Ralph Nader Radio Hour

Ralph Nader
  • 4.8 (1.2K)
  • News
  • Updated Weekly

Ralph Nader talks about what’s happening in America, what’s happening around the world, and most importantly what’s happening underneath it all. www.ralphnaderradiohour.com

  1. 6d ago

    AI Backlash

    In a program devoted to the topic of AI, Ralph welcomes first, Tyson Slocum, director of the energy group at Public Citizen, who tells us about the local backlash against the construction of data centers. Then New York Times climate writer, David Wallace-Wells, explains how the Big Tech CEOs did not count on human beings possibly rising up against them and their machines. Tyson Slocum is director of Public Citizen’s Energy Program, covering the regulation of petroleum, natural gas and power markets. He serves on the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s “Energy & Environmental Markets Advisory Committee,” and frequently intervenes before the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) representing the interests of household consumers. The basic question is they (Big Tech companies) are developing essentially governmental powers— governmental powers— not market powers or corporate powers. They’ve reached a level now where they are our government, the corporate government. And we have to escalate our urgencies to that level. It’s more than just the hour is late. The hour is over. So we have to go back and respond with a completely unprecedented level of public interest, standards, etc., including whether this technology (AI) should be allowed at all. Ralph Nader I definitely see that we are in a speculative bubble. That bubble will burst. And folks within the AI industry, like Sam Altman, have been very clear where they have publicly said, when the bubble breaks, we expect to get a financial bailout because our AI applications are so important to the national interest. Tyson Slocum And the backlash to data centers isn’t just about, oh, I’m concerned about my power rates going up or I’m concerned about the noise or the water usage. It’s also a civil rights and human rights issue where people are saying, I don’t like this vision that Big Tech is laying out for us that is going to be produced in this building down the street from our community. Tyson Slocum David Wallace-Wells is a columnist and staff writer at the New York Times, where he writes a weekly newsletter on climate change, technology, and the future of the planet. He is the author of the book, The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming. His recent feature in the New York Times Magazine is “AI Populism is Here. And No One is Ready.” Just over the last six months, there’s been a huge surge in anti-AI and in particular anti-data center organizing and activism in the U.S. And you can see that on the ground where you see huge crowds coming to town halls to protest new data centers that are being proposed. You see some towns that have approved those data centers literally having their entire city council voted out of office as a result. And you see it in these surveys where within the span of just a few months. Huge sentiment flips among the American public from being basically agnostic about AI with some misgivings and some optimism to pretty striking majority opposition to the technology and the infrastructure build out that it requires. David Wallace-Wells This (AI) is a technological revolution that has been designed and is being built by an extremely small number of people with very particular idiosyncratic, in certain ways, I think, somewhat sociopathic worldviews. David Wallace-Wells News 6/5/26 * Our top story this week comes from Congress, where the House has, at long last, successfully pushed through a War Powers Resolution on Iran. As NPR notes “The resolution had originally been set for a vote two weeks ago, but Republican leaders sent House members home early for a May recess when it appeared the largely Democratic-backed measure had enough Republican votes for passage.” However, this did not substantially erode Republican support and the resolution passed by a margin of 215 to 208, with four Republicans, led by Thomas Massie, voting for a cessation of hostilities. The measure now heads to the Senate, where Democrats have been pressing the matter as well but face an uphill battle, and even if it passes through the upper chamber, President Trump is likely to veto the measure if it arrives on his desk. Moreover, House progressives are now pushing a new War Powers Resolution, this one focusing on Lebanon. POLITICO reports Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib forced a vote this Thursday on a resolution calling for the removal of U.S. troops from Lebanon in seven days, despite opposition from the leadership of her own party. The resolution failed by a wide margin, but still garnered a respectable 92 votes, including support from Congressman Massie. Symbolic though they may be, these votes show a growing backlash to Trump’s military adventurism abroad, particularly in the Middle East. With oil prices continuing to rise, this discontent shows no sign of