FEATURING KRISTY DRUTMAN – As the United Nations climate conference enters its second week in Katowice, Poland, US President Donald Trump’s Administration saw fit to promote coal and other fossil fuels at a side event on Monday. Young climate activists from the US were having none of it and a group disrupted the COP24 coal event. They began by laughing when the speaker suggested fossil fuels were important and then broke into a coordinated chant of “Keep it in the ground.”

At the same time here in the United States, hundreds of young climate activists gathered in the halls of Congress and showed up at California Representative Nancy Pelosi’s office in Washington DC demanding that she definitively back a bill dubbed the “Green New Deal.”

Kristy Drutman, SustainUS delegate and the California Digital Campaigner with 350.org. She is also the creator of a podcast and media series called Brown Girl Green.

FEATURING NICOLE SEYMOUR – There is bad news about the global climate every day. We’re burning more fossil fuels instead of less, the predictions are more dire than scientists thought, and the impacts are shattering: deadly wildfires, super-storms and unseasonal hurricanes, horrendous heat waves.

Glaciers are melting, whole species are disappearing, and there are seemingly insurmountable political obstacles to doing anything about it. We have resorted to turning on one another and laying blame for using too much plastic, or too much water, or eating meat, and so on.

It appears as though our human brains are not quite capable of tackling such a massive existential crisis. Showcasing the doom and gloom doesn’t seem to work. In fact it may be having the opposite effect, causing us to retreat.

Now, a new book aims to convince us that art, creativity, and even irreverence are necessary to move forward on climate change and that environmentalists need to shed their reputation of being killjoys.

Nicole Seymour, Associate Professor of English at California State University at Fullerton. Her earlier book was Strange Natures: Futurity, Empathy, and the Queer Ecological Imagination. Her new book is called Bad Environmentalism: Irony and Irreverence in the Ecological Age.

Several leading Democrats have raised the prospect of impeachment and even possible jail time for President Donald Trump as a result of new information from an investigation related to the Special Counsel’s probe. Court filings made on Friday indicate that Trump is at the center of a major probe regarding election campaign finance over “hush money” payments made to two women ahead of the election. Representative Jerry Nadler, who will be chair of the House Judiciary Committee next year said that Trump was, “at the center of a massive fraud,” and that, “They would be impeachable offenses.” In an interview on Face the Nation, Representative Adam Schiff even suggested jail time. Schiff will be the Chair of the House Intelligence Committee next year.

Trump denied any wrongdoing, tweeting on Monday morning that, “Democrats can’t find a Smocking Gun tying the Trump campaign to Russia after James Comey’s testimony. No Smocking Gun…No Collusion.” @FoxNews That’s because there was NO COLLUSION. So now the Dems go to a simple private transaction, wrongly call it a campaign contribution…” Mr. Trump misspelled “smoking” twice in that tweet. He added in a second tweet, “it is only a CIVIL CASE, like Obama’s – but it was done correctly by a lawyer and there would not even be a fine. Lawyer’s liability if he made a mistake, not me.”  But AP explained that, “federal law requires disclosure of payments made ‘for the purposes of influencing’ an election,” regardless of whether the money came from a campaign or personal funds.

In other news, Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner is at the center of an exposé by the New York Times. The paper on Saturday published a lengthy investigation into how Kushner, “had been having private, informal conversations with [Saudi Crown] Prince Mohammed bin Salman.” The two men were on a first-name basis and their conversations continued even after the brutal killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi which the crown prince is known to have orchestrated. The Times reporters wrote, “the ties between Mr. Kushner and Prince Mohammed did not happen on their own. The prince and his advisers, eager to enlist American support for his hawkish policies in the region and for his own consolidation of power, cultivated the relationship with Mr. Kushner for more than two years, according to documents, emails and text messages.” Kushner has been the Crown Prince’s most stalwart supporter inside the White House.

