In the immediate aftermath of the mammoth fires in Los Angeles, Ralph welcomes Douglas Heller, Director of Insurance at Consumer Federation of America to fill us in on what to expect from the industry and how to get the most out of your fire insurance claims. Then, our resident constitutional scholar, Bruce Fein, returns to present a list of constitutional crises to expect upon the second coming of Donald Trump.

Douglas Heller is a nationally-recognized insurance expert and Director of Insurance at Consumer Federation of America. In addition to conducting research for and providing expertise to consumer rights organizations, Mr. Heller is a member of the U.S. Department of Treasury’s Federal Advisory Committee on Insurance, an appointee of California’s Insurance Commissioner, serving as a board member of the California Automobile Assigned Risk Plan, and he serves on the Executive Board of the Coalition Against Insurance Fraud.

A key thing for everybody to know is that the premiums that we have paid over the last several years here in California—and this really goes across the country, but in California in particular—have put the insurance industry in a perfectly healthy position to deal with the claims, as dramatic and as severe as these fires are and the amount of damage that they caused…For the insurance companies to cry poverty in the wake of the buildup of capital over the last several years would be outrageous, and so we're going to be watching for that.

Douglas Heller

The story around the country was that California was already a terrible hellscape for the insurance companies to do business in. When in fact, they were doing far better than the rest of the country. One of the big trade journals that reports on the industry has said that State Farm has been kept afloat by its performance in California over the last couple of years. And it was more a kind of a climate opportunism—after ignoring the potential (and then, growing) impact of climate change on property risk for years and decades, the insurance companies finally had this kind of revelation that oh they can talk about climate change as a new risk and a justification for demanding whatever they want.

Douglas Heller

Battle lines seem to be drawn—at least in my opinion—between the “Drill baby, drill. All we need to do is rake the leaves” camp versus “Hey, this is another wake up call to the climate crisis.” Because this was a severe weather event. And there were four major fires at once, and no fire department, whose main daily job is medical emergencies, is equipped to deal with that. Especially since the first two days the winds were so high—hurricane force winds—they couldn't get helicopters and airplanes into the air to make the drops in these canyons. And I don't think there's any amount of brush clearing that would have stopped these winds from whipping up these embers to send them into these residential districts.

Steve Skrovan

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 Trump regime has a high probability of being the most lawless dictatorial regime in American history. All presidents violate laws, but Trump has taken this to a new, boastful level of variety.

Ralph Nader

The reason why it's more likely that Trump will use this dragnet in a more abusive ways, is because he and his FBI nominee have said openly that they're going to do everything they can to persecute, to go after their enemies list…The only limitation on abuse is that they don't have the manpower to actually use it all.

Bruce Fein

We're the guardrails—not Congress anymore. It's the people who have to stand up and protest and not send scoundrels back to office if they're not discharging their obligations under the United States Constitution. If we aren't the guardrails, there aren't any out there.

Bruce Fein

News 1/15/25

1. In Gaza, CNN reports a ceasefire deal has finally been reached. This comes on the heels of negotiations between the warring parties, attended by envoys of both President Biden and incoming President Trump, with Egyptian and Qatari mediators. Under the terms of this deal, Hamas has agreed to free the remaining 33 Israeli hostages in their custody, while Israel will “free hundreds of Palestinian prisoners.” Trump’s apparent demand for an immediate settlement with this many Israeli concessions comes as a shock. Israeli journalist Erel Segal, widely seen as a Netanyahu proxy, is quoted saying “We're the 1st to pay a price for Trump's election. [The deal] is being forced upon us… We thought we'd take control of northern Gaza, that they'd let us impede humanitarian aid.”

2. In more foreign policy news, the American Prospect is out with a piece on the gifts received by senior foreign policy officials in the Biden Administration. According to this report, Bill Burns – Director of the Central Intelligence Agency – has in the past year received “an $18,000 astrograph, an $11,000 Omega watch, and a ceremonial Saudi war sword.” By comparison, Secretary of State Antony Blinken received $600 worth of memorabilia and “several acrylic landscape portraits.” As this piece notes, individuals cannot keep these gifts – they become public property – yet the disparity in these gifts does reflect the difference in perception toward Blinken and Burns. As one State Department official put it, “When you want someone to drink champagne, you send Blinken. When you need someone to actually fix s**t in Brazil, the Middle East, or Russia, you send Burns.”

3. And in the final days of his administration, AP’s Matt Lee reports President Biden will reverse Trump’s decision to designate Cuba a state sponsor of terror. The state sponsor of terror designation resulted in Cuba facing even harsher sanctions than they had during the decades-long embargo and led to multiple critical shortages of essential goods like fuel. Since the designation was announced in 2021, many have called for it to be reversed, including New York State Senators and representatives in New York, Massachusetts and Minnesota, as well as local representatives and labor unions like the UAW, UE, and others, per People’s Dispatch. It is unclear why Biden is taking this action now and Trump can reverse this move as soon as he takes office.

4. Turning to labor, NBC reports the Services Employees International Union (SEIU) will rejoin the AFL-CIO, 20 years after leaving the labor federation. With SEIU back in the fold, the AFL-CIO will represent over 15 million workers. AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler is quoted saying “We are the, probably, only institution in the country that has an infrastructure in every city, in every state, in every workplace, that is a mobilizing machine…And as they say, outside power builds inside power.” This move is widely seen as an attempt to consolidate worker power ahead of Trump’s return to office, though the unions have resisted saying so explicitly. The Teamsters left the AFL-CIO around the same time as the SEIU, but have made no moves to rejoin the labor federation and have instead opted to strategically align themselves with Trump. It remains to be seen which strategy will yield better results.

5. In more labor news, Fast Company reports servers at Waffle House franchises around the country claim “the chain forces them to do janitorial work and dishwashing for [sub-minimum] tipped wages, robbing them of up to $46.8 million.” As this piece notes, “Wage theft…is a common practice. As of 2017…workers lose $15 billion annually in minimum wage violations alone.” Moreover, “From 2021 to 2024, the Department of Labor recovered more than $1 billion in back wages and damages for 615,000 employees in the U.S.” Waffle House is a particularly egregious offender, with 90% of workers surveyed reporting they had experienced some form of wage theft in the past year. The state minimum wage in Georgia, where Waffle House is based, is a meager $5.15 per hour, yet the tipped minimum is even lower at just $2.13 – a starvation wage. One worker, Melissa Steach, is quoted saying “Corporations can’t keep throwing us around because we make all this money for them…And what are they really doing with it? They are not supporting their workers. They can’t keep screwing us around. We’re here. We’re worth it.”

6. On the other end of the spectrum, Apple CEO Tim Cook’s staggering compensation package hit nearly $75 million in 2024, according to the Hollywood Reporter. Converted to an hourly wage, this equates to roughly $600 per minute. This is a substantial increase from his 2023 total of $63.2 million, but still lower than the nearly $100 million he received in 2022. In October, Apple reported its services business, including Apple Music and iCloud, hit a revenue of $24.97 billion for the quarter, a “new all-time high for the company.”

7. In more tech news, the Intercept reports Meta – parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp – is relaxing their content moderation rules as they relate to hate speech. The Intercept received leaked training materials to this effect, which explicitly outline what users are now allowed to say. These officially permitted statements include “Immigrants are grubby, filthy pieces of s**t,” “Jews are flat out greedier than Christians,” and simply “I’m a proud racist.” The Electronic Frontier Foundation’s international freedom of expression director Jillian York is quoted in this piece saying, “While [Meta’s previous censorship regime] has often resulted in over-moderation that I and many others have criticized, these examples demonstrate that Meta’s policy changes are political in nature and not intended to simply allow more freedom of expression.”

8. In a more positive story of social progress, EuroNews reports that the Italian Bishops’ Conference has issued new guidelines all but clearing the way for openly gay men to enter the priesthood. According to the newly issued report, titled "Guidelines and norms for seminaries,” "When referring to homosexual tendencies, it’s… appropriate not to reduce discernment only to this aspect, but, as for every candidate, to grasp its meaning in the global framework of the young person’s personality.” In 2023 Pope Francis told the AP that “being homosexual isn’t a crime,” and has endorsed the church “blessing” same-sex unions. Women remain entirely excluded from the priesthood.

9. On the domestic front, Axios reports Justice Democrats – the progressive insurgent group – is planning a new wave of primary challenges to unseat “corporatist” incumbent Democrats. While the group’s number one target seems to be George Latimer, who ousted Congressman Jamaal Bowman from his newly redrawn seat last cycle, spokesperson Usamah Andrabi told Axios the group is, “keeping every deep blue district on the table.” However, many of the prominent House progressives are shying away from this effort. Pramila Jayapal, former chair of the Progressive Caucus said “I think given what's at stake we feel really urgently that we need to protect all incumbents,” while Ilhan Omar said "There are folks who endorse against their own colleagues, but I don't."

10. Finally, Public Citizen co-presidents Rob Weissman and Lisa Gilbert have written a letter to the chairs of the Trump Transition team asking to be named members of the Department of Government Efficiency, aka DOGE. In this letter, Weissman and Gilbert express their “concerns about DOGE’s structure and mission,” particularly with regard to its proposed leaders Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, who “hold financial interests that will be directly affected by federal budgetary policies,” but also makes the key argument that DOGE’s mission to “slash excess regulation” and “cut wasteful expenditures” must be tied to the other “half of the picture: more efficiently regulating corporations to better protect consumers and the public from harmful corporate practices.” They argue that their “appointment to serve as members of DOGE” would enable them to serve as “voices for the interests of consumers and the public who are the beneficiaries of federal regulatory and spending programs.” Rather than an earnest plea for an appointment, this letter is more likely meant to expose a key issue with the DOGE project: those in charge of cutting supposed government waste are riddled with conflicts of interests. They have too many fingers in the pie. If Trump were serious about reducing government spending generally – and corruption specifically – he would appoint people like Weissman and Gilbert, not Ramaswamy and Musk. And they would start with the unbelievably bloated, unauditable Pentagon budget.

This has been Francesco DeSantis, with In Case You Haven’t Heard.

Ralph welcomes historian Douglas Brinkley (author of "The Unfinished Presidency: Jimmy Carter's Journey Beyond the White House") as well as journalist and former Carter speechwriter James Fallows to reflect on the life and legacy of the late, great President Jimmy Carter.

Douglas Brinkley is the Katherine Tsanoff Brown Chair in Humanities and Professor of History at Rice University, presidential historian for the New-York Historical Society, trustee of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library, and a contributing editor at Vanity Fair. He has authored, co-authored, and edited more than three dozen books on American history, including Silent Spring Revolution: John F. Kennedy, Rachel Carson, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, and the Great Environmental Awakening, Rosa Parks: A Life, and The Unfinished Presidency: Jimmy Carter's Journey Beyond the White House.

When [Jimmy Carter] came in in January of 1977, he said, “The Democratic Party is an albatross around my neck…” The Southern Democrats that voted for Carter in 1976 in the Senate because of, you know, “he's a fellow Southerner,” they abandoned him. They wanted nothing to do with him.

Douglas Brinkley

Ralph, I don't know if anyone’s already told you this—there's a lot of Carter in yourself. You have a lot of similarities in my mind in the sense that you both work tirelessly, and are brilliant, and you learn the nuts and bolts of an issue and you lean into it, and both of you are known for your integrity and your honesty and your diligence and your duty. The question then becomes: Where did Carter fail? And it's about media and about power within the Democratic Party. Those two things Carter couldn't conquer.

