FEATURING ROBERTO LOVATO – President Donald Trump on Tuesday night took a moment during his State of the Union address to slam Venezuela’s President Nicholas Maduro and praise opposition leader Juan Guaido who has declared himself interim President. The US has made no secret about wanting regime change in Venezuela and has rallied several international allies to back Guaido against Maduro.

Maduro continues to face a crisis inside Venezuela as a failing economy has prompted mass protests and led to an exodus of people leaving the country. But the top brass of the military have continued to support him – a critical element to remaining in power in Venezuela if history is any guide.

Meanwhile Maduro has announced early elections for the National Assembly hoping this will assuage his critics.

Roberto Lovato, writer and journalist, whose work has appeared in such publications as the Nation, The Guardian, Boston Globe, Associated Press, San Francisco Chronicle, Al Jazeera and more. His journalism focuses on immigration, the drug war, US policy in Latin America and more. His work has been recognized by the Pulitzer Center and he was a co-founder of Presente.org, the largest online advocacy group for Latinos in the US.

FEATURING JOSHUA FRANK – The recent Polar Vortex of 2019 was so severe that the city of Chicago was actually colder than the North Pole, Antarctica, and Alaska. Just months earlier California was burning. We have entered the topsy-turvy world of unpredictable weather patterns that are a predictable outcome of climate change. We are at a tipping point and yet our political leaders boast of oil and gas dominance and the stripping away of even modest regulations on greenhouse gas emissions.

Joshua Frank, managing editor of CounterPunch. He is the co-author with Jeffrey St. Clair of ‘The Big Heat: Earth on the Brink’.

President Donald Trump gave his second State of the Union address on Tuesday night. It was the third time he had addressed a joint session of Congress and his annual speech came one week late due to the federal government shutdown. Early in his speech he called for unity despite being the most divisive President in memory. 

Trump also touted the economy and ridiculed the Special Counsel’s investigation. 

News outlets responded to the lengthy and rambling speech filled with contradictions with numerous fact checking. Trump’s claims of an economic miracle in particular stood in stark contrast to the facts.  The New York Times explained that, “The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that since January 2017, when Mr. Trump took office, the economy has added 4.9 million jobs, including 454,000 manufacturing jobs. Far from being ‘impossible,’ that is closely comparable to the pace of job creation during some two-year periods during the Obama administration, and significantly slower than the pace of job creation in manufacturing in the 1990s.”

Trump also boasted about the state of the US economy compared to the rest of the world. But the New York Times explained that in fact, “The American economy expanded at an annual rate of 3.5 percent in the third quarter of 2018. Growth in Latvia and Poland was almost twice as fast. Same for China and India. Even the troubled Greek economy posted stronger growth.”

Stacey Abrams, the former Democratic nominee for Governor of Georgia was picked to deliver her party’s official response to the State of the Union. She became the first black woman to ever deliver the official Democratic Party response.  Her speech drew widespread praise and even speculation about a Presidential run.

Vermont Independent Senator Bernie Sanders also issued his own response, as he has done for the previous two years. While most of his speech focused on fact checking Trump on the economy, he also singled out Trump’s demonization of immigrants. 

In other news, David Duke, the founder and former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, has endorsed Democratic hopeful Tulsi Gabbard for President. He tweeted, “Tulsi Gabbard in 2020. Finally a candidate for President who will really put America First?” The Guamese American who hopes to be the nation’s first Hindu President, rejected the endorsement. Gabbard said, “I have strongly denounced David Duke’s hateful views and his so-called ‘support’ multiple times in the past, and reject his support.” Gabbard has come under criticism from the left for cozying up to the Hindu fundamentalist Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi, and for Islamophobia and homophobia.

Another Presidential hopeful who is struggling with perceptions is Senator Elizabeth Warren, who on Tuesday apologized for identifying as Native American for two decades.

FEATURING ROSA CLEMENTE AND JODI JACOBSON – President Donald Trump gave his second State of the Union address on Tuesday. It was the third time he addressed a joint session of Congress. His address was delayed by a week because of the government shutdown.

Many Democratic female lawmakers wore white to the speech including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. The coordinated clothing was apparently a tribute to suffragettes and women’s rights.

Trump spoke at length, largely sticking to a script. He began by calling for an end to divisiveness, touted the “economic miracle” that he claims to have ushered in, and showcased the criminal justice reform act he championed. Then he pivoted to the topic that was expected to be the major focus of his State of the Union: his obsession with funding for a border wall. Trump did not declare a national emergency to obtain his funding without congressional approval as he hinted he might.

