FEATURING LISA ROSENBERG – Amazon.com has for years been positioning itself as a retailer for all things, mowing down competition wherever it can, gobbling up a lion’s share of online retail sales. But what most customers of the company may not realize is that Amazon doesn’t just want our business, it wants the government’s business.

A new report by Open the Government called Government Inc: Amazon, Government Security and Secrecy, has exposed the corporation’s controversial relationship to the national security state and law enforcement apparatus.

Read the report HERE.

Lisa Rosenberg, Executive Director of Open the Government, which just published the report, Government Inc: Amazon, Government Security and Secrecy.

The House of Representatives on Friday passed a major disaster relief bill approving $17 billion to states around the nation including California, Hawaii, Alaska, and states in the Midwest and South. The funding will address damage from major storms and hurricanes, wildfires, and more. Included in the bill is $600 million for nutrition assistance for Puerto Rico’s residents impacted by Hurricane Maria – which President Donald Trump has opposed and repeatedly lied about. Trump also wanted $4.5 billion in emergency funding for is border wall. But Friday’s bill passed with 34 Republicans joining Democrats. The House passed another version of the same bill in January but the Senate did not take a vote on that bill. Additionally, the Pentagon approved a transfer of $1.5 billion from its Defense Budget to fund Trump’s border wall with Mexico. The funds are drawn from a number of projects including Afghan security forces in their fight against the Taliban. And, Trump on Thursday formally nominated Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan to his permanent position. The former Boeing executive faces a contentious Senate confirmation hearing.

The House on Thursday also passed a bill to protect the Affordable Care Act from the Trump Administration. The bill prevents the federal government from issuing waivers to states that want to avoid the law. The Democrat-controlled House will vote on seven more bills related to President Obama’s signature healthcare law next week. The Trump administration has pledged to repeal Obamacare in its entirety and replace it with an as-yet-unknown law.

President Trump has made good on his promise to raise tariffs on Chinese imports as talks between trade representatives from China and the US failed to come to agreement. About $200 billion worth of Chinese goods will now see tariffs raised from 10% to 25%. Trump also took steps to potentially impose tariffs on all Chinese goods coming into the US. China responded saying it would be forced to take the, “necessary countermeasures,” but did not specify what those were. Speaking at the White House on Thursday Trump tried to justify the tariffs. Critics say that the cost of the tariffs will fall largely on Americans.

President Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani has said he plans to travel to the Ukrainian capital Kiev shortly to meet with the newly elected Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. According to the New York Times, Giuliani will urge Zelensky, “to pursue inquiries that allies of the White House contend could yield new information about two matters of intense interest to Mr. Trump.” The issues are the origins of the 2016 Special Counsel investigation into Trump, and what role Joe Biden’s son played in a Ukrainian-owned gas company. The Times remarked, “Mr. Giuliani’s plans create the remarkable scene of a lawyer for the president of the United States pressing a foreign government to pursue investigations that Mr. Trump’s allies hope could help him in his re-election cam...

FEATURING AARON SCHERB – House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has agreed with some of her Democratic colleagues that the US is in the midst of a constitutional crisis, with President Trump and the White House throwing up roadblocks at every turn as lawmakers attempt to hold the President accountable. Protected by his loyal Attorney General William Barr, Federal Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell, and two Supreme Court appointees, Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, Trump has skillfully engineered a situation that protects him from the checks and balances built into our system.

Still, the subpoena of Donald Trump Jr. by a Senate Republican, Richard Burr who heads the Intelligence committee, suggests there may be cracks in the firewall of Trump’s support.

Many have pointed out that Trump’s resistance to subpoenas mirrors what Richard Nixon’s administration engaged in ahead of his resignation over the Watergate scandal. Additionally it was in part the crumbling of Nixon’s Republican supporters that led to his downfall.

Aaron Scherb, Director of Legislative Affairs at Common Cause.

FEATURING ADAM WINKLER – How do US corporations claim so many of the same rights that humans have, such as the right to free speech? After all, we human beings are tangible persons with cognitive abilities. But corporations are abstract notions, they are institutions created for practical reasons. When the rights of corporations are given the same weight as the rights of humans, how does this impact real people?