Douglas Brinkley

I've just written a column called “Jimmy Carter Was My Last President.” And by that I meant he was my last president—and I believe he was the last president for progressive civic groups as well—because he was the last president to actively open up the federal government to engagement and participation by long politically-excluded American activists. He did this actively. He took our calls. No president since has done that. He invited us to the White House to discuss issues. No president since has done that. And that's what I think has been missing in a lot of the coverage—he really believed in a democratic society.

Ralph Nader

James Fallows is a contributing writer at the Atlantic and author of the newsletter Breaking the News. He began writing for the magazine in the mid-1970s, reporting from China, Japan, Southeast Asia, Europe, and across the United States and has written hundreds of articles for the publication since then. He’s also worked as a public radio commentator, a news magazine editor, and for two years he was President Jimmy Carter’s chief speechwriter. He is the author of twelve books, including Who Runs Congress (with Mark Green and David Zwick), The Water Lords, Breaking the News: How the Media Undermine American Democracy, and Our Towns: A 100,000-Mile Journey Into the Heart of America (with Deborah Fallows).

Jimmy Carter, for better and worse, had zero national politics experience. That was part of what made him seem refreshing…But Carter, I think one of his limitations in office was that he didn't know what he didn't know, in various realms. This happens to all of us. That's why many outsiders struggle in their first term as president. And so I think yes, he felt as if he could be in command of many things. And I think if he had a second term, he would have been more effective—as Barack Obama was, and others have been.

James Fallows

I'm really grateful for the chance to talk with you, Ralph, at this moment. As we reflect on a president of the past and prepare for an administration of the future…There are people whose example lasts because they've been consistent over the decades. And I think you, Ralph, in the decades I've known you, that has been the case with you. I think it's the case of Jimmy Carter as well. For people who are consistent and true to themselves, there are times when fortune smiles in their favor and there's times when fortune works against them, but their lasting example endures and can inspire others.

James Fallows

News 1/8/25

1. According to newly released CIA documents, the agency conducted extensive surveillance on Latino – specifically Mexican and Puerto Rican – political activity in the 1960s, ‘70s, and early ‘80s Axios reports. Among other revelations, these documents prove that the agency infiltrated student activist groups “making demands for Mexican American studies classes” – in direct contravention of the CIA’s charter, which prohibits domestic activities. The push to disclose the reality of this spying campaign came from Congressmen Jimmy Gomez and Joaquin Castro, whose mother was monitored by the FBI for her Chicano-related activism. Unlike the CIA, the FBI has not released their records.

2. Crusading independent journalists Ken Klippenstein and Daniel Boguslaw are out with a new Substack piece regarding Luigi Mangione. This piece, based on a leaked NYPD intelligence report “Warning of ‘a wide range of extremists’ that ‘may view Mangione as a martyr,’” due to their “disdain for corporate greed.” These reporters go on to criticize the media for hiding this report from the public, as they have with other key documents in this case. “The report, produced by the NYPD’s Intelligence & Counterterrorism Bureau …was blasted out to law enforcement and counterterror partners across the country. It was also leaked to select major media outlets which refused to permit the public to read the document…By withholding documents and unilaterally deciding which portions merit public disclosure, the media is playing god.”

3. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has finalized its rule to remove medical bills from credit reports. The bureau reports this rule will wipe $49 billion in medical bills from the credit reports of approximately 15 million Americans. Further, embedded within this rule is a critical provision barring creditors from access to certain medical information; in the past this has allowed these firms to demand borrowers use medical devices up to and including prosthetic limbs as collateral for loans and as assets the creditors could repossess.

4. President Biden has blocked a buyout of US Steel by the Japanese firm Nippon Steel, per the Washington Post. His reasons for doing so remain murky. Many in Biden’s inner circle argued against this course of action, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken, U.S. Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. And despite Biden framing this decision as a move to protect the union employees of US Steel, Nippon had promised to honor the United Steelworkers contract and many workers backed the deal. In fact, the only person Biden seemed to be in complete agreement with on this issue is incoming President Donald Trump.

5. In September 2023, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson issued a groundbreaking proposal: a publicly owned grocery store. While such institutions do exist on a very small scale, the Chicago pilot project would have been the largest in the United States by a wide margin. Yet, when the city had the opportunity to apply for Illinois state funds to begin the process of establishing the project, they “passed” according to the Chicago Tribune. Even still, this measure is far sounder than the previous M.O. of Chicago mayors, who lavished public funds on private corporations like Whole Foods to establish or maintain stores in underserved portions of the city, only for those corporations to turn around and shutter those stores once money spigot ran dry.

6. On January 5th, the American Historical Association held their annual meeting. Among other proposals, the association voted on a measure to condemn the “scholasticide” being perpetrated by Israel in Gaza. Tim Barker, a PhD candidate at Harvard, reports the AHA passed this measure by a margin of 428 to 88. Along with the condemnation, this measure includes a provision to “form a committee to assist in rebuilding Gaza’s educational infrastructure.” The AHA now joins the ever-growing list of organizations slowly coming to grips with the scale of the devastation in Gaza.

7. According to Bloomberg, AI data centers are causing potentially massive disruptions to the American power grid. The key problem here is that the huge amounts of power these data centers are gobbling up is resulting in “bad harmonics,” which distort the power that ends up flowing through household appliances like refrigerators and dishwashers. As the piece explains, this harmonic distortion can cause substantial damage to those appliances and even increase the likelihood of electrical fires and blackouts. This issue is a perfect illustration of how tech industry greed is impacting consumers, even those who have nothing to do with their business.

8. The Department of Housing and Urban Development reports homelessness increased by over 18% in 2024, per AP. HUD attributes this spike to a dearth of affordable housing, as well as the proliferation of natural disasters. In total, HUD estimates around 770,000 Americans are homeless, though that does not include “those staying with friends or family because they do not have a place of their own.” More granular data is even more appalling; family homelessness, for example, grew by 40%. Homelessness grew by 12% in 2023.

9. On January 7th, Public Citizen announced that they have launched a new tracker to “watchdog federal investigations and cases against alleged corporate criminals…that are at risk of being abandoned, weakened, or scaled back under the Trump administration.” This tracker includes 237 investigations, nearly one third of which involve companies with known ties with the Trump administration. These companies include Amazon, Apple, AT&T, Bank of America, Coinbase, Ford, Tesla, Goldman Sachs, Meta, OpenAI, SpaceX, Pfizer, Black & Decker, and Uber among many others. As Corporate Crime expert Rick Claypool, who compiled this tracker, writes, “Corporate crime enforcement fell during Trump’s first term, even as his administration pursued ‘tough’ policies against immigrants, protestors, and low-level offenders…It’s likely Trump’s second term will see a similar or worse dropoff in enforcement.”

10. Finally, Senate Republicans are pushing for swift confirmation hearings to install Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence, per POLITICO. Yet, the renewed spotlight on Gabbard has brought to light her association with the Science of Identity Foundation, an alleged cult led by “guru” Chris Butler, per Newsweek. The New Yorker reports members of this cult are required to “lie face down when Butler enters a room and even sometimes eat his nail clippings or ‘spoonfuls’ of the sand he walked on.”

This has been Francesco DeSantis, with In Case You Haven’t Heard.

Steve, David, Hannah, Jimmy, and Francesco give Ralph a well-deserved break and highlight some of the clips they want to revisit from this challenging, inspiring, fascinating, infuriating, and galvanizing year. Featuring interviews with Mumia Abu-Jamal, Dr. Feroze Sidhwa, Ryan Grim, Craig Mokhiber, and more.

Featured Clips

Dr. Feroze Sidhwa — Boobytraps, Bombs & Blowback (September 28, 2024)

Craig Mokhiber — Israel's Wall of Impunity (December 7, 2024)

Ryan Grim — Cabinet of Curiosities (November 16, 2024)

Mark Dimondstein — Delivering the Election (November 2, 2024)

Hamilton Nolan — The Hammer (May 11, 2024)

Jonathan Kozol — Apartheid Education/Gas Station Heroin (March 23, 2024)

Mumia Abu-Jamal — Mumia Abu-Jamal: Criminal Injustice (April 20, 2024)

Marc Rotenberg — AI: Can Frankenstein Be Tamed? (November 30, 2024)

Vani Hari — Food Babe/Democrats Laboring (November 23, 2024)

The use of Palestinians as human shields by the Israeli military is something else that just—it's just—someone at some point will write a history of American media coverage of the Israel-Palestine conflict, and no rational person will believe that it could have been this mendacious.

Dr. Feroze Sidhwa

It is unlikely that Israel will hand over its perpetrators for international trial, but they are already extremely limited. They have been marked as fugitives from justice, as suspected perpetrators of crimes against humanity. That impact is real and it is a part of chipping away at that longstanding impunity of Israel, and therefore it's extremely important. Although they may never be brought to trial, they will pay a cost for these enormous crimes.

Craig Mokhiber

That's where we are in this moment—opaque systems that the experts don't understand, increasingly being deployed by organizations that also don't understand these systems, and an industry that says, “don't regulate us.” This is not going to end well.

Marc Rotenberg

Look, it doesn't take a rocket scientist, right? If you're rich in this country, you can get every break that you can afford. You can get the best justice, best lawyers, and they will fight wars.

Mumia Abu-Jamal

Hanna’s favorite episode images from 2024:

First up on today's wide-ranging show, Ralph speaks to political scientist Adolph Reed about how American politics has started taking its cues from professional wrestling and how the left can rebuild itself. Then, we welcome Steve Silberstein from National Popular Vote to update us on their interstate compact's progress. Finally, we're joined by three interns from the American Museum of Tort Law—Dylan Bird, Gabriel Duffany, and Rachel Donovan discuss a rather unique summer assignment.

Adolph Reed is Professor Emeritus of political science at the University of Pennsylvania and an organizer with the Debs-Jones-Douglass Institute’s Medicare for All-South Carolina initiative, and co-host of Class Matters Podcast. His most recent books are The South: Jim Crow and Its Afterlives and (with Walter Benn Michaels) No Politics but Class Politics.

One of the things that struck me, especially, is during the pandemic it was striking to see how much full-blown animus toward government— or toward the idea of public and public goods—that there is out there in society at large. And we know Heritage (and the rest of the reactionary, the Koch brothers) have been fueling that and stoking that kind of resentment for as long as they've been around, frankly, right…But what's different is that since the Clinton years, the Democrats have been just as likely to attack the idea of government or public goods and public services, right? And they're more likely to do it backhandedly…So there hasn't been any space for people to connect even the fact that they like to go to the public library or like to use the public park with this bipartisan, full-bore attack on the idea of government. And that has gone so far and so deeply within society.

Adolph Reed

Steve Silberstein founded and served as the first president of Innovative Interfaces Inc., a leading supplier of computer software for the automation of college and city libraries. Mr. Silberstein sold his interest in the company in 2001 and now devotes his time to philanthropic and civic matters, one of which is sitting on the Board of Directors of National Popular Vote.

Of the states that have passed [the National Popular Vote compact], it's mostly been with Democratic votes. Because for a while there's been a theory that Republicans couldn't win the national popular vote. That's why they opposed it. But now that they have actually won the popular vote this time around, that theory which caused some of them to oppose it has gone by the wayside.

Steve Silberstein

There's no reason for [Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan being “swing states”]. You know, those states didn't even exist when the constitution was established. It's just purely an accident…Those states are not typical of the United States—each state is unique in some way. So, Wisconsin has a big dairy industry. Pennsylvania has coal mining or fracking or something like that. So the candidates just concentrate on those—what are really very obscure issues to most of the people in the country. These states are not typical. They are not representative in any way shape or form of the rest of the country.

