The Senate debate over the rules of the impeachment trial went late into the night on Tuesday with 12 grueling hours of acrimonious testimony by House impeachment managers and President Donald Trump’s legal team. Senators sat silently and watched the debate over their proposed rules unfold as required, while Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts presided. At one point after heated discussions between White House Counsel Pat Cippolone and House Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler, Justice Roberts admonished both sides.

In the end, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell won most of his demands on behalf of Trump, refusing to allow Democrats to subpoena the necessary documents from the White House, State Department and Office of Management and Budget. Republicans – including moderates and supposed critics of impeachment like Mitt Romney – also voted to refuse testimony from White House officials like Mick Mulvaney and former National Security Advisor John Bolton. Among the few concessions that McConnell made to moderates in his party, were, according to the Washington Post, “revisions that allowed both sides more time to present their cases, and for findings from the House impeachment probe to be automatically entered into evidence as part of the trial.” Right around midnight the leader of the House Impeachment team Adam Schiff speculated that Republicans were trying to sweep the impeachment under the rug and under cover of darkness.

Meanwhile the Office of Management and Budget late on Tuesday did release a massive trove of heavily redacted documents – to an ethics organization called American Oversight as the result of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. Reporters analyzing the documents say that the White House was laying the groundwork to freeze US military aid to Ukraine even before President Trump’s controversial phone call to Ukrainian President Zelensky on July 25th, 2019. Austin Evers, executive director of American Oversight said in a statement on Wednesday, “The public can now see even more evidence of the President’s corrupt scheme as it unfolded in real-time.” Meanwhile Trump speaking in Davos, Switzerland where he is attending the World Economic Forum, said he would like to sit in the Senate as the impeachment trial continues and also contradicted himself and his party in implying that he would like witnesses to testify after all. 

While in Davos, Trump also continued his tradition of irking the US’s European allies, this time announcing new tariffs on cars as leverage for a new trade deal. A day after he boasted about his modest trade deal with China (that critics worry will be hard to enforce), and the newly passed USMCA deal that replaces NAFTA, Trump pivoted to Europe where he hopes to force trade negotiations. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin also warned European nations on the same day against imposing heavy taxes on tech companies like Facebook.

FEATURING ALLAN LICHTMAN – As President Donald Trump hobnobs with world leaders in Davos, Switzerland for the World Economic Forum, his legal defense team together with Republican Senators are fighting Democrats to keep him in office. The Senate impeachment trial, which officially began last week, has now commenced in earnest. Critical to the effort to convict Trump for two articles of impeachment is the set of rules by which the Senate will conduct the trial. Democrats want to present evidence and interview witnesses. Republicans want it all to go away as fast as possible. 

Allan Lichtman, Distinguished Professor of History at American University and author of numerous books including The Case for Impeachment which was published back in early 2017.

FEATURING PAUL O’BRIEN – President Donald Trump, after skipping last year’s World Economic Forum, appeared this year’s gathering of world leaders in Davos, Switzerland – perhaps as an escape from the Senate Impeachment trial taking place in the US. Trump triumphantly touted economic success in the US and urged other nations to do what he is doing – put their own people before the global interest. 

Also at the meeting was climate activist Greta Thunberg who denounced the inaction of those gathered as climate change continues to be a threat to humanity. 

Meanwhile the United Nations’ International Labor Organization has issued a new report showing that while billionaires continue to tout their prosperity as proof that capitalism works, hundreds of millions of people struggle worldwide to find jobs that pay a living wage. Oxfam has also issued its own report to coincide with the World Economic Forum drawing attention to unpaid labor, and to the domestic work that women are forced into.  

Read Oxfam’s report ‘Time to Care: Unpaid and underpaid care work and the global inequality crisis,’ HERE.

Paul O’Brien, Vice President for Policy and Advocacy at Oxfam America.