abating. * The main news this week however were the primaires. Tuesday saw a wave of major Democratic primaries across the country. Faiz Shakir, longtime advisor to Bernie Sanders and Executive Director of More Perfect Union, reports that election night was a “clean sweep for Bernie’s endorsements” with five out of five of these candidates set to win the Democratic nomination in their respective races. One race Shakir highlighted was Sam Forstag’s bid for Congress in Montana’s 1st congressional district. Forstag, a firefighter – technically a “smokejumper,” who parachutes into remote areas to extinguish wildfires – earned the endorsements of AOC, Jamie Raskin, Pramila Jayapal and others, as well as many unions, in addition to that of Senator Sanders. Meanwhile in the Montana Senate race, Alani Bankhead has triumphed in the Democratic primary. According to Semafor, “Republicans suspect Bankhead will essentially cede the race to [independent candidate Seth] Bodnar (despite her denials), which would make the general election more competitive.” Bodnar is the former president of the University of Montana and his campaign is backed by former Democratic Senator Jon Tester. One recent poll of a head-to-head match up of Bodnar against Republican nominee Kurt Alme shows the candidates in a dead heat. * In New Jersey, two more Sanders-endorsed candidates have emerged victorious: Analilia Mejia and Dr. Adam Hamawy. Mejia won the special election to replace now-Governor Mikie Sherill in April, beating out former Congressman Tom Malinowksi, the heavy favorite in that race. Mejia is very likely to win this seat again in November, as she already defeated the Republican nominee, Joe Hathaway, in the special election. This from MorristownGreen. Perhaps more surprisingly is the victory of Dr. Adam Hamawy. Now a plastic surgeon, he has distinguished himself for his heroism: saving the life of now-Illinois Senator Tammy Duckworth when her Blackhawk helicopter was shot down in Iraq, serving as a first responder to the 9/11 attacks, and most recently, for his work in Gaza. As the Intercept puts it, “In 2024, [Hamawy]...went to Gaza to provide medical aid to Palestinians wounded by Israeli forces and was temporarily trapped there after Israel closed the Rafah border crossing. When the crossing was reopened, Hamawy was among a small group who refused to leave on demands that more medical workers be let in.” Hamawy’s progressive policy platform includes support for Medicare for All, abolishing ICE, and opposing military aid to Israel. He is almost guaranteed to win this D+13 seat, succeeding Congresswoman Bonnie Watson Coleman. * The candidates Bernie endorsed in California also prevailed, with Randy Villegas poised to win his primary in the state’s 22nd congressional district and Jane Kim winning her race for California Insurance Commissioner, but the results from the state overall are more mixed. As of now, Republican Gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton leads in the count, with centrist Democrat and former Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra in a close second and progressive billionaire Tom Steyer in third. However, as the count continues, Steyer’s margin continues to improve while Hilton’s ebbs away – meaning the runoff could end up being Becerra vs. Steyer, though it is still too early to say. A similar dynamic is unfolding in Los Angeles, where incumbent Mayor Karen Bass is ensured a slot in the general election while her opponents – Councilwoman Nithya Raman to her left and former reality TV star Spencer Pratt to her right – continue to duke it out for the second slot. With California’s notoriously glacial counting pace and the LA Times reporting that millions of ballots remain to be counted, all we can do is watch and wait. * However, up in Minnesota, another Bernie-backed candidate is on the road to victory. On Tuesday, Peggy Flanagan, the Lieutenant Governor seeking the Senate seat being vacated by Amy Klobuchar, overwhelmingly won the endorsement of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party. Her closest rival, Congresswoman Angie Craig, did not even bother to attend the party convention. While Craig decried the supposed anti-democratic nature of a party convention endorsement, Flanagan posted a video telling Craig “If you can’t show up and face your own party, then you’re not ready to face Republicans,” per the Nation. Flanagan can boast the endorsement of many high-profile progressives in addition to Sanders, such as Senators Elizabeth Warren, Ed Markey, and Minnesota’s own Tina Smith, among many others. If elected, she would be the first ever Native American woman to serve as Governor of an American state. * More much-publicized endorsements came this week from AOC and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who both endorsed DSA-aligned legislative candidates, but as City and State NY notes, not the same ones. Mamdani gave his blessing to Darializa Avila Chevalier, a DSA-backed candidate running to unseat powerful Rep. Adriano Espaillat who is seeking his sixth term in Congress. Polling shows Avila Chev

