President Donald Trump on Thursday tweeted a surprise announcement that he would be imposing tariffs on all Mexican goods in relation to the entry of undocumented immigrants and asylum seekers to the US. He wrote, “On June 10th, the United States will impose a 5% Tariff on all goods coming into our Country from Mexico, until such time as illegal migrants coming through Mexico, and into our Country, STOP. The Tariff will gradually increase until the Illegal Immigration problem is remedied…” In an accompanying statement written in Trump’s style of tweets, the White House published a bizarre and lie-riddled statement that included the baseless assertion, “Thousands of innocent lives are taken every year as a result of this lawless chaos. It must end NOW!” The word “NOW” was capitalized. It is completely unclear which “thousands of innocent lives” the White House was referring to.

Mexico’s President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador wrote a letter to Trump responding to the announcement of tariffs. He said, “Social problems are not resolved by taxes or coercive measures,” and added, “With all due respect, even though you have the right to express it, the slogan ‘America First’ is a fallacy because until the end of time, even over national borders, universal justice and fraternity will prevail.” Mr. Lopez Obrador ended his letter saying, “Nothing by force, everything by reason and Law!” At a news conference on Friday morning, Mexico’s President repeated these sentiments. On the same day that Trump made the threat his administration moved to fast-track approval of the new US-Mexico trade treaty that updates NAFTA. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi retorted in a statement that Trump’s move, “indicates a lack of knowledge on the part of the administration on the policy and process to pass a trade agreement.”

The Washington Post on Thursday reported that hundreds of immigrant minors are being held in detention for much longer than they are legally allowed. As per federal law, children under the age of 18 cannot be held in border detention facilities for longer than 72 hours and must be transferred to certified shelters. But the Trump administration is breaking the law in about 1,000 cases. About 250 children aged 12 or younger have been held in detention for an average of 6 days. Meanwhile, on Thursday, Politico reported that a draft proposal to further restrict asylum rules was circulating around the Department of Homeland Security. The new rules being considered, “would prohibit migrants from seeking asylum if they have resided in a country other than their own before coming to the U.S.” This would effectively disqualify Central American migrants who travel through Mexico. And, Presidential candidate and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders addressed the issue of immigrant rights...

FEATURING DAN VICUÑA – In just a few weeks the US Supreme Court is expected to rule in the case of Department of Commerce Vs. New York – a critical case over adding a question of citizenship to the 2020 US Census. The Trump administration and Republican Party have pushed hard on the idea of collecting information of the citizenship status of US residents.

But critics have long countered that it will lead to fear among undocumented people who will in turn fail to fill out the form, be undercounted, and therefore have their home states be underrepresented in Congress. Now, a smoking gun has emerged to solidify that counter-argument to the census question.

In a case around gerrymandering, a long-time Republican operative named Thomas Hofeller – now deceased – was found to have suggested the idea of counting citizens in order to boost the voting power of whites and therefore to benefit the Republican Party.  

Dan Vicuña, National Redistricting Manager at Common Cause.

FEATURING KELLY PERCIVAL – Hearings began at the Supreme Court on Tuesday over a critical question of whether the government can ask citizenship status of residents as part of the 2020 US Census. So far the conservatives on the court – who hold a majority – appear inclined to include the question.

The Trump administration has made including the citizenship question a central part of its anti-immigrant agenda. Critics have fought back saying it will sow fear in communities and is deliberately designed to undercount undocumented residents. States are appropriated federal funds based on population and those states with high numbers of undocumented residents may lose funding.

Eighteen states, a number of US cities, and immigrant rights organizations have led the legal challenge to the inclusion of the citizenship question in what is being considered the Supreme Court’s highest profile case this term.

Kelly Percival, Counsel with the Brennan Center for Justice’s Democracy Program. 

**This segment was originally broadcast on April 23, 2019.

President Donald Trump on Thursday in a tweet admitted that Russian interference helped him get elected in 2016. In an angry post in the early hours of the morning, just a day after Special Counsel Robert Mueller gave his first public address, Trump wrote, “Russia, Russia, Russia! That’s all you heard at the beginning of this Witch Hunt Hoax…And now Russia has disappeared because I had nothing to do with Russia helping me to get elected.” Hours later, he backtracked on his own words in remarks to reporters outside the White House.

In other news, more Democratic leaders are pushing for Mr. Mueller to testify before Congress and others have joined in the chorus calling for impeachment. Representative Jim McGovern of Massachusetts who chairs the House Rules Committee became the highest ranking Democrat to back impeachment, saying in an interview, “We’re beyond talking about this in terms of political implications…We have to do what’s right.” Maine Representative Chellie Pingree said Congress should, “continue its own investigations in the face of unprecedented obstruction and move toward an impeachment inquiry.” And Mississippi Representative Bennie Thompson, who chairs the Homeland Security Committee said that Trump had, “egregiously obstructed justice.” Meanwhile, veteran actor Robert DeNiro, who plays Mueller on Saturday Night Live, wrote an op-ed in the New York Times on Thursday urging him to testify and saying, “the country needs to hear your voice.”