Steve Silberstein

Dylan Bird is a sophomore at St Lawrence University, pursuing a double major in Global Studies and Spanish on a Pre Law Track. Gabriel Duffany is a sophomore at the University of Connecticut, pursuing a double major in Human Rights and Communication also on a Pre Law Track, and he is an intern at the American Museum of Tort Law. Rachel Donovan is the Outreach Coordinator at the American Museum of Tort Law, and she is pursuing studies in education. All three recently worked as summer interns at the American Museum of Tort Law in the VoxBox Civic Engagement Summer Course, and they participated in Ralph Nader’s Dictionary Pilot.

It’s a very daunting task when somebody hands you a full dictionary—over a thousand pages or so—and asks you to read it front-to-back. Once you start to actually sink your teeth into it…I actually found it to be a very positive experience. Rather than simply looking up individual words and ending your journey there, the goal really becomes the exploration of knowledge.

Dylan Bird

For me, what really did stand out wasn't the individual words. It was more so the process of defining that I found the most compelling. So it showed up to me in the linguistic sense that these aren't exact definitions here. They're more so measurements, gauges of people's public opinions and definitions that would shift over time. So it was interesting to see how the evolution of words came, how meanings evolved over time with new technologies, new cultural moments. And as a news writer, I found that fascinating—the complexities of a word, the connotations that go with it, they can make or break the framing of any certain topic.

Gabriel Duffany

I think that this project could be very important for students of all ages because it's not often that you would use a physical dictionary very much anymore—versus just going online and looking up a word. And now multiple definitions could come up—you may not even find exactly what you're looking for, because words undergo new meanings on a near-daily basis. And I think having the chance to read the original definition may give students new meanings to words that they may have thought they had the knowledge of due to social media.

Rachel Donovan

News 12/25/24

1. On December 19th, the Teamsters announced they would launch “the largest strike against Amazon in U.S. history.” This strike covers nearly 10,000 Amazon workers who have joined the Teamsters, with workers taking to the picket line in New York City Atlanta, Southern California, San Francisco and Skokie, Illinois. Teamsters President Sean O’Brien is quoted saying “If your package is delayed during the holidays, you can blame Amazon’s insatiable greed. We gave Amazon a clear deadline to come to the table and do right by our members. They ignored it…This strike is on them.” Scenes from this strike went viral over the holidays; one video posted by Labor Notes journalist Luis Feliz Leon shows NYPD officers guarding a path for Amazon trucks to depart after clearing away a blockade by striking workers – in case you were wondering whose side the cops are on.

2. In more Amazon union news, INDY Week’s Lena Geller reports that on December 23rd Amazon workers filed for a union election at the RDU1 warehouse in Garner, North Carolina. These workers are organizing under the auspices of Carolina Amazonians for Solidarity and Empowerment, aka CAUSE, which states that “despite an illegal campaign of intimidation by Amazon, which is desperate to keep unions out to continue paying poverty wages and failing to improve dismal work conditions,” the union believes they have “easily” exceeded the 30% card check threshold to demand an election. If successful, RDU1 would become the first unionized Amazon facility in the South.

3. Independent investigative journalists Ken Klippenstein and Dan Boguslaw are out with a report on a potential conflict of interest in the Luigi Mangione prosecution. Apparently, “Magistrate Judge Katharine H. Parker, who is overseeing pre-trial hearings for…Mangione, is married to a former Pfizer executive.” Judge Parker’s husband, Bret Parker, had served as Vice President and assistant general counsel at Wyeth, and held the same titles after that company was purchased by Pfizer. According to financial disclosures, Mr. Parker still collects a pension from Pfizer in the form of a “Senior Executive Retirement Plan.” The Parkers also own hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of stock in Pfizer itself, along with other pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and healthcare companies. These holdings raise grave questions about the impartiality of this judge.

4. In more news from New York, Gothamist reports New York Governor Kathy Hochul has vetoed a bill which would have “reversed New York’s longstanding ban on jury service for anyone convicted of felonies at any point in their lives. If enacted, the bill would have allowed people with felony convictions to serve only after completing their sentences, including parole.” This bill passed with the support of the New York Civil Liberties Union and Phil Desgranges, an attorney at The Legal Aid Society, called this bill “common-sense legislation.” State Senator Jabari Brisport wrote “Fun fact about [New York] politics. The Governor has until end of year to sign bills so she usually waits until [the] holiday season and vetoes a bunch right before Christmas, hoping no one notices.” The Gothamist piece notes that Hochul vetoed 132 bills over the weekend.

5. Turning to Israel, a remarkable story in unfolding around the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. According to Democracy Now!, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is planning to skip the anniversary “out of fears he might be arrested for committing war crimes in Gaza.” As we have documented on this program, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and his former defense minister Yoav Gallant in November, and since then various countries have grappled with their obligations under international law to arrest the pair. While certain ICC signatory nations like Germany and France have sought to weasel out of these commitments, according to this report, “Poland’s deputy foreign minister recently confirmed Poland would comply with the ICC arrest warrants if Netanyahu visited.”

6. On the domestic front, newly elected Congressional Progressive Caucus chair Greg Casar has sent a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin demanding that the Biden administration withhold new transfers of offensive weaponry to the Israeli military. In this letter, he and other progressive members of Congress make clear that the administration itself has “correctly identified steps the Israeli government must take in order for continued transfers…to be in accordance with U.S. law,” and that “the Israeli government has failed to take sufficient action or change course.” This letter is signed by 20 members of Congress including Casar himself along with Summer Lee, James McGovern, Mark Pocan, Pramila Jayapal, Sara Jacobs, AOC, Rashida Tlaib, and others.

7. In a stunning story picked up by POLITICO, Republican Congresswoman Kay Granger – chair of the critical House Appropriations Committee until last April – has been missing in action for months. Despite continuing to hold her Texas seat, she has not cast a vote at all since July. Calls to her office went unanswered and unreturned. Visits to her office found it vacant. And when investigative reporters sought her out, they wound up finding her in an assisted living facility wracked with dementia. This story is tragic; Granger’s son has spoken out since publication, addressing how rapidly his mother’s mental decline has progressed. Yet, this is just the most striking example of the gerontocracy that has gripped Capitol Hill. And at least Granger had the sense remaining to recuse herself from votes; rebellious Republican Congressman Thomas Massie of Kentucky is quoted saying he’s “more concerned about the congressmen who have dementia and are still voting.”

8. Moving to some good news, the Federal Trade Commission announced last week that they, along with the Attorney General of Illinois, have reached a $25 million settlement with food delivery giant GrubHub, stemming from the firm’s engagement in “an array of unlawful practices including deceiving diners about delivery costs and blocking their access to their accounts and funds, deceiving workers about how much money they would make delivering food, and unfairly and deceptively listing restaurants on its platform without their permission.” In addition to the monetary penalty, the company must make significant changes to its operations model, including “telling consumers the full cost of delivery, honestly advertising pay for drivers, and listing restaurants on its platform only with their consent.” This is a victory for consumers, workers, restaurants, but perhaps above all, the rule of law. As FTC Chair Lina Khan puts it “There is no ‘gig platform’ exemption to the laws on the books.”

9. On December 23rd, President Biden announced that he would commute the death sentences for 37 out of the 40 federal prisoners on death row, in a major victory for ending executions by the state. These sentences have been commuted to life in prison without the possibility of parole. In a statement, Biden wrote “I’ve dedicated my career to reducing violent crime and ensuring a fair and effective justice system…Make no mistake: I condemn these murderers, grieve for the victims of their despicable acts, and ache for all the families who have suffered unimaginable and irreparable loss. But… I am more convinced than ever that we must stop the use of the death penalty at the federal level.” He ends this statement by alluding to the fact that as president he has imposed a moratorium on federal executions and fears that the incoming Trump administration will resume state-sponsored killings. Per AP, the three inmates whose sentences were not commuted are: Dylann Roof, the Mother Emanuel AME Church shooter, Boston bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, and Tree of Life Synagogue shooter Robert Bowers.

10. Finally, on Christmas Eve, Bernie Sanders issued a statement laying out “How to Make America Healthy Again,” echoing the language used by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Under Bernie’s plan, this initiative would include Medicare for All, lowering the cost of prescription drugs, paid family and medical leave, a 32-hour work week, raising the minimum wage, and reforms to the food industry itself, such as banning junk food ads and stronger warning labels on high-sugar products. As with Bernie’s qualified embrace of the “Department of Government Efficiency” this should be seen as a savvy move to call the Trump team’s bluff. Will they really go after big sugar? Or will they bend the knee to their corporate benefactors yet again?

This has been Francesco DeSantis, with In Case You Haven’t Heard.

Ralph and team spend the entire hour with Israeli reporter, Gideon Levy, a singular voice in an otherwise compliant domestic press to discuss his book “The Killing of Gaza: Reports on a Catastrophe” a series of columns written before and after the October 7th, 2023 attacks that put this ongoing tragedy in historical context.

Gideon Levy is a Haaretz columnist and a member of the newspaper's editorial board. He is the author of the weekly “Twilight Zone” feature, which covers the Israeli occupation in the West Bank and Gaza over the last 25 years, as well as the writer of political editorials for the newspaper. He is the author of The Punishment of Gaza, and his latest book is The Killing of Gaza: Reports on a Catastrophe.

If you talk with me about a very broad scheme—not ending this war now in Gaza, but really for a long range, a real vision—the vision is only the choice between an apartheid state between the river and the sea, or a democracy between the river and the sea. There is no third way anymore, unfortunately. And we have to choose, and the world has to choose: Is the world ready to accept a second apartheid state, or is the world ready to act for having an equal democracy for Palestinians and Israelis living between the river and the sea?

Gideon Levy

We have to stick to global, universal values: occupation is illegal, apartheid is immoral, and war is always cruel.

Gideon Levy

After the 7th of October, an iron curtain fell between Israel and any kind of human sentiments toward Gaza— the people of Gaza, the victims of Gaza, we don't want to hear, we don't want to know, we are not bothered, and we have the right to do whatever we want.

Gideon Levy

We hear about the hundred hostages held by Hamas underground a great deal in the US media, but we don't hear much about the torture and the other mistreatment of thousands of Palestinians—some of them women and children—who were arrested, just arbitrarily kidnapped, and sent to Israeli jails.

Ralph Nader

News 12/18/24

1. Our top story this week comes from Public Citizen Corporate Crime expert Rick Claypool, who reports that the Biden Department of Justice has opted to not prosecute McKinsey, the consulting firm that advised Purdue Pharma to “turbocharge” OxyContin sales even as the opioid crisis reached its peak. Instead, the DOJ announced they would enter into a Deferred Prosecution Agreement with the firm; in other words, the Biden administration is giving McKinsey a get out of jail free card for their role in perhaps the most expansive, destructive, and clear case of corporate crime this century. Claypool rightly calls this deal “Pathetic” and “A slap in the face to everyone who lost a loved one to the crisis.”

2. On December 10th, a federal judge blocked Kroger’s proposed $20 billion acquisition of Albertsons supermarkets, per the Wall Street Journal. According to the Journal, U.S. District Judge Adrienne Nelson sided with the Federal Trade Commission, which had sued to stop the merger, agreeing that this consolidation in the grocery store sector would “erode competition and raise prices for consumers.” This argument was particularly poignant given the soaring cost of groceries since the COVID-19 pandemic. In the aftermath of this decision, Albertsons has filed suit against Kroger alleging that the larger supermarket chain had resisted calls to “divest itself of a larger number of stores,” in order to stave off the inevitable antitrust actions federal regulators would bring against this merger. Albertsons filed this lawsuit, which seeks at least $6 billion in damages less than 24 hours after the ruling, per the Journal.

