Ralph Nader Radio Hour

Ralph speaks to America's #1 Populist Jim Hightower to get the lowdown on some potentially historic races coming up in Texas. Then Ralph is joined by Norman Solomon (co-founder of RootsAction) to get his final take on how this round of Democratic campaigns have played out. Finally, Ralph talks to pollster John Zogby about what we can learn from the latest polls.

Ralph wants to hear from you! When was the last time you bought anything— a product or a service, based directly on the ad that you read or listened to or saw? We will read and discuss your responses on a future program.

Jim Hightower is a syndicated columnist, national radio commentator, and America’s Number One populist. He is a board member of Public Citizen, and he is a founding member of Our Revolution, an organization inspired by the issues brought up in the Bernie Sanders campaign. He has written several books including Swim Against the Current: Even a Dead Fish Can Go With The Flow, and his newsletter The Hightower Lowdown publishes twice a week on Substack.

Even the current [Texas] Agriculture Commissioner (who Republicans abandoned, even though he is a right-wing Republican himself) has effectively endorsed Clayton Tucker for that position. And one reason, the main reason, is because Clayton took on early the data center corruption in our state. Where our state government under Abbott got fully behind the building of data centers and the coming AI revolution, saying that we were going to be the centerpiece in the world of data centers. And it turns out that, oops, that’s not a very popular position among Republicans in rural areas of our state, because, of course, they’re going to suck up the water, they’re going to take over the land, take over the local government, etc. And people aren’t real keen on that. So there’s been a rebellion building in the countryside. And I’ve got to say, the Democratic Party did not understand that rebellion and did not adopt it early. But Clayton Tucker did.

Jim Hightower

People are finally catching on, getting fed up, and not just getting mad, but doing something about it.

Jim Hightower

Norman Solomon is co-founder of RootsAction.org and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. He is the author of War Made Easy, Made Love, Got War, and War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine.

“Tone deaf” from Schumer and Jeffries is part of what they assume to be their job description.

Norman Solomon

All too often, people are overly respectful. Sure, you don’t want to go around screaming at your representatives. But the amount of deference, the amount of kowtowing and, “Oh, thank you for all you’ve done. Appreciate it,” it gets translated to, “Well, you’re not a Republican, so thank you very much. You’ve done your job.” No, that’s not your only job. Your job is to represent people against corporate power, against the militarists, against the vicious economic and social system that is crushing millions and millions of people.

Norman Solomon

Wherever you live, if you have somebody in Congress, don’t treat them like a god. Forget about No Kings—don’t treat them like a prince or anything else. They’re there to work for you. And the vast majority of the members of Congress (and that includes Democrats), they haven’t been working for you. They’ve been working for military contractors. They’ve been working for the Fortune 500 and Big Tech. And that has to change. And will change only if we confront them.

Norman Solomon

John Zogby is a public opinion pollster, author, and public speaker. He is the founder of the Zogby poll and the Zogby International poll, and he is founder and Senior Partner at John Zogby Strategies, a consumer opinion survey and political survey company.

I’m a little less worried this time around, simply because the Republicans own what’s going on. They can’t blame the Democrats for the lack of affordability, for status anxiety…They own the war in Iran…These are things that they have to defend. In the absence of defending, they blame Democrats for being socialists or blame Democrats for personal foibles. And that may work with some. But the fact of the matter is, what voters really want to know is: What have you done for me lately, and what are you going to do for me next? And they’re not hearing that from Republicans. Now, they’re not necessarily hearing a united message from Democrats either. But the Democrats, at least this time, don’t own the mess.

John Zogby

News 10/30/26

* Our top story this week is the shock re-election victory of Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Lula, who began his career as a labor leader and dissident under the Brazilian dictatorship, now becomes perhaps the most voted-for individual in the history of the world. Lula placed second in the first round of the presidential election, with his opponent Flávio Bolsonaro coming in first, which makes the reversal in the second round that much more impressive. According to PBS, voting was extended by two hours just minutes before the polls were set to close following requests from both campaigns, with Lula citing “issues with buses that provide transportation to polls in Sao Paulo and Salvador,” and Bolsonaro citing “heavy rains in Brazil’s south.” One major theme of his campaign was that a victory for Flávio Bolsonaro, son of former President Jair Bolsonaro, would undermine Brazilian sovereignty and give the Trump administration carte blanche to do as they please in the country. This has been a recent pattern in Latin America, borne out by right-wing governments in Argentina, El Salvador, Ecuador, Colombia, Chile and Peru, compounded by the administration’s aggressive approach to more left-wing governments as in Cuba and Venezuela. Flávio’s actions in the wake of his loss – fleeing to Miami under the protection of the U.S. government after defying a Brazilian Supreme Court order to surrender his passports and stand trial in a sprawling money laundering investigation and declaring himself the rightful president-elect of Brazil in exile – does little to refute this narrative. However, despite Lula’s victory his next, and likely final, term is expected to mostly consist of rearguard actions as the new Congress will be dominated by the extreme right, including two newly elected senators from the Bolsonaro clan.

* Elections were also held in Israel this week, but appear to have resulted in a hung parliament. As of this writing, the Likud bloc, led by incumbent Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appears to have won 53 seats, while the opposition bloc won 48 seats, leaving neither bloc with a governing majority of 61 seats. The swing bloc consists of the Arab parties, which are claiming 19 seats in an unprecedented electoral showing. However, neither side has so far proven willing to ally themselves with the Arab parties, a strict taboo in Israeli parliamentary politics. Netanyahu himself has “dismissed the idea of partnering with Arab parties as treasonous,” according to AP. Al Jazeera reports Netanyahu is claiming that the Arab parties stole the election via “serious criminal offences” including “bribery, threats, violence, [and] forgery,” echoing Donald Trump’s oft-repeated claims about Democrats in the 2020 election. Sami Abu Shehadeh, the leader of Balad, a left-wing Arab-Israeli party, is quoted saying “When someone who is a candidate to be a prime minister says he does not want to sit with 20 percent of the population…this is racism, and racism is ugly, whether its victims are Jewish or the victims are Arabs.” Over 400,000 ballots remain to be counted by Israeli citizens who are “unable to leave their posts, such as nurses, diplomats or soldiers. They are tallied separately to ensure each voter has not already cast a ballot elsewhere.” Isaac Herzog, who serves in the largely ceremonial role of President of Israel, is urging the factions to form a government as soon as possible, adding that “We need to do everything…not to hold another electio…

With the midterm elections just over the horizon, Ralph makes his impassioned pitch for how the Democrats can beat MAGA Republicans to Democratic pollster, Celinda Lake and executive director of Progressive Democrats of America, Alan Minsky. Plus, the team takes a brief moment to analyze Donald Trump’s apparent obsession with hot male backsides.

Celinda Lake is a political strategist and president of Lake Research Partners. She and her firm are known for cutting-edge research on issues including the economy, health care, the environment and education, and have worked for a number of institutions including the Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Governor’s Association, AFL-CIO, SEIU, CWA, Sierra Club, NARAL, Human Rights Campaign, Planned Parenthood, VoteVets Action Fund, and the Kaiser Family Foundation. Her international work has included work in Liberia, Kyrgyzstan, Belarus Ukraine, South Africa, and Central America.

One factor is the most important thing that you can play a major, major role in: We have to get young people out to vote. They are our best voting group in some races...they are so strongly for the candidate. It could be just pulling out every young person to vote. And they vote for our candidates by 70-80%.

Celinda Lake

Democrats have been very good about voting early and getting their ballots in early. And we’ve dominated the early vote 60-70%. So that’s helped to mute [the impact of election interference]. But you can bet on a lot of people trying to interfere with people voting on Election Day, and it’s going to be very, very important for us to insist that everyone can vote and every vote be counted.

Celinda Lake

We have 60% of the voters who don’t like socialism, but only 50% of the voters who say they know what it is.

Celinda Lake

Alan Minsky is a lifelong activist and Executive Director of Progressive Democrats of America. Alan has worked as a progressive journalist for the past two decades, and he has coordinated Pacifica Radio’s national coverage of elections. He is the creator and producer of the political podcasts for The Nation and Jacobin, as well as a contributor to Common Dreams and Truthdig.