The fight to give corporations many of the same rights as human beings has a long history in the US and involves the end of slavery, the civil rights movement, and numerous Supreme Court decisions in landmark cases. In his latest book UCLA law professor Adam Winkler tells the story of how corporations won their “civil rights.”

Adam Winkler, Professor of Law at UCLA whose writing has appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, New York Review of Books, and more. He is the author of Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America and his newest book is ‘We The Corporations: How American Businesses Won Their Civil Rights.’

**This segment was originally broadcast on March 8, 2018.

Tthe Senate Intelligence Committee has subpoenaed Donald Trump Jr. as part of its on-going investigation into the 2016 Trump election campaign. It is the first time that a Trump family member has been subpoenaed by a Congressional panel since the Special Counsel investigation began. The move is also surprising given that Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell had just a day earlier dismissed the entire investigation saying, “case closed.” According to people familiar with the committee’s thinking, Senators are interested in what Donald Jr. said and did at the infamous Trump Tower meeting in in 2016 where he met with Russian nationals hoping for dirt on the Clinton campaign. President Donald Trump’s former Attorney Michael Cohen during his public testimony claimed that the younger Trump was actively involved in the meeting. According to the New York Times, “The decision to subpoena the president’s son is an aggressive move, and appears to have come after discussions broke down about whether the younger Mr. Trump might appear voluntarily before the panel.”

Meanwhile White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney complained publicly about being blindsided by Senate Republicans. He said during an interview on CBS on Wednesday, “I have no difficulty with bipartisanship, but to subpoena the president of the United States’s son and not at least get a heads-up, I thought was — let’s say — bad form.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi addressing reporters said on Thursday that the nation was in a “constitutional crisis.” Her comments came a day after the House Judiciary Committee voted to hold Attorney General William Barr in contempt of Congress for refusing to testify at a committee hearing.

New York’s State Senate voted on Wednesday to turn over President Trump’s tax returns to Congressional committee chairs. The so-called TRUST Act passed the Democratic controlled body 39 to 21 and is expected to be signed into law by Governor Andrew Cuomo. It will enable the commissioner of the state Department of Taxation and Finance to hand over Trump’s state tax returns upon request. New York is Trump’s home state and so his state tax returns would include roughly the same type of information that federal returns have and may enable federal legislators to conduct their oversight duties in the face of White House stonewalling. Federal Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin who has pledged allegiance to Trump above all else, has refused to comply with a lawful Congressional request for the President’s tax returns. Meanwhile the New York State Senate also successfully voted to allow the state to prosecute any individuals that Trump pardons.

At a political rally in Florida on Wednesday night the President once more touted a lie about Puerto Rico’s disaster relief. The President had previously claimed, despite plenty of evidence to the contrary, that the federal government had spent $91 billion to help Puerto Rico recover from Hurricane Maria. In reality the island has only received about $11 billion. During his rally Trump pulled out a bar graph claiming to show the $91 billion figure and use it as a weapon to whip up resentment again...

FEATURING KATE PHILLIPPO – The debate over public schools and education policy can get really contentious. Most Americans disagree on how best to run a public school system, arguing over traditional schools versus charter schools, and with terms like “school choice” being bandied about.

Today we’ll examine a specific type of school system in Chicago – a city where ninth graders can apply to the high school of their choice – just like they might for public universities.

Does this system work? How does it impact the very people who are supposed to benefit, namely students?

Kate Phillippo, Associate Professor of cultural and educational policy studies at Loyola University Chicago School of Education, author of Advisory in Urban High Schools: A Study of Expanded Teacher Roles and A Contest Without Winners: How Students Experience Competitive School Choice.

FEATURING DEDRICK ASANTE-MUHAMMAD – Georgetown University students recently overwhelmingly approved a $27 fee that would pay reparations to the descendants of 272 enslaved people who were sold off in 1838 to pay off the college’s debts. The idea of reparations for slavery to make financial restitution to a group of Americans who were disadvantaged by the economic system from the start is gaining new steam.