President Trump’s pick for Attorney General is being met with strong skepticism on several fronts even from inside his own party. In an interview on NBC, Republican Senator Rand Paul said he opposed the nomination of William Barr, who served as George H. W. Bush’s Justice Department head as well.  Others have raised the worrying prospect of Barr’s tenure during the elder Bush’s administration. Slate.com said that, “Barr recommended to Bush that he pardon six individuals involved in the Iran-Contra scandal, four of whom had already been convicted of lying to federal and congressional...

FEATURING STEVEN HILL – The “Yellow Vests” protests in France have rocked the European nation for weeks now. Thousands of activists have taken to the streets and organized all over the country, donning yellow vests to signify their demands that the French President back down from high fuel taxes. But, even after Emmanuel Macron and his government backed down on the proposed tax hike, protests have continued. At least 4 people have been killed and hundreds injured and arrested.

The protests have been cast as a people’s response to a necessary action to curb climate change. US President Donald Trump jumped on that framing tweeting on Tuesday, “I am glad that my friend Emmanuel Macron and the protestors in Paris have agreed with the conclusion I reached two years ago. The Paris Agreement is fatally flawed because it raises the price of energy for responsible countries while whitewashing some of the worst polluters.”

But others have pointed out that this is not a matter of people versus the climate, but rather of the rich versus the rest.

Steven Hill, was recently the journalist-in-residence at the Berlin Social Science Center. He is a political writer and author of five books, including Raw Deal: How the ‘Uber Economy’ and Runaway Capitalism Are Screwing American Workers, as well as Europe’s Promise: Why the European Way Is the Best Hope in an Insecure Age.

FEATURING LINDSAY KOSHGARIAN – The House and Senate on Thursday passed a stopgap funding measure to keep the federal government funded for two weeks and postpone a political battle over funding for Trump’s border wall. Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi who is seeking the position of House Speaker next year, spoke to reporters about the wall calling it “immoral.”

Trump wants $5 billion for the wall. Some Democratic leaders, rather than outright reject that figure, have said that they will back $1.6 billion for the wall and/or immigration enforcement at the border.

The new deadline for a federal government spending bill is now December 21st.

Lindsay Koshgarian, Research Director at National Priorities Project.

A credible case of voter fraud has finally emerged and Republican Party lawmakers and President are largely silent about it. Republican Mark Harris won the Congressional race in North Carolina’s District 9 beating his rival Democrat Dan McCready by less than a 1,000 votes. Now it has been revealed that hundreds or more of questionable absentee ballots were filed in the race and that a political consultant working for the Harris campaign may have tampered with ballots. Election officials have delayed their certification of the vote and an investigation is underway. McCready withdrew his concession in the race on Thursday.  Republicans, who have made it part of their election strategy to curb voting rights alleging voter fraud are largely silent on the North Carolina story, despite the fact that officials knew something was amiss when Harris won the primary last May. Robert Pittenger, who lost the primary to Harris by just a few hundred votes believed he too had been victim of voter fraud. Party officials apparently ignored his claims.

The New York Times on Thursday published a bombshell article centered on the story of an undocumented immigrant who worked as a hotel maid at the Trump Golf Course in New Jersey since 2013. “Victorina Morales has made Donald J. Trump’s bed, cleaned his toilet and dusted his crystal golf trophies. When he visited as president, she was directed to wear a pin in the shape of the American flag adorned with a Secret Service logo,” writes reporter Miriam Jordan. The piece cites that there were several undocumented workers at Trump’s resort and interviewed a second woman named Sandra Diaz who was undocumented when she was hired but now has legal status. Trump has made it a central part of his campaign and his presidential tenure to demonize undocumented immigrants and even assert that his businesses have never hired them.  Morales, who is from Guatemala, currently has an asylum application pending. She told the Times, “We are tired of the abuse, the insults, the way he talks about us when he knows that we are here helping him make money. We sweat it out to attend to his every need and have to put up with his humiliation.”