In one of the many investigations that have spun off from the Mueller probe, an aide to Trump confidante Roger Stone, is expected to testify before a Grand Jury on Friday. Andrew Miller has legally challenged a subpoena from the same grand jury used by Mueller, for nearly a year. According to the Washington Post Miller is expected to, “answer prosecutors’ questions about Stone’s activities since 2016 — including what work or services Stone asked him to perform since the election.” If Miller fails to appear he will be jailed for contempt of court.

News emerged on Thursday that during Trump’s trip to Japan earlier this week, Navy sailors aboard the USS John McCain were not invited to the President’s address at Yokosuka Naval Base and that the White House had apparently asked the Navy to hide the ship bearing the name of Trump’s late nemesis so it wouldn’t appear in photos alongside him. According to the Wall Street Journal, which first reported the story the White House sent an email to US Navy and Air Force officials with a list of directives ahead of Trump’s trip, including the line, “USS John McCain needs to be out of sight.” Trump denies that he knew anything about it.

FEATURING JEAN BRICMONT – Hundreds of millions of voters participated in last weekend’s European Union elections for more than 700 representatives elected from 24 different countries. The EU’s political structure has for decades been held by centrist right and left parties but on May 26th that center fell apart as right wing nationalist parties surged, but also leftist parties like the Greens.

What do the election results mean for Europe and its relationship to the world. Do the election results suggest a realignment of Europe’s political direction?

Jean Bricmont, retired mathematical and statistical physicist at the University of Louvain, and author of Humanitarian Imperialism: Using Human Rights to Sell War, and co-author of Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals’ Abuse of Science.

FEATURING COREY BRETTSHNEIDER – House Democrats are on the verge of holding Attorney General William Barr in contempt for failing to appear at a House Judiciary Committee hearing on Thursday. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called him out for lying about the Special Counsel report at an earlier hearing and said he committed a crime. And Senator Mazie Hirono a day earlier at the Senate Judiciary committee hearing which Barr did attend, told the Attorney General to his face that he should resign.

At the same time President Donald Trump has refused to comply with subpoenas for information and barred his advisers from complying with Congressional orders to appear at hearings. His violations of the Emoluments Clause are being exposed as evermore egregious, and he has stepped in to ensure the lawmakers have no access to his tax returns.

Has Trump broken the US system of checks and balances that are supposed to protect against such blatant abuses of power?

Corey Brettschneider, professor of political science at Brown University. He is the author of When the State Speaks, What Should It Say: How Democracies Can Protect Expression and Promote Equality. His latest book is called The Oath and the Office: A Guide to the Constitution for Future Presidents.

**This interview was originally broadcast on May 2, 2019. 

Special Counsel Robert Mueller addressed the public on Wednesday morning for the first time since the inquiry he conducted began. Speaking for just over 9 minutes Mueller announced his resignation as Special Counsel, asserted that he would not reveal anything in Congressional testimony that wasn’t already in his report, and, most importantly, did not clear President Donald Trump of wrong doing on the issue of obstruction of justice. Predictably President Trump had an entirely different interpretation of Mueller’s comments, tweeting immediately that, “Nothing changes from the Mueller Report. There was insufficient evidence and therefore, in our Country, a person is innocent. The case is closed! Thank you.” Trump was referring only to the Russia-collusion aspect of the case and ignored the section on obstruction.

House Judiciary committee chair Jerrold Nadler responded soon after Mueller’s remarks, saying in a statement that, “the Special Counsel has clearly demonstrated that President Trump is lying about the Special Counsel’s findings, lying about the testimony of key witnesses in the Special Counsel’s report, and is lying in saying that the Special Counsel found no obstruction and no collusion.” He added, “Given that Special Counsel Mueller was unable to pursue criminal charges against the President, it falls to Congress to respond to the crimes, lies and other wrongdoing of President Trump.” Mr. Nadler did not mention the word “impeachment.” Meanwhile on Tuesday Republican congressman Justin Amash who is the first GOP lawmaker to publicly call for Trump’s impeachment, received a standing ovation at a town hall meeting.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is being roundly criticized for comments made on Tuesday at an event where a reporter asked him if he would fill a vacant Supreme Court seat next year. McConnell had led the Republican charge in refusing to fill Antonin Scalia’s seat in President Barack Obama’s last year in office saying it was up to the newly elected President to do so. But with the 2020 election coming up, McConnell appears to have reversed his standards. Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer responded on Twitter calling McConnell a “hypocrite.” He said, “McConnell lives for GOP judges because he knows the GOP agenda is so radical & unpopular they can only achieve it in courts. Anyone who believes he’d ever allow confirmation of a Dem President’s nominee for SCOTUS is fooling themselves.”