A bill in the House to create a Congressional Committee on reparations has been in the works for years and that bill is one of ten ideas explored in a new study by the Institute for Policy Studies on how best to bridge America’s persistent racial wealth gap.

Find out more and download the report at www.inequality.org.

Dedrick Asante-Muhammad, Associate Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, co-author of the new report, Ten Solutions to Bridge the Racial Wealth Divide.

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

President Donald Trump has claimed executive privilege over the full Special Counsel’s report on the 2016 election. The decision came in the form of an announcement by Justice Department official, Stephen E. Boyd who wrote to the House Judiciary Committee that, “the president has asserted executive privilege over the entirety of the subpoenaed materials.” The language used means that Trump has asserted authority over the entire Mueller report and the evidentiary materials that Congress members have requested. The decision also comes on the same day that the Judiciary Committee held a vote to hold Attorney General William Barr in contempt for refusing to testify at a hearing last week. Indeed it was Barr who requested the President to invoke executive privilege over the Mueller report. Referring to Judiciary Committee chair Jerrold Nadler, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders released a statement saying, “Faced with Chairman Nadler’s blatant abuse of power, and at the Attorney General’s request, the President has no other option than to make a protective assertion of executive privilege.” Critics have pointed out that there is no basis to assert executive privilege at this stage after a redacted version of the Mueller report was made public. Congress is expected to file suit in a legal battle over the Mueller report.

Nadler made these comments at the House Judiciary committee vote on Barr on Wednesday morning during a vote to hold Barr in contempt of Congress.

In a live-streamed interview with the Washington Post on Wednesday morning House Speaker Nancy Pelosi declared that Trump was becoming “self-impeachable,” a statement she made just as news emerged of Trump’s assertion of executive privilege over the Mueller report.  A day earlier at another event Pelosi invoked a comparison with President Richard Nixon saying that he was impeached in part for ignoring Congressional subpoenas. She added, “Every day, he’s obstructing justice by saying, ‘This one shouldn’t testify, that one shouldn’t testify,’ and the rest. So he’s making a case. But he’s just trying to goad us into impeachment.”

The New York Times has just published a lengthy exposé of Trump’s taxes and what they say about his business abilities and dealings. The report was based on ten years of tax information – not actual tax returns – that the paper obtained from 1985 through 1994 showing that Trump racked up $1.17 billion in losses over that period. It also showed that Trump lost more money during several of the years on record than any other individual taxpayer and that in 8 of the 10 years he paid no federal income taxes. In 1989 Trump reported income from interest of $52.9 million but did not declare where that interest came from. Trump responded to the Times’ article on Twitter saying, “You always wanted to show losses for tax purposes….almost all real estate developers did – and often re-negotiate with banks, it was sport.” Just after validating the report he then contradicted himself in...

FEATURING NOAH GREENWALD – A major United Nations report has spelled out extremely bad news for life on earth. The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services has found that a million species are at threat of extinction and that the, “Current global response [is] insufficient,” and “‘Transformative changes’ [are] needed to restore and protect nature.”

IPBES Chair, Sir Robert Watson said, “The health of ecosystems on which we and all other species depend is deteriorating more rapidly than ever. We are eroding the very foundations of our economies, livelihoods, food security, health and quality of life worldwide.” The report is the result of 145 experts from 50 different countries over 3 years.

 

Noah Greenwald, Director of the Endangered Species Program at the Center for Biological Diversity.

FEATURING JAMES HICKS – The rideshare app company Uber is making its Initial Public Offering (IPO) on Friday and is hoping for a whopping $91 billion valuation, which would make it the biggest such offering in years. The company has set aside about 3% of its shares for its drivers – a benefit only about a quarter of them will receive.

Uber and Lyft drivers have long been unhappy about their treatment at the company and have planned a 1-day strike on Wednesday May 8th, two days ahead of Uber’s IPO. The strike is the latest action by drivers in cities across the country with the last one taking place on March 25th. This next strike will be organized by rideshare drivers in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, and San Francisco.

James Hicks, a rideshare driver and organizer with Rideshare Drivers United.