    1h 33m

  2. May 30

    The Assault on Lebanon

    Ralph speaks to independent investigative journalist Lylla Younes to discuss her reporting on Israel's assault on southern Lebanon. Then, Ralph and media studies professor Robin Andersen discuss her new book "The Complicit Lens: US Media Coverage of the Genocide in Gaza." Lylla Younes is a Beirut-based journalist. She is an editor at The Public Source, and a frequent contributor to Drop Site News. What we’ve seen in the past several days is really an escalation of what’s been happening since March 2nd (when the US-Israeli assault on Iran took off) and then obviously the ceasefire… What we see is a campaign of ethnic cleansing from the Israeli military in Lebanon. And that has looked like the Gaza playbook sped up, you could say, in southern Lebanon. It’s looked like invading and bulldozing homes; tearing up roads; destroying, booby-trapping, and detonating entire villages and cultural sites. It’s looked like targeting medical personnel—killing, at this point, over 100 since March 2nd (this is in addition to the 130 or so who were killed in the last round of fighting in 2024). In addition to that, the targeting and killing of journalists who are reporting near the border. I think it’s important to note there’s practically no one left in the border region. Having a press vest on and a microphone and a camera is basically like having a target on your back at this point. Lylla Younes The pager attack was, I think it’s fair to say, one of the darker days of Lebanese history. I think regardless of people’s feelings about Hezbollah, the fact that you are setting men alight literally in the streets in cities all across the country, killing children, maiming children—the mark of the pager attack was that these pagers that Hezbollah members were carrying exploded in their faces and blinded them. So you have thousands of blinded people, people missing fingers. And again, some of these are relatives of Hezbollah members. It was a massive event that overwhelmed hospitals across the country. And it also marked the beginning of that 66 day [period] of escalated fighting. And it showed how deeply infiltrated Hezbollah was in an intelligence capacity. This was quite a feat by the Israeli Mossad. Lylla Younes Robin Andersen is professor emerita of media studies at Fordham University and an award-winning author of a dozen single- and co-authored books. She serves as a Project Censored Judge, and contributes to the annual State of the Free Press. She is on the Board of Directors of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), where she also writes regularly, and is an Izzy Award Judge for the Park Center for Independent Media. Her latest book is The Complicit Lens: US Media Coverage of Israel’s Genocide in Gaza. In my book, I look at the directives of the New York Times and CNN, and then I compare it to media coverage. And I found that, in fact, these were the ways [the directives that were passed down] in which the media was presenting the genocide in Gaza…But in terms of the Israeli directives, CNN was putting their copy through their Jerusalem bureau and the IDF was looking at it. The New York Times was simply going along with Israeli talking points. So we did find that. And the real telling part was when they finally did say that Israel dropped the bomb, it was only when Israel had admitted—or put their propaganda to the next level, which was to claim that they had killed a Hamas commander or a fighter or somebody involved in Hamas. And we found that also in the BBC. So those were direct things that came from Israel. And abandoning their journalistic mission, the US media was basically following the dictates of a foreign government. Robin Andersen Their form of censorship was basically murder. They knew that as the genocide wore on (and Israel controlled the narrative for a very long time, and then it started to collapse) as over time we saw on the internet, we saw on our handheld devices the documentation of what was happening [they’d lose control of the narrative]. And so in a total propaganda environment, what we have to have is no noise, no opposition, no alternative information. And Israel really was trying to achieve a total propaganda environment. It wasn’t enough that they had establishment in legacy media and those media were allowing outside influences to direct their editorial decisions. That wasn’t quite enough. Robin Andersen News 5/29/26 * This week, Democratic Socialist Mayor of New York City Zohran Mamdani unveiled his plan to construct 200,000 new rent-stabilized homes in the city over the next decade, PIX 11 reports, making good on a campaign promise that many supposedly savvy political observers doubted. In addition to the new construction, Mamdani vowed to “preserve and stabilize” an additional 200,000 via New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) repairs, increased housing code enforcement, and a special focus on development in the