The House and Senate on Thursday passed a stopgap funding measure to keep the federal government funded for two weeks and postpone a political battle over funding for Trump’s border wall. Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi who is seeking the position of House Speaker next year, spoke to reporters about the wall calling it “immoral.” 

Trump has decided on the next US Ambassador to the United Nations – and it’s a person with barely a year of diplomatic experience. Heather Nauert, who spent the majority of her career as a Fox News anchor, joined the State Department last year, and will now be the US’s top diplomat at the world body. While her predecessor Nikki Haley also lacked foreign policy and diplomatic experience, she did run a state as Governor of South Carolina. Haley announced her resignation earlier this year, joining the long line of Trump administration officials that have left their positions prematurely. According to the

The Global Carbon Project released its annual report on greenhouse gas emissions and the news is not good. After several years of very small increases, the rate of carbon use jumped from 2017 to 2018 by 2.7 percent. The figures were announced during the on-going COP24 climate meeting in Katowice, Poland where delegates from around the world are discussing the implementation of the Paris Accord – a climate accord that President Donald Trump has pulled the US out of. According to the Guardian newspaper, “The rise is due to the growing number of cars on the roads and a renaissance of coal use and means the world remains on the track to catastrophic global warming.” Additionally, “Almost all countries are contributing to the rise, with emissions in China up 4.7%, in the US by 2.5% and in India by 6.3% in 2018. The EU’s emissions are near flat, but this follows a decade of strong falls.”

Meanwhile, residents of Paradise, California were allowed to return to what were once their homes on Wednesday. Authorities deemed it safe enough a month after the state’s most ferocious and deadly blaze burned down the small retirement community in hours. Those who chose to return had to wear hazmat suits and gloves as the fire likely released heavy metals and other toxins that are still present. It was the first time that many saw the state of their town and their homes. Survivors of the Camp Fire returned to what’s left of their homes in Paradise, California. The fire killed at least 85 people. Eleven are still missing. The unusual fire is linked to climate-driven warming.

In other news, a bi-partisan group of Senators have introduced a bill to denounce Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman for his role in ordering the brutal murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said in a statement, “This resolution — without equivocation — definitively states that the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia was complicit in the murder of Mr. Khashoggi and has been a wrecking ball to the region jeopardizing our national security interests on multiple fronts.” According to Vox, “The resolution also takes issue with Saudi Arabia’s other actions in the region, such as human rights abuses related to its war in Yemen, the diplomatic and economic blockade against Qatar, and the imprisonment of political dissidents.” A total of six Senators brought the resolution including Republicans Marco Rubio and Todd Young, and Democrats Dianne Feinstein, Ed Markey, and Chris Coons.

The Washington Post reported that within weeks of Trump’s election in 2016, the Saudi Arabian government rented hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of hotel rooms at the Trump Hotel in Washington DC. The rooms were part of a controversial program offering US military veterans free trips to nation’s capitol in exchange for them lobbying lawmakers against certain laws that the Saudis opposed. The Post interviewed some of the veterans who participated in the trips and discovered they were unaware of being used by the Saudi government. Trump is under investigation by the Attorneys General of D.C. and Maryland for violations of the emoluments clause of the US Constitution that prohibits receiving gifts from foreign governments.

Trump’s former campaign chair

FEATURING MARY BOTTARI – Wisconsin’s Republicans are sore losers. The GOP-dominated state government engaged in a brazen power grab this week working feverishly over several days and into the night on Tuesday to pass a sweeping set of bills by early Wednesday curbing the power of incoming Democratic elected officials. They faced thousands of protesters who marched, chanted, rallied, and denounced the GOP’s moves outside the State Capitol.

According to the New York Times, the measures, “limit early voting, require lawmaker approval for the attorney general to settle certain lawsuits, and give lawmakers, not the governor, the majority of appointments on an economic development board. They also prevent [Governor Elect] Tony Evers from banning guns in the Wisconsin Capitol without permission from legislators.” But Republican lawmakers are justifying their move saying it’s simply a way to balance power.