[Democrats] are told that if they’re going to get Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) money, they can’t be endorsing anybody who’s running against the incumbent Democrat. And that’s relevant in California, because there are some races that are Dem-on-Dem still on November 3rd. And the other thing they’re told is they have to (in advance) endorse Jeffries for speaker. So that’s the kind of pressure they put on even these incoming progressives. And it’s sad. It’s pathetic. It’s absolutely something that we hope that, if and when progressives take over the Democratic Party (and that’s a heavy lift, but that’s what our intention is), something like that will never happen again.

Alan Minsky

News 10/23/26

* Our top story this week is an exposé published in the New Republic showing how Bari Weiss, as editor in chief of CBS News, has weaponized the network against specific Democratic candidates. This piece shows how Weiss, described herein as an “anti-woke crusader…urged her newsroom to cover right-wing conspiracy theories regarding Democratic Senate candidates James Talarico and Abdul El-Sayed.” Specifically, Weiss encouraged reporters to investigate “El-Sayed’s (nonexistent) ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and 9/11, and Talarico’s (also nonexistent) trip to a mental health facility.” El-Sayed, who is Egyptian American, has in fact denounced the Muslim Brotherhood on numerous occasions. Talarico, who became the subject of a conspiracy theory claiming he had checked into a mental hospital in Ohio after a week-long absence from the campaign trail, simply had the flu. In a viral post, Talarico added “I’ve never even been to Ohio.” TNR notes that, “both Talarico and El-Sayed are progressive candidates who have been critical of Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, something that Weiss, her pro-Israel The Free Press blog, and CBS have covered with extreme bias.”

* Turning to the Executive Branch, the Washington Sun reports that the Trump administration is gearing up to “impose financial penalties on millions of Americans in default on their federal student loans next year.” The administration has tried to “seize federal benefits and wages from defaulted borrowers,” in the past, but divisions between the Education Department, the Office of Management and Budget and the Treasury have stymied these efforts. Now, the administration is signaling that they are committed to this policy, either by seizing “expected payments…such as…tax refunds, Social Security…or the earned income tax credit and child tax credit,” or by garnishing wages. The Treasury continues to fight against these moves, arguing that such measures would harm low-income borrowers and further depress an unsturdy economy. Beyond the economic impacts, administration insiders also argue such a move will generate immense political blowback even among Trump’s base. Anonymous Treasury officials quoted in the Sun emphasized that their message within administration discussions has been “This is not who you think it is. The demographics are not good for us.”

* Meanwhile, in the House, the first skirmish of the next Congress – anticipating a Democratic majority – is already underway. Congresswoman Maxine Waters, the presumptive chair of the House Financial Services Committee, found herself the target of at least one challenge from Illinois Congressman Sean Casten. Another Illinois Rep., Bill Foster, is also reportedly weighing a challenge. However, the two Illinoisans seem to have already been outmaneuvered. On Monday, POLITICO reported that 19 of the 23 Democrats on the committee signed a letter backing Waters. This letter was reportedly led by Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey, among the most centrist Democrats in the caucus, and emphasized that Waters has “managed the Committee with skill and inclusivity,” ensuring that “all Members, from the most senior to the newest, from New Democrats to Progressive Caucus Members, have a seat at the table and a voice in the Committee’s agenda.” Still, the challenge itself, like AOC’s bid for the top spot on the Oversight Committee after the 2024 elections, represents younger members chafing against the baronial power of longtime incumbents. Casten is 54 years old; Waters is 88 and is running for her 19th term in the House.

* The Judicial Branch has also been in the news this week, with reports that Columbia University activist Mahmoud Khalil will bring his case before the Supreme Court. Khalil spent months in jail last year and has long maintained that his imprisonment amounted to retaliation by the administration for his protected political speech, namely on Palestine. Khalil’s case has wound its way through the legal bureaucracy, involving fights in both federal court and immigration court systems. The specific petition to the high court has to do with “a ruling that a federal judge had no power to order his release from jail until [Khalil] exhausts his options in the immigration system.” Khalil’s lawyers argue that “If the decision stands, the government would be handed a powerful and unprecedented weapon to silence its critics, and to chill the speech of countless others, including citizens, who wish to avoid the government’s wrath against themselves and their loved ones.” Khalil will remain free until the justices decide how to proceed. This from the Hill.

* In Canada, the left continued its winning streak in local elections with the victory of the Vancouver Green Party mayoral candidate Pete Fry over the incumbent Mayor Ken Sim, who was affiliated with the center-right ABC Vancouver coalition. The Tyee reports the left also experienced a romp in the city council elections, sending four Green candidates to the council along with four candidates affiliated with the Coalition of Progressive Electors (COPE). The ABC, which currently…

Ralph speaks to Peter Maybarduk of Public Citizen about how the Trump Administration's drug pricing deals favor Big Pharma. Then, some advice for progressive candidates from Ralph and former NYC Public Advocate Mark Green.

Peter Maybarduk directs Public Citizen’s Global Access to Medicines Program, which helps partners worldwide make medicine available and affordable for all. He has provided technical and strategic assistance to government agencies and health organizations in dozens of countries, and sits on the governance board of the Medicines Patent Pool, a United Nations-backed organization that negotiates licenses among drugmakers to expand global availability of affordable generics.

Trump has several different drug pricing initiatives, but he’s hollowing them out himself by negotiating exemptions from his own drug pricing programs on behalf of the Big Pharma corporations. Trump has been signing a series of deals in the White House so far with 27 drug makers, and they get the PR from this, right? They come out and say, “We’ve got a new deal. We’re going to offer the best prices in the world.” But those deals are secret. Part of what we know now is the deals actually exempt the drug makers from any of the binding mandatory programs that Trump is trying to run.

Peter Maybarduk

Almost every new drug relies on some kind of US-government funding at some stage. Sometimes it’s just in the research chain (in the literature, the publications) that link back to NIH research. Sometimes it’s all the way up through development…So there’s a lot to be said for public R&D, which already happens. There’s also: we could just manufacture more drugs publicly in the late stage...And generally, if you had, for example, a government-owned-contractor-operated model or a fully public model of production and the proper terms attached to it, you could fight rationing. You could ensure that there’s a basic supply of essential medicines available for people. It would help you fight during pandemics and not have to be reliant on pharma’s profit-maximizing decisions about who is going to get vaccines, for example, at what price and when. You could bring those things under public authority and make them accountable. There’s a lot of levers that we’re not yet using that we could use to make medicine affordable and available for all.

Peter Maybarduk

Mark Green is a former Nader’s Raider, who ran Public Citizen’s Congress Watch for ten years and was elected New York City’s first Public Advocate. He’s a prolific author, and has collaborated with Ralph on Fake President: Decoding Trump’s Gaslighting, Corruption, and General B******t, and Wrecking America: How Trump’s Lawbreaking and Lies Betray All.

As the GOP spends hundreds of millions on negative ads in the final month, here’s a suggested strategy and narrative for aggressive and progressive Democrats in close contests. First: yes, Assume Trump’s “on the ballot” (in his phrase), to tarnish your rival with his erratic extremism. And second: frame everything under the memorable banner of “Progress, not corruption.” [Trump] has pushed America to an inflection election when voters determine whether Trumpism survives Trump, or whether it becomes a pariah ideology like McCarthyism.

Mark Green

News 10/16/26

* Our top story this week is the resounding reelection victory of United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain. As Jacobin reports, Fain won his first term in 2022, taking out the long-entrenched leadership clique at the union following internal democratic reforms, including direct election of union leadership. Under Fain, the UAW has again become a fighting union, winning “record agreements at the Big Three,” automakers following a successful stand-up strike, “delivering 25 percent wage increases, eliminating wage tiers, restoring cost-of-living adjustments, securing bonuses for retirees for the first time in decades, winning the right to strike over product commitments, and bringing electric vehicle battery production under the union’s master agreements.” Fain’s UAW also secured “life-changing contracts” at Daimler Truck, American Axle, Allison Transmission, Cornell University and Rolls-Royce, along with unionizing the workers at “Volkswagen’s sole US assembly plant in Tennessee, which became the first foreign-owned Southern auto plant to be organized in US history.” Fain has also expanded the UAW’s horizons in terms of international solidarity, making it the largest union to call for a ceasefire in Gaza in 2023. In response, and many say, in retaliation, a federal monitor was appointed to oversee the union and, some allege, to sabotage Fain’s governing program. Hopefully, Fain’s renewed mandate will send a signal throughout the labor movement that there is nothing to be lost – and everything to be gained – to, as this piece puts it, “wage a real fight for working-class people in this country.”