3. On December 14th, the BBC reported 26-year-old OpenAI whistleblower Suchir Balaji was found dead in his San Francisco apartment. In October, Balaji exposed that OpenAI had flagrantly violated US copyright laws while developing its flagship AI program ChatGPT. Balaji’s revelations form the underpinnings of lawsuits against OpenAI by news publishers, including the New York Times, as well as best-selling authors who allege their work was unlawfully used to train the company’s AI models. The BBC reports that Balaji’s death was ruled a suicide by the San Francisco medical examiner’s office and that his body was discovered by police when they were called in to “check on his wellbeing.” This report does not include who called in the wellness check.

4. According to intrepid independent journalist Ken Klippenstein, the New York Times has issued internal guidance directing staff to “dial back” its use of photos of Luigi Mangione’s face. The reasons for withholding images of Mangione’s face – bizarre in its own right given the inherent newsworthiness of such photos – is however just the tip of the iceberg. The Times has also directed its reporters to refrain from publishing Mangione’s manifesto, despite having copies in their possession. As Mr. Klippenstein puts it “This is media paternalism at its worst, the idea that seeing the shooter’s face too much, or reading his 262-word statement, will necessarily inspire copy-cat assassinations and should therefore be withheld from the public.” To his immense credit, Mr. Klippenstein has published the manifesto in full, which is available on his Substack – as are photos of Mangione’s face.

5. Turning to the Middle East, the diplomatic tension between Israel and Ireland continues to deepen. On December 11th, the Middle East Monitor reported that Ireland will “formally join South Africa’s genocide case against Israel,” at the International Court of Justice, following formal approval by the Irish government. Ireland will reportedly ask the Court to “broaden its interpretation” of what constitutes genocide, according to the nation’s Foreign Minister Micheal Martin. Martin went on to say that Ireland is “concerned that a very narrow interpretation of what constitutes genocide leads to a culture of impunity in which the protection of civilians is minimised,” and that the government has also approved joining the Gambia’s genocide case against Myanmar. Just days later, Israel announced that the country would shutter its embassy in Dublin, accusing Ireland of “extreme anti-Israel policies,” including joining the genocide lawsuit and recognizing the state of Palestine, per CNN. Irish Prime Minister Simon Harris, facing harsh criticism from Israeli politicians, wrote “I utterly reject the assertion that Ireland is anti-Israel. Ireland is pro-peace, pro-human rights and pro-International law.”

6. In more Palestine news, the Hill has published a heartrending op-ed by Hamid Ali, widower to Aysenur Eygi, the American citizen murdered in cold blood by the IDF during a protest in the West Bank in September of this year. This piece begins “What do you do with the clothes your wife was wearing when she was killed, now stained with her blood? How do you preserve them as evidence for an investigation that may never happen? What else can you do when your government has given no indication that it will hold her killer — a soldier in the army of a close ally — accountable[?]” Ali goes on to tell the story of how he met Aysenur, how they fell in love, and eventually got married – and recounts the eyewitness testimony that she was shot after “20 minutes of calm, sheltering behind an olive tree.” Ali also expresses his anger and frustration – both at the Israeli military’s flimsy attempt to cover up the murder by falsely claiming she was “shot accidentally during a violent protest,” an assertion that, he notes, was swiftly debunked by major news outlets – and at the United States government, which has refused to hold the Israeli military accountable. Ali ends this piece by laying out how he and his family will meet with the State Department and members of Congress next week to “plead with them to do something about Aysenur’s senseless killing…support our family’s call for an independent U.S. investigation into her death and accountability for the soldier that killed her…[and] urge President Biden to prioritize this case in the last days of his administration and uphold justice for our family.”

7. Last week, we reported on the so-called “mutiny” of younger Democrats against the old-guard poised to take the ranking member committee seats in the new Congress. Chief among these was AOC’s bid to seize the ranking member slot on the Oversight Committee from Congressman Gerry Connolly, who is 74 years old and suffering from cancer. At first, it seemed like the young Congresswoman from Queens had successfully outmaneuvered Connolly – even going so far as to pledge that she would no longer back primary challenges against incumbent Democrats, a cornerstone of her outsider brand and appeal, POLITICO reports. Yet, with help from the Democratic power brokers including Nancy Pelsoi, Connolly was able to beat back this challenge at the Democratic Steering Committee. The final vote was a lopsided 131-84, per Axios.

8. Our last three stories this week concern the legacy of the Biden Administration. First, progressives are calling on the president to pardon environmental lawyer Steven Donziger, who has faced persecution as a “corporate political prisoner” per American University’s Center for Environment Community & Equity for his role in suing Chevron over that company’s environmental devastation in Ecuador. In a letter signed by 34 congressional Democrats, led by Congressman Jim McGovern and including Senators Bernie Sanders and Sheldon Whitehouse, along with Representatives Rashida Tlaib, Pramila Jayapal, and Jamie Raskin among others, the progressives write “Mr. Donziger is the only lawyer in U.S. history to be subject to any period of detention on a misdemeanor contempt of court charge…the legal case against Mr. Donziger, as well as the excessively harsh nature of the punishment against him, are directly tied to his prior work against Chevron.” This letter continues “Pardoning Mr. Donziger”…[would send] “a powerful message to the world that billion-dollar corporations cannot act with impunity against lawyers and their clients who defend the public interest.” We echo this call to pardon Donziger, particularly since President Biden’s recent, highly-publicized pardons have consisted of corrupt public officials and his own troubled son Hunter.

9. Next, Reuters reports that on December 11th, the Senate opted not to back President Biden’s renomination of Lauren McFerran to the National Labor Relations Board. The upper chamber voted 50-49 against holding a confirmation vote, with the usual suspects – Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema – defeating the move. Had the Senate reconfirmed McFerran, the balance of the labor board would have remained tilted in favor of Democrats and their allies in organized labor. Now, incoming President Trump will be able to stack the board with his own nominees, expected to be much friendlier to business. Trump is also expected to sack NLRB General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo, who has been instrumental in leveraging the power of the NLRB in favor of workers.

10. Finally, on a lighter note, Deadline reports the NLRB has ruled that contests on the Netflix dating show Love Is Blind are in fact employees under the law. This reclassification opens the door to widespread unionization throughout the unscripted television sector, which has long skirted the heavily-unionized Hollywood system. The fallout from this decision will have to be observed over time and the Trump NLRB could certainly seek to hold the line against unionization in that industry – of which Trump himself was a longtime fixture – but this decision could mean an almost unprecedented expansion of the Screen Actors Guild. We will be watching.

This has been Francesco DeSantis, with In Case You Haven’t Heard.

Ralph welcomes retired diplomat Ambassador Chas Freeman to discuss the United States' disregard for international law, the incoming Trump administration's approach to foreign policy, and the decline of the American Empire (among other topics).

Ambassador Chas Freeman is a retired career diplomat who has negotiated on behalf of the United States with over 100 foreign governments in East and South Asia, Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, and both Western and Eastern Europe. Ambassador Freeman was previously a Senior Fellow at Brown University's Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, and served as U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense, U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, acting Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, and Deputy Chief of Mission and Chargé d’Affaires in the American embassies at both Bangkok and Beijing. He was Director for Chinese Affairs at the U.S. Department of State from 1979-1981. He was the principal American interpreter during the late President Nixon’s historic visit to China in 1972. In addition to Chinese, Ambassador Freeman speaks French and Spanish at the professional level and can converse in Arabic and several other languages.

He concluded his thirty years in public service as Assistant Secretary of Defense, responsible for managing defense relations with all regions of the world except the countries of the former Soviet Union. Ambassador Freeman is the author of several well-received books on statecraft and diplomacy, including The Diplomat’s Dictionary, America’s Misadventures in the Middle East, and America's Continuing Misadventures in the Middle East.

I think it's fair to say that our country led the drive for international law, a world order that was based on rules established by consensus and legitimized at the United Nations. But we have also led the drive away from the rule of law, both internationally and domestically. And I think the connection is contempt for procedural justice or due process.

Chas Freeman

That whole area of international law—which was a stabilizing force in the world—has gone [when Trump removed us from the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Agreement in Europe.] And the UN Charter is disrespected—not just the US Constitution is—in its fundamentals. We invade the sovereignty of other countries with no serious regard for the legal prohibitions against that. And in fact, those legal prohibitions—which once were something that smaller countries could rely upon when they confronted the great powers—are no longer effective. Therefore, we see at the local level, the regional level, a proliferation of weapons designed to counter and defend against attack by greater powers. So the whole world is in effect arming itself. This is very good for arms manufacturers, but it's very bad for the prospects for our species.

Chas Freeman

There are no realistic threats against the United States—except those that we are provoking. Our view seems to be that the best way to deal with the hornet’s nest—I’m speaking of West Asia, the Middle East here—is to go and poke the hornets in their nest.

Chas Freeman

The real risk now…is Israel has so much power in the US that it could create incidents which would flip the United States into a blazing barrage of empire expansion— and suppression in the United States domestically. And they have an incoming president who is ripe for that kind of manipulation to begin with.

Ralph Nader

In Case You Haven’t Heard with Francesco DeSantis

News 12/11/24

1. On December 4th, UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was assassinated in broad daylight in Midtown Manhattan. Clues indicated that the killing was political; most notably, the words “delay,” “deny” and “depose” were each written on one of the three bullets fired at the scene. As AP notes, “The messages mirror the phrase ‘delay, deny, defend,’ which is commonly used by lawyers and critics about insurers that delay payments, deny claims and defend their actions.” Following nearly two full days of nescience, authorities turned up a suspect – Luigi Mangione, the Ivy League-educated scion of an established Baltimore family who had shown signs of increasingly erratic behavior in recent months, perhaps related to ever-worsening back pain. When Mangione was apprehended in an Altoona, Pennsylvania McDonald’s, he was found with “a three-page handwritten document that indicated ‘motivation and mindset,’” the BBC reports, however authorities have not released this manifesto. Perhaps unsurprisingly, ABC 7 New York reports that Mangione’s actions have unleashed a torrent of “‘volcanic’ anger,” toward health insurance agencies, which many regard as capricious and cruel. It remains to be seen how this public sentiment will factor into what is sure to be a highly-publicized criminal trial.

2. The reverberations of Mangione’s actions are already being felt. Back in November, the American Society of Anesthesiologists issued a statement decrying Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield’s unilateral declaration that it would refuse to “pay for anesthesia care if [a] surgery or procedure goes beyond an arbitrary time limit, regardless of how long the surgical procedure takes.” The ASA called on Anthem to reverse that proposal, but their pleas were ignored. That is until December 5th – just one day after the UnitedHealthcare shooting – when the company abruptly reversed themselves and even scrubbed the announcement of the policy from their website. Of course, Anthem insists that the outcry was based on “misinformation” and denies any correlation between the assassination and their decision, per NBC, but the timing frankly makes that difficult to believe.

3. Another New York City killing also made the news last week: the trial of Daniel Penny, a former U.S. Marine on trial for strangling Jordan Neely to death in a New York subway car. Neely was an African-American street artist who had been experiencing homelessness. CNN reports Penny was found not guilty of criminally negligent homicide, already a lesser charge than the original second-degree manslaughter allegation, which Judge Maxwell Wiley dismissed Friday after jurors “twice told the court they could not come to a verdict on the count.” Neely’s father, Andre Zachary, is quoted saying “I miss my son. My son didn’t have to go through this. I didn’t have to go through this either…What’s going to happen to us now? I’ve had enough of this. The system is rigged.”