The Senate Impeachment trial began in earnest this week with lawmakers tussling over the rules for how the proceedings will be run. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has vowed to push through rules with a 51-vote majority that will make the trial as short as possible. McConnell has openly promised a biased process and yet last week took an oath to deliver “impartial justice.” House impeachment managers are demanding a trial that includes witnesses and the presentation of evidence. House Intelligence Committee chair Adam Schiff who leads the team of impeachment managers made these comments on Tuesday morning. Among the specific moves McConnell is making is to insist that opening arguments from both the House impeachment team and President Trump’s defense team are limited to 24 hours over 2 days each. McConnell is also working to ensure that former National Security Advisor John Bolton does not testify at the Senate even though Bolton has indicated he is willing to do so. If Bolton is allowed to testified he may be moved behind closed doors with the issue of “national security” used as a justification. 

House impeachment managers had sent a 48-page trial memorandum along with a 60-page statement to the Senate. In it they laid out their arguments of the President engaging in a corrupt scheme to benefit himself politically and then proceeding to hide his conduct from Congress. “President Trump’s conduct is the framers’ worst nightmare,” said the memo. In response, on Monday President Trump’s legal team issued a blistering defense in a 6-page memo demanding the immediate dismissal of the trial and declaring that it was a political move by Democrats to interfere in the 2020 election. House managers then responded on the same day in a 9-page memo saying, “the outcome of these proceedings will determine whether generations to come will enjoy a safe and secure democracy in which the President is not a king, and in which no one, particularly the President, is above the law.”

In other news from the impeachment trial House managers are questioning whether White House Counsel Pat Cippolone ought to be part of Trump’s legal team, saying he was personally involved in the Ukraine scandal at the heart of the impeachment articles and therefore his legal representation is a conflict of interest. Meanwhile a new CNN poll found that 51% of Americans want the Senate to convict and remove Trump from office. Nearly 70% feel that the Senate trial should allow witnesses to speak. 

In other news world leaders are gathering this week in Davos, Switzerland for the annual World Economic Forum and among the attendees is teen climate activist

FEATURING DEDRICK ASANTE-MUHAMMAD – Ahead of what would have been Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s 90th birthday, there are obligatory memorials and retrospectives remembering his critical work on civil rights. But near the end of his short life Dr. King took on the project of economic inequality and led the “Poor People’s Campaign.” There has always been a racial wealth gap in the US but that gap has not closed. In fact since the 1980s it has doubled.

A new report by the Institute for Policy Studies, titled Dreams Deferred, has found that, “Between 1983 and 2016, the median Black family saw their wealth drop by more than half after inflation, compared to a 33% increase for the median White household. Meanwhile, the number of households with $10 million or more skyrocketed by 856%.” The report links the ever-rising fortunes of the obscenely wealthy with the on-going racial wealth gap.

Download the report HERE. 

Dedrick Asante-Muhammad, Associate Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, co-author of the report Dreams Deferred: How Enriching the 1% Widens the Racial Wealth Divide.

** This segment was originally broadcast on January 16, 2019.

FEATURING CHARLES POSTEL – The failings of capitalism and the rise of wealth inequality in the US has become a more and more common topic of political discussion. Communities of color in the US have long suffered disproportionately in terms of economic, racial, and gender justice. But that is no accident as my next guest describes in his timely history book, Equality: An American Dilemma 1866-1896.

Charles Postel, Author of the award-winning book, The Populist Vision which won the Bancroft Prize and the Frederick Jackson Turner award. He is a professor of History at San Francisco State University. His new book is called Equality: An American Dilemma, 1866-1896.

** This interview was originally broadcast on August 22, 2019.

FEATURING IMANI PERRY – The United States is a deeply racialized country, no matter what pundits and commentators like to say. This nation was found on genocide and slavery and has never reconciled with its ugly past. And so there is no surprise that the vestiges of that deep racial injustice continues to manifest today even as we pay lip service to equality and freedom.

How do parents, especially black parents, raise their children in a society that teaches them they have the same rights as others but in practical terms they will face more discrimination and more brutality? Addressing that difficult task in a deeply moving book is my guest Imani Perry. 

Imani Perry, Hughes-Rogers Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University, author of six books including the award-winning “Looking for Lorraine.” Her new book is called ‘Breathe: A Letter to My Sons.’

**This interview was originally broadcast on September 26, 2019.

FEATURING RICHARD CAHAN – It has been more than half a century since the civil rights movement of the United States was in its hey-day, demanding racial justice for African Americans with leaders like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. pushing the federal government for full civil rights through powerful mobilizations. No one has perhaps captured the visual imagery of the civil rights era more prolifically and beautifully than Ernest C. Withers. 