* In more positive labor news, New York City Deputy Mayor for Economic Justice Julie Su reports the city’s ferry captains have voted to unionize and affiliate with the Transport Workers Union (TWU). Su notes in her statement that the Mamdani administration will “always support workers’ choice to organize for a union,” and that “Workers should be free to make that choice without employer interference…[and] have a path to a speedy first contract. These crews, and all working people, deserve nothing less.” This decision comes just two months after the Diesel Technicians and Welders on the ferries voted to unionize under the TWU banner as well. At that time, the union issued a statement reading, in part “The highly skilled NYC Ferry workers are trusting in the industrial power of the TWU in New York to deliver a crucial first contract while showing up to fight for them on all fronts, no matter what…Across New York City and New York State, the TWU is showing over and over again why we are America’s fightback union, organizing the unorganized and standing up for every worker against powerful interests.”

* Turning to the midterms, Shannon O’Brien, Chair of the Montana Democratic Party writes in an op-ed for MS NOW that she is resigning her post and throwing her support behind independent Senate candidate Seth Bodnar. Bodnar is widely seen as the most competitive non-Republican candidate in this race, but Democrat Alani Bankhead has refused to drop out despite garnering little support, either inside the state or nationally. In this piece, O’Brien writes that she is a “a lifelong Montana Democrat who has proudly run and served under that label,” but that she believes “there are things more important than labels or party politics.” O’Brien goes on, writing that “Bankhead does not have the momentum, resources or will to win this race,” and denounces her for “mudslinging” at Bodnar and citing the “real questions about…Bankhead’s commitment to protecting a woman’s right to choose, her support of working people and her views of people living in poverty.” O’Brien finishes by appealing to Montana values, arguing that her “job has always been to advance the values Democrats in this state care about, and right now, the clearest path to doing that runs through an independent candidate.”

* Elsewhere in the Great Plains, Democrat Adam Hamilton is building stunning momentum in his bid to unseat incumbent Republican Senator Roger Marshall. This week, the Washington Post published an article explaining why two former Republican Governors of the Sunflower State, Mike Hayden and Bill Graves, have endorsed Hamilton. This piece quotes Graves, who said “I’ve just been terribly disappointed and alarmed at the congressional level in the Republicans’ willingness to yield so easily, so readily, to this executive branch and yielding to actions that a lot of Americans don’t think make a lot of sense,” while Hayden, formerly a backer of Marshall, said Marshall’s willingness to back Trump’s war in Iran and the administration’s tariffs, “despite the consequences for Kansans,” convinced him that “It’…

Ralph welcomes Dr. Alison Galvani, the founding director of the Yale Center for Infectious Disease Modeling and Analysis, and co-author of the forthcoming article, “Projected Economic Gains and Lives Saved Under Universal Health Care in the United States.” Then our constitutional law expert, Bruce Fein, stops by to tell us about a letter he and Ralph sent to states Attorneys General urging them to prosecute Donald Trump for exhorting his followers to commit voter fraud in the forthcoming midterm congressional elections. Finally, we respond to your feedback on how to be a smart voter.

Alison Galvani is the founding director of the Yale Center for Infectious Disease Modeling and Analysis and the Burnett and Stender Families Professor of Epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health, Yale School of Medicine. She has applied her modelling and health economics skills to address public health challenges including HIV/AIDS, Zika, Ebola, influenza, and COVID-19. And she is co-author of the forthcoming article “Projected economic gains and lives saved under universal healthcare in the United States.”

We analyze the American healthcare system as a national balance sheet. And on one side of the ledger, we have: covering the uninsured and expanding care for the uninsured (that costs money). And we took into account that utilization will increase for people that currently have inadequate health care… And when we initially started looking at this in 2019…I anticipated a hefty price tag as well. Our work has focused on the effectiveness and cost-efficiency of public health policy in the US and around the world, and usually we’re asking: How much will it cost to save lives? And we rarely get a no-brainer where you save money and you’re saving lives.

Alison Galvani

Currently, no country spends more on health care than America (even though millions of Americans are completely uninsured and many more have inadequate insurance). And despite spending so much, we trail dozens of nations in life expectancy, infant survival, maternal mortality, and deaths that timely medical care should prevent. The prevailing issue is that even though we’re spending so much, a lot of the money we’re spending isn’t going to health care delivery itself. So much of it is extracted by for-profit insurance companies and directed away from care towards shareholders. There’s a misalignment of incentives—insurers make more profit when health care is denied. So, Americans are literally forfeiting their health so that corporate shareholders can make more money. And that’s just the architecture of our current health care system by having for-profit companies at so many junctures, even beyond the health care insurers.

Alison Galvani

People are dying not because their conditions couldn’t be prevented or treated, but because they couldn’t afford to see a doctor or fill their prescriptions. People without health insurance are more likely to die than insured people of the same age—that’s been empirically shown. So we took those empirical parameters and we applied that increased risk to the uninsured population in each age group, and then the difference between the deaths we have and the deaths we would be able to avert under universal health care coverage is more than 114,000 lives a year, we estimated. And last year’s Big Beautiful Bill, with its health care retractions, will only exacerbate the toll.

Alison Galvani

Bruce Fein is a Constitutional scholar and an expert on international law. Mr. Fein was Associate Deputy Attorney General under Ronald Reagan and he is the author of Constitutional Peril: The Life and Death Struggle for Our Constitution and Democracy, and American Empire: Before the Fall.

[The US Supreme Court] issued this very broad immunity theory that Presidents have immunity from criminal prosecution for discharging Constitutional responsibilities entrusted to the President. And this was way outside that scope because it relates to Mr. Trump’s activity as the head of the Republican Party, trying to promote results in Congressional campaigns. And to the extent there’s any federal role in Congressional campaigns, it’s entrusted to Congress, not the President…Trump should not be subject to any different standard than any citizen who would likewise make such a claim of fraud. I can guarantee you, if you had a Democrat stand up and say, “Democrats should take a pledge to commit fraud, vote even if you’re not registered,” there’d be a grand jury at the federal level summoned within 24 hours. And why should it be any different with Mr. Trump—by state attorneys general, who have the same authority and requirement to enforce state laws against fraud at the state level as the President does at the federal level?

Bruce Fein

Action Alert!

Call or write your state’s Attorney General about the following...

September 15, 2026

Connecticut Attorney General William Tong, President, National Association of Attorneys General (NAAG)

Re: State prosecutions of Donald Trump for inciting or aiding and abetting state electoral fraud in the midterm 2026 congressional elections

Dear Mr. Tong:

We urge every member of NAAG to consider state prosecution of President Donald Trump under their respective state laws for urging, in his non-presidential capacity, to commit voter fraud in the forthcoming midterm congressional elections. Speaking in his capacity as a leader of the Republican Party in Dallas, Texas, on September 10, 2026, unprotected by the constitutional immunity shield of Trump v. United States (July 1, 2024), Mr. Trump urged attendees to take a pledge as follows: “I don’t care if I’m registered or not. I’m going to try and cheat like hell, like they do.”

If an ordinary person uttered such an exhortation to industrial-scale electoral fraud, a state prosecution would be forthcoming. The United States abandoned “the King can do no wrong” doctrine of Great Britain 250 years ago on July 4, 1776.

We are eager to explore this idea further with NAAG.

Sincerely,

Bruce Fein, Esq. | Ralph Nader, Esq.