Bronx. In his announcement, Mamdani said “We are the largest city in the nation. We have the resources, the talent, and the will to achieve this.” * In the federal government, one of the most controversial members of the Trump administration – former Democratic Congresswoman and presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard – has resigned her position as Director of National Intelligence (DNI). The BBC reports Gabbard is citing her husband’s recent bone cancer diagnosis as the reason for her departure, but also notes that Gabbard “has largely been out of public view even as the US took military action against Iran, put pressure on Cuba, and…removed Venezuela’s president.” In theory, these would all require a substantial degree of participation from and coordination with the DNI, but Gabbard seemed pointedly out of the loop. The actions of the administration have also been diametrically opposed to Gabbard’s past foreign policy positions, defined by her 2020 slogan “no more regime change wars.” Others have noted that Gabbard now joins former Attorney General Pam Bondi, Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer and DHS Secretary Kristi Noem as high-profile women ousted from the Trump administration while glaringly incompetent men like Pete Hegseth remain in their posts. * Turning to Texas, this week saw a political bloodbath in the runoffs for the primaries held back in March. The topline of course is that scandal-plagued Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, backed by Trump, triumphed over powerful longtime incumbent Senator John Cornyn. With the backing of the president, Paxton wiped the floor with Cornyn, winning around two-thirds of the vote. Yet Paxton goes into the general election against James Talarico very weak. 35% of those polled “Disapprove Strongly” of Paxton with only 15% saying they “Strongly Approve” according to the Texas Politics Project and even the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) condemned Paxton’s “lies” “incompetence” personal scandals and corruption in now-deleted press releases. Further down the ballot, incumbent Democratic Members of Congress Al Green and Julie Johnson have been defeated in their primary run-offs, after being forced into Member-on-Member races by the Texas redistricting scheme. * Meanwhile in Michigan, NOTUS reports the Working Families Party (WFP) has endorsed progressive Senate hopeful Abdul El-Sayed. This primary campaign, with El-Sayed running against moderate Congresswoman Haley Stevens and liberal state Sen. Mallory McMorrow, has become a bruising tripartite affair pitting the three major factions within the Democratic Party against one another. Recently, El-Sayed has taken the lead in this race, which WFP hopes to help consolidate, saying it is prepared to go “all in” on this race. WFP is feeling confident following their role in helping to ensure victory for Chris Rabb in Pennsylvania and Analilia Mejia in New Jersey. * In the Garden State, Senator Andy Kim was caught in a cloud of pepper spray this week as he joined protestors outside of a privately-run ICE detention facility, NJ.com reports. The protests began as a result of an ongoing hunger strike inside of the facility, which has led many high-profile New Jersey Democrats – including Governor Mikie Sherill and Congressman Robert Menendez Jr. in addition to Senator Kim – to call for the facility’s closure. Following the confrontation, Kim stated that “What we saw here is unfortunately just what we see all over the country…It’s sad…sad day.” At another point, Kim said “The cruelty that you see behind me, this is the point…Right now, I’m trying to have them not point guns at us.” * In another case of outrageous overreach by the Trump administration, Fox reports the Treasury Department has served subpoenas to CodePink activist Medea Benjamin and political streamer and influencer Hasan Piker seeking “financial, logistical and communications information” regarding their recent humanitarian voyage to Cuba. According to this story, the Treasury probe – handled through their Office of Foreign Assets Control – is primarily concerned with whether the convoy “violated U.S. sanctions laws through the financing, coordination or delivery of goods to Cuba, including potential contacts with Cuban government personnel or entities on the island.” The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has condemned the probe, writing that “Weaponizing the Treasury Department to target Americans for exercising their constitutional right to support human rights is unacceptable.” CAIR went on to call the investigation “performative and politically-motivated,” contending that “Every American who believes in the rule of law and human rights should stand in solidarity with Medea and demand that the Treasury Department drop its McCarthyite witch hunt.” * The Democrats meanwhile are once again conspiring against one another. The Bulwark reports the campaign to unseat Democratic