Wisconsin’s current Governor Scott Walker was shocked by his loss to Mr. Evers. He is expected to sign the bills into law as one of his last major acts as Governor.

Mary Bottari, Director of the Center for Media and Democracy‘s Real Economy Project.

FEATURING DANA FRANK – The caravan of refugees waiting at the US-Mexico border in Tijuana is dominated by Hondurans. There is good reason for that. The Central American nation of Honduras has become an increasingly violent place, plagued by state repression and paramilitary forces. Buåçt it is also a country where resistance has a long history and a powerful protest movement has been pushing back.

Most importantly – and this is a fact that is often obscured in media coverage of Honduras – the United States has played a critical role in undermining democracy in Honduras.

Dana Frank, Professor of History Emerita at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She is the author of numerous books including Bananeras: Women Transforming the Banana Unions of Latin America, Buy American: The Untold Story of Economic Nationalism, and more. Since the 2009 military coup her articles about human rights and U.S. policy in Honduras have appeared in The Nation, New York Times, Politico Magazine, Foreign Affairs.com, Foreign Policy.com, Miami Herald, Los Angeles Times, and more. She now joins me to discuss her newest book, The Long Honduran Night: Resistance, Terror, and The United States in the Aftermath of the Coup.

CIA director Gina Haspel briefed US Senators on Tuesday about the murder of Saudi dissident journalist and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. Senators concluded unequivocally that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman was responsible for ordering Khashoggi’s murder at the Saudi Embassy in Istanbul. Republican Senators Bob Corker, and Lindsey Graham, concluded in strong terms that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman was responsible for the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. The GOP Senators are breaking with President Donald Trump as well as State Department head Mike Pompeo and Defense Department head James Mattis on the issue.

In other news, the Special Counsel’s investigators have filed court documents requesting a short to no prison sentence for Trump’s former national security advisor Michael Flynn. The move is bad news for the President as it means that Flynn has been cooperating so well with investigators that he may have earned his freedom. Indeed the court filing on Tuesday, according to AP, “provides the first details of Flynn’s assistance in the Russia investigation, including that he participated in 19 interviews with prosecutors and cooperated extensively in a separate and undisclosed criminal probe.” Mr. Flynn pled guilty to various charges just over a year ago, becoming the first of five of Trump’s colleagues to do so.

The Attorneys General of Washington DC and Maryland have indicated that they are filing subpoenas of the Trump organization, the Treasury Department and dozens of other agencies, businesses and institutions, as part of a probe into whether the President has personally profited from his office. Maryland Attorney General Brian E. Frosh said, “We’re seeking to confirm the information that everybody already knows: Trump’s violation of the emoluments clause of the Constitution. He’s received numerous payments from foreign governments and state governments and they’ve been funneled, at least in part, through the Trump (hotel) in D.C.”

Politico reported on Tuesday that the National Republican Congressional Committee had been hacked into ahead of this fall’s midterm elections. According to Politico, “The email accounts of four senior aides at the National Republican Congressional Committee were surveilled for several months.” Once the intrusion was discovered, the NRCC contacted the FBI and conducted an internal investigation. But several senior House Republicans including Paul Ryan, were not even aware it had happened until Politico contacted them for comment. Additionally, “Party officials would not say when the hack began or who was behind it, although they privately believe it was a foreign agent because of the nature of the attack.” President Trump has routinely mocked Democrats for having their servers hacked into in 2016. Just this past July he said, “The DNC should be ashamed of themselves for allowing themselves to be hacked. They had bad defenses, and they were able to be hacked…I heard they were trying to hack the Republicans, too. But, and this may be wrong, but they had much stronger defenses.”

The out-going Republican dominated state government in Wisconsin has passed a broad set of bills this week, voting early Wednesday morning, to weaken the power of the incoming Democratic governor and attorney general. Lawmakers worked feverishly through the night as thousands of protesters gathered at the State Capitol outside denouncing them for their...