News 10/9/26

* Our first stories this week concern the progressive campaigns underway in Michigan. In the Senate race, Abdul El-Sayed made headlines after he announced that he would be joined on the trail by former President Barack Obama. According to the Detroit Free Press, “President Obama will rally voters and encourage them to vote early for Democrats up and down the ballot,” in an event to be held October 24th. In addition to El-Sayed, Obama is expected to stump hard for Democratic Gubernatorial nominee Jocelyn Benson. At the same time, El-Sayed announced that he will also be joined on the campaign trail by New York progressive firebrands AOC and Zohran Mamdani, per the Washington Examiner. El-Sayed being able to bring together these factions of the fractious Democratic Party bodes well not only for his campaign but for his ability to govern effectively if he is ultimately elected to the Senate.

* Meanwhile, in Michigan’s 7th Congressional District, incumbent Republican Congressman Tom Barrett faced off against his Democratic challenger, climate organizer William Lawrence, in the first debate of this race. Lawrence took the opportunity to tie Barrett to support for data centers and Trump’s tariffs – as well as Trump himself, who currently holds an approval rating of between 32% and 39% in Michigan, according to recent polling. On the issue of affordability, Lawrence argued that Barrett is “taking money from the corporations that are raising our costs and making our lives more challenging,” while Lawrence himself has “never taken a dime of corporate PAC money.” Barrett won this seat in 2024 by a margin of under 1%; this seat is considered a must-win for Democrats to retake the House. This from WLNS.

* The first debate of the Senate campaign in Maine was held this week as well. CNN reports incumbent Senator Susan Collins “touted her ‘effective leadership’ securing federal funds for Maine, while [Democratic challenger Troy] Jackson sought to nat…

Ralph speaks to Dr. Feroze Sidhwa for an update on the death toll in Gaza as well as the new documentary film “American Doctor.” Then Ralph and economic William Lazonick discuss Nvidia’s planned $235 billion stock buyback.

Dr. Feroze Sidhwa is a general, trauma, and critical care surgeon in California. He is also a humanitarian surgeon who has worked in Palestine, Ukraine, Haiti, Zimbabwe, and Burkina Faso. He most recently volunteered at Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis, Gaza. He was blocked from entering Gaza by Israel’s Shin Bet intelligence service in November 2025. His work in Gaza is featured in the new documentary film American Doctor.

If I’m remembering the exact time right, March of 2016 was the deadliest month for children that [Airwars] had ever studied anywhere—so that’s the 31 days of March of 2016. In the first 25 days of the US-Israeli assault on Gaza, the rate of killing of children was 71 to 142 times higher than in the deadliest month they had ever studied for children anywhere else. And just to put these numbers in a little bit of perspective…If you look at Russia’s invasion of Ukraine versus Israel’s invasion of Gaza, Russian forces killed the same percentage of children in Ukraine in 10 months as the US and Israel kill in Gaza every 18 to 37 hours.

Dr. Feroze Sidhwa

I want to emphasize to people that [American Doctor] is not a gory movie. This movie is nothing— Saving Private Ryan is a much bloodier movie than this. But nevertheless, this movie is a tough watch sometimes because the things you see (like what [Dr. Mark Perlmutter] shows at the very beginning) are difficult. They are scenes of dead bodies—not bodies that have been ripped to shreds, but bodies that are just dead. And it forces you to realize what our bombs do to people. You know, our bombs are not made of magic and pixie dust. They cause pressure waves, they cause blast injuries, they cause all sorts of death and destruction. And in that opening scene that’s what Mark is trying to get the director [Poh Si Teng] to understand—that if she blurs these images, if she pixelates them, if she refuses to show people what it looks like to kill children and what dead children actually look like and force people to look (to really just look), that she’ll be doing people a disservice. And you hear it at the end of the trailer when he’s saying “People have a right to know the truth.” Well, the truth is pretty uncomfortable.

Dr. Feroze Sidhwa

The most effective medical care that human beings provide to each other is provided to small children so that they can reach the age of five (at that point they become a bit more robust and they can survive the challenges that the world throws at them) and to pregnant women. Those are the two groups that benefit most from medical care. When you destroy a medical system…This is literally every hospital in Gaza, and not just the hospitals. Most of the clinics have been destroyed. Most of the pharmaceutical warehouses have been destroyed. Most of the veterinary medicine spots have been destroyed. So when you attack a health care system like this, you’re basically condemning women and children to die. There’s no other effect that it could even be expected to have. The same goes with the destruction of Gaza’s sewage system, it’s the destruction of its educational system, the destruction of the water treatment facilities, the destruction of almost all of the housing in Gaza, the destruction of the entire arable land and food distribution system, the destruction of almost every bakery in Gaza, the destruction of every chicken farm, it just goes on and on and on. Everything that sustains life, especially for an urbanized population, has been destroyed. And that’s why the vast majority of international experts consider this to be genocidal.

Dr. Feroze Sidhwa

William Lazonick is a professor emeritus of economics at the University of Massachusetts Lowell and co-founder and president of the Academic-Industry Research Network, a non-profit research organization . His recent work includes Predatory Value Extraction: How the Looting of the Business Corporation Became the US Norm and How Sustainable Prosperity Can Be Restored, and Investing in Innovation: Confronting Predatory Value Extraction in the U.S. Corporation.’

When [Nvidia] issued this press release a couple days ago about the [$235 billion] buyback, one of the things it says is that it’s “returning capital to shareholders”. I mean, Jensen Huang (who’s a founder and CEO of Nvidia) knows that’s nonsense. The only time they ever raised money from shareholders on the stock market was in their IPO in 1999 (January 1999). And that was $40 million. One of his three co-founders, Curtis Priem, sold all his stock in 2006 for about $30 million. It’s estimated that if he had held the stock to the present, it would be worth $70 billion. So if those people who originally bought the stock at the IPO had held on to it, you don’t need to return anything else to them. They’ve got plenty and plenty of money for holding on. So this is just a manipulation of the stock market.

William Lazonick

News 10/2/26

* Our first story this week comes to us from Florida, where Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Angie Nixon made news by saying in an interview with Newsweek that she thinks “there needs to be a moratorium [on the construction of data centers] until more research is done,” but that “if people want to build a data center, they should put it on Mar-a-Lago.” Nixon is careful to explain that she is open to data center construction given the appropriate safety guidelines and under the correct circumstances, such as “requiring or creating a mechanism for communities affected by data centers to receive some form of financial benefit.” While the invitation to build a data center on Mar-a-Lago is obviously incendiary, Nixon rejects the notion that her campaign is primarily about Trump, saying “I’m not pushing an anti-Trump message,” in the president’s adoptive home state, instead arguing that she is “pushing a message about how people should decide what their economies and communities look like.”

* Meanwhile the Hill reports Senate Democrats, led by Senators Mark Warner, Brian Schatz and Andy Kim, sought to pass a package of AI guardrails via unanimous consent this week, but were blocked by Ted Cruz. According to this report, the Artificial Intelligence Risk Management and Security Act of 2026 sought to “establish a permanent AI safety board within the Commerce Department,” which “would develop standards for evaluating frontier models and securing their testing environments, with developers required to give the panel access to models at least 45 days before they go public.” Cruz blocked the unanimous consent resolution on the basis that it would “give the executive branch too much power over private AI companies.”

* For our final tech story for the week, the Huffington Post reports that shortly after the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute fiasco which saw the group accept, then reject major donations from Palantir, the controversial high-tech surveillance firm was apparently “acknowledged as a supporter of the annual gala” for the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, the CBC’s “charitable arm,” in Washington. Many remarked on the perverse symbolism of “one digital banner…[upon which] the firm was listed among the conference’s ‘top supporters…’...[while] The background featured a faded portrait of Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman elected to Congress, whose campaign motto ‘unbought and unbossed’ symbolized resistance to corporate influence.” This piece observes that Palantir has “long sought to curry favor with Democratic-aligned institutions,” while simultaneously cultivating close ties with ICE and the military and the firm’s founders, notably Peter Thiel, publicly espouse far-right ideas. In a statement, Palantir wrote that they are “proud and honored to support the CBC Foundation’s mission of creating pathways for promising …

Ralph welcomes Mary Berry the daughter of the late American novelist, poet, essayist, environmental activist, cultural critic, and farmer, Wendell Berry. Ms. Berry runs the non-profit Berry Center in New Castle, Kentucky, which serves as a repository for the study of small farm agriculture and preserves the legacy of her family’s work. Then, with the midterms on the horizon, Ralph and the team talk about how to be a smart voter. Plus, Ralph has some choice words for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s so-called “Free Enterprise Express.”

