President Donald Trump in an interview on Sunday said that he would not listen to the audio recording of journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s killing at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. The recording had been obtained by Turkish intelligence officers and turned over to several governments including the US. Trump on Fox News on Sunday explained why he wouldn’t listen to the recording of Khashoggi’s killing.

On Saturday Trump toured fire-ravaged parts of California. He was accompanied by current Governor Jerry Brown and Governor Elect Gavin Newson – both strong critics of Trump. After touring the hardest hit town of Paradise, Trump forgot the name of the town during his remarks to reporters as “Pleasure,” before being corrected. He also continued to assert that the California fires are easy problems to solve and that Finland’s approach of “raking and cleaning“ was worth studying. Trump on Saturday in California lectures state officials on the fire problem and refuses to utter the words “climate change.” The latest death toll from the horrific fires is now 77 with 993 people still missing.

A number of high profile midterm election races were resolved over the weekend. In Florida Democrat Bill Nelson conceded the race to Republican Gov. Rick Scott for the Senate seat after trailing Scott by about 10,000 votes. Also in Florida, Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum, a Democrat, conceded to Republican Ron DeSantis for the Governor’s seat that Scott held. Gillum trailed DeSantis by about 33,000 votes. The Florida elections were fraught with issues of race and problematic voting.

In Georgia, Democrat Stacey Abrams also conceded the race for Governor on Friday to Republican Brian Kemp. Georgia’s election was marred by serious voter suppression tactics that Kemp oversaw as Secretary of State. There were also numerous lawsuits over the handling of the election, voter registration, and vote counting. On Sunday Abrams gave her first interview after the concession, to CNN’s Jake Tapper. Abrams does plan to run again in the future.

In California the last major race in question was finally decided with the win by Gil Cisneros over Young Kim for House Representative of the 39th District. This means that Democrats flipped a total of 6 Republican seats this election. All four Republican districts in the traditionally Red Orange County are now Democratic districts.  

And in Mississippi, both Democrats and Republicans are frantically working to salvage one last Senate seat in a runoff election scheduled for November 27th. Republican incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith should have easily won reelection but was stymied by comments she made that the

FEATURING JUAN COLE – Islam is the youngest of the world’s major religions – and sadly the most misunderstood especially in the West. A whopping 1.5 billion humans identify as Muslim. Yet there are political forces that have interpreted an extremist version of the religion and there are racist forces that have deemed them representative of all Muslims.

Now, a new biography of the Prophet Muhammad attempts to correct the record on a holy figure that has been maligned by Islamophobes for years.

Find more about Juan Cole’s book at www.juancole.com.

Juan Cole is the Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan. He has written several books including ‘The New Arabs: How the Wired and Global Youth of the Middle East Is Transforming It,’ and ‘Engaging the Muslim World.’ He has a column at Truthdig.com and his blog, Informed Comment, can be found at juancole.com. His latest book is called Muhammad: Prophet of Peace Amid the Clash of Empires.

FEATURING IOAN GRILLO – A high-profile trial of Joaquín Guzmán Loera, the man better known as El Chapo, has begun in Brooklyn, New York. The notorious Mexican drug lord whose Sinaloa cartel has been responsible for immeasurable brutality, violence, and deaths, had been extradited for the trial from Mexico.

Unfolding as part of the trial is also the immense corruption among Mexican government officials who routinely accepted massive bribes from the cartels. It is fitting that El Chapo’s trial begins at the same time that a refugee caravan from Central America, traveling through Mexico, is arriving at the US border. Many among the refugees are fleeing the drug war in their home countries.

For more information visit www.ioangrillo.com.

Ioan Grillo, award winning journalist and writer based in Mexico City.. His books include El Narco: Inside Mexico’s Criminal Insurgency and Gangster Warlords: Drug Dollars, Killing Fields, and the New Politics of Latin America. He just published an op-ed in the New York Times entitled, El Chapo Puts the Drug War on Trial.

The recount in Florida’s midterm election has officially ended and Ron DeSantis has maintained enough of a lead over Democrat Andrew Gillum for the Governor’s race that he is likely to be declared the winner. For the contentious Senate race between incumbent Bill Nelson – a Democrat – and current Governor Rick Scott, the margin of difference is low enough that election officials now move into a hand-count of ballots that may have been tossed out due to poor handwriting or other problems. The deadline to complete the handout is this Sunday.

In Georgia where the Governor’s race also remains undecided, former Secretary of State Brian Kemp has declared victory but his opponent Stacey Abrams has been buoyed by several recent court wins for recounting votes and accepting mail-in and provisional ballots. One judge set a deadline of Friday evening to certify the results and allow voters to check through a hotline whether their provisional ballots were counted or not. According to Vox, “Abrams’s campaign told reporters on Tuesday that their candidate needs 18,259 votes to trigger a recount and 20,595 votes to trigger a runoff. The campaign also estimated that some 28,716 votes have yet to be counted.”