On foreign policy issues Trump also addressed the US Embassy in Israel, the crisis in Venezuela, a warming of ties with North Korea, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and his animosity toward Iran.

Rosa Clemente is a news correspondent for Rising Up With Sonali. She’s also a community organizer, 2008 Green Party Vice Presidential candidate, and currently a doctoral candidate in the W.E.B. DuBois Department of AfroAmerican Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Jodi Jacobson, President and Editor in Chief of Rewire.News.

FEATURING KENIA YARITZA ARREDONDO RAMOS AND DIANA LAUREANO – Ahead of the President’s Tuesday’s evening State of the Union address we spoke with two of the young immigrant rights activists who were invited by Democrats as their guests.

Kenia Yaritza Arredondo Ramos, a DACA recipient and aspiring nurse at Los Angeles Trade Tech College, is a guest of Congresswoman Lucille Roybal-Allard, author of the DREAM Act; Diana Laureano, a Rio Hondo College student, DACA recipient, and fierce advocate of immigrant rights in Orange County, is a guest of Congresswoman Linda Sanchez.

Federal prosecutors in New York have hit President Donald Trump’s inaugural committee with a subpoena over internal documents. The committee is under criminal investigation for how it raised and spent $100 million in funds for the President’s inauguration in January 2017. The Wall Street Journal, which obtained a copy of the subpoena, said it, “requests documents related to the committee’s donors and spending…including communications about payments made directly by donors to vendors—which would flout disclosure rules.” Additionally, “Federal prosecutors are also seeking documents related to a Los Angeles financier who gave $900,000 to the committee through his private-equity firm and once registered as a foreign agent working on behalf of the Sri Lankan government.”

In other news, President Trump has named Acting Interior Secretary David Bernhardt as permanent Secretary. Bernhardt will be replacing Ryan Zinke – the latest in a long series of Trump administration officials leaving under a cloud of ethics scandals. Bernhardt served as deputy Interior Secretary under Zinke. As is his custom, Trump announced Bernhardt’s promotion on Twitter on Monday, saying, “David has done a fantastic job from the day he arrived, and we look forward to having his nomination officially confirmed!” According to the New York Times, “While Mr. Zinke had been the public face of some of the largest rollbacks of public-land protections in the nation’s history, Mr. Bernhardt was the one quietly pulling the levers to carry them out, opening millions of acres of land and water to oil, gas and coal companies.” Critics have denounced Bernhardt’s past career as a lobbyist for oil and gas companies – companies that he will now be regulating. Bernhardt only narrowly won confirmation to his position as Deputy. Now, he faces the same scrutiny at his confirmation hearings to lead the Interior Department. Congressman Raúl Grijalva, who is chair of the House Natural Resources Committee, remarked, “The president putting him in charge of regulating his former clients is a perfect example of everything wrong with this administration.”

In the latest news from Virginia, Ralph Northam remains firm in his position to remain Governor despite an outcry over a racist yearbook photo. Now, his Lieutenant Governor, Justin Fairfax, who would be next in line if Northam were to resign, has come under a cloud of suspicion over allegations of sexual assault from 2004. The allegations emerged on Sunday night on a right wing website and then made headlines in mainstream media. Mr. Fairfax denounced the allegation and even implied that Northam’s supporters may have started a “whisper campaign,” to squash his ascent to the Governorship, saying, “Does anybody think it’s any coincidence that on the eve of potentially my being elevated that that’s when this smear comes out?” He later admitted he had no evidence to suggest Northam was behind it. The sexual assault allegations had come up in the past and Fairfax said that the Washington Post had looked into them in 2017 and when they could not corroborate them, the paper decided not to publish. Meanwhile Northam continues to weigh his options.

FEATURING J. J. MILLIGAN SEPÚLVEDA – US immigration courts in January 2019 turned away hundreds of people who showed up for their scheduled government-issued appearances. It is part of an on-going phenomenon that immigrants arrive at courts with government documents in hand saying they should appear only to be told that they don’t have a scheduled appointment. In the January instance courts cited the government shutdown and harsh winter weather for the confusion over court dates.

Much of the rhetoric on immigration focuses on the crisis at the border. But the experiences of undocumented immigrants is more often marked by endless waiting, lack of information, invisibility, and a sense of helplessness. Among the only resources guiding them through our cruel and capricious legal system where court rooms are backlogged and judges are in short supply, are armies of overworked immigration attorneys.

Relating the experiences of immigrants through the eyes of an immigration lawyer is J. J. Mulligan Sepúlveda, author of the new book ‘No Human Is Illegal: An Attorney On the Front Lines of the Immigration War’.