Leave a comment about how you are a smart voter. We will collect these and discuss them on our next program.

Click the button below to get Professor Laura Nader’s book Controlling Processes.

Mary Berry is Executive Director of the Berry Center, a nonprofit organization dedicated to bringing focus, knowledge and cohesion to the work of changing our ruinous industrial agricultural system into a system and culture that uses nature as the standard, accepts no permanent damage to the ecosphere, and takes into consideration human health in local communities.

[Wendell Berry] lived the way he thought one should live. He used to say to people when they kind of congratulated him for coming home to Kentucky to live and to farm (as if that was some kind of sacrifice), he would say, “I just did what I wanted to do.” So he was an exceptional person, an extraordinary person, and he’s left an absence that is going to be keenly felt for quite some time.

Mary Berry

We have (since the end of the tobacco program) lost 15,000 farms in Kentucky. And we’ve lost the rural culture. And we’ve lost the rural culture that sustained good life here and good land use… Without an economic backstop, people begin to fall apart. It takes a lot to hold culture together. It takes a lot to hold people together. So I took a list to my father and said we’ve got to work on these things—the miseducation of farmers, access to capital, terrible land use, we’ve got to study the tobacco program (this is not about tobacco, this is about the principles of a program that protected farmers). And he said: well, it sounds like you’re starting a center.

Mary Berry

One of the reasons I started the Berry Center is because I saw the local food movement as a failure. And I began to understand that we could not just have entrepreneurial farming or industrial farming, with nothing in the middle. We were going to have to try to put something in the middle that would take care of marketing and pricing and so on for farmers, so they didn’t have to do it all.

Mary Berry

I think one of the things that makes my father’s work singular is that he never talked about the land without talking about the people— talking about the people, talking about the land, the two never separated.

Mary Berry

News 9/25/26

* Our first two stories this week have to do with the Senate race in the state of Michigan. First up, Dropsite is out with an expose of “Michigan Jews Against Extremism,” a group that emerged in August which sought to astroturf opposition to Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed among Jewish voters. Yet, while the avowed members of this group purport to be “Democrats and Independents” Dropsite finds that in fact, “many of the Jewish community leaders involved have deep ties to the GOP, as well as to pro-Israel activist groups such as AIPAC.” Among the signatories, “Nearly 50 were involved in a nearly identical gambit in 2012 that went by the name ‘Jews for Mitt.’...[arguing that] Then-President Barack Obama…was so “anti-Israel” that their consciences drove them to abandon the Democratic Party to support Republican nominee Mitt Romney.” All in all, Dropsite finds that “nearly 90% of the first 430 signatories are either connected to pro-Israel activist groups, GOP aligned, Jews for Mitt voters, or may not live in Michigan,” at all. This piece notes that Jewish voters typically go for Democrats by a ratio of about 2:1, making them a key part of the Democratic coalition.

* Helping to counter the narrative pushed by this group and others, this week Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel formally endorsed El-Sayed, the Detroit News reports. In an interview conducted side by side with him, Nessel said she “can’t be true to my values if I even consider voting for Mike Rogers,” adding that he is the “one candidate that I know is going to fight against the Trump administration…to protect…our physical security, our safety, our health and our futures.” Nessel has been critical of El-Sayed in the past; in August, she gave a private speech to Jewish Democrats in which she implied that Democrats critical of Israel, like El-Sayed, “have thrown us,” referring to Jewish Democrats, “under the bus, despite our lifelong contributions to our party.” Many Democrats worried that her disagreements with El-Sayed over Israel would undermine his candidacy. By coming around on the candidate, she immediately becomes one of his strongest surrogates in the Michigan Jewish community and helps to unite the often fractious Democratic coalition behind him. Recent polling has favored El-Sayed over Rogers by an increasing margin. While a Detroit News/WDIV-TV poll conducted in late August and early September found Rogers leading by one point, a Suffolk University poll conducted in mid-to-late September found El-Sayed ahead by seven.

* In more Senate race news, this week saw the publication of a bombshell report of corruption on the part of longtime Maine Senator Susan Collins – and how Trump helped to cover it up. According to ProPublica Martin Kao, CEO of defense contractor Navatek, funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars to a Collins Super PAC through a shell company in exchange for her intervening on behalf of his company to secure lucrative military contracts, part of a “sweeping pay-to-play” scheme. When the feds caught onto Kao, leaving him staring down the barrel of a lengthy prison sentence, he told-all. This piece notes that while the Supreme Court has “narrowed what counts as bribery” to require “extraordinary proof of a quid pro quo arrangement,” the FBI “had enough evidence to pursue a sweeping bribery probe that could ensnare top lawmakers of both political parties,” by late 2024. After the election however, Trump “stacked the Department of Justice with his personal lawyers” and “eviscerated” the “specialized FBI and DOJ teams handling public corruption investigations,” because they had been involved in cases deemed lawfare against him specifically. The investigation based upon Kao’s story, substantiated by reams of evidence, is now regarded as dead in the water. In light of all of this, whether or not Collins faces accountability for this brazen corruption falls to the voters of Maine.

* In our last Senate story of the week, the Texas Tribune reports the Senate Leadership Fund (SLF), the “main outside group affiliated with Senate Majority Leader John Thune,” will “book an additional $30 million in ads,” on behalf of Republican Senate candidate Ken Paxton through its connected entity, Texas PAC. Piled on top of SLF’s previous spending of nearly $70 million, this “will to bring its total spend to the $100 million mark.” This spending confirms that the GOP considers this race highly competitive and tracks with past predictions by SLF, which estimated that “a Paxton candidacy would cost $200 million to $250 million in order to keep the seat in Republican hands.” On top of the SLF’s $100 million spend, other groups have poured around $40 million into this race. Some wondered whether the Republicans, defending a broad array of seats, would be willing to bail out Paxton’s flailing candidacy. This new monetary commitment seems to confirm that they will throw as much money as they deem necessary to prevent the victory of James Talarico. While Talarico has raised and spent colossal amounts of money as well, this new infusion of Republican cash has swamped his spending thus far – with the Tribune reporting that in the “month of September…

Ralph welcomes “New York Times” reporter Natasha Singer to discuss her new book, “Coding Kids: Big Tech’s Battle to Remake Public Schools.” Then, Ralph talks about Donald Trump’s midterm convention speeches and the latest impeachment drive with Constitutional law expert Bruce Fein.

Natasha Singer is a New York Times reporter covering the intersection of technology, business and education. She has covered tech industry influence in schools for the New York Times for more than a decade, and her school tech reporting helped prompt California to enact a landmark student online data protection law. In 2019, she was part of a Times team whose tech coverage won a George Polk Award and was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for National Reporting. She is also the author of the book Coding Kids: Big Tech’s Battle to Remake Public Schools.

It’s not about the companies immediately making money off schools. It’s about influencing kids, getting customers early and for life. But I think more importantly, it’s about imprinting Silicon Valley worldviews and values on young people. So that you get docile consumers who maybe aren’t worried about wholesale surveillance and data gathering, and docile employees who are not going to push back against being surveilled by their employer or using AI tools or having AI replace them. And so I think this story about tech companies capturing the classroom is not just about how they’re shaping learning. It’s about how some of the most powerful, wealthiest corporations on the planet are able to influence school systems.

