Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire testified to the House Intelligence committee for 3 hours on Thursday after several days of extraordinary developments around a whistleblower’s complaint that President Donald Trump acted inappropriately in a phone call to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. House Intelligence Committee chair Representative Adam Schiff of California in his opening statement likened the phone call – whose transcript the White House released a day earlier – as akin to a mobster making a shakedown. Summarizing his assessment of the call Schiff referred to impeachment of the President. Mr. Maguire, the acting National Intelligence Director maintained throughout that he and others involved had only been following the letter of law. One lone Republican, Mike Turner, expressed concern at the President’s conduct. A day before Maguire’s hearing there were reports that he had threatened to resign if the White House tried to stop him from testifying to Congress. But Maguire denied the report. 

Just before Maguire began his testimony a minimally-redacted version of the original whistleblower complaint that set off the controversy was made public. In it the unnamed whistleblower also details White House efforts to restrict the details of President Trump’s July 25th phone call with Zelensky, implying that the President’s own staff may have realized just how damning it was. The complaint says, “senior White House officials had intervened to “lock down” all records of the phone call especially the official word-for-word transcript of the phone call that was produced…This set of actions underscored to me that White House officials understood the gravity of what had transpired in the call.”

Meanwhile, President Trump’s defense has been that because he did not dangle the resumption of military aid to Ukraine in exchange for dirt on his political opponents during the call, the lack of an overt “quid-pro-quo” absolved him. Instead he said later that the reason he withheld aid to Ukraine was to force the country to tackle internal corruption. However on Wednesday NPR obtained a Pentagon letter confirming that this past May, US military aid to Ukraine was cleared because of substantial progress that the country had made on corruption and other issues. Trump blocked the aid unilaterally in July. 

Zelensky, who happened to be in the US for the United Nations meeting in the same week that this scandal is unfolding in the US, was visibly upset about his call with Trump being made public. He told reporters, “I think such things, such conversations between heads of independent states, they shouldn’t be published.” Trump met Zelensky at the UN on Wednesday and publicly referred to the scandal in vague and humoro...

FEATURING CHRISTY DELAFIELD – First it was the record-breaking hurricane Dorian that hit the Bahamas causing untold devastation and killing as yet unknown numbers of people. Then Hurricane Humberto headed toward the Caribbean islands. And this week Hurricane Karen, which was headed toward open water, is now expected to return back over its own footprint and impact the Bahamas. 

It has been weeks since Dorian hit and well over 1,000 people remain missing. There are grim stories of search and rescue teams finding bodies only by their smell. But cruise ships have resumed operations and the major news media have already moved on.

Christy Delafield, Director of Communications of Mercy Corps.

FEATURING EMILY RUSCH – The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s new report on the oceans is devastating, not only in showcasing the impact of a warming planet but also in terms of the pollution from plastic. By the year 2050 there will be more plastic in the oceans than fish. With the plastics recycling industry having essentially come to a halt, and fossil fuel industries looking to expand plastic production, there is great urgency on tackling this issue. 

Bills at the state level in California and the federal level in the US are hoping to address the plastics crisis. But will they pass given the political landscape?

Emily Rusch, Executive Director of CALPIRG and CALPIRG Education Fund.

Mumia Abu Jamal is a political prisoner and award-winning journalist. He recently filed this commentary about the pharmaceutical industry and the lawsuits they are facing over the opioid crisis. 

Find out more at www.prisonradio.org.

The White House has released a rough transcript of a July 25th phone call between President Donald Trump and Ukraine’s new president Volodymyr Zelensky a day after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi launched an impeachment inquiry over an intelligence whistleblower complaint. The transcript shows Trump clearly asking Mr. Zelensky to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, who Trump presumably expects to face in the 2020 Presidential election. The President asked Ukraine’s leader to be in touch not only with Attorney General William Barr on the matter but also his own personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani. Giuliani had publicly boasted earlier this year that Ukraine was being asked to investigate Trump’s opponents and the transcript confirms that. A day earlier Trump was convinced that the transcript would absolve him, tweeting confidently, “You will see it was a very friendly and totally appropriate call. No pressure and, unlike Joe Biden and his son, NO quid pro quo!” 

Trump’s decision to release the rough transcript of his call with Zelensky came after the US Senate passed Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s non-binding resolution to make the contents of the whistleblower complaint available to the House and Senate Intelligence Committees. In a surprise move, no Republican Senators objected to the passage of the resolution. The Washington Post reported that, “Several Senate Republicans were stunned Wednesday and questioned the White House’s judgment,” in releasing the transcript of the Ukraine phone call. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell met with top Republicans over lunch in a closed-door session to discuss responses to the developments. 

It has now emerged that the Justice Department examined the whistleblower complaint and decided that no laws were broken. According to the New York Times, “The department’s criminal division reviewed the matters and concluded that there was no basis for a criminal investigation into Mr. Trump’s behavior. Law enforcement officials determined that the reconstructed transcript of the call did not show that Mr. Trump had violated campaign finance laws by soliciting from a foreign national a contribution, donation or thing of value.” House Judiciary Committee chair Jerrold Nadler has demanded that Attorney General William Barr recuse himself from any investigations that may result from Congressional scrutiny of the same issue. 