    1h 21m

  3. May 23

    Unions Hiding/A Solution to Gerrymandering

    Ralph welcomes back union organizer, Chris Townsend, to discuss the reasons why the AFL-CIO shrinks from effectively fighting for its members and expanding the power of workers. Then, political scientist Lee Drutman lays out a system of proportional representation that would take away the incentive to gerrymander congressional districts. Plus, Ralph gives some quick takes on Thomas Massie’s primary loss, fish hopped up on cocaine, and the situations in Lebanon and Ukraine. Chris Townsend has been a union member and labor leader for more than 45 years. He was most recently the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) International Union Organizing Director. Previously, he was an International Representative and Political Action Director for the United Electrical Workers Union (UE), and he has held local positions in both the SEIU and UFCW. [The upcoming AFL-CIO] convention is deliberately kept secret. It’s what I describe as sort of a hideout strategy. It enables the leadership to not have to discuss or take positions that for them are difficult, such as: What is the labor movement going to do to confront the rampant lawlessness and criminality of the Trump regime? What is the labor movement going to do to address the rampaging inflation that is eating up living standards? There’s no wage policy. There’s no bargaining policy of the Federation. What are they going to do to address the ongoing national health care crisis and disaster?... And what are they doing about the crisis of the unorganized? Chris Townsend The labor movement finds itself (I would submit) with the leadership disinterested in going out and organizing the unorganized. But even for those who do (and there are some), the laws—Taft-Hartley primary among them—provide such a minefield that we have to run through, that our ability to organize on any scale for decades has been stopped. And therefore, we are condemned to a perpetual shrinking size, resources, and whatnot. [And what] might help for folks to figure out how or why this is happening is that the labor movement is systematically being converted from trade union fighting organizations, membership-driven fighting organizations, to harmless not-for-profit organizations. And this is today’s administrative layer of trade union leaders that don’t see anything wrong with that. But that doesn’t help anyone in the shop, in the office, in the workplace. And it doesn’t help anyone looking to the labor movement for something better—better treatment, better wages, better benefits, better conditions, better health and safety in the workplace. Chris Townsend Lee Drutman is a senior fellow in the Political Reform program at New America, where he focuses on electoral reform, Congress, and democratic health. He writes the newsletter Undercurrent Events and co-hosts the podcast Politics in Question. And he is the author of The Business of America is Lobbying and Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop: The Case for Multiparty Democracy in America. The whole issue of gerrymandering is really just an outgrowth of this way that we use single-winner districts with winner-take-all votes. It’s also what entrenches the two-party system in the US, which limits the choice of voters. So there’s this one weird voting mechanism that we have that most countries have gotten rid of, that is an antiquated voting system, that preserves the two-party system and makes gerrymandering just inevitable—and that’s the use of single-member districts. Now, in a proportional system, you take away the districts, and you do this statewide, you can carve up larger states into a few multi-member districts. And then seats get allocated proportionally by party share. That takes away the entire incentive of gerrymandering, it gives voters everywhere meaningful choices, meaningful votes