4. Turning to the Middle East, the regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria has fallen. Assad, with help from Russia, has clung to power since the country descended into civil war in 2011, beating back all manner of rival forces ranging from U.S.-backed rebels to left-wing Kurdish militias to ISIS. The faction that finally did wrest power from Assad is called Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham or HTS, which splintered from Al-Qaeda but is now engaging in a so-called “charm offensive” per France24, and promoting itself as a tolerant faction that will not subjugate women or oppress ethnic and religious minorities such as Syrian Christians, Druze, and Kurds. In a statement, the group told the Kurds of Aleppo “You have the right to live freely … Diversity is a strength of which we are proud…We denounce the actions of the Islamic State group against the Kurds, including the enslavement of women … We are with the Kurds to build the Syria of tomorrow.” ABC reports the U.S. will “recognize and support a new Syrian government that renounces terrorism, destroys chemical weapons stocks and protects the rights of minorities and women.” So far HTS seems to fit the bill. And if this all wasn’t enough, the Syrian situation is further complicated by Israel using this moment to expand its foothold in the country. CNN reports Israel has “launched airstrikes at military targets across Syria and deployed ground troops both into and beyond a demilitarized buffer zone for the first time in 50 years,” setting the stage for a possible new front in Netanyahu’s ongoing regional war.

5. In Palestine, the Intercept reports five Palestinians in the West Bank, along with the councils of the three villages they hail from have filed “a formal regulatory complaint in Germany accusing the media giant Axel Springer of contributing to human rights abuses in Palestine.” Specifically, the complaint concerns Yad2, a classified ads platform and subsidiary of Axel Springer that has been compared to Craigslist, which the plaintiffs allege enables illegal settlements. According to the complaint filed by Jerusalem Legal Aid and Human Rights Centre, Yad2’s facilitation of settler activity violates Germany’s Supply Chain Due Diligence Act, which “requires German companies to identify and mitigate human rights risks within their global supply chains, including in subsidiaries which they control.”

6. In more Israel/Palestine news, the student body at Yale has “overwhelmingly,” passed three pro-Palestine referenda, including two demanding that the university “disclose and divest from its holdings in military weapons manufacturers, ‘including those arming Israel,’” per Yale Daily News. These measures passed with around 80% of the vote. Han Pimental-Hayes, an organizer with the pro-Palestine Sumud Coalition, is quoted saying “University leaders have long tried to paint pro-Palestine and pro-divestment students as a fringe minority. The results of this referendum demonstrate that in reality, the movement for a free Palestine and a more ethical endowment is overwhelmingly popular.” Yale Friends of Israel however expressed that they are “certain” Yale will not change its investment policy regarding Israel’s weapons of war.

7. Looking to Africa, Semafor reports that the incoming Trump White House appears set to recognize the breakaway state of Somaliland, spurred on by right-wing elements who wish to use the unrecognized country as a base for anti-China intelligence operations. This piece highlights that this move would rattle the governments of East Africa and draw the ire of the African Union, but Trump’s China hawks see it as a critical element of countering Chinese influence in the region and particularly in Djibouti where the People’s Liberation Army has set up one of its handful of foreign military bases. Even if Trump does not recognize Somaliland however, and instead hews to the traditional American “One Somalia” policy, Republicans are calling for Trump to take an approach akin to Taiwan – treating it as independent without formal recognition.

8. Turning to domestic politics, POLITICO reports Democrats are staging a “mutiny” against the old guard who have monopolized power in the House. This report focuses on Rep. Jerry Nadler, 77, who will vacate his position as the top Democrat on Judiciary to clear the way for Jamie Raskin, Rep. Raul Grijalva, 76, who announced he would step down as the top Dem on the Natural Resources Committee, and David Scott of Georgia, 79, who is looking down the barrel at multiple challenges for his spot on the Agriculture Committee. Since this piece was published, another major challenge has emerged – NBC reports AOC is gunning for the top Democratic spot on the Oversight Committee. The POLITICO piece emphasizes Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries’ approach of letting the challenges “speak for themselves,” as an indication that he will not fight this wave of challenges.

9. Washington Post labor reporter Lauren Kaori Gurley reports the Teamsters are demanding Amazon agree to bargaining dates by December 15. In a statement, Teamsters President Sean O’Brien writes “The Teamsters are done asking nicely for Amazon to stop breaking the law. Amazon must commit to come to the table and bargain a Teamsters contract with its workers — or face the consequences of its inaction.” This gambit by the Teamsters comes just as the winter holiday gift deliveries are getting into full swing, maximizing the union’s leverage. Moreover, the Teamster’s Faustian bargain with the Trump administration may yield results for them, as the normally business friendly Republicans may be inclined to put the screws to Amazon on behalf of this particular union. Whatever the circumstances, the Amazon Teamsters deserve a contract and it is heartening that O’Brien is fighting for his members.

10. In decidedly worse Trump news, the president-elect has announced former Missouri Republican Congressman Billy Long as his pick to lead the IRS. A story by the Lever sounds the alarm on how he might use the “non-profit killer” bill to pursue political vendettas against tax-exempt organizations he dislikes. This piece exposes Long’s role in trying to pressure the IRS to launch a probe into, of all things, the Humane Society following their support of a Missouri ballot measure strengthening dog breeder regulations. Put another way, if Long was ready to use the long-arm of the IRS to crack down on an organization whose sole political goal is the protection of animals, what might he do to organizations devoted to civil rights or social justice?

This has been Francesco DeSantis, with In Case You Haven’t Heard.

Ralph welcomes international human rights lawyer and activist, and former senior United Nations human rights official Craig Mokhiber to discuss Israel and Gaza—if Israel should be thrown out of the UN, how Trump's positions will compare to Biden's, and whether we're starting to see cracks in Israel's wall of impunity. Plus, Ralph shares a possible ray of light in Trump's cabinet, a warning about the cost of credit cards for small businesses, and some tough love for AARP.

Craig Mokhiber is an international human rights lawyer and activist, and a former senior United Nations human rights official. A human rights activist in the 1980s, he would go on to serve for more than three decades at the United Nations, with postings in Switzerland, Palestine, Afghanistan, and UN Headquarters in New York. In October of 2023, he left the United Nations, penning a widely read letter criticizing the UN’s human rights failures in the Middle East, warning of unfolding genocide in Gaza, and calling for a new approach to Palestine and Israel based on international law, human rights, and equality.

Gaza is now the world capital of child amputation. And that doesn't even cover the true horror, because Israel blocks any anesthesia from entering Gaza as a means of imposing further agony on the population that they are subjecting to genocide. Which means those amputations are being carried out on children and adults without anesthesia and often without sterile equipment or adequate hospitals, such that even if they survive the excruciating agony of an amputation without anesthesia, they may well not survive the side effects. They may well not survive the infection.

Craig Mokhiber

The irony is that in November, the UN announced that Israel had paid its dues in full in order to preserve its membership and to continue to fund the UN— an organization that the Israelis say is a terrorist, anti-Semitic organization dedicated to its destruction, is an organization that they have decided to be a member of and to fund. So when you look at the kind of propaganda that they distribute…You can see how ironic and how outrageous it really is. I've said that it would be hard to imagine any country in the history of the organization more deserving—at a minimum—of suspension from the UN General Assembly. No country in history has violated the principles of the UN Charter more than Israel, and it has done so from the moment of its admission in 1948.

Craig Mokhiber

We can certainly expect a dangerous four years under Trump. There's no denying it…But we shouldn't forget that we've just had a four-year term under Biden and Harris in which they undid none of those policies, and in which they actually supported horrific international crimes being perpetrated by Israel. And Biden and his administration were at the helm of the brutal repression of human rights defenders here in the United States, on college campuses and workplaces and the streets and in media places. So we're going to go from genocide abroad and repression at home under Biden to more genocide abroad and repression at home under Trump. The only difference is that Trump won't waste his time on the kind of mendacious pretense of civility and humanitarian concern that was peddled by Biden and Harris as it murdered babies in their thousands.

Craig Mokhiber

AARP has maybe 18 million members. That's a big, big organization, and we want it on our side. We want it on the side of single-payer, universal insurance, full Medicare for all.

Ralph Nader

Link to Ralph’s letter to AARP CEO Jo Ann Jenkins

In Case You Haven’t Heard with Francesco DeSantis

News 12/4/24

1. On Tuesday, right-wing South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol attempted to stage a coup, declaring martial law and stationing troops outside of the South Korean National Assembly in an attempt to block lawmakers from assembling and voting to overturn his decree. Reuters reports that while Yoon used the pretext of cracking down on “North Korean anti-state forces," he “did not cite any specific threat” and instead focused on his domestic political opponents. Some contend that this move was meant to stave off prosecution of his wife, who is under investigation for corruption. When lawmakers were finally able to enter the National Assembly, all 190 members present voted to overturn the decree, including members of Yoon’s own party. Former Democratic President Moon Jae-in urged the National Assembly to “act quickly to protect our democracy from crumbling." Even still, Yoon initially refused to call off the military, only folding after the Korean unions declared a general strike and the defense minister tendered his resignation. South Korea has previously been ruled by U.S.-backed dictators, including Syngman Rhee, Park Chung-Hee, and Chun Doo-hwan. Almost 30,000 American troops are stationed in the country and a provision in the American-drafted Korean constitution gives the U.S. emergency powers to take over the South Korean military.

2. In Western Europe, the governments of Germany and France are collapsing. CNN reports that weak economic performance led German Chancellor Olaf Scholz of the SDP to dismiss his finance minister, Christian Lindner of the FDP, which in turn resulted in that party pulling out of Scholz’s governing coalition – leaving Scholz in charge of a minority government. According to this report, Scholz committed to holding a confidence vote set for January 15th; if he loses that vote, a snap election could be held as early as March 2025, well ahead of the scheduled September elections. Meanwhile in France, Macron’s center-right coalition is facing no confidence motions from the Left and far-Right. This crisis boils down to a budget showdown hinging on a social security austerity measure that Prime Minister Michel Barnier rammed through without a vote, per Le Monde. Mathilde Panot of the left-wing France Unbowed party is quoted in Reuters saying "Faced with this umpteenth denial of democracy, we will censure the government…We are living in political chaos because of Michel Barnier's government and Emmanuel Macron's presidency."

3. In their December 2024 report, Prisoners for Peace lists four Israeli refuseniks: Itamar Greenberg, who has already spent 105 days in prison and has now been sentenced to another 45 days; Yuval Moav, who has been in prison for 125 days and may face yet more jail time – and now Itamar and Yuval are joined by Soul Behar Tzalik and Iddo Eilam, who were both sentenced to 30 days on November 27th. All four refuseniks are just 18 years old. They are affiliated with the Israeli refusenik peace group, Mesarvot.

4. The Financial Times reports that the United States is exerting pressure on Ukraine to lower its age of conscription from 25 to just 18 years old. A senior U.S. military official is quoted saying “The simple truth is that Ukraine is not currently mobilising or training enough soldiers to replace their battlefield losses while keeping pace with Russia’s growing military.” This piece frames this push as part of the Biden administration’s feverish attempts to “deploy $7bn in security assistance to Kyiv before…Donald Trump takes office,” and cites estimates that Ukraine needs at least another 160,000 soldiers to replenish its ranks. Anti-war advocates have long decried the United States’ role in perpetuating this war rather than seeking a negotiated settlement, resulting in a staggering loss of Ukrainian and Russian lives. For his part, President Zelenskyy told the Ukrainian parliament last week “Let there be no speculation — our state is not preparing to lower the mobilisation age.”