Unfazed by how deeply he has been implicated in the Ukraine scandal is Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani, who decided to make an appearance on Fox News and conti...

FEATURING PAUL SEAMUS RYAN – President Donald Trump on Tuesday announced that he would be ordering the release of transcripts of his controversial phone call with Ukrainian president. Trump on Twitter wrote that he has “authorized the release tomorrow of the complete, fully declassified and unredacted transcript of my phone conversation.” He added, “You will see it was a very friendly and totally appropriate call. No pressure and, unlike Joe Biden and his son, NO quid pro quo!” However, it is not yet clear if the call transcript Trump is referring to is the same one that a intelligence community whistleblower complaint was recently focused on. 

The scandal over whether the President withheld US military aid as leverage to extort dirt on a political rival from a foreign country could be the final nail in the impeachment coffin. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who has been adamantly resistant to taking action has announced a formal impeachment inquiry. 

Paul Seamus Ryan, Vice President of Policy & Litigation at Common Cause.

FEATURING KAREN SPRING – The US-backed government in Honduras has faced accusations of mass repression. The Central American nation, whose citizens are fleeing northward to the US escaping that repression, has been in political turmoil for more than ten years since the US-backed overthrow of Manuel Zelaya’s presidency. 

The current President Juan Orlando Hernandez has overseen a government that has pushed through a privatization agenda and been accused of widespread corruption. In fact the President’s own brother faces a trial in Miami, Florida on drug-related charges. President Hernandez himself now faces charges of using drug money to fund his campaign. 

Find more at https://www.facebook.com/HondurasSolidarityNetwork/ and on Twitter @hondurassol.

Karen Spring, Coordinator of the Honduras Solidarity Network based in Tegucigalpa.

President Donald Trump delivered a speech at the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday addressing national borders, immigration, Iran, and his trade war with China. Among his strongest assertions was one of nationalism versus a globalist approach, saying directly to the international body that borders were more important than the free movement of people. Trump also slammed the Iranian regime without a hint of irony over the fact that the US is waging multiple wars in the Middle East with routine reports of civilian deaths from US bombs. Trump also railed against China.

 A number of other world leaders addressed the UN General Assembly as well, including Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan whose comments seemed to be aimed directly at Trump. Erdogan denounced the rise in hate crimes saying they were the result of “populist politicians seeking to garner votes” and “provoking these tendencies.” Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro defended himself against international condemnation of the burning of the Amazon rainforest saying, “We all know that all countries have problems…The sensationalist attacks we have suffered due to fire outbreaks have aroused our patriotic sentiment.” He added, “The Amazon is not being devastated, nor is it being consumed by fire as the media misleadingly says.” And Egypt’s embattled leader Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi also spoke focusing in part on escalating violence in Libya but not referencing the mass protests he is facing back home. A day earlier Trump had praised Al-Sisi saying as they met at the UN, “Everybody has demonstrations…No, I’m not concerned with it. Egypt has a great leader.” Politico joked that Tuesday was “‘Dictator Day’ at the U.N.”

On Monday the Guardian Newspaper reported that Trump was using the US’s position at the United Nations to quietly build an international coalition opposing abortion. In a letter to other states that the paper got a hold of the Trump Administration said, “As a key priority in global health promotion, we respectfully request that your government join the United States in ensuring that every sovereign state has the ability to determine the best way to protect the unborn and defend the family as the foundational unity of society vital to children thriving and leading healthy lives.” The letter denounced the advance of sexual and reproductive rights for women and girls worldwide. 

Also on Monday Trump’s brief appearance at a critically important climate-related UN conference caused a stir and a screen grab of the teen climate activist Greta Thunberg glaring toward Trump went viral. Thunberg’s powerful speech was widely covered and Trump re-tweeted an article describing her words with the sarcastic comm...

FEATURING THANU YAKUPITIYAGE – The historic Global Climate Strike on Friday mobilized an estimated 4 million protesters in thousands of cities worldwide demanding action on climate change. What started out as a small number of school kids around the world skipping school on Fridays last year, ballooned into a massive movement that has inspired a huge swath of humanity to take to the streets. 

Friday’s actions kicked off a week-long series of events through September 27th. The actions are timed to coincide with a major United Nations climate conference taking place at the UN headquarters in New York where state leaders are expecting to make stronger pledges for climate action. 

For information about other actions taking place all over the United States this week visit https://globalclimatestrike.net and www.riseforclimate.org.

Thanu Yakupitiyage, U.S Communications Manager, 350.org.

We’ll continue our coverage of the historic Global Climate Strike for the rest of the show, playing excerpts of speeches and interviews showcasing the diversity of the actions for climate justice. We’ll begin with a young indigenous woman speaking on Friday in Washington DC. Also on stage was California Representative Nanette Barragán, one of several elected officials to address protest actions. 

We also go to Los Angeles, where this program is produced, to bring you a conversation we had with indigenous organizer Lydia Ponce, followed by a 16-year old high school student who attended the strike action in Pershing Square in downtown LA. On stage in Los Angeles was actress and long-time activist Jane Fonda. 

In New York City, where the largest north American action took place, Swedish teen activist Greta Thunberg gave a lengthy speech and on Monday she addressed the UN climate conference with a powerful and emotional 5-minute speech.