Two Democratic Presidential candidates are calling attention to Trump’s military deferments in an attempt to showcase his hypocrisy toward war veterans. South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Massachusetts Rep. Seth Moulton, both of whom are vets themselves, have led the charges. Buttigieg said this week of Trump, “This is somebody who, I think it’s fairly obvious to most of us, took advantage of the fact that he was a child of a multimillionaire in order to pretend to be disabled so that somebody could go ...

FEATURING RACHEL CLEETUS – “World War III” is how Fire Chief Mark Lynch of Harrison County, Ohio, described the devastation left by a string of extreme tornadoes that slammed into the Midwestern United States on Monday night going into Tuesday. At least one person is known to have been killed and several injured by falling debris. One resident of Celina, Ohio who doesn’t have a basement told reporters she was forced to hide in her bathtub with her son holding a mattress above them for protection.

Such weather is increasingly commonplace. Evidence is all around us that the earth’s atmosphere is heating up. It is within this context, when we should be taking radical steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, that President Donald Trump’s administration is launching a fresh assault on climate-related science research. The New York Times this week published a lengthy exposé about the ways in which federal climate research is being severely and systematically undermined.

Rachel Cleetus, Policy Director, Climate and Energy Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

FEATURING VARSHINI PRAKASH – Five leading institutions worldwide, including NASA, the NOAA, and the UK’s Hadley Center, recently jointly concluded that the year 2018 was the fifth straight year of warming temperatures. The years 2014 to 2018 have been the five warmest years in recorded history. Additionally NASA has found that 18 of the 19 warmest years on record were after the year 2000. In other words the planet is undeniably warming. There can be no more greater evidence of it than what the agencies found.

On Thursday morning, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Ed Markey formally introduced a resolution on the Green New Deal to move toward a green economy through a massive jobs program. However, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi threw cold water on it saying in an interview with Politico on Wednesday, “It will be one of several or maybe many suggestions that we receive. The green dream, or whatever they call it, nobody knows what it is, but they’re for it, right?”

Well, plenty of people do know what it is and why they’re for it.

Varshini Prakash, Founder of the Sunrise Movement.

**This segment was originally broadcast on February 8, 2019. 

President Donald Trump spent the weekend in Japan, visiting Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, playing golf and eating cheeseburgers and dropping diplomatic bombs. On Saturday he tweeted, “North Korea fired off some small weapons, which disturbed some of my people, and others, but not me. I have confidence that Chairman Kim will keep his promise to me, & also smiled when he called Swampman Joe Biden a low IQ individual, & worse. Perhaps that’s sending me a signal?” The tweet referred to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and the man that Trump considers his biggest political rival here in the US – former Vice President Joe Biden.

Then during a news conference with Mr. Abe, Trump contradicted his own National Security Adviser John Bolton about North Korea’s nuclear testing saying he “personally” didn’t believe they violated UN Security Council resolutions, and that he thought Mr. Kim was a, “very smart man.” According to the Washington Post, “Trump also seemed to side with Kim and his repressive regime over Biden, violating an unofficial rule of presidential behavior — that partisan politics stops on foreign soil. Asked about a tweet in which Trump appreciatively recounted North Korea’s state media calling Biden a ‘fool of low I.Q.,’ the president simply doubled down on the insult.” When asked about Iran, Trump said, “We’re not looking for regime change…I just want to make that clear. We’re looking for no nuclear weapons.” In unrelated news, a 51-year old man just outside Tokyo attacked a group of school children with knives, killing an 11-year old child and another adult and injuring 17 others before stabbing himself to death. No motive is yet known.

In other international news, European Union Parliament elections were held over the weekend with more than 50% of voters showing up at the polls in what are considered the largest elections after India’s. The political power long-held by Europe’s centrist parties faded as nationalist right-wing parties gained some ground, while left-leaning parties surged especially the European Greens. In France, England, and Italy in particular right wing, nationalist and racist anti-immigrant forces won big. France’s Marine Le Pen edged out President Emmanuel Macron’s party. In the UK, Nigel Farage, who led the Brexit movement won big, and in Italy, Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini’s party was victorious. Still the right’s gains were not as big as initially predicted, and by themselves cannot effect as much change in Europe as they hoped. The Washington Post explained, “The far right… captured about a quarter of the seats, up from a fifth — enough to entrench their angry voices of protest and cause trouble in the legislature, but not enough to actually enact an agenda.” Green Party wins were higher than expected, indicating voters’ strong pro-climate agenda and turning them into potential “king-makers” as centrist parties vie for their support in coalition building.

Meanwhile, climate-justice teen activist