In her bid to become House Speaker once more, California representative Nancy Pelosi is busy picking up endorsements from party leaders. Civil rights icon Representative John Lewis has backed the 78-year old Pelosi for the leadership position, as has Jim Clyburn who is the third highest ranking Democrat and a prominent member of the Congressional Black Caucus. Pelosi addressed reporters on Thursday.  According to Associated Press, “Pelosi has faced challenges before but this one — fueled by newcomers calling for change and frustrated incumbents who feel shut out of leadership after her many years at the helm — poses perhaps the biggest threat yet.”

The death toll from the Camp Fire in Northern California has been updated and it has now jumped to 63. Although the number of missing people was down to 130 earlier this week it has now jumped back up to 631. According to AP, “The high number of missing people probably includes some who fled the blaze and don’t realize they’ve been reported missing.” To that end Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea will be making the list of missing people public so that those who are on the list can notify authorities that they are safe. About 9,800 homes were destroyed, the majority in the town of Paradise. The air quality across Northern California remains so bad that schools were closed and some public transportation was stopped. The Camp Fire is now 40% contained but many people are not being let back into the area where their homes once stood because of continued dangers from things like downed power lines. In Southern California, people were being let back into the area that had been evacuated. More than 500 homes were destroyed in the Woolsey Fire and 3 people were killed.

The New York Times this week published a major exposé of the inner workings of social media company Facebook. The investigative piece revealed that Facebook executive Sheryl Sandberg and founder Mark Zuckerberg made major missteps in the years after the 2016 election revealed that its user data had been misused.

FEATURING OCTAVIO SOLIS – To be a brown-skinned immigrant in today’s America is to immediately be part of the a demographic that has become demonized and weaponized for political use. Octavio Solis, the acclaimed playwright, grew up along the US-Mexico border in El Paso, Texas. In his new memoir, Retablos: Stories From a Life Lived Along the Border, Solis writes poetic vignettes from his childhood and complicates the simplistic narrative that supporters of President Donald Trump have been fed.

For more information about his book ‘Retablos: Stories From A Life Lived Along The Border’ visit www.octaviosolis.net.

Octavio Solis, written over 20 plays and considered is to be one of the most prominent Latino playwrights in America. He has also produced and directed numerous plays and even produced films, and won awards and fellowships. His new book is called Retablos: Stories From A Life Lived Along The Border.

FEATURING SONALI KOLHATKAR – The recent midterm elections offered an opportunity for America’s moneyed elites to spend their ridiculous wealth on a catalog of their favorite causes and candidates. We are locked in a vicious cycle, where billionaires continue to amass wealth due to policies their influence has bought, which in turn enrich them with even more resources with which to shift the American polity in their favor.

Part of the problem is that billionaires’ control over our democracy is largely invisible. As a recent study by The Guardian showed, high-profile wealthy elites like Warren Buffett or Bill Gates are anomalies. To that point, “[M]ost of the wealthiest US billionaires have made substantial financial contributions—amounting to hundreds of thousands of reported dollars annually, in addition to any undisclosed ‘dark money’ contributions—to conservative Republican candidates and officials who favor the very unpopular step of cutting rather than expanding social security benefits,” write the report’s authors. “Yet, over the 10-year period we have studied, 97% of the wealthiest billionaires have said nothing at all about social security policy.”

Read Sonali Kolhatkar’s entire column HERE.

FEATURING EMANUEL NIEVES – Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell recently reacted to news of the ballooning federal deficit that was created by tax giveaways to the rich and by higher military spending by saying that social safety net programs need to be cut. McConnell said, “It’s disappointing but it’s not a Republican problem,” even though it was Trump and the GOP that rammed through last year’s tax reform bill.

Critics of last year’s GOP tax cuts predicted that the reduced tax revenues would be offset by Republican-led cuts to social safety net programs. And indeed that is exactly what McConnell and his fellow Republicans are doing. McConnell said in an interview with Bloomberg, “The three big entitlement programs that are very popular, Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid, that’s 70 percent of what we spend every year.” The term “entitlement programs” is popular with conservatives to refer to earned benefits and social safety net program.

Meanwhile a new report has zeroed in on a little-acknowledged impact of the tax reform law – how tax cuts are disproportionately benefiting wealthy white Americans. In other words, the tax reform will only worsen the existing racial wealth gap in this country.

Read the report ‘Race, Wealth and Taxes: How the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act Supercharges the Racial Wealth Divide’, HERE.