J. J. Mulligan Sepúlveda, an immigration attorney working at UC Davis School of Law’s Immigration Law Clinic. He is a former Immigrant Justice Corps Fellow and Fulbright Scholar. His new book is called ‘No Human Is Illegal: An Attorney On the Front Lines of the Immigration War’.

President Donald Trump gave an interview to CBS’s Face the Nation that aired on Sunday ahead of the Super Bowl. Speaking with Margaret Brennan he addressed a number of topics including his dispute with the heads of Intelligence agencies, the US backing for a regime change in Venezuela, the Special Counsel’s investigation, Colin Kaepernick’s protests, and whether he will declare a national emergency during his State of the Union address on Tuesday.  The interview aired on Sunday ahead of the Super Bowl.

In other news, Virginia’s embattled Democratic Governor Ralph Northam has dug in his heels and refused to resign after racist photos emerged from his medical school yearbook. The photo from the 1984 book shows a person dressed in the white robes of the Ku Klux Klan, standing next to a white person wearing blackface. At first Northam admitted that he was in the photo, saying on Friday that he was, “deeply sorry for the decision I made to appear as I did in this photo.” Then on Saturday he denied it but admitted that he once darkened his skin as part of a dance contest at a party during his school years.  The Democratic Party has been nearly unanimous in calling for his resignation but so far Northam continues to refuse. California Representative Karen Bass, the head of the Congressional Black Caucus said in an interview, “I think he’s been completely dishonest and disingenuous…He knew this picture was there, and he could’ve come clean and talked to African-Americans that he’s close to decades ago.” Interestingly Northam’s own Lieutenant Governor is an African American man named Justin Fairfax, who would assume the governorship if Northam were to resign.

Canadians watched a controversial ad during Sunday’s Super Bowl that US Americans did not get to see. A Canadian autoworkers union aired a 30-second commercial critical of US company GM, that GM tried and failed to get withdrawn. The ad accused GM of taking Canadian subsidies and then announcing the closing of a major auto plant in Oshawa, Ontario.

Democrats have introduced the Social Security 2100 Act in the House, an ambitious bill that goes on the offensive against relentless Republican efforts to cut the New Deal era safety-net program. The bill increases benefits across the board, cuts taxes on benefits, and also raises the cost-of-living increase. For those Americans who spent years in low wage jobs, it raises the minimum benefit so that people don’t fall through the cracks when they retire. The new bill would also make small changes that would increase the solvency of the program. It would be the biggest expansion of Social Security since 1972. Democratic Representative John B. Larson of Connecticut, who is the Chair of the Ways and Means Committee and who wrote the legislation, has promised to hold hearings around the nation to garner support for the bill.

The Pentagon announced on Sunday that it would be sending 3,750 more military troops to the US-Mexico Border, bringing the total number to 4,350. The primary task of the troops would be to put up 150 miles of concertina wire along the existing barriers at the border and to assist Customs and Border Protection officers. Critics have accused President Trump of wasting the time and resources of the A...

FEATURING BRENDA EKWURZEL – The latest death toll from the frigid temperatures that hit the American Midwest has hit 21. The so-called Polar Vortex plunged large swathes of the nation into double digit below freezing temperatures, breaking multiple records and sending people into emergency rooms for frostbite and hypothermia that kicked in within minutes. In essence people were subjected to temperatures similar to the Arctic.

Just as the one weather extreme was playing out, scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory issued a report that found a massive hole in a major glacier on Antarctica. The Thwaite Glacier has a cavity about two-thirds the size of Manhattan and about 1,000 feet tall, indicating that glacier melting rates are faster than expected.

Displaying his lack of scientific understanding (and poor spelling), President Trump predictably took to Twitter to declare that the Polar Vortex-related low temperatures were antithetical to the reality of global warming (or waming).

Read her article about the Polar Vortex HERE.

Brenda Ekwurzel, senior climate scientist and the director of climate science for the Climate & Energy Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

FEATURING JOE WILLIAM TROTTER JR. – The labor movement in the United States has long had a complicated history of addressing race and gender. Some of those complexities are encompassed in the history of black labor in the United States over four centuries.

From the time that Africans were enslaved and shipped to Virginia in 1619 to the modern day conditions of black workers, the story of how African American workers including especially black women workers navigated a tumultuous, racist and sexist world is a fascinating one with great relevance today.

Joe William Trotter, Jr. is the Giant Eagle Professor of History and Social Justice and Founder and Director of the Center for African American Urban Studies and the Economy at Carnegie Mellon University. His new book is called ‘Workers on Arrival: Black Labor in the Making of America’. He is also the past President of the Labor and Working Class History Association.