5. In another case of foreign policy being made in the liminal space between the Biden and Trump administrations, AP reports China has announced they will ban exports of gallium, germanium, antimony and other high-tech materials with military applications to the United States. in retaliation for the U.S. limiting semiconductor-related exports – and for Donald Trump’s threats to impose steep tariffs on the People’s Republic. Lin Jian of the Chinese Foreign Ministry is quoted saying “China has lodged stern protests with the U.S. for its…malicious suppression of China’s technological progress…

illegal unilateral sanctions and long-arm jurisdiction against Chinese companies.”

6. In yet another instance of Trump conducting foreign policy before his term begins, the president-elect has already provoked a diplomatic incident with Canada and Mexico. Trump has threatened to impose 25% tariffs on the two countries unless they “stem the flow of migrants and drugs,” per AP. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, rather than standing together with Mexico, met with Trump to convince him that the two countries should not be treated equally. In response, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said “Mexico must be respected, especially by its trading partners,” and added that Canada “could only wish they had the cultural riches Mexico has.”

7. A new bombshell report comes to us from Drop Site. This time, it concerns the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, OCCRP, which is one of the “largest and most powerful” news organizations in the world. As this report notes, the OCCRP works with major newspapers across the globe to collaboratively publish major stories, including the Panama Papers. Yet, an investigation led by French outlet Mediapart, Italian outlet Il Fatto Quotidiano, Reporters United and Drop Site itself – along with the German NDR, though they were pressured to pull their own story – revealed a stunning truth at the heart of the OCCRP: more than half of its funding comes directly from the U.S. government. This story is complex and the reporters involved are not trying to discredit the reporting done by the OCCRP. But the public deserves to know who is funding the journalism they consume.

8. Matt Bruenig’s NLRB Edge has documented a remarkable case before the labor board involving the U.S. Postal Service. As Bruenig lays out, back in 2021 “Nicolas Montross, a letter carrier…invoked his contractual right…to not work more than 60 hours in a week. After working nearly 60 hours, [he] returned undelivered mail to the facility and left work.” At that point, he was called to a “pre-disciplinary interview” with his supervisor, who “questioned whether Montross's loyalty lay with the union or USPS, threatened him with discipline and criminal prosecution, and attempted to determine who had informed him about his contractual rights.” Montross eventually resigned, believing if he did not, he would face criminal charges. When this case finally made it to the NLRB, they ruled that the USPS had violated federal labor law and ordered them to offer Montross reinstatement with back pay and benefits – called “make-whole” relief – among other remedies. Yet, the USPS is now challenging make-whole relief, which has been standard practice at the Biden NLRB since 2022. As Bruenig writes, “Shouldn’t the Biden administration be telling the USPS to cut it out, lest they manage to undermine one of the Biden NLRB’s major accomplishments?”

9. Following Donald Trump’s victory in the 2024 presidential election, Senator Bernie Sanders has sought to hold Trump to the promises he made during the campaign. On November 15th, Sanders wrote “I look forward to working with the Trump Administration on fulfilling his promise to cap credit card interest rates at 10%. We cannot continue to allow big banks to make record profits by ripping off Americans by charging them 25 to 30% interest rates. That is usury.” Now, Sanders is seeking to leverage Elon Musk’s government efficiency initiative to curb runaway Pentagon spending. On December 1st, he wrote “Elon Musk is right. The Pentagon, with a budget of $886 billion, just failed its 7th audit in a row. It’s lost track of billions. Last year, only 13 senators voted against the Military Industrial Complex and a defense budget full of waste and fraud. That must change.” Put simply, Sanders is calling the Trump bluff. He ran, and won, on a populist economic message. If anyone can get him to deliver, it’s Bernie – and if Trump backs down, he will be exposed as beholden to the corporate powers that be.

10. Finally, on a lighter note, this week saw the resurrection of notorious corporate criminal firm Enron, via what CNN calls an “elaborate joke.” In short, this report finds that instead of a reincarnation of the scandal-plagued energy giant, this is merely a T-shirt company which bought the Enron trademark and is trying to capitalize on it. So, we can all breathe a sigh of relief. We have quite enough criminal corporations, no need to raise the dead.

This has been Francesco DeSantis, with In Case You Haven’t Heard.

Ralph welcomes Marc Rotenberg, founder and president of the Center for AI and Digital Policy to fill us in on the latest international treaty aimed at putting guardrails on the potential Frankenstein monster that is Artificial Intelligence. Plus, as we get to the end of the Medicare enrollment period, we put out one last warning for listeners to avoid the scam that is Medicare Advantage.

Marc Rotenberg is the founder and president of the Center for AI and Digital Policy, a global organization focused on emerging challenges associated with Artificial Intelligence. He serves as an expert advisor on AI policy to many organizations including the Council of Europe, the Council on Foreign Relations, the European Parliament, the Global Partnership on AI, the OECD, and UNESCO.

What troubles me is the gap between an increasingly obscure, technical, and complex technology—abbreviated into “AI” —and public understanding. You know, when motor vehicles came and we tried to regulate them and did, people understood motor vehicles in their daily lives. When solar energy started coming on, they saw solar roof panels. They could see it, they could understand it, they could actually work putting solar panels on roofs of buildings. This area is just producing a massively expanding gap between the experts from various disciplines, and the power structure of corporatism, and their government servants and the rest of the people in the world.

Ralph Nader

The difference between these two types of [AI] systems is that with the old ones we could inspect them and interrogate them. If one of the factors being used for an outcome was, for example, race or nationality, we could say, well, that's impermissible and you can't use an automated system in that way. The problem today with the probabilistic systems that US companies have become increasingly reliant on is that it's very difficult to actually tell whether those factors are contributing to an outcome. And so for that reason, there are a lot of computer scientists rightly concerned about the problem of algorithmic bias.

Marc Rotenberg

[The sponsors of California SB 1047] wanted companies that were building these big complicated systems to undertake a safety plan, identify the harms, and make those plans available to the Attorney General…In fact, I work with many governments around the world on AI regulation and this concept of having an impact assessment is fairly obvious. You don't want to build these large complex systems without some assessment of what the risk might be.

Marc Rotenberg

We've always understood that when you create devices that have consequences, there has to be some circuit breaker. The companies didn't like that either. [They said] it's too difficult to predict what those scenarios might be, but that was almost precisely the point of the legislation, you see, because if those scenarios exist and you haven't identified them yet, you choose to deploy these large foundational models without any safety mechanism in place, and all of us are at risk. So I thought it was an important bill and not only am I disappointed that the governor vetoed it, but as I said, I think he made a mistake. This is not simply about politics. This is actually about science, and it's about the direction these systems are heading.

Marc Rotenberg

That's where we are in this moment—opaque systems that the experts don't understand, increasingly being deployed by organizations that also don't understand these systems, and an industry that says, “don't regulate us.” This is not going to end well.

Marc Rotenberg

In Case You Haven’t Heard with Francesco Desantis

News 11/27/24

1. Last week, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. According to a statement from ICC prosecutor Karim Khan, the international legal body found reasonable grounds to believe that each has committed war crimes and crimes against humanity, including the use of starvation as a method of warfare and intentionally directing attacks against civilians. This news has been met with varied reactions throughout the world. These have been meticulously documented by Just Security. The United States, which is under no obligation to honor the warrant as it is not a party to the Rome Statute, has said it “fundamentally rejects” the judgment and has called the issuing of warrants “outrageous.” Canada, which is party to the Rome Statue has vowed to uphold their treaty obligations despite their close ties to Israel. Germany however, another signatory to the Rome Statute, has suggested that they would not honor the warrants. In a statement, Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib said the warrants are “long overdue” and signal that “the days of the Israeli apartheid government operating with impunity are ending.” One can only hope that is true.

2. On November 21st, 19 Senators voted for at least one of the three Joint Resolutions of Disapproval regarding additional arms transfers to Israel. As Jewish Voice for Peace Action puts it, “this is an unprecedented show of Senate opposition to President Biden’s disastrous foreign policy of unconditional support for the Israeli military.” The 19 Senators include Independents Bernie Sanders and Angus King, progressive Democrats like Elizabeth Warren, Chris Van Hollen and Raphael Warnock, and Democratic caucus leaders like Dick Durbin, among many others. Perhaps the most notable supporter however is Senator Jon Ossoff of Georgia, whom Ryan Grim notes is the only Democrat representing a state Trump won and who is up for reelection in 2026 to vote for the resolution. Ossoff cited President Reagan’s decision to withhold cluster munitions during the IDF occupation of Beirut in a floor speech explaining his vote. The Middle East Eye reports that the Biden Administration deployed Democratic Senate Leader Chuck Schumer to whip votes against the JRD.

3. Last week, we covered H.R. 9495, aka the “nonprofit killer” bill targeting pro-Palestine NGOs. Since then, the bill has passed the House. Per the Guardian, the bill passed 219-184, with fifteen Democrats crossing the aisle to grant incoming-President Trump the unilateral power to obliterate any non-profit organization he dislikes, a list sure to be extensive. Congressman Jamie Raskin is quoted saying “A sixth-grader would know this is unconstitutional…They want us to vote to give the president Orwellian powers and the not-for-profit sector Kafkaesque nightmares.” The bill now moves to the Senate, where it is unlikely to pass while Democrats cling to control. Come January however, Republicans will hold a decisive majority in the upper chamber.

4. President-elect Donald Trump has announced his selection of Congresswoman Lori Chavez-DeRemer as his pick for Secretary of Labor. Chavez-DeRemer is perhaps the most pro-labor Republican in Congress, with the AFL-CIO noting that she is one of only three Republicans to cosponsor the PRO Act and one of eight to cosponsor the Public Service Freedom to Negotiate Act. Chavez-DeRemer was reportedly the favored choice of Teamsters President Sean O’Brien, who controversially became the first ever Teamster to address the RNC earlier this year. While her selection has been greeted with cautious optimism by many labor allies, anti-labor conservatives are melting down at the prospect. Akash Chougule of Americans for Prosperity accused Trump of giving “A giant middle finger to red states,” by “picking a teachers union hack” and urged Senate Republicans to reject the nomination.

5. Unfortunately, most of Trump’s selections are much, much worse. Perhaps worst of all, Trump has chosen Mehmet Cengiz Öz – better known as Dr. Oz – to lead the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Beyond his lack of qualifications and history of promoting crackpot medical theories, Oz is a longtime proponent of pushing more seniors into privatized Medicare Advantage, or “Disadvantage,” plans, per Yahoo! Finance. This report notes that the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 called for making Medicare Advantage the default health program for seniors.

6. According to CNN, Brazilian police have arrested five people who conspired to assassinate leftist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, better known as Lula, in 2022. This assassination plot was allegedly cooked up even before Lula took office, and included plans to kill Lula’s Vice President Geraldo Alckmin and Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes. The conspirators included a former high-ranking Bolsonaro advisor and military special forces personnel. Reuters reports investigators have discovered evidence that Bolsonaro himself was involved in the scheme.

7. In more news from Latin America, Drop Site reports that the United States and Colombia engaged in a secretive agreement to allow the country’s previous U.S.-backed conservative President Ivan Duque to utilize the Israeli Pegasus spyware for internal surveillance in the country. Details of the transaction and of the utilization of the spyware remain “murky,” but American and Colombian officials maintain it was used to target drug-trafficking groups and not domestic political opponents. Just two months ago, Colombia’s leftist President Gustavo Petro delivered a televised speech revealing details of this shadowy arrangement, including that the Duque government flew $11 million cash from Bogotá to Tel Aviv. As Drop Site notes, “In Colombia, there’s a long legacy of state intelligence agencies surveilling political opposition leaders. With the news that the U.S. secretly helped acquire and deploy powerful espionage software in their country, the government is furious at the gross violation of their sovereignty. They fear that Colombia’s history of politically motivated surveillance, backed by the U.S. government, lives on to this day.”

8. Following the Democrats’ electoral wipeout, the race for new DNC leadership is on. Media attention has mostly been focused on the race to succeed Jamie Harrison as DNC Chair, but POLITICO is out with a story on James Zogby’s bid for the DNC vice chair seat. Zogby, a longtime DNC member, Bernie Sanders ally and president of the Arab American Institute has criticized the party’s position on Israel and particularly of the Kamala Harris campaign’s refusal to allow a Palestinian-American speaker at this year’s convention. He called the move “unimaginative, overly cautious and completely out of touch with where voters are.” This report notes Zogby’s involvement in the 2016 DNC Unity Reform Commission, and his successful push to strip substantial power away from the so-called superdelegates.

9. Speaking of Democratic Party rot, the Lever reports that in its final days the Biden Administration is handing corporations a “get out of jail free card.” A new Justice Department policy dictates that the government will essentially look the other way at corporate misconduct, even if the company has “committed multiple crimes, earned significant profit from their wrongdoing, and failed to self-disclose the misconduct — as long as the companies demonstrate they ‘acted in good faith’ to try to come clean.” This is the logical endpoint of the longstanding Biden era soft-touch approach intended to encourage corporations to self-police, an idea that is patently absurd on its face. Public Citizen’s Corporate Crime expert Rick Claypool described the policy as “bending over backward to protect corporations.”

10. Finally, on November 23rd lawyer and former progressive congressional candidate Brent Welder posted a fundraising email from Bernie Sanders that immediately attracted substantial interest for its strong language. In this note, Sanders writes “The Democrats ran a campaign protecting the status quo and tinkering around the edges…Will the Democratic leadership learn the lessons of their defeat and create a party that stands with the working class[?]…unlikely.” The email ends with a list of tough questions, including “should we be supporting Independent candidates who are prepared to take on both parties?” Many on the Left read this as Bernie opening the door to a “dirty break” with the Democratic Party, perhaps even an attempt to form some kind of independent alliance or third party. In a follow-up interview with John Nichols in the Nation, Sanders clarified that he is not calling for the creation of a new party, but “Where it is more advantageous to run as an independent, outside of the Democratic [Party]…we should do that.” Whether anything will come of this remains to be seen, but if nothing else the severity of his rhetoric reflects the intensity of dissatisfaction with the Democratic Party in light of their second humiliating defeat at the hands of a clownish, fascistic game show host. Perhaps a populist left third party is a far-fetched, unachievable goal. On the other hand, how many times can we go back to the Democratic Party expecting different results. Something has got to give, or else the few remaining pillars of our democracy will wither and die under sustained assault by the Right and their corporate overlords.

This has been Francesco DeSantis, with In Case You Haven’t Heard.

Ralph welcomes Vani Hari, also known as “The Food Babe,” to tell us about her campaign against Kellogg’s to stop using artificial dyes in their cereals that have been linked to various health problems and have been banned in Europe. Plus, noted labor organizer, Chris Townsend gives us his take on the AFL-CIOs obeisant relationship to the Democratic Party.

Vani Hari is an author and food activist. A former corporate consultant, she started the Food Babe blog in 2011, and she is the co-founder of the nutritional supplement startup Truvani.

It is a game of whack-a-mole because we get these corporations to change, or they announce that they're going to change, and then they go back on their commitment. And that is what's happened with Kellogg's.

Vani Hari

Chris Townsend is a 45-year union member and leader. He was most recently the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) International Union Organizing Director. Previously he was an International Representative and Political Action Director for the United Electrical Workers Union (UE), and he has held local positions in both the SEIU and UFCW.

These workers who have been betrayed, lied to, wrecked, destroyed, poisoned, all of these things—this becomes the breeding ground for Trumpist ideology. And the Democrats won’t face this.

Chris Townsend

Our media largely ignores the labor movement. Our small labor press—left press—generally subscribes to the “good news only” school of journalism. So these endemic problems and even immediate crises are never dealt with. Now, some of that is because the existing labor leadership generally is not fond of criticism or is not fond of anyone pointing out shortcomings (or) mistakes.

Chris Townsend

We’re a cash cow—and a vote cow— to be milked routinely and extensively by this Democratic machinery… The leadership today in the bulk of the unions is an administrative layer, business union through and through to the core. The historic trade union spirit that always animated the unions in various levels is not extinguished, but in my 45 years, I would say it is at a low ebb. In the sense that we just have been sterilized because of this unconditional and unholy alliance or domination by the Democratic Party. And there's no room for spark. There's no room for dissent. There's no room for anyone to even raise the obvious.

Chris Townsend

[Leaders of the AFL-CIO are] basically bureaucrats in that building on 16th Street, collecting their pay and their nice pensions. Completely out of touch with millions of blue collar workers that have veered into the Republican Party channels—the so-called Reagan Democrats, which have spelled the difference in election after election for the Senate, for the House, for the Presidency.

Ralph Nader

In Case You Haven’t Heard with Francesco DeSantis

News 11/20/24

1. In his new book Hope Never Disappoints, Pope Francis writes “what is happening in Gaza has the characteristics of genocide,” and called for the situation to be “studied carefully…by jurists and international organisations,” per the Middle East Eye. These comments come on the heels of a United Nations committee report which found that Israel’s actions are “consistent with characteristics of genocide,” and alleged that Israel is using starvation as a weapon of war. The Catholic pontiff has long decried violence in all forms and has previously criticized Israel’s “disproportionate and immoral” actions in Gaza and Lebanon, per AP.

2. On November 14th, the AP’s Farnoush Amiri reported that more than 80 Congressional Democrats sent a letter to President Biden on October 29th, urging the administration to sanction Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir. Only made public after the election, this letter called for sanctions on these individuals “Given their critical roles in driving policies that promote settler violence, weaken the Palestinian Authority, facilitate de facto and de jure annexation, and destabilize the West Bank.” This letter was principally authored by Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro, and in addition to dozens of House Democratic signatories, was signed by no less than 17 Senators.

3. Another remarkable post-election Israel story concerns outgoing Congressman Jamaal Bowman, who was ousted from his seat by a flood of AIPAC money. In an interview with Rania Khalek, Bowman relates a remarkable anecdote about the presidential campaign. Bowman says he specifically requested to campaign for Kamala Harris in Michigan – where he was so popular his AIPAC-backed primary challenger disparagingly said “[Bowman’s] constituency is Dearborn, Michigan” – but the campaign ignored him and instead deployed surrogates that seemed almost designed to alienate Arab-Americans: Liz Cheney, Ritchie Torres, and Bill Clinton who went out of his way to scold these voters. These voters were likely decisive in Kamala Harris’ loss in that state.

4. On November 13th, Senator Bernie Sanders announced that he intends to bring Joint Resolutions of Disapproval to the Senate floor. As Sanders writes in a press release, the “The JRD is the only mechanism available to Congress to prevent an arms sale from advancing.” Unlike previous efforts however, Sanders no longer stands alone. According to Reuters, “Two of the resolutions, co-sponsored with…Senators Jeff Merkley and Peter Welch, would block the sale of 120 mm mortar rounds and joint direct attack munitions (JDAMS). A third, sponsored by Democratic Senator Brian Schatz, would block the sale of tank rounds.” Senators Elizabeth Warren and Chris Van Hollen have announced their intention to support the JRD. Certain heavy-hitting Democratic-aligned institutions have also bucked precedent to back this effort, including the massive Service Employees International Union and leading Liberal-Zionist group J Street.

5. In the House, Republicans and many Democrats are pushing H.R. 9495, a bill which would grant the executive branch the power to unilaterally strip non-profit organizations of their tax-exempt status based on accusations of supporting terrorism. As the Intercept notes, “The law would not require officials to explain the reason for designating a group, nor…provide evidence.” The ACLU and over 150 other “civil liberties, religious, reproductive health, immigrant rights, human rights, racial justice, LGBTQ+, environmental, and educational organizations,” sent a letter opposing this bill in September, and celebrated when the bill was blocked on November 12th – but it is back from the grave, with Nonprofit Quarterly reporting the bill has cleared a new procedural hurdle and will now advance to the floor. Yet even if this bill is successfully blocked, little stands in the way of Republicans reviving it in the next Congress, where they will hold the House, Senate, and the Presidency.

6. Back in October, we covered Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib’s letter to Kroger CEO Rodney McMullen expressing grave concern over the company’s decision to roll out facial recognition-based price gouging technology. According to Tlaib, Kroger has stonewalled Congress, so she is leading a group of House Democrats in a new letter demanding answers to the critical questions that remain, such as whether Kroger will use facial recognition to display targeted ads, whether consumers can opt out, and whether the company plans to sell data collected in stores. This letter is co-signed by progressives like AOC, Barbara Lee, and Eleanor Holmes Norton, among others.

7. In new labor news, the NLRB has issued a rule banning anti-union “captive audience meetings,” per the Washington Post. This report notes that these meetings, in which employers warn workers of the risks in unionizing, are considered highly effective and are commonly used by companies like Amazon, Starbucks, Apple and Trader Joe’s. According to the Post, Amazon alone spent more than $17 million on consults to do exactly this between 2022 and 2023. On the other hand, Bloomberg Law reports a federal judge in Texas has blocked a Labor Department rule that would have expanded overtime eligibility to four million mostly lower-level white collar workers. This was seen as among the Biden Administration’s key achievements on labor rights and foreshadows the rollback of worker protections we are likely to see in a Trump presidency redux.

8. Donald Trump has signaled that he will nominate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as his Secretary of Health and Human Services. Kennedy will likely face a difficult confirmation process; his past environmental activism is anathema to Republican Senators, while his more recent vaccine-skepticism is unpopular among Democrats. Yet just as Donald Trump emerged as an improbable RFK ally, a surprising opponent has emerged as well: former Vice-President Mike Pence. In a “rare” statement Pence writes “For the majority of his career, RFK Jr. has defended abortion on demand during all nine months of pregnancy, supports overturning the Dobbs decision and has called for legislation to codify Roe v Wade. If confirmed, RFK, Jr. would be the most pro-abortion Republican appointed secretary of HHS in modern history…I…urge Senate Republicans to reject this nomination.” As with other unpopular Trump nominees, many expect RFK to be appointed on an acting basis and then possibly installed via the recess appointment process.

9. In some positive news, Drop Site reports that in Sri Lanka, the Leftist president Anura Kumara Dissanayake, who wrested the office from the corrupt clique that has ruled the nation since independence has won a resounding victory in the recent parliamentary elections. Reuters reports that Dissanayake’s coalition won a “sweeping mandate,” with enough seats to pass his anti-corruption and poverty-alleviation agenda. More shocking is the fact that Dissanayake’s coalition ran up the score in the Tamil-dominated north and east of the country. As Drop Site notes, only 15 years ago the Sri Lankan government crushed the Tamil Tigers and carried out large-scale massacres of the Tamil minority. Dissanayake has vowed to end the occupation and release Tamil political prisoners, as well as take on the International Monetary Fund which is seeking to impose economic control on the country in exchange for a fiscal bailout. Neither goal will be easily achieved, but the size of Dissanayake’s victory at least provides the opportunity for him to try.

10. Finally, AP reports that three of Malcolm X’s daughters have filed a $100 million lawsuit against the CIA, FBI, and NYPD. This lawsuit alleges that these agencies were “aware of and…involved in the assassination plot,” and that law enforcement was engaged in a “corrupt, unlawful, and unconstitutional [relationship with]…ruthless killers that…was actively concealed, condoned, protected, and facilitated by government agents.” Two of Malcolm X’s alleged assassins were exonerated in 2021 after an extensive re-investigation found that authorities withheld crucial evidence, per AP, and new evidence reported earlier this year by Democracy Now! supports the theory of an assassination plot involving collusion between the FBI and NYPD, if not others.

This has been Francesco DeSantis, with In Case You Haven’t Heard.

First on today's show, Ralph welcomes author, statistician, and professor Nassim Nicholas Taleb to discuss the wars in Gaza and Lebanon and give us his take on the election results. Then, Ralph and journalist Ryan Grim speak about President-Elect Trump's cabinet appointments and what we can expect from the upcoming Trump Administration. Finally, we're joined by constitutional law expert Bruce Fein for a post-election Donald Trump legal roundup.  

Nassim Nicholas Taleb spent twenty-one years as a derivatives trader before changing careers to become a scholar, mathematical researcher and philosophical essayist. Mr. Taleb’s works focus on mathematical, philosophical, and practical problems with risk and probability, as well as on the properties of systems that can handle disorder.  He is the author of many essays and books about risk and uncertainty including the New York Times bestselling The Black Swan and his latest Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life.

The supporters of Israel are getting smaller in relative economic and financial size—and of course, in technological size as well. So it's getting smaller while at the same time, Israel relies more and more on their support. So that's not a robust situation. In other words, the strategy of Israel being continuously confrontational has led to more and more confrontation, and the strategy of relying on the West is not going to pay off.

Nassim Nicholas Talib

Israel has been behaving like a child with a strong personality and been capable of winning concessions from her or his parents continuously. So that's what has been happening. But the problem is— not finding any resistance, they kept going, they kept going, and one day they realized that, ah, they went too far but it was too late. So you can rely on AIPAC to do a bunch of things, but at some point, the strategy is not going to work.

Nassim Nicholas Talib

Ryan Grim is co-founder of Drop Site News, host of the podcast Deconstructed, and co-host of the show Counter Points. He was previously D.C. Bureau Chief for The Intercept and the Washington bureau chief for HuffPost, and he has been a staff reporter for Politico and the Washington City Paper. He is the author of the books This Is Your Country on Drugs, We’ve Got People, and The Squad: AOC and the Hope of a Political Revolution.

[The incoming administration of Trump and his Trumpsters] are very aggressive. They think they're above the law. They are greedy. They want to turn the U .S. government into a honeypot for their commercial paymasters—which include their own businesses, by the way, like Elon Musk. And when that happens—when you have greed and almost total power with the Supreme Court on your side, with the Congress under Republican control—you're inevitably going to get serious examples of corruption. You're inevitably going to get blatant corruption. 

Ralph Nader

So far, to a lot of people's great disappointment, Democrats have been pretty terrible at [going after corruption]. So on the one hand, they angered the entire support base for Donald Trump and whipped them up into a frenzy accusing Democrats of prosecuting their enemies, while at the same time not actually prosecuting them for any corruption…Now, because the Trump movement has been able to argue to its base that it feels persecuted, they are probably going to spend a significant amount of their energy going after those who they see as their persecutors. 

Ryan Grim

Time is one of [Donald Trump’s] restraints and incompetence is another. He's up against those two elements—and in-fighting. There are a number of competing factions for his attention and for his agenda and they are going to relentlessly work to undermine each other. So that factor will restrain him. 

Ryan Grim

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.

I do think there's a remedy here, and that is I think that any of the decisions made by the people who are appointed through illegal or unconstitutional recess appointments, when they take any action, you wouldn't have to comply with their actions. You can say the decisions, their orders are null and void because they weren't appointed properly.

Bruce Fein

In Case You Haven’t Heard with Francesco DeSantis

News 11/13/24

1. Following Kamala Harris’ disastrous defeat at the hands of Donald Trump last week – which saw the Vice President lose the electoral college by a greater margin than Hillary Clinton and swept Republicans to power in all three branches of government – the Democratic Party blame game is in full swing. Perhaps the most prominent critical voice has come from Bernie Sanders, who issued a blistering statement in which he writes “It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned the working class would find that the working class has abandoned them.” DNC Chair Jamie Harrison has dismissed this criticism, calling it “straight up BS,” but in this moment Democrats are finding it harder to wave this critique away. Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut, for example, echoed Bernie’s warning, writing “when progressives like Bernie aggressively go after the elites that hold people down, they are shunned as dangerous populists. Why? Maybe because true economic populism is bad for our high-income base.”

2. Meanwhile, Donald Trump appears to be setting the stage for Elon Musk to take on a prominent position in the incoming administration. Axios reports Trump had a call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky last Wednesday, and was joined by Musk. Details of the call remain murky, but Trump reportedly said he “will support Ukraine” and Musk said he will continue to aid Ukraine with his Starlink satellites. Bloomberg further reports that Musk joined Trump on a call with Serbian President Aleksander Vucic, and may meet with Trump and Argentinian President Javier Milei at Mar-a-Lago.

3. Filling out the incoming administration, CNN reports Trump has offered New York Republican Congresswoman Elise Stefanik the role of Ambassador to the United Nations. Stefanik entered Congress as a moderate Republican, but has grown closer and closer to the Trump wing of the party. More recently, she rose to national prominence for her role as ringleader of the McCarthyist hearings on supposed antisemitic protests on college campuses; in actuality of course, these protests were merely demanding recognition of human rights for Palestinians. Because of her staunch Zionist bona fides, Anti-Defamation League President Jonathan Greenblatt celebrated her selection. Stefanik has previously boosted the antisemitic “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory, per the Washington Post, but apparently the ADL is happy to look past that so long as she blindly backs the State of Israel.

4. Another Trump administration staffing decision which has drawn scrutiny is the supposed appointment of Massad Boulos, father-in-law to Tiffany Trump, as “US point man for Lebanon,” per the Times of Israel. Boulos, a Lebanese-American billionaire, told the Lebanese network MTV “People see that Biden and Harris failed to end the wars and failed to even return the American hostages from Gaza…Lebanese Americans are migrating to [the] Republican Party and to Trump because they feel that Trump is their only hope to end this war, and end all the wars… so we can start talking about rebuilding Lebanon and Gaza.” However, this dovish tone is at odds with Trump’s promises to Right-wing Zionists, meaning one faction or the other is in for a rude awakening.

5. In more Middle East News, a potential political earthquake is unfolding in Israel. According to the Times of Israel, the chief of staff to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has allegedly been accused of using security camera footage from the Prime Minister’s Office to blackmail an IDF official into “changing protocols of government meetings related to the October 7 Hamas attack…the attempts to alter the meeting minutes centered on how much knowledge Netanyahu had of the potential for a Hamas attack immediately before October 7.” Specifically, this report insinuates that Israeli intelligence was aware of “activation by terror operatives of dozens of SIM cards.” A curious detail of this scandal is that U.S. media has largely failed to report it at all. As of now, the most high-profile American journalist to cover it is none other than legendary investigative reporter, Seymour Hersh.

6. Back on the home-front, the Democrats are failing to safeguard the National Labor Relations Board. Trump has already made it abundantly clear that he will do everything he can to rollback the Biden-era gains for unions and their workers. Bloomberg reports that in addition to “defang[ing]” the NLRB and dismissing the Board’s crusading General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo, “business advocates are…urging Trump to make the questionably legal move of firing all the Democrats on the labor board, so that he can more quickly unwind the union-friendly rulings of the Biden years.” Per JacksonLewis, the NLRB currently has “a 2-1 Democratic majority. In June 2024, Biden renominated current Board Chair Lauren McFerran (whose term expires on Dec. 16, 2024) to a third term and nominated Joseph L. Ditelberg to fill the Board’s vacant Republican seat. The Senate, however, has not yet confirmed these nominations. If McFerran is confirmed for a third term, the Board will maintain a Democratic majority until at least August 2026, when Member David Prouty’s term expires. This extended majority could lead to the continuation and expansion of pro-labor policies and decisions. But if the nominees are not confirmed by the Senate prior to Trump taking office, they will likely be filled by Trump appointees and the Board will return to a Republican majority.” In a word, if the Senate acts fast they could shore up the NLRB until late 2026 – but if they fail to act in the lame-duck session, Trump will be able to stack that Board like he has so many other institutions, up to and including the Supreme Court.

7. In more NLRB news, Matt Bruenig, via his Substack NLRB Edge, reports that a major unfair labor practice charge he filed against Bloomberg LP successfully forced the firm to change their standard employment agreement. The charge alleged that Bloomberg LP was “maintaining illegal confidentiality, coworker non-solicitation, and customer non-solicitation rules…[which] violated Section 8(a)(1) of the National Labor Relations Act.” Bruenig argued that “a reasonable employee would read them as prohibiting …publicizing working conditions, soliciting coworkers to leave for a competitor as part of a broader course of protected activity, and soliciting customers to engage in a solidaristic consumer boycott of the company.” Beyond the wonkish improvements to Bloomberg employment agreements however, Bruenig emphasizes that he was “able to get these changes…without ever revealing the identity of the person [he] was working for,” a loophole rarely used by lawyers. He notes the obvious value in doing so, writing “if an employer does not know which of their employees is behind the charge, they cannot retaliate against them. Thus, it is possible to get your employer to comply with the NLRA without incurring any personal risk.”

8. Another major story from NLRB Edge concerns the Amazon facility in Bessemer, Alabama. Put simply, Amazon was accused of interfering with the 2022 rerun union election at the facility via “Unlawful Confiscation of Union Materials…Surveillance and Coercion…[and] Disparate Enforcement of Rules.” The Administrative Law Judge overseeing this case agreed Amazon had violated Section 8(a)(1) of the NLRA, among other findings, and therefore ordered a second rerun election. He also issued a cease and desist order demanding Amazon “stop unlawfully removing union literature and engaging in surveillance of employees' protected activities.” While there is no guarantee a third election will yield different results, it is encouraging to see the NLRB stand up to corporate titans like Amazon.

9. Our final two stories today concern education. First, in Florida, the Orlando Sentinel reports that since 2023, “The state’s average SAT score dropped to 948 out of 1600, an 18-point decline.” This is now the third year in a row that Florida’s SAT scores declined. In addition to the overall SAT scores, “Florida’s SAT math score dropped eight points to 455 - among the lowest for the ten states that, like Florida, test more than 90% of their graduating seniors.” Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has made “anti-woke” education reform a centerpiece of his administration, leading many to attribute this decline to his leadership. The Sentinel reports “The Florida Department of Education did not respond to requests for comment.” 

10. Finally, to end on a positive note, Sacramento State University has “announced the creation of Sacramento State Native American College, the first of its kind in California, offering students an inclusive, Native-based education that fosters connections to community and tribal government.” This college will reportedly “offer a diverse range of programs that integrate academic excellence with tribal values, traditions and community engagement,” and while “All students will minor in Native American Studies, with an emphasis on Native American Leadership, [they] can pursue any major the University offers.” Per California law the college is “open to students of all races and backgrounds who are interested in learning about Native life, history, and culture,” and the University notes that “Sac State also is home to the nation’s first Black Honors College, which offers a comprehensive curriculum focused on the Black and African American experience.”

This has been Francesco DeSantis, with In Case You Haven’t Heard.