Emanuel Nieves, Senior Policy Manager at Prosperity Now. He also leads Prosperity Now’s work on predatory lending and coordinates the Assets Building Policy Network. He is the co-author of the new report, ‘Race, Wealth and Taxes: How the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act Supercharges the Racial Wealth Divide’.

**This segment was originally broadcast on October, 18, 2018.

At least 56 are confirmed dead in California’s Camp Fire that wiped out towns in Butte County. There are still about 130 people missing and National Guards troops are leading the search teams to find remains and help identify them. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke toured the destroyed town of Paradise along with California Gov. Jerry Brown. Zinke, who is part of President Donald Trump’s group of cabinet members denying the existence of human-caused climate change said, “Now is not the time to point fingers. There are lots of reasons these catastrophic fires are happening.” The tens of thousands of evacuees that likely have no homes left to go back to have camped out next to a Walmart Parking lot in Chico. Some of them spoke with reporters from the Associated Press. 

The California Utilities Company Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) declared on Wednesday that it may owe billions of dollars in liabilities from wildfire damage throughout the state and that its insurance would not cover those liabilities. According to the New York Times, “State officials have determined that electrical equipment owned by PG&E, including power lines and poles, was responsible for at least 17 of 21 major fires in Northern California last fall.” According to Citigroup, the damages from those fires could total $15 billion and that if the Camp Fire was found to be the fault of a PG&E faulty line, it could add another $15 billion in damages. State utilities customers would either see massive price increases to pay for those damages, or the state would have to bail out the company. The company, whose stock value plummeted by 20% this week, has been investigated for poor management of its power lines. 

Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen visited the US border with Mexico on Thursday where thousands of troops have been deployed on Trump’s order as a caravan of tired refugees begins arriving. Mattis and Nielsen addressed some of the troops. 

In other news, more election races that were too close to call are being resolved and many are going the way of Democrats as mail-in and provisional ballots are counted. In California at least, the predicted “Blue Wave“ has materialized with the declaration of victory by Democrat Katie Porter over Republican incumbent Mimi Walters. According to USA Today, “At least four incumbent Republican House members were swept away in California by last week’s election and two more are still at risk as votes continue to be counted.” Another race between Democrat Gil Cisneros and Republican Young Kim is looking to be a possible win for the Democrat at Ms. Kim’s lead has now narrowed to only 711 votes. Democrats control at least 43 out of California’s 53 House seats.

Republicans have elected a California Representative – Kevin McCarthy – as the new House GOP leader, replacing the retiring Paul Ryan in the New Year. McCarthy will be the House Minority leader and won by a vote of 159-43. In the Senate Leadership, both incumbents, Mitch McConnell and Chuck Schumer were reelected by their respective parties.

FEATURING MELEIZA FIGUEROA – The death toll from Northern California’s “Camp Fire” has jumped to 48 as search and rescue crews find more bodies. The fire itself has also continued to grow and has so far consumed 8,800 structures. The size of the record-breaking blaze is about 130,000 acres – that’s larger than the city of Atlanta. In Southern California the Woolsey and Hill Fires continue to burn as well but are 40% and 90% contained respectively.

Meanwhile just a few minutes before the Camp Fire and the Woolsey Fires began, utilities companies in both areas reported problems with electricity lines. They are now a focus of investigation.

The damage to the environment, to wildlife, to homes, and to the lives of ordinary people is hard to quantify. And worse, this could become the new normal, or as some have put it, the new “abnormal,” in California, as fire season becomes a year-round phenomenon.

Meleiza Figueroa, PhD Candidate in Geography at UC Berkeley and was the Press Director for the Stein/Baraka 2016 Presidential campaign, and Executive Producer of the Green News Network. She has been a longtime political educator and organizer, involved in a wide range of movements for social and environmental justice in California and is a correspondent for Rising Up With Sonali.

FEATURING JUAN CARLOS – The first wave of the refugee caravan from Central America arrived in Tijuana on Tuesday aboard 9 buses. Most of the migrants are from Honduras and have been traveling for over a month on foot and on trucks or buses when possible. The rest remain in Mexico and are expected to begin arriving in the US over the next several days.

President Donald Trump has just issued new, restrictive rules for asylum seekers, which are likely to be challenged in court. There are thousands of US military troops that have been deployed to the border and in some parts of there was a show of putting up barbed wire. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis is at the border as well this week. Trump used the refugee caravan to score political points ahead of the midterm elections, tweeting about it dozens of times. Since the election he has been silent on the issue.

We go now to Mexico City to connect up with a photojournalist who has been traveling with the caravan and documenting it visually.

Find Juan Carlos work at www.JuanCarlosPhotos.com and follow him at instagram.com/photojuancarlos.

Juan Carlos, freelance photographer documenting social issues and humanitarian crises, originally from El Salvador, now based in Los Angeles. He has been traveling with the refugee caravan from Central America, documenting its journey.