He famously replied, “because that’s where the money is.” We’re interested in the labor movement not only for humanitarian reasons but because that’s where the power is. Union members can withhold their labor and bring the economy to a standstill. Unionized workers gained ground in 2024. Union workers in the private sector saw a 6% rise in real w...

Taxpayers Against Genocide: Lawsuit Filed Against Congress Members For Approving $26.38B In Military Aid To Israel On December 19, 2024, a coalition of human rights activists and organizations filed a class action lawsuit against California Congress members Mike Thompson and Jared Huffman. The lawsuit alleges that the representatives misused their authority by approving $26.38 billion in military aid to Israel, despite evidence that these funds contribute to ongoing genocide against Palestinian...

Charting A Way Forward: A Billionaire President, Economies and Policies The corporate media has been working to normalize Trump and his cabinet nominees who are waiting in to take the reins of the US government on January 20, 2025. Trump won the popular vote by less than his three predecessors Biden, Obama, and Bush. He lost in 2020 and attempted to stay in power by a coup that failed. But last month he succeeded in staging a comeback. He will be more focused, organized, and more brutal than he...

U.S. Attorney General Choice: Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi Bondi, Florida's first woman attorney general for eight years from 2011-2019, was part of Trump's defense team during his first impeachment trial and supported his false claims of fraud following the 2020 election. She's remained in Trump's orbit since then, continuing to advise him on legal matters. In announcing Bondi as his new choice, Trump signaled the role he expects her to play. "For too long, the partisan Department of Ju...

Attacking Those In Academia Who Condemn The Israel-Gaza War All across this country, academic freedom is once again under severe attack. Why?…because at colleges and universities, professors who dare to speak out in defense of the Palestinian people and condemn Israel’s genocidal war against the Palestinian people, are being censored, disciplined and fired. These attacks on academic freedom are not limited to actions by university administrators, but include those by the federal government, as ...