Natasha Singer

Since the time of Steve Jobs, Silicon Valley has attached this fancy word “literacy” to whatever product they have, and then told schools they needed to teach it. So in the era of Steve Jobs, there was suddenly this fervor that we had to teach “computer literacy” because Japan was ahead and if we wanted our country to compete, we needed computer literacy. And then the internet came and we got “internet literacy” and “smartphone literacy” and then “digital literacy”... And now we’re in this moment where Silicon Valley and tech-funded nonprofit groups are pushing “AI literacy”, except we don’t know what AI literacy is and we don’t know how to teach AI. And so it makes it sound really fancy: “AI literacy”. But oftentimes the companies are really just talking about: “Learn how to use our chatbot.” And now you have asked: When are we going to stop listening to these people? When are we going to stop rushing to teach whatever product “literacy” Silicon Valley is pushing us to do this week, and then pivot with whiplash to whatever they’re pushing next week? And I think that’s the question of the hour.

Natasha Singer

Bruce Fein is a Constitutional scholar and an expert on international law. Mr. Fein was Associate Deputy Attorney General under Ronald Reagan and he is the author of Constitutional Peril: The Life and Death Struggle for Our Constitution and Democracy, and American Empire: Before the Fall.

They’re playing to dodge accountability by saying, “We’re neither for nor against this,” like someone who’s claiming they’re agnostic. Now, how you could be agnostic on Donald Trump, whose impeachable offenses are proven out of his own mouth? All these statements that he’s made are open and notorious. And so it’s almost implausible to suggest that these people don’t know that he has committed impeachable offenses and are deciding to duck for political, partisan purposes (their calculation as to what would help them politically). Now, that, of course, is directly contrary to their oaths of office. Hakeem Jeffries, like his colleagues, has taken an oath (without mental reservation or purpose of evasion) to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. At present, the Constitution is in flames under Donald Trump. And to sit and do nothing—to declare neutrality between the firefighter and the fire—is itself an impeachable offense for which they should be impeached and be prosecuted for perjury when they were sworn into office.

Bruce Fein

News 9/18/26

* Our first stories this week are about impeachment. On the Democratic side, outgoing Congressman Al Green, long a champion of impeachment, introduced a resolution which “sought to impeach Mr. Trump over the conduct of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection…[citing] the killings of Renee Good, Alex Pretti, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo and Johan Sebastian Duran Guerrero by federal immigration agents this year,” per CBS. House Democratic Leadership punted, announcing that they would neither whip votes for nor oppose the resolution, opting instead to simply vote “present” on the motion to table Green’s resolution. Ultimately 47 members voted present and 147 voted against tabling, but even put together it would not have been enough to overcome the 232 votes in favor of setting the resolution aside. Impeachment has resurfaced as a major question for Democrats as they appear poised to retake the House and perhaps even the Senate. Jamie Raskin, who would become Chair of the House Judiciary Committee if Democrats retake the majority, said earlier this month that Democrats “will not hesitate” to use the tool if needed and that Mr. Trump has “undoubtedly” committed impeachable offenses. However, House Democratic Caucus Chairman Pete Aguilar said this week that impeachment is “not anything that is top of the agenda for House Democrats.”

* On the other side of the aisle, outgoing Congressman Thomas Massie also introduced articles of impeachment, with these singling out Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth for frustrating “Congress’s ability to exercise its most solemn constitutional responsibility” and allowing an “unlawful war” to continue in Iran. Axios notes that this resolution also includes articles concerning “U.S. military operations in Venezuela and Yemen, including accusing [Hegseth] of illegally directing the operation to capture Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro without congressional authorization.” Massie lost his re-election primary earlier this year to a Trump-backed opponent; he has since made noises about pursuing the creation of a third party in conjunction with other dissident right-wing figures like Tucker Carlson and Marjorie Taylor Greene. It remains to be seen what he will do once he is out of office come January.

* Speaking of bucking one’s party, this week POLITICO reported that conservative House Democrats Jared Golden and Marie Glusenkamp-Perez again broke with leadership to “advance a slate of GOP bills in a procedural vote that was otherwise on track to fail.” The rules in question set up votes to grant yet more power to President Trump, including “new authorities to sanction Russia’s trading partners…[and] rolling back…EPA regulations.” This same duo voted with the GOP several weeks ago, after which House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries promised a “serious response.” However, he “later indicated that there would be no public consequences.” It is impossible to imagine a progressive being given this kind of long leash by leadership. For his part, Golden is not seeking re-election, but Gluesenkamp-Perez is and if she wins – no guarantee as her district went for Trump in 2024 – she will certainly come into the next Congress with a substantial amount of enmity built up from the rest of the Democratic caucus.

* In more news from the Hill, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute (CHCI) went into crisis mode earlier this week when some of the high-profile progressives in the caucus, namely AOC and Nydia Velázquez, found out that the institute’s Annual Awards Gala – at which Velázquez, who is not seeking re-election is to be presented with a lifetime achievement award – had agreed to be sponsored by Palantir. Apparently, the deal was brokered by CEO and President of the CHCI Marco Davis and Velázquez went “ballistic” upon hearing the news. Congressman Darren Soto, the Chair of the CHCI claims to have been “unaware of the donation” and that as soon as …

Ralph welcomes Keira Havens a United States Air Force veteran and the executive director of Citizens’ Impeachment a grassroots organization that lobbies Congress and supports candidates who are willing to impeach and convict Donald Trump for a myriad of Constitutional violations. Then Michael Marx, founder of the group CorpEthics that conducts marketing campaigns that apply public pressure to corporations to change their behavior, joins us to discuss his new book “Reining in the Bulls: How to Stop Corporate Abuse in an Age of Unbridled Greed.”

Keira Havens is a United States Air Force veteran, a former scientist, and a longtime political activist. She is the executive director of Citizens’ Impeachment.

I am a veteran. I was in the United States Air Force. My job was to launch nuclear missiles. I was an ICBM crew commander for four years. And that entire system, that entire weapons system is based on trust that the person at the top has a handle on what needs to be done and has good faith and good leadership to navigate this country. That is not the case right now. That cornerstone is beyond weakened—it has just crumbled straight into dust. The trust and faith in the American President as a capable leader, capable of effective leadership, is an assumption we can no longer make.

Keira Havens

His entire cabinet, everybody that gets appointed to the judicial system under his people, everybody that is building out the roadmap for what the economy looks like, all of these failures of leadership—yes, they roll upward to the President. But it is an entire administration of people that do not respect the Constitution, and are not planning on upholding it, and require impeachment, removal and conviction at the bare minimum. Because these folks have had a taste of power now, and they will be back for more. And impeachment is the only way to insist that they never be allowed to hold power again.

Keira Havens

[Democrats] will talk about how bad things are (and they will fundraise off it repeatedly over and over again), but they will not take the additional step and say: “And that is why I will impose consequences.” Our recommended consequence is: impeachment, conviction, removal. But there is more that can be done. There is their making a more plain-spoken assessment of the current situation. And people are hungry to hear it. You don’t have to pretend that this is business as usual. You can actually identify this as a crisis for the Constitution and for this democracy and outline the steps that you will take in your own legislative power.

Keira Havens

Michael Marx is one of the world’s premier environmental corporate campaigners. He served as campaign director for both Rainforest Action Network and Sierra Club. He was the co-founder and executive director of ForestEthics (now Stand.earth) and founder of CorpEthics. He is the author of  Reining in the Bulls: How to Stop Corporate Abuse in an Age of Unbridled Greed.

I think we’re a corporatocracy. I think we have the illusion of being a democracy, but really we’re controlled by corporations. Because from the beginning, they control the way we think with their advertising, with the kind of programs they put on, with their investments in local and state and federal political campaigns. And then, they own the government. I mean…not only can they literally get away with murder (particularly not just in the U.S., but worldwide) but the government protects them from liability.

Michael Marx

If you want to fight these companies—right now we’re on the defense, and particularly on the defense in the government. And the only thing saving us right now is legal cases in the courts by Earth Justice and NRDC and Sierra Club and groups like that. And we need to go on offense even stronger in the marketplace because companies don’t own civil society. They can’t buy the advocacy wing, the more ethical wing of civil society. And they don’t know how to play that game as well as they know how to play the government game.

Michael Marx

News 9/11/26

* Our first story this week comes to us from New York City, where Mayor Zohran Mamdani used the occasion of Labor Day to launch the Mayor’s Office of Worker Power (MOWP). According to the city’s website, the MOWP is the “first office of its kind in the nation, [designed] to use the resources and convening power of City Hall to help workers get informed, connected and organized.” The MOWP will be led by Tony Perlstein, a former longshoreman and United Auto Workers (UAW) organizing director. Mayor Mamdani is quoted saying, “Every day, working New Yorkers show up, do their jobs, and keep this city running. Too often, they have no say in the conditions they work under…The Mayor’s Office of Worker Power will make sure workers have a seat at the table before exploitation becomes a crisis and violations become routine. We’re connecting workers to their rights, to each other and to the organizations ready to stand with them. Because when workers have power, this city works better for everyone.” Deputy Mayor for Economic Justice and former Acting Secretary of Labor Julie Su added “This office allows us to get ahead of exploitation instead of simply responding to it…By building relationships with workers, unions and worker centers, we can understand what is happening on the ground and act before problems become crises. That is how we build an economy that delivers for working people.”

* On the other end of the spectrum, ProPublica is out with a new report on the abject capitulation of the Trump administration to corporate interests in the field of consumer protection. This piece explains how Russell Vought – Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and Acting Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) until August of this year – previously “boasted” that he’d “refashioned” the CFPB’s approach to pursuing banks and other financial companies accused of exploiting Americans, focusing instead on deregulation, embracing “humility” and adopting a “collaborative approach” to its dealings with companies that harm consumers. This article highlights the example of Bilt, which “fumbled a critical transition” earlier in the year, and instead of using the tools the CFPB might have in the past, such as investigating Bilt’s technology platforms for potential flaws, questioning its third-party contractors or issuing subpoenas, Vought’s hollowed out shell of a CFPB instead bragged that they were able to solve the issue “before it got to the adversarial part of the process.” Lo and behold, just two weeks later “Bilt cardholders received mistaken debt collection notices and saw their credit scores go down as a result, sparking more embarrassing news stories and angry complaints.” This story just goes to show that whatever issues the CFPB might have had in the past, companies simply will not change their bad behavior if there is no proverbial stick in the incentive structure. This piece characterizes Vought’s plan as turning the Bureau from a watchdog into a golden retriever; the problem here is that the retriever has no bite.

* Meanwhile, at least one Democrat is courting a key faction of Trump’s base: POLITICO reports Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is seeking inroads into the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) world. According to this story, AOC’s team has undertaken a monthslong effort behind the scenes to find common ground with this slice of the MAGA base on “pesticides, corporate power and access to safe food,” among other issues. AOC’s team argue that pesticides and chemicals are issues “the traditional left has cared about for decades.” Additionally, influential figures in this world are coming to the realization that these issues transcend partisan politics, something Ralph Nader has preached for his entire career. Zen Honeycutt of Moms Across America is quoted saying “I don’t agree with socialism…but…do believe in corporate responsibility…Even if somebody is into

socialism or a conservative, I think we should …

Ralph welcomes sportswriter Dave Zirin to talk about his new book, "The People's Historian: The Outsized Life of Howard Zinn." Then Ralph speaks to labor activist Gene Bruskin about their upcoming Labor Day event at Busboys and Poets in DC, "Galvanizing Labor Day for a Workers’ Compact."

Dave Zirin is the sports editor for The Nation, a columnist for the Progressive, and the author of eight books on the politics of sports, including What’s My Name, Fool?: Sports and Resistance in the United States and A People’s History of Sports in the United States. His new book is The People’s Historian: The Outsized Life of Howard Zinn.

There’s a despondency that exists now, I believe, among people who are also very angry about the state of our politics. And the thing that Howard always insisted upon—he was an activist who happened to be a historian, not a historian who was an activist. And that doesn’t denigrate his incredible skills as a historian, it just says where his priorities were in his time on this planet. And one of the things that Howard believed so strongly is that the movements themselves needed to have a strong sense of history. The movements needed to know that we live in a time of great ups and downs.

Dave Zirin

People did step up to create the Zinn Education Project. And every book event I’m doing, I’m showing up with copies of their materials and they usually have somebody on the ground doing the organizing at the event. And at the very least, we’re helping it be a little bit sticky. You know what I’m saying? Like, it’s not just a book event. It’s not just celebrating Howard. But it’s also something that allows us to be able to make it matter in a way that it otherwise would not—because it’s not just about selling books, it really is about building a movement.

Dave Zirin

Gene Bruskin is a veteran of the labor movement as a local union president, an organizer, and campaign coordinator for numerous local and national unions. He has done extensive international labor solidarity work, including with Iraqi workers and unions, and is a founder of US Labor Against the War.

What we’re breaking through here now (and partly this has been the definition of this resistance movement) it’s workers versus billionaires. And I think the labor movement in general coming out of World War II has been captured by this mythology that “What’s good for General Electric is good for the nation.” And the more the economy “prospers,” the more it’s good for everybody. And it turns out that that’s not really the case, because we don’t have that kind of equality. And also what’s in the national interest in terms of our foreign policy is not in the interest of the average working class person. A lot of that stuff is being challenged and reversed—not enough, but it’s forcing some of the more moderate forces to the left, just as we’re seeing in some of these Senate and House elections.

Gene Bruskin

I think this is a really important moment for Labor Day because Labor Day, among other things, is generally the kickoff for whatever elections are happening in November. And it’s going to be that on steroids this year. But I think the important thing is that, of course, we want to throw out a bunch of these Neanderthal Republicans in the House and Senate. But it’s not just a matter of restoring a Democratic majority in the House and Senate. The question is: to what end? And what is on the agenda of a Democratic-majority Congress at this minute? What is the vision that we have for our future that we have to be fighting for? … We have to change this whole climate so that people have some kind of hope, some kind of vision for what we want and what we deserve. And the same old, same old, whether it’s a Democratic Congress or not, is not acceptable anymore.

Gene Bruskin

Galvanizing Labor Day for a Workers’ Compact (Sep 7, 2026 2:00 pm ET): Busboys and Poets and Ralph Nader present Galvanizing Labor Day for a Workers’ Compact, a discussion of how unions can maximize the impact of Labor Day to mobilize workers and voters ahead of the 2026 midterm elections and afterwards. (Event is in-person @ Busboys and Poets 14th & V + Livestreamed. Free and open to all, but registration is required.)

News 9/4/26

* Our top story this week is the neo-colonial oil extraction deal that has been struck between the Trump administration and the government of Delcy Rodríguez in Venezuela. This government has been running the country under the barrel of a gun since Trump sent Delta Force to kidnap President Nicolás Maduro from his home in the Bolivarian Republic in January. According to the BBC, the new deal “grants a US-led company 100-year concessions over 17 oilfields in Venezuela, amounting to a staggering 65 billion barrels of crude,” or over one-fifth of the country’s proven oil reserves. The White House has released a fact sheet, stating that much of the new extraction will be conducted by North American Blue Energy Partners (Nabep), and that the U.S. government will have “veto power over the appointment of any member of the board of directors, and a majority of Nabep’s board of directors must be US citizens.” The announcement of this deal drew scorn from a wide variety of sources. These range from Trump’s former special representative on Venezuela and Iran, Elliott Abrams who called the deal “terrible” and sees it as Rodríguez “simply complying with the demands she’s getting from Washington,” to Rafael Ramírez, who served as the head of the state-run energy firm, PDVSA, and as the oil minister under former President Hugo Chávez, who is quoted saying the deal “hands over [the oil] and opens the doors to a new colonialism of the United States.”

* In more outrageous foreign policy news, Reuters reports the Trump administration has designated the United Kingdom-based pro-Palestine activist group Palestine Action a ”terrorist organization,” part of the administration’s “campaign to crack down on left-wing groups” using post-9/11 anti-terrorism laws. The United Nations has decried this move, with the UN’s human rights office chief Volker Turk calling it a “disproportionate and unnecessary ⁠restriction on the rights to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and association as well as the right ​to participate in public affairs,” adding that the “expansive use ​of the term ‘terrorism’ has been documented to have a chilling effect on civic space.” The UK has sought to bring the legal hammer down on Palestine Action, though these efforts have been somewhat stymied by the courts. Sarah McLaughlin, senior scholar of global expression at free speech group Foundation for Individual Rights and Free Expression (FIRE), ​said that the US “must reject that censorship - not import it.” Reuters notes that “Israel’s foreign ministry welcomed the designation.”

