Front Burner

In just over five weeks, Americans will head to the polls for the midterm elections and the contours of the vote are taking shape.

Republicans are defending narrow majorities in Congress. Trump’s approval ratings are underwater, with the economy and cost of living a central concern. In some Republican races candidates are beginning to put some distance between themselves and the president.

But what larger questions are Americans being asked to confront this November? Is this a referendum on Donald Trump? On the economy? On the war in Iran? Or will this be about the Democratic Party's attempt to carve out a coherent identity post-Biden? 

Alex Shephard is a Senior Editor at The New Republic. He's our guest today.

For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts 

A new investigation into the Tumbler Ridge shooter's use of ChatGPT has revealed some disturbing information. It has long been public knowledge that the 18-year-old had used the chatbot months before she killed her mother, half-brother, five students and an educator at school, before turning the gun on herself. That account was flagged and shut down.

But a story in the American outlet Mother Jones reveals the extent to which Jesse van Rootselaar is alleged to have used a second chatGPT account right up to the day of the massacre. CBC has not independently verified this reporting.

Mark Follman, the national affairs editor at Mother Jones, reported this story and has been looking closely at the role of ChatGPT in mass shootings and other violence. He joins Jayme to talk about what he found.

For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

The United States is getting older, and so, increasingly, are the people charged with governing it.

The average age of a U.S. senator is 64-years-old and in the House it's 58, according to 2025 numbers. Dozens of elected officials are in their 70s and 80s. Presidents Joe Biden and Donald Trump both turned 80 in office. As a result, Americans have seen questions about the age and capacity of their leaders become a central feature of the national conversation. 

What happens when the people at the top don't leave? And at what point does an aging society become a gerontocracy? 

Samuel Moyn is a political theorist and professor at Yale university. He's the author of several books, including 'Gerontocracy in America'. He's our guest today.

For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts 

On Tuesday, B.C. Premier David Eby called a snap election, two years into his term. He said the province needs to show a strong response to American aggression. 

This was just two days after the leader of the Opposition, Kerry-Lynne Findlay, resigned, following a tumultuous four months that included a string of firings and defections, leaks from caucus meetings, and allegations of spying. 

Eby's critics are calling his timing "cynical" and "profoundly undemocratic." It could also end up backfiring, since the election call has been a rally cry for unity on the right.

Rob Shaw, who covers B.C. politics for CHEK news and Glacier Media, explains how divisions and dysfunction inside the B.C. Conservatives triggered a high-stakes political gamble in the province.

For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts 

Earlier this week, Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party won a record number of seats in the country's parliamentary elections. Putin is expected to frame the result as an endorsement of his war with Ukraine. And, according to Ukrainian intelligence, he may mobilize hundreds of thousands more Russian troops before the end of the year. 

All of this has Europe on edge. Because Russia hasn't just been targeting Ukraine – but Ukraine’s allies too. In the last few weeks, a Russian ship fired flares at a Danish military helicopter, NATO jets shot down a drone over Lithuania, and Germany thwarted a suspected Russian drone attack at one of their airports. 

Many observers think Russia is intentionally trying to provoke NATO. But why? And what happens if NATO decides to fight back?

Victor Jack, POLITICO’s NATO reporter, joins us from NATO’s headquarters in Brussels.

For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

On Sunday it looked like the United States was about to wade back into its fight with Ansar Allah, or the Houthis, the Iran-backed group in Yemen that has grown into a surprisingly powerful military presence in the region.

Saudi Arabia had been asking for support after a series of Houthi attacks and advancements, 

which brought a major global shipping and oil chokepoint - the Bab el-Mandeb strait - under Houthi control.

Iona Craig has been reporting on Yemen and the Arabian Peninsula for over a decade and she joins us to track the group's rise from a group of rebels from the mountains of northwestern Yemen to a geopolitical force.

For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

Parliament returns today from summer recess, amid ongoing economic uncertainty and an unresolved trade war with the U.S. Prime Minister Mark Carney told MPs on Friday that this will be "a crucial session of the House of Commons" and vowed to introduce "some of the most consequential legislation not just of this government, but in decades." 

CBC's Chief Political Correspondent Rosie Barton joins us to talk about what we can expect in this session of Parliament, and Carney's balancing act for his ambitious agenda. 

For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts 

It's been almost a month now since trade talks between the U.S. and Canada collapsed and Mark Carney's government walked away from a deal. Canadian retaliatory tariffs went into effect earlier this month and yet more U.S. tariffs hit this week. A new deal between the two countries is nowhere in sight. 

By and large — Canadians support this.

But Sean Speer sees this a bit differently: he's wondering if Canada really should have walked away from the table, and asks if Canadians – in all their righteous anger – are thinking clearly about the path we're on now.

Speer is the editor-at-large of The Hub and a former senior economic advisor to Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts 

At her State of the Union address yesterday, the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, made a historic offer: she wants Canada to become the first “associate member” of the European Union.

No one knows exactly what that will mean. Associate membership is a designation that doesn’t currently exist in the EU.

But Drew Hinshaw and Joe Parkinson think it could be transformational. They’re two of the journalists who first broke this story in the Wall Street Journal, and they think this signals more than a changing relationship between Canada and Europe. It’s a sign of a fundamental shift in the international order.

For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts 

For years, hundreds of thousands of Haitians living in the United States have been protected from deportation under a program known as Temporary Protected Status, or TPS. But, as of August, that protection is over as the Trump administration moves to deport Haitians en masse to a country still facing extraordinary political and humanitarian upheaval.

The decision to end TPS comes after years of increasingly hostile rhetoric about Haitian migrants, including the false claim, amplified by Donald Trump and other Republicans, that Haitians in Springfield, Ohio, were eating people's cats and dogs.

So, what explains the U.S.'s now centuries-long fascination with Haiti, and how does Donald Trump's contemporary immigration regime connect to that story?

Marlene Daut is a writer, scholar and author of several books on Haitian history, and a professor of French and African Diaspora Studies at Yale University. She is our guest today.

For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts