Ralph welcomes back Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson to share his view of Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense and to get his take on the military and political situation in the Middle East. Then, from Tel Aviv we are joined by Alon-Lee Green, co-director of the Israeli peace organization “Standing Together” a progressive grassroots movement based in Israel that organizes Jewish and Palestinian citizens against the occupation and the ethnic cleansing of Gaza.

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

The Pentagon is now led by one of the least-qualified persons ever to be Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth. He was exposed by the Democrats and the media when he was going through the congressional-confirmation process as ignorant, belligerent, vengeful, a woman-abuser denounced by his own mother, and a financial mismanager of the two groups that he directed. He's now Secretary of Defense.

Ralph Nader

What I'd like to see Hegseth do is try his best to get Trump to help him refuse that money (the $150 billion that Congressional Republicans have proposed adding to the military budget). Gordon Adams—a man for whom I have a lot of respect, who was an OMB-type for a long, long time and knows more about the defense budget than probably anyone alive—said the truth the other day when he said: when Defense gets tons of money, it's polluted, weakened, and turns into a place that can't do its job. When it has periods of scarcity—and the better the scarcity, the deeper the scarcity, the better the Defense Department—it turns out to operate pretty well. So I think that's stupid. I think it's the Congress doing it because the Congress has become a wholly paid subsidiary of the military-industrial complex.

Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson

Alon-Lee Green is National Co-Director of Standing Together, a progressive Jewish-Arab grassroots movement. Previously, he worked for five years as a political and parliamentary adviser in the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, and was involved in the legislative process and the building of citizens’ campaigns that influenced parliamentary decisions. During that time, he was responsible for laws advancing the rights of workers, students, and the LGBT community.

It devastates me to know that I'm part—as an Israeli citizen, as a citizen that wants to take responsibility of the society, the Israeli society, it makes me devastated and sick and so, so, so heartbroken to know that we are a part of and a reason for so many tens of thousands reported people that died… I do not understand how someone can come to us Israelis and tell us that this is in the name of our security. I cannot understand how someone can promise us that this will better our lives or create a good or a reality that is livable. I understand it as just something that promises more death.

Alon-Lee Green

It is a given fact, especially after October 7th, a lot of the soldiers went there and did what they did believing that they're fighting to defend, they're fighting monsters. But a lot of soldiers died there. A lot of mothers lost their sons. A lot of families joined the circle of grief. And this is something that changed people's perspectives and people's opinion about the war. A lot of soldiers came back wounded. A lot of soldiers came back with PTSD. And we are hearing voices right now of soldiers saying, “We will not come back there, even if you call us into reserve duty.” It exists in society. You can hear it. You can hear it also around the question of the hostages, soldiers saying, “I thought I'm fighting for 300 days to release the hostages. And now I realized I'm fighting for the delusional messianic ideas of the right wing to build settlements in Gaza or to forcefully transfer people from there. This is not the reason I went.” And it is a good awakening we see in our society.

Alon-Lee Green

The Israeli media and most of the Israeli parliament and political system celebrated Trump's declaration of forceful transfer from Gaza and the supposed takeover by the US of Gaza. They said things like, “It's a Biblical miracle,” “We live in Biblical times,” things like this. The reaction of Standing Together is the complete opposite, of course. This is not only a delusional, scary, and dangerous plan, it is also something that is not going to happen. Trump can dream until tomorrow to remove two million Palestinians from Gaza. It is not going to happen. But only speaking about it is the problem itself. Thinking that you can remove—I don't know how, but remove two million people from their homeland, fantasizing about somehow making people disappear from the land, it is a dangerous idea.

Alon-Lee Green

Ralph welcomes Constitutional law expert Bruce Fein to analyze Congress' abdication of power in the face of President Trump and Elon Musk's actions to dismantle the federal government, and whether any of it is legal. Then, Ralph is joined by Norman Solomon from RootsAction to discuss the new Chair of the Democratic National Committee, Ken Martin, and whether we should be optimistic about his agenda for the Democrats.

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.

What I think shows the clear (what I would call malignant) intent, is even though he has Republican majorities in the House and the Senate, he's never contemplated going back to Congress and saying, "Hey, I want you to do X. I want you to do Y. We need to do this in the proper way."

Bruce Fein

[Trump’s] boogeyman is DEI. So he claims that a crash between a helicopter and airplane in Washington, D.C. is a DEI problem. Of course, it's amazing that somebody who has such contempt for meritocracy with his own cabinet appointments suddenly blames, “Oh, well, DEI, it's watering down standards.” Well, he doesn't have any standards himself, so it's kind of ironic there.

Bruce Fein

Impeachment is not a criminal prosecution. Impeachment is what Benjamin Franklin at the Constitutional Convention said— it's the civilized substitute for tyrannicide…And if you're impeached, it's because you have undertaken attempts to subvert the Constitution so the people no longer view you as a trustworthy steward of our liberties and the rule of law. That's what it is. You don't go to Siberia, you don't go to the guillotine, that's it. And there have been, of course, many federal judges (probably as many as a dozen) who've been impeached, removed from office. And you know what? They still survive. There's not a graveyard of them…So this idea that impeachment is somehow some enormous volcanic eruption on the landscape is totally misleading and wrong.

Bruce Fein

There are two informal checkpoints I want to run by you. [Trump] is afraid of the stock market collapsing—and it could well collapse because chaos is the thing that really gets investors and big institutional investors scared. And the second thing he's afraid of is a plunge in the polls, including among Trump voters who represent families that have the same necessities for their children and their neighborhood as liberal families.

Ralph Nader

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

Especially when there's not a Democrat in the White House, the leader of the Democratic Party de facto is often the chair of the Democratic National Committee. And we now, of course, have the Democrats in minority in the House and the Senate. Biden's out of there in the White House. And so, really, it falls to the chair of the DNC to ostensibly at least give direction to the Democratic Party. And we've suffered for the last four years under Jamie Harrison as chair of the DNC, who basically did whatever Biden told him to do, and Biden told him to just praise President Biden. And we saw the result, the enabling process from the DNC was just a disaster for the Democratic Party and the country.

Norman Solomon

Literally and figuratively in a sense, there needs to be a tearing down of the walls that have been surrounding the Democratic National Committee headquarters. Activists (thousands of us, really, in recent years) have discovered and rediscovered that the DNC is like a fortress. They have the moat, the drawbridge is locked, and we can't even get inside to have a word in edgewise compared to the lobbyists and those who are running the DNC. This is really just remarkable, how difficult it has been for strong Democratic Party activists, if they're not on the DNC (and even if they are, quite often) to get a word in edgewise for the corporate-oriented so-called leadership of the DNC. That might change now.

Norman Solomon

Alfred Bridi is a U.S. immigration attorney associated with the law firm Scale LLP who specializes in employment- and family-based immigration law. Prior to joining Scale LLP, he practiced law at major international law firms and also worked with leading international organizations on global migration and transparency issues.

These executive orders and these executive actions have really created a tension in terms of enforcement officials trying to understand what these mean; in terms of the judiciary and and legal activists contesting a lot of the foundations and the arguments made; in terms of our legal system and our constitutional rights; and I think more than anything, they have had a signaling effect to ordinary Americans and immigrant populations that, “You're not welcome here, and we are going to come after you.” And I think the difference that we've seen is a broadening of the enforcement net and a removal of any sort of refinement or targeting. We've seen American citizens and military veterans being arrested and detained. We've seen Indigenous people being detained. And it's created a sense of terror and panic across the country that I feel is absolutely deliberate, and in line with the campaign promises of this new administration.

Alfred Bridi

News 2/5/25

1. The New York Times reports President Trump has ousted Rohit Chopra, the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau who was “known for his aggressive enforcement and expansion of consumer protection laws.” During his tenure, Chopra cracked down on junk fees, particularly bank overdraft fees, and sought to remove medical debt from individuals’ credit histories. As the Times notes, Chopra “improbably hung on for nearly two weeks [after Trump took office, and]…used that time to impose a $2 million fine on a money transmitter and release reports on auto lending costs, specialty credit reporting companies and rent payment data.” In his letter of resignation, Chopra wrote “With so much power concentrated in the hands of a few, agencies like the C.F.P.B. have never been more critical,” and “I hope that the CFPB will continue to be a pillar of restoring and advancing economic liberty in America.”

2. In more Trump administration staffing news, AP reports the Senate Finance Committee voted 13-14 along party lines Tuesday to advance the nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services. Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, a physician by trade and member of the committee who expressed grave concern over Kennedy’s stances on vaccines and other health-related matters, said during the hearings “Your past, undermining confidence in vaccines with unfounded or misleading arguments, concerns me.” Ultimately however, Cassidy voted “aye.” Kennedy’s nomination will now advance to the full Senate, where the GOP holds a comfortable majority thus almost ensuring his confirmation.

3. Speaking of Trump and health, CBS is out with an update on the 2023 East Palestine, Ohio railroad disaster. According to this report, Vice President JD Vance visited the crash site on February 3rd and vowed that the administration would hold Norfolk Southern accountable for “unfilled promises of settlement money and training centers.” That same day, residents of East Palestine filed a lawsuit alleging that Norfolk Southern’s actions resulted in the wrongful death of seven people, including a one-week-old baby.

4. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has successfully negotiated a month-long delay of Trump’s proposed 25% tariffs. According to CNN, the deal reached between the two North American heads of state includes Mexico deploying 10,000 National Guard troops to its northern border to help stem the flow of fentanyl into the U.S., while Trump has reportedly agreed to help end the deluge of American guns moving South. In her regular Monday morning press conference, Sheinbaum said “For humanitarian reasons, we must help the United States address its fentanyl consumption crisis, which is leading to overdose deaths.” Sheinbaum has been roundly praised for her ability to both stand up to and placate Trump. Reuters quoted Jorge Guajardo, a former Mexican ambassador to China and member of the opposition Partido Acción Nacional or PAN party, who had to admit “President Sheinbaum played it…Masterfully.”

5. Democracy Now! reports a group of Quaker congregations have filed a lawsuit against Immigration and Customs Enforcement in response to the Trump administration’s order “allowing federal agents to raid…schools, hospitals, shelters and places of worship.” This lawsuit alleges that “The very threat of [such raids] deters congregants from attending services, especially members of immigrant communities,” and that therefore this order infringes upon the Constitutional “guarantee of religious liberty.” The Quakers have historically been among the most progressive Christian sects, having been leaders in the fight to abolish slavery and to oppose war.

6. Reese Gorman of NOTUS reports that so far approximately 24,000 federal employees have accepted Elon Musk’s proposed “buyout,” meaning they will leave their jobs and should receive eight months of severance pay. This purge of the federal workforce has been among the most prominent initiatives of Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. Less prominently touted however is what the administration plans to do once these employees have been purged. Recent comments from Secretary of State Marco Rubio in Bloomberg however are enlightening. Rubio, commenting on the “potential reorganization” of the Agency for International Development or USAID, indicated that the reduction in the size of the workforce would be paired with greater use of private contractors. Most likely this means farming out government services to Trump lackeys, cronies, and assorted grifters – all on the taxpayers’ dime.

7. Front and center in combatting Musk’s quiet coup is Public Citizen. On Monday, the public interest watchdog announced they are suing the Treasury Department for its “unlawful disclosure of personal & financial information to Elon Musk’s DOGE.” Their legal complaint, filed alongside the Alliance for Retired Americans, the Association of Federal Government Employees and the SEIU, reads, in part, “The scale of the intrusion into individuals’ privacy is massive and unprecedented. Millions of people cannot avoid engaging in financial transactions

with the federal government and, therefore, cannot avoid having their sensitive

personal and financial information maintained in government records. Secretary

Bessent’s action granting DOGE-affiliated individuals full, continuous, and ongoing

access to that information for an unspecified period of time means that retirees,

taxpayers, federal employees, companies, and other individuals from all walks of life have no assurance that their information will receive the protection that federal law affords.”

8. Turning to the Middle East, Drop Site News reports “Over 100 journalists…sent a letter to Egyptian authorities on Sunday requesting access to Gaza through the Rafah border crossing.” CNN, NBC, NPR, CBS, ABC, AP, Reuters, BBC, Sky News, the Financial Times, the Washington Post, the LA Times France 24, Le Monde, El Pais, and others, including Drop Site itself, are signatories on this letter. The letter states “We understand that the situation is fluid regarding the border crossing, but we ask that permission for journalists to cross the Rafah border be at the forefront of the…No international journalists have been able to access Gaza without an Israeli military escort since the war began in October 2023. We request that permission be granted on an expedited basis while Phase 1 of the ceasefire is still in effect.” As Drop Site notes, “Egypt has not allowed journalists to cross Rafah into Gaza since 2013, when Abdel Fattah al-Sisi took power in Egypt in a military coup.” This has meant all journalistic access to Gaza must go through Israel.

9. Our last two stories have to do with the Democrats. On February 1st, Ken Martin was elected the new chair of the Democratic National Committee. Martin previously led the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party and the Association of State Democratic Parties, per POLITICO. WPR reports Martin’s victory was decisive at 246.5 out of 428 votes; the second-place finisher, Ben Wikler, chair of the Wisconsin Democratic Party, won only 134.5 votes despite endorsements from House and Senate Minority Leaders Jeffries and Schumer, among many other high-profile elected Democrats, per the Hill. Other candidates included Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley and Bernie Sanders’ 2020 campaign manager Faiz Shakir, though he entered late and without substantial backing. Martin’s reputation is mixed, with one DNC member telling POLITICO, “he’s a knife-fighter.” Perhaps that is what the party needs to turn things around.

10. Finally, Variety reports former President Biden has signed with the Creative Arts Agency, or CAA, one of the premier talent agencies in Hollywood. CAA also represents Barack and Michelle Obama and Hillary Clinton, per the BBC. With the White House once again occupied by a creature of showbusiness, the symbiotic relationship between politics, media and entertainment has never been clearer. In the words of George Carlin, “It's a big club, and you ain't in it.”

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

Ralph welcomes Deepa Padmanabha, senior legal advisor to Greenpeace USA, to discuss that organization’s looming trial against Energy Transfer Partners (builder of the Dakota Access Pipeline at Standing Rock) that threatens the constitutionally protected First Amendment right of citizens and citizen groups to protest. Plus, Josh Paul, former State Department employee, who resigned in protest over the Biden Administration’s policy of sending weapons to support Israel’s genocide in Gaza, returns to tell us about an organization he co-founded called “A New Policy,” which as the name suggests envisions an American policy toward the Middle East more in line with the “foundational principles of liberty, equality, democracy, and human rights; advancing American interests abroad; and protecting American freedoms at home.”

Deepa Padmanabha is Senior Legal Advisor at Greenpeace USA, where she works closely with environmental activists seeking to exercise their First Amendment rights to promote systemic change. In September 2022, she testified before the House Committee on Oversight and Reform on Greenpeace USA’s experience with legal attacks from extractive industries and the importance of federal anti-SLAPP legislation. And her work has focused on defending Greenpeace entities in the US against two SLAPP lawsuits attempting to silence the organization’s advocacy work.

This was not a Greenpeace campaign—and that was very intentional. And so our very limited involvement was solidarity with the Indigenous tribes, the Indigenous water protectors that were carrying this fight…Personally, I don't think that Energy Transfer likes the optics of going after Indigenous people. I think that it's much easier to go after the “Big Greens”, the “agitators”, things like that—and they probably would be dealing with a much more difficult PR campaign if they went after members of tribes.

Deepa Padmanabha

Back in 2016 and 2017, when the original civil RICO cases were filed against the Greenpeace entities (all of these fights started out as RICO), many groups across issue areas were deeply concerned that this would be the new tactic used to go to attack labor, to attack human rights, to attack every kind of organization imaginable. And so what we did at that time (Greenpeace USA was a part of it as well as other groups) is we've created a coalition called Protect the Protest. Protect the Protest is a coalition of organizations to provide support for individuals who are threatened with SLAPPs, who receive cease-and-desist letters, who might want help either finding a lawyer or communication support. Because we know that the individuals bringing these lawsuits want the fights to happen in silence. So a big part of the work that needs to be done—and that we do—is to bring attention to them.

Deepa Padmanabha

Past SLAPP lawsuits by corporations intended to wear down the citizen groups, cost them all kinds of legal fees. There have been SLAPP lawsuits for citizen groups just having a news conference or citizen groups being part of a town meeting. Or in the case of Oprah Winfrey, who was sued by at Texas meat company because she had a critic of the meat industry on her show that reached millions of people. That case was settled. So, this is the furthest extension of suppression of free speech by these artificial entities called corporations.

Ralph Nader

Josh Paul is co-founder (with Tariq Habash) of A New Policy, which seeks to transform U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. He resigned from the State Department in October 2023 due to his disagreement with the Biden Administration’s decision to rush lethal military assistance to Israel in the context of its war on Gaza. He had previously spent over 11 years working as a Director in the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, which is responsible for U.S. defense diplomacy, security assistance, and arms transfers. He previously worked on security sector reform in both Iraq and the West Bank, with additional roles in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, U.S. Army Staff, and as a Military Legislative Assistant for a Member of the U.S. House Armed Services Committee.

I think that the time for quitting in protest over Gaza, unfortunately, in many ways, is greatly behind us. I think there will be a significant number of State Department officials who will be leaving in the coming days, weeks, and months. And this is a result of a push from the Trump administration to gut America's diplomatic corps, much as they did at the start of the previous Trump administration, but even more so this time around. What I'm hearing from former colleagues in the State Department is a sense of immense despair as they see freezes being placed on U.S. foreign assistance programs—including programs that do an immense amount of good around the world—and just a concern about the overall and impending collapse of American diplomacy.

Josh Paul

We have to acknowledge the precedent set by President Biden. Not only in his unconditional support for Israel and its attacks on Gaza, its violations of international humanitarian law, but also in President Biden and Secretary Blinken's willingness to set aside U.S. laws when it came to, in particular, security assistance and arms transfers in order to continue that support. That is a precedent that I think all Americans should be concerned about regardless of their thoughts on the conflict itself.

Josh Paul

I would say that what we face in America is a problem set that runs much deeper than any change in administration, than any political party. There is an entrenched dynamic within American politics—an entrenched set of both political and economic incentives across our electoral system—that are maintaining U.S. unconditional support for Israel, regardless of what the American people might want.

Josh Paul

News 1/31/25

1. Our top stories this week have to do with the betrayal of the so-called “Make America Healthy Again” or “MAHA” movement. First up, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. – President Trump’s nominee to lead the Department of Health of Human Services – found himself in the hot seat Wednesday as his confirmation hearings began. Kennedy, who is facing opposition both from Democrats who regard his anti-vaccine rhetoric as dangerous and Republicans who view him as too liberal, struggled to answer basic questions during these hearings. Perhaps most distressingly, he shilled for the disastrous Medicare privatization scheme known as “Medicare Advantage,” at one point saying that he himself is on a Medicare Advantage plan and that “more people would rather be on Medicare Advantage.” Kennedy went on to say most Americans would prefer to be on private insurance. As Matt Stoller of the American Economic Liberties Project writes, this is “basically Cato [Institute] style libertarianism.”

2. Meanwhile, the Trump Administration is signaling they intend to scrap a proposed EPA rule to ban “forever chemicals” from Americans’ drinking water, per the Spokesman-Review out of Spokane, Washington. Per this piece, “perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, abbreviated PFAS, are a set of man-made chemicals used in thousands of products over the decades. High levels of them have…been linked to cancers, heart disease, high cholesterol, thyroid disease, low birth weight and other diseases.” Shelving PFAS regulation was high on the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 wish list, though the Trump team had previously sent mixed messages on the topic. Trump’s pick to oversee regulation of dangerous chemicals is Nancy Beck, a longtime executive at the American Chemistry Council.

3. As if those betrayals weren’t enough, Trump has also selected Ms. Kailee Buller as the Chief of Staff for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. For the past year, Buller has served as president & CEO of the National Oilseed Processors Association. More simply put, she is the top seed oil lobbyist in the nation. This is perhaps the most illustrative example of the MAHA bait and switch. Not only is the Trump administration spitting in the face of their own supporters and doing the opposite of what they promised in terms of cracking down on ultra-processed, unhealthy food – they are doing so in an openly and brazenly corrupt manner. Under Trump, regulatory agencies are on the auction block and will be sold to the highest bidder.

4. In more health news, legendary investigative journalist Seymour Hersh has come out with a new story – and it’s a doozy. According to Hersh’s sources, the Trump administration mishandled the COVID-19 pandemic long before the public knew anything about the virus. He writes “I learned this week that a US intelligence asset at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China, where the Covid virus was first observed…provided early warning of a laboratory accident at Wuhan that led to a series of infections that was quickly spreading and initially seemed immune to treatment.” Hersh continues “early studies dealing with how to mitigate the oncoming plague, based on information from the Chinese health ministry about the lethal new virus, were completed late in 2019 by experts from America’s National Institutes of Health and other research agencies.” Yet, “Despite their warnings, a series of preventative actions were not taken until the United States was flooded with cases of the virus.” Most damningly, Hersh’s sources claim that “All of these studies…have been expunged from the official internal records in Washington, including any mention of the CIA's source inside the Chinese laboratory.” If true, this would be among the most catastrophic cases of indecision – and most sweeping coverup – in modern American history. Watch this space.

5. Meanwhile, in more foreign affairs news, Progressive International reports that “For the first time in history,” Members of the United States Congress have joined with Members of Mexico's Cámara de Diputados to “oppose the escalating threats of U.S. military action against Mexico” and call to “strengthen the bonds of solidarity between our peoples.” This move of course comes amid ever-rising tensions between the United States and our southern neighbor, particularly as the GOP has in recent years taken up the idea of a full-blown invasion of Mexico. This letter was signed by many prominent U.S. progressives, including Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, Summer Lee, AOC, Greg Casar and Raul Grijalva, as well as 23 Mexican deputies. One can only hope that this show of internationalism helps forestall further escalation with Mexico.

6. Turning to the issue of corruption, former New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez was sentenced to 11 years in prison for his role in a bribery scheme that included him acting as an unregistered agent of the Egyptian government, per the DOJ. Until 2024, Menendez had served as the Chairman or Ranking Member of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee – an ideal perch for a crooked politician. During sentencing, Menendez broke down and weepily begged the judge for leniency. Yet, almost immediately after the sentence was handed down, Menendez changed his tune and started sucking up to Trump in a transparent attempt to secure a pardon. Axios reports Menendez said “President Trump was right…This process is political, and it's corrupted to the core. I hope President Trump cleans up the cesspool and restores the integrity to the system.” Unfortunately, Trump’s fragile ego makes him particularly susceptible to just this sort of appeal, so it would be no surprise if he does grant some form of clemency to the disgraced Senator.

7. Likewise, New York City Mayor Eric Adams appears to feel the walls closing in with regard to his corrupt dealings with his Turkish benefactors. And just like Menendez, Adams’ strategy appears to be to ingratiate himself with Trump world. On January 23rd, the New York Daily News reported that Adams had pledged to avoid publicly criticizing Trump. Adams has previously called Trump a “white supremacist.” Adams’ simpering seems to having the intended effect. On January 29th, the New York Times reported “Senior Justice Department officials under President Trump have held discussions with federal prosecutors in Manhattan about the possibility of dropping their corruption case,” against Adams. This story notes that “The defense team is led by Alex Spiro, who is also the personal lawyer for Elon Musk.”

8. Our final three stories this week have to do with organized labor. First, Bloomberg labor reporter Josh Eidelson reports Trump has ousted National Labor Relations Board General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo. This alone is a tragedy; Abruzzo has been nothing short of a crusader on behalf of organized labor during her tenure. Yet, more troubling news quickly followed: Trump has unlawfully sacked Gwynne Wilcox a Democratic member of the labor board with no just cause. As Eidelson notes, the law forbids “firing board members absent neglect or malfeasance.” Wilcox was the first ever Black member of the NLRB and her unlawful removal gives Trump a working majority at the board. Expect to see a rapid slew of anti-worker decisions in the coming days.

9. In some good news, independent journalist Ken Klippenstein reports that union collective bargaining agreements have successfully “thwart[ed]…Trump's return to work order.” Instead, the administration has been forced to issue a new order, stating “Supervisors should not begin discussions around the return to in-person work with bargaining unit employees until HHS fulfills its collective bargaining obligations.” In other words, even while every supposed legal guardrail, institutional norm, and political force of gravity wilts before Trump’s onslaught, what is the one bulwark that still stands strong, protecting everyday working people? Their union.

10. Our final story is a simple one. Jacobin labor journalist Alex Press reports that in Philadelphia, the first Whole Foods grocery store has voted to unionize. The nearly-300 workers at the store voted to affiliate with United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1176. Whole Foods was sold to Amazon in 2017 and since then the e-tail giant has vigorously staved off unionization. Could this be the first crack in the dam? Only time will tell.

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

First up, Ralph welcomes back constitutional law expert Bruce Fein to talk about his reaction to Donald Trump's inaugural address. Then Ralph is joined by Public Citizen Co-President Robert Weissman to discuss Public Citizen's lawsuit against Trump regarding Elon Musk's D.O.G.E task force. Finally, Ralph speaks with Public Citizen's Government Affairs lobbyist Craig Holman about the flood of donations from corporations and billionaires to Trump's inaugural fund.

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.

Sitting on that platform at the inauguration was probably trillions of dollars held by individuals—not by companies, just individuals—fabulous wealth. And you have to ask, if these are business people, why are you at the political event? Why aren't you building a better mousetrap? Why aren't you like Thomas Edison, looking to find new ways of doing business? It's because all of their profits come from manipulating government in their favor. It's the opposite of so-called capitalism.

Bruce Fein

Remember that this lust for power transcends all reason, and that we're endowed with that lust.

Bruce Fein

Robert Weissman is a staunch public interest advocate and activist, as well as an expert on a wide variety of issues ranging from corporate accountability and government transparency, to trade and globalization, to economic and regulatory policy. As the President of Public Citizen, he has spearheaded the effort to loosen the chokehold corporations and the wealthy have over our democracy.

The alleged purpose [of D.O.G.E.] is to advance efficiency of the government. But what it's really about is rolling back regulations—the things that give us clean air, clean water, safe food, fair workplace, economic justice, protections against discrimination, and more—to benefit corporate bottom lines, on the one hand, and on the other, to pursue a right-wing libertarian extremist agenda with slashing government spending, especially to protect the most poor and vulnerable.

Robert Weissman

Musk said at first he wanted to try to cut $2 trillion from the budget every year. That's an impossibility, since the entire budget of discretionary spending is less than $2 trillion. Apparently, if you're the richest person in the history of the world, you don't actually have to know anything that you're talking about to be taken seriously.

Robert Weissman

Craig Holman serves as Public Citizen’s Capitol Hill lobbyist on ethics, lobbying, and campaign finance rules. He is also working with European nongovernmental organizations and members of the European Commission and Parliament in developing a lobbyist registration system for the European Union. Previously, he was senior policy analyst at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law, and he has assisted in drafting campaign finance reform legislation (including pay-to-play legislation), and has conducted numerous research projects on the initiative process and the impact of money in politics.

What's interesting is that some previous inaugural committees…didn't want to make it look like their administration’s on the auction block by taking million-dollar donations from special interests and corporations. And so Bush had limited contributions to $100,000, Obama limited to $50,000 as well—they just didn't want it to look like they're putting their whole administration on the auction block. Trump doesn't seem to care about that.

Craig Holman

News 1/22/25

* On January 20th, Joe Biden handed over the presidency to Donald Trump. In one of his last acts before leaving office, former President Biden commuted the sentence of Indigenous activist Leonard Peltier, NPR reports. Peltier has been imprisoned for nearly 50 years following his conviction for the murder of two FBI agents at the Pine Ridge reservation; he has never wavered in maintaining his innocence. Despite Peltier being 80 years old and in increasingly poor health, NPR reports FBI Director Christopher Wray urged Biden not to “pardon Leonard Peltier or cut his sentence short.” Biden ultimately did not pardon Peltier, instead merely allowing him to complete his sentence under house arrest. In a statement, Peltier himself said “It's finally over — I'm going home…I want to show the world I'm a good person with a good heart.” Friend of the show Tom Morello, a longtime advocate for Peltier’s release, wrote “Leonard has become a friend over the years and I am so glad…he will be able to spend his remaining years with family and friends.” Peltier’s daughter Kathy, shocked by Biden’s last-minute commutation after decades of being rebuffed by successive presidents of both parties, said “I'm just thankful that he had the balls and the guts to do it.”

* Donald Trump was inaugurated on Monday, making him the first president in the modern era to serve non-consecutive terms. Immediately following his formal assumption of power, he issued a flurry of executive orders, including an exhaustive list of “rescissions” of Biden’s executive actions. Among these, POLITICO reports that Trump immediately put Cuba back on the list of state sponsors of terrorism, signifying a return to the bad old days of hostility towards our island neighbor. This is only expected to worsen with American foreign policy being directed by Marco Rubio. Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel called Trump’s reversal “an act of arrogance and disregard for truth,” adding “the legitimate and noble cause of our people will prevail and we will once again succeed.”

* Another Trump executive order issued Monday formally created the Department of Government Efficiency, aka DOGE. However, it seems that instead of creating a new agency, this action mainly just renamed the U.S. Digital Service – an existing executive branch office – the U.S. DOGE service. Moreover, this newly redubbed USDS does not appear to have a mandate to cut the federal workforce. Instead, it seems to be primarily concerned with updating federal information technology systems. Reading between the lines, it seems likely that Trump is putting Elon Musk in charge of this federal IT agency as a means to dole out public money to the tech oligarch and his cronies, rather than streamline the functions of the federal government.

* In more Big Tech news, CBS reports President Trump is “set to announce billions of dollars in private sector investment to build artificial intelligence infrastructure in the United States.” According to this report, OpenAI, Softbank and Oracle are planning a joint venture called “Stargate,” to begin with a massive data center in Texas. These corporations are planning to pour $500 billion into this project over the next four years. This will almost certainly be augmented by public funds provided by the Trump administration.

* Turning to Gaza, Democracy Now! reported Saturday that both Biden and Trump gave Israel the “green light” to resume the assault on Gaza if Netanyahu felt it necessary. This piece quotes Netanyahu, saying that both presidents “gave full backing to Israel’s right to return to fighting if Israel reaches the conclusion that negotiations of the second stage is fruitless.” As this piece notes, Israel killed approximately 200 Palestinians after the ceasefire was agreed upon last Wednesday. We can only hope the ceasefire holds and that President Trump sticks to his commitment to enforce the deal.

* At the same time, friend of the show Norman Solomon is out with a piece in the Hill on the class action lawsuit filed by 800 Northern California residents, including Solomon himself, against their Democratic representatives in Congress, alleging that they are “illegally helping to provide weapons to Israel for use in committing genocide in Gaza.” As Solomon admits, the suit, directed against Congressmen Jared Huffman and Mike Thompson is unlikely to get far. However, he does believe both that the funding of the genocidal war is illegal under the humanitarian Leahy Laws and that these lawsuits can apply much needed scrutiny to these members and force them to register the opposition of their constituents to their positions – something with which many Democrats have refused to reckon. Solomon hopes to make Gaza a defining issue in the 2026 California Democratic Congressional primaries.

* Two weeks ago, we discussed the American Historical Association’s vote to condemn the “scholasticide” occurring in Gaza. Since then however, the AHA has tried to backpedal and delegitimize that vote. On January 17th, the AHA Council released a statement in which they write that while they deplore “any intentional destruction of Palestinian educational institutions, libraries, universities, and archives in Gaza,” the council considers the scholasticide resolution “outside the scope of the Association’s mission and purpose.” The AHA Council therefore decided to disregard the vote of its membership and unilaterally veto the resolution. This cowardly and disgraceful decision to nullify the voice of America’s historians will ironically be a stain on the history of the organization itself.

* In more foreign affairs news, the crisis in South Korea continues to deepen. Last week, President Yoon was formally incarcerated pending his trial before the country’s Constitutional Court after he attempted to seize power in a coup. Upon his detention, South Korean political newsletter Blue Roof reported that “Pro-Yoon supporters are rioting… storming the courthouse and attacking the marshals.” Security forces however were able to subdue the rioters, per Reuters. The Constitutional Court will now decide whether or not to remove Yoon from the presidency. Yoon could also face a trial on insurrection charges which would carry penalties up to and including life in prison and even capital punishment.

* Turning back to domestic news, the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 5, representing the cops of Philadelphia, is currently engaging in contract negotiations with the city – and making outrageous new demands. The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that beyond pay raises and better vacation policy, “the police union is seeking to roll back transparency and accountability measures that predate the COVID-19 pandemic and civil unrest of 2020.” Indeed, the FOP is seeking to terminate the department’s decade-long policy of releasing the names of most officers involved in shootings, prevent the Citizens Police Oversight Commission from investigating police misconduct, and “restrict outside access to currently available records ― such as those detailing how fired officers return to the force through the once-secretive grievance arbitration process.” Beyond these measures to make the police more secretive and less accountable to the public, the FOP is also demanding outrageous new perks for police officers, including interest free home loans and provisions allowing cops to live outside the state. We can only hope the city remains firm in these negotiations and preserves the public’s right to know

* Finally, CNN is out with a new poll showing the Democratic Party registering its worst ratings in decades. According to this poll, “a 58% majority of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents say that the…Party needs major changes, or to be completely reformed, up from just 34% who said the same after…2022.” This comes on the heels of a January 15th YouGov poll showing that a plurality of Biden 2020 voters who didn’t vote for Kamala Harris in 2024 said “ending Israel’s violence in Gaza was the top issue affecting their vote choice.” The CNN poll also showed that “Only 49% of Democratic-aligned adults say they expect their party’s congressional representatives to be even somewhat effective at resisting GOP policies.” Yet, perhaps the starkest number from this poll is “just 33% of all Americans express a favorable view of the Democratic Party, an all-time low in CNN’s polling dating back to 1992.” These abysmal results should be a wakeup call to the moribund leadership of the party as the country drives of a cliff. If history is any indication though, the Democrats will remain asleep at the wheel.

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

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.