* This is not the only case wherein the Trump administration has gone to extreme lengths to punish pro-Palestine activism. California District Judge Noel Wise highlighted this in her recent decision, excoriating the State Department and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for their attempts to deport noncitizens over protected speech. This ruling, stemming from a lawsuit filed by FIRE, “centred on how the second Trump administration revoked visas and detained international students studying in the US after they engaged in pro-Palestinian advocacy.” Judge Wise stated in her decision that “in the United States, freedom of speech belongs to the people..It is not the government’s to take.” She added that the strength of our democracy is “diminished when members of our society — citizens and noncitizens alike — must self-censor and ‘behave’ or suffer the government’s retaliation.” Mahmoud Khalil, the most prominent victim of the administration’s policy of seeking to deport activists they want to silence, applauded the decision, saying “No one should fear speaking up for Palestine.” This from Al Jazeera.

* Our final Palestine-related story for this week takes us to Hollywood, where prominent …

Ralph speaks with Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, former Chief of Staff for Colin Powell, about the fall of the American Empire and self-proclaimed Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth. Then we welcome the CEO and co-founder of the Canadian-based organization Corporate Knights, Toby Heap, to break down Trump’s unprecedented trade war with our closest ally. Plus, Ralph has some choice words for Hakeem Jeffries and his meeting with Jared Kushner and for Hillary Clinton and her take on the war with Iran

.

Lawrence Wilkerson is a retired U.S. Army colonel. Over his 31 years of service, Colonel Wilkerson served as Secretary of State Colin Powell’s Chief of Staff from 2002 to 2005, and Special Assistant to General Powell when he was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 1989 to 1993. Colonel Wilkerson also served as Deputy Director and Director of the U.S. Marine Corps War College at Quantico, Virginia, and for fifteen years he was the Distinguished Visiting Professor of Government and Public Policy at the College of William and Mary. He is currently a Senior Fellow at the Eisenhower Media Network, senior advisor to the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, and co-founder of the All-Volunteer Force Forum.

Two-thirds of the world now thinks that we are an enemy of their state. Two-thirds of the world. And it happens to be the two-thirds that has the greatest amount of the GDP in the world.

Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson

I’ve lived for 81 years, almost 82, and I’ve watched my country go to hell right in front of my face… And the billionaires who want all of this to happen, they do not want a democracy. A democracy is fallible. A democracy can’t beat China. A democracy can’t beat Russia. A democracy can’t even beat Iran. They want a technocracy that is run by them, armed by them, technical revolution by them. They want all of this, and oh by the way they want to live to 150 while they’re doing it too.

Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson

Every freaking hour they create a series of war crimes in Iran. Every freaking hour they perpetrate war crimes in the Persian Gulf. Every freaking hour they perpetrate war crimes in Lebanon with Israel. “What’s new?,” I want to say. We are a criminal state. There is no other way to describe it. We are a criminal state. We pay no attention whatsoever to domestic or international law. Only when it benefits the person who is doing the deed do we pay any attention at all.

Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson

Toby Heaps is the CEO and co-founder of Corporate Knights, and Editor-in-Chief of Corporate Knights magazine. He spearheaded the first global ranking of the world’s 100 most sustainable corporations in 2005, and in 2007 coined the term “clean capitalism.”

What we’re seeing is a sort of political physics—for every action is an equal and opposite reaction. Canada has in many ways benefited and rallied around our nationhood. We’re often not the most boisterous or loudest type of folks. But this continued disrespect for our statehood and the continued attacks and the unreasonableness and the unfair play, our prime minister said something to the effect of: when the United States signs something, it’s in pencil. It’s really denigrating the United States’ reputation globally and in Canadians’ minds.

Toby Heaps

News 8/28/26

* This week, the left-wing insurgency in the Democratic Party scored several new victories. First, NBC reports that in Oklahoma, N’Kiyla Jasmine Thomas won the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Markwayne Mullin, who Trump selected to lead the Department of Homeland Security following the resignation of Secretary Kristi Noem. Thomas will go up against Republican Congressman Kevin Hern in November. Unfortunately, Thomas stands little chance of winning the state, which has not elected a Democratic Senator since 1990. Thomas is a member of the Chickasaw Nation and identifies as a Democratic Socialist, but is “not yet” a member of DSA.

* Next, in California, Democracy Now! reports progressive state lawmaker Aisha Wahab has prevailed in the special election to fill the seat vacated by disgraced former Congressman Eric Swalwell. This piece notes that Wahab “overcame a flood of attack ads from pro-Israel groups,” which sought to bolster her Democratic primary rival, Melissa Hernandez. In an interview, Wahab said that she “appreciates” voters in her district for “seeing through” the “lies that were spread by AIPAC.” Wahab will make history as the first Afghan American in Congress and has called for the United States to engage with the Taliban government and attempt to “[steer] them in the right direction” on human rights.

* In Georgia, the Hill reports another progressive – Everton Blair – won the special election to fill the seat of Congressman David Scott, who passed away in April during his 12th term in the seat. Blair, the former chair of the Gwinnett County School Board, defeated Scott’s daughter Marcye Scott. However, Blair will only represent this seat until the end of the year. Beginning in January, State Rep. Jasmine Clark, who won the May primary, will fill the seat for the 120th Congress.

* Meanwhile, in the Cornhusker State, the Nebraska Examiner reports that the “Legal Marijuana NOW U.S. Senate candidate Mike Marvin announced he can’t put more ‘energy’ into the Senate race because of health issues and endorsed nonpartisan U.S. Senate candidate Dan Osborn.” Marvin will remain on the ballot, but is “urging all who supported [him] to now support…Osborn.” This piece notes that this announcement comes on heels of reporting by Flatwater Free Press showing that two staffers from Osborn’s 2024 independent Senate campaign joined the Legal Marijuana NOW executive board and sought to dissolve the party from the inside. This, combined with the fact that former Democratic Senate nominee Cindy Burbank paid Mike Marvin’s $1,740 candidate filing fee and dropped out of the race one day after the secretary of state verified Osborn’s signatures to be on the fall ballot has fueled speculation that these were coordinated efforts to clear the field for Osborn. Marvin for his part disputes this and says he never planned to leave the race. Osborn is quoted saying “We hope to earn the support of the LMN voters and hope that we can represent their concerns well in the US Senate.”

* In more third party news, Trump has launched new broadsides against the emerging ex-MAGA clique – consisting of Tucker Carlson, Congressman Thomas Massie, and former Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene. According to the Hill, Trump attacked the group, said to be exploring the possibility of founding a new right-wing party, calling Carlson “a loser,” Greene “a highly neurotic woman” and Massie a “real JERK” on Truth Social. The president added, “What a team this would be, THREE LOSERS, and a pocketful of change!...The only chance they have is to join the Radical Left Dumocrats, and try breaking into the Primary System. To all of them I say, PRAISE BE TO ALLAH!” The proximate cause of this latest flare-up between the camps is Trump’s decision to allow in 300,000 metric tons of ground beef to be imported in the next 90 days, a move Massie called “worse than socialism.” Greene, who has been perhaps the most vocal defector from the MAGA camp, said “He attacks us with such vitriol because we actually are everything he claimed to be…he has proven as President that he is nothing more than a neocon puppet for Israel, corporations, big donors with special interests, and his dear friends in the Epstein class…We never changed, Trump did.”

* Another story from this side of the aisle comes to us from NOTUS, which reports that an “unknown actor” has stolen over $16,000 from the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC). This incident, alternatively characterized as a “theft” from a “foreign country” or simply a “fraud,” occurred in early July, when the NRCC “attempted to pay a bill from Ranger Wi-Fi Consulting, a Texas-based firm that specializes in helping clients ‘optimize their wirele…