Withers captured thousands of images of black Americans, activists, leaders, and cultural figures such as musicians and dancers. His photography is gathered together in a stunning new book called The Revolution in Black and White: Photographs of the Civil Rights Era by Ernest C. Withers, by my guest Richard Cahan in collaboration with Michael Williams and with a foreword by Andrew Young. 

Richard Cahan, journalist who writes about photography, art and history.  He worked for the Chicago Sun-Times from 1983 to 1999, primarily serving as the paper’s picture editor. He is the author or co-author of more than a dozen books, including Un-American, about the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II, as well as Aftershock: The Human Toll of War – Haunting World War II Images by America’s Soldier Photographers. His new book together with Michael Williams is called The Revolution in Black and White: Photographs of the Civil Rights Era by Ernest C. Withers. His forthcoming book is River of Blood, a book based on the interviews of formerly enslaved Americans.

FEATURING DAVID MARPLES – Lev Parnas, the associate of President Donald Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani, has been spilling the beans on an extensive media tour just as the Senate impeachment trial kicks off. Parnas is a Russian born US citizen who was arrested last year along with another colleague Igor Fruman as they attempted to leave the country on one-way tickets. Parnas says he along with Giuliani carried out much of the sordid plan to pressure Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden in exchange for US military aid. That plan and the attempt to cover it up is at the heart of the two articles of impeachment against Trump that the House passed. 

Meanwhile in Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelensky, who has yet to complete his first year in office is plagued by more political problems than the Trump scandal. Ukraine’s Prime Minister Oleksiy Honcharuk offered to resign on Friday after his private criticism of the president became public. Zelensky has reportedly refused to accept the resignation.  

David Marples, Distinguished University Professor at the University of Alberta in Canada, specializing in Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus. 

News broke that President Donald Trump’s legal defense team for the Senate Impeachment trial includes Ken Starr, the man who served as independent counsel in investigating President Bill Clinton, as well as Harvard Professor Alan Dershowitz, a vociferous supporter of the President. The team is being led by White House Counsel Pat Cippolone and Trump’s personal attorney Jay Sekulow. Trump’s defense team released a statement explaining, “Professor Dershowitz will present oral arguments at the Senate trial to address the constitutional arguments against impeachment and removal.” Dershowitz has represented high-profile clients such as O.J. Simpson and Jeffrey Epstein. 

In other news related to the impeachment State Secretary Mike Pompeo in an interview with a rightwing radio host said on Friday that he had no knowledge of any surveillance of former US Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch in Ukraine. The evidence that Yovanovitch was being surveilled by a non-governmental US citizen and Trump supporter was part of the trove of evidence from Lev Parnas, an associate of Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani. Parnas has also implicated a wide circle of Trump’s colleagues including Vice President Mike Pence who apparently canceled a trip to Ukraine as part of the Trump team’s pressure campaign to obtain political dirt on Joe Biden. Mr. Pence has denied knowing who Parnas was. Instead the Vice President is exhorting Democrats to acquit Trump in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal on Friday. Pence raised the historical events of Andrew Johnson’s impeachment and lauded those Senators who voted against their party but made no references to the facts of Trump’s impeachment charges. 

The conservative anti-Trump organization Republicans for the Rule of Law have spent $1 million in ads running on the President’s favorite Fox News shows demanding that witnesses like former National Security Advisor John Bolton be allowed to testify at the Senate impeachment trial. Meanwhile journalists are decrying the restrictive new rules that have been put in place for coverage of the Senate trial. Journalists have normally been given free rein to ask lawmakers questions as they walk between rooms but this practice will be barred during the trial. 

The city of Richmond, Virginia is on edge ahead of a major so-called gun-rights rally planned by extremist, white-supremacist, and neo-Nazi hate groups. Virginia governor Ralph Northam has temporarily banned guns from the grounds of the State Capitol as many fear a potential repeat of the hate-gathering in Charlottesville in 2017. Northam said in a statement, “I took this action to protect Virginians from credible threats of violence. These threats are real — as evidenced by reports of neo-Nazis arrested this morning after discussing plans to head to Richmond with firearms.