FEATURING MITCH JESERICH – Acting US Ambassador of Ukraine William Taylor’s testimony to House Committees conducting the impeachment inquiry into President Trump was so damning that lawmakers emerged saying they were stunned. Taylor confirmed the account by the original whistleblower who complained about Trump’s attempt to arrange for a quid pro quo with Ukraine, holding back military aid in exchange for political dirt on his rivals. But unlike the unnamed CIA officer, Mr. Taylor is a seasoned and veteran retired diplomat respected by both parties and over whom Trump has no leverage. Will his testimony be the smoking gun that breaks the dam of Republican support for Trump?

Mitch Jeserich, Pacifica Reporter, host of Letters and Politics heard on KPFA and KPFK; covering the impeachment inquiry, veteran journalist on DC politics.

FEATURING MELIDA ABDULLAH – This Wednesday, members of the Los Angeles chapter of Black Lives Matter will mark two years since they began targeting District Attorney Jackie Lacey for refusing to prosecute violent officers who have killed. Lacey became the first woman and the first African American to ever serve in the role of DA. But in her role Lacey has effectively protected the most violent police forces in the nation. As other cities slowly start to hold police more accountable for killing unarmed African Americans – very slowly I should add – Los Angeles remains distinct for protecting a brutal status quo. 

Melina Abdullah, Professor and Chair of the Department of Pan African Studies at California State University of Los Angeles, active with the Los Angeles chapter of Black Lives Matter.

The testimony of a Defense Department official named Laura Cooper to House committees was delayed on Wednesday after a number of Republican supporters of President Donald Trump staged a bizarre act of civil disobedience and refused to vacate the room that the hearing was to be held in. Of the more than 2 dozen House Republicans only a handful were actually members of the House Committees holding the hearings. Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida led the insurrection. He later said this to reporters, explaining why he and other Republicans delayed the start of a closed-door hearing with the Pentagon official. A day earlier a damning testimony by Acting US Ambassador to Ukraine, William Taylor, consumed the news cycle as details emerged about how he confirmed that President Trump had indeed engaged in a quid pro quo with Ukraine to demand political dirt in exchange for military aid. Several lawmakers said they were stunned by what appeared to be a “smoking gun.” In Mr. Taylor’s opening remarks, which were obtained by press, he said, “I became increasingly concerned that our relationship with Ukraine was being fundamentally undermined by an irregular, informal channel of US policymaking and by the withholding of vital security assistance for domestic political reasons.” 

In other impeachment related news, two men linked to Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, appeared in court to enter “not guilty” pleas to charges of campaign finance violations. Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman were charged with funneling hundreds of thousands of dollars of donations from foreign sources into Republican political committees and President Trump’s election campaign. 

Meanwhile the anonymous writer of a New York Times op-ed last September by someone claiming to be part of “the resistance” to Trump’s agenda from the inside, has reportedly written a book. The book is to be titled, “A Warning” and will be published by Hachette. According to the Washington Post, “the author did not receive an advance, and would be donating any royalties to nonprofit organizations that focus on government accountability and press freedom.” 

Two new polls on impeachment continue to show very high levels of public support for impeachment and removal of Trump from office. A Quinnipiac poll found that, “55 percent approve of the inquiry,” up from 51% found by the same polling company just a week ago. Additionally, the new poll found that, “Nearly half of registered voters, 48 percent, say President Trump should be impeached and removed from office.” And, a Reuters/Ipsos poll found that “46% of Americans said they supported impeachment.

FEATURING GUILLAUME LONG – A number of countries in Latin America have been wracked by political violence over the past several weeks. Most recently Bolivian authorities announced on Monday night that President Evo Morales has likely won reelection and narrowly avoided a runoff. Riots erupted in response amid accusations that Morales won the election unfairly. 

In Chile, mass protests have led to nearly a dozen deaths in just a few days as Chileans revolted against an increase in subway fares that they say unfairly targets ordinary people. President Sebastián Piñera, a billionaire who was elected in 2017 has declared war against the protesters. 

Ecuador has also been struck with anti-austerity protests as President Lenin Moreno agreed to cancel a package of reforms backed by the International Monetary Fund. 

And in Peru, earlier this month, President Martin Vizcarra abruptly dissolved the country’s Congress, leading Congress members to suspend him. 

Guillaume Long, senior research fellow at the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

William Taylor, the acting US Ambassador to Ukraine testified before House committees on Tuesday as part of the on-going Democrat-led impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump. Like the other hearings, this one was also held behind closed doors. However what is known publicly is that, like his predecessor Marie Yovanovitch, Taylor was deeply disturbed by the Trump administration’s insistence on withholding US military aid to Ukraine in order to pressure them to obtain incriminating political information on Trump’s perceived political rival Joe Biden. According to text messages that Taylor had sent to other diplomats, he referred to the situation as a, “nightmare scenario,” and, said that it was, “crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign.” Taylor had previously served in the role of US Ambassador to Ukraine before retiring and is considered, “an elder statesman,” whose credibility among both parties is strong. According to the New York Times, “Taylor is a potentially damaging witness for Trump, because he appears to have no political or personal incentive to protect the administration. Unlike other State Department witnesses, he has neither his government career nor his personal standing with Trump at stake.”

Meanwhile, President Trump, feeling cornered as a clearer picture of his wrong doing continues to emerge daily, lashed out on Twitter saying, “All Republicans must remember what they are witnessing here – a lynching.” His use of the historically fraught word referring to the racist terror that whites inflicted on black Americans was swiftly condemned by Democrats and even some Republicans. Representative Bobby Rush, a long-time civil rights activist said, “Do you know how many people who look like me have been lynched, since the inception of this country, by people who look like you. Delete this tweet.” But some of Trump’s most ardent supporters continued to back the President including Senator Lindsey Graham who said “this is a lynching in every sense.”

Meanwhile President Trump appeared in an interview with his favorite Fox News host Sean Hannity, during which the two turned into an echo chamber with Hannity’s questions similar to Trump’s answers. Trump spent the entire interview lamenting the impeachment with Hannity sympathetically chiming in. And House Speaker Nancy Pelosi released a 4-page fact sheet on Trump’s call to Ukraine’s President Zelensky using Trump’s own words in the call transcript to make the case for why it is clear he was pressuring Zelensky. Pelosi on Monday led Democrats in blocking a vote brought by Republicans to censure House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff. Schiff had parodied Trump’s words to Zelensky in his opening remarks at a hearing after the call transcript was released. Democrats are under pressure to hold open hearings on impeachmen...

FEATURING NATASHA HAKIMI ZAPATA – An estimated one million Britons gathered in London on Saturday in what was considered one of the largest demonstrations in the UK’s history. They were mobilized on the day that the British Parliament was scheduled to vote on a new Brexit deal negotiated by Prime Minister Boris Johnson with the European Union in the face of a looming October 31st deadline. Protesters demanded a new referendum on Brexit and a desire to remain in the EU. 

Meanwhile as Mr. Johnson characterized his deal as, “the greatest single restoration of national sovereignty in parliamentary history,” MPs refused to vote on Saturday and similarly stymied him on Monday. They want Johnson to ask the EU for another delay to achieve a deal. The EU has said it would not grant a delay. 

Natasha Hakimi Zapata, Foreign Editor for Truthdig.com. Her latest report for Truthdig is called ‘Boris Johnson Will Ruin Britain or Cry Trying‘.

President Donald Trump has backtracked on his idea to host the next G7 meeting at his own resort in Florida. News media are reporting that Trump’s reversal was a response to moderate Republicans who have grown tired of defending him and whose votes he is counting on to survive an impeachment trial in the Senate. But in a series of angry tweets Trump blamed Democrats and the media instead, saying, “based on both Media & Democrat Crazed and Irrational Hostility, we will no longer consider,” the resort. Trump claimed to have offered the space at zero profit but given how badly the resort is struggling financially critics pointed out that, in addition to the free publicity, he would still have improperly benefitted. Meanwhile his Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, who had announced the G7 site last week and who admitted to press that Trump withheld military aid to Ukraine in exchange for political favors, further embarrassed himself and the president on Sunday in an interview with Fox News’ Chris Wallace.

The main topic of Mulvaney’s appearance was to address the comments he made on Friday admitting to press that Trump engaged in a “quid pro quo” on Ukraine after the President had claimed repeatedly that that didn’t happen.

That’s Mick Mulvaney on Fox News on Sunday in remarks that continue to implicate the President on a topic that he is facing an impeachment inquiry on. Meanwhile, one of Trump’s top Republican allies Lindsey Graham has said in response to a question of whether he would support impeachment, “If you could show me that, you know, Trump actually was engaging in a quid pro quo outside the phone call, that would be very disturbing.” 

Vermont Senator and Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders held his first major rally since undergoing a medical procedure for a heart attack. On Saturday he was joined by New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez who has officially endorsed him for President. Sanders gave an impassioned speech challenging rally-goers to stand up for all Americans.

In other news, the US Supreme Court once more sided with Republican attempts to gerrymander voting districts in their favor. In a 5-4 ruling on Monday morning along strict political lines, the conservative justices voted to overturn a major ruling by the sixth circuit court of appeals requiring Michigan’s districts be redrawn in a fairer manner. Meanwhile the group Common Cause released a major report on Monday on how states use of citizenship data to draw district lines unfairly favors white Americans and Republicans. The report, titled, “Whitewashing Representation: How Using Citizenship Data to Gerrymander will Undermine our Democracy,” claims that, “Using citizen voting age data to draw districts will exclude millions of young people and people of color,

FEATURING GEORGE MONBIOT – Hundreds of scientists from around the world recently signed onto a document endorsing civil disobedience as the only answer to saving our atmosphere from climate change. Reuters reported that, “In a joint declaration, climate scientists, physicists, biologists, engineers and others from at least 20 countries broke with the caution traditionally associated with academia to side with peaceful protesters courting arrest from Amsterdam to Melbourne.”

In the US, actress Jane Fonda announced she was moving to Washington DC so she could engage in civil disobedience every Friday and get arrested until there was action on the climate. 

And my next guest arrived at the same conclusion, writing an op-ed in The Guardian newspaper that he would get arrested protesting inaction on climate change. 

Read George Monbiot’s latest column on The Guardian ‘Today, I aim to get arrested. It is the only real power climate protesters have,’ HERE.

George Monbiot, world renowned journalist, author and activist and a columnist for The Guardian. His books include Out of the Wreckage, How Did We Get Into This Mess?, and The Age of Consent. More than 10 years ago, he wrote the book Heat: How To Stop the Planet From Burning. 

FEATURING AARON GLANTZ – There have been many books written about the financial recession of 2008 and the mortgage crisis that caused so many Americans to lose their homes. But what happened after the crash? A new book exposes how hedge fund investors and Wall Street executives took advantage of the crash and swooped in, with government backing, to scoop up hundreds of thousands of homes and rent them back to the public. 

That phenomenon was not just a massive transfer of wealth from ordinary Americans to the wealthy and powerful, but it led to the lowest levels of homeownership in decades, in a country that prides itself on individuals owning property as a form of wealth creation. Many of the villains in that story – who my guest calls “homewreckers” are part of Donald Trump’s administration. 

Aaron Glantz, journalist at Reveal, two-time Peabody Award winner, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. His work has appeared in the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, PBS NewsHour and more. His new book is called Homewreckers: How a Gang of Wall Street Kingpins, Hedge Fund Magnates, Crooked Banks, and Vulture Capitalists Suckered Millions Out of Their Homes and Demolished the American Dream.

President Donald Trump held a rally in Dallas, Texas on Thursday night where he railed against his enemies by resorting to namecalling once more. Trump also spoke about his controversial foreign policy shift in northern Syria, allowing Turkey to move in and bomb the US’s Kurdish allies. Trump maintained that he would win the state of Texas by a landslide in 2020 but the polls show otherwise. According to one analyst writing in the Huffington Post, “behind Trump’s show of force lies lackluster polling numbers, a weakening Republican Party and uncertainty about whether the president is more of an asset or a liability for the conservative control of the country’s largest red state.”

Meanwhile in Northern Syria, the ceasefire that Trump hailed as having orchestrated through his Vice President Mike Pence appears to be unsteady. Pence announced a 120-hour détente to allow time for Kurdish fighters to leave the area Turkey had been bombing and shelling but there were reports of shelling in the area after the ceasefire clock began but those apparently died down by Friday evening. As President Trump casually dismissed the fighting, Amnesty International on Friday released a damning report of Turkish atrocities in northern Syria saying that, “Turkish military forces and a coalition of Turkey-backed Syrian armed groups have displayed a shameful disregard for civilian life, carrying out serious violations and war crimes, including summary killings and unlawful attacks that have killed and injured civilians.” Additionally, “at least 218 civilians have been killed in Syria, including 18 children, since the offensive began.” Trump’s claim about the Islamic State remaining cowed is also being undercut by reports that the organization is regrouping. According to theWashington Post, ISIS is “racing to capitalize on the deteriorating security situation in northern Syria, stepping up attacks on prisons as well as on the now-weakened Kurdish militia that served as the vanguard in the U.S.-led war against the group’s self-proclaimed caliphate.”

In news from the impeachment inquiry, White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney on Thursday tried to walk back comments that he made earlier in the day during a press briefing where he essentially admitted that Trump engaged in a quid pro quo with Ukraine’s President, withholding military aid in exchange for politically useful information about his rivals. Mulvaney told reporters, “Get over it. There’s going to be political influence in foreign policy,” but then issued a statement blaming the media for twisting his words even though they were publicly documented. In his statement Mulvaney said, “Once again, the media has decided to misconstrue my comments to advance a biased and political witch hunt against President Trump,” and added, “there was absolutely no quid pro quo between Ukrainian military aid and any investigation into the 2016 election.” Democrats pounced on the contradiction with California Representative Ted Lieu saying, “Mick Mulvaney was either lying then, or he’s lying now.” Some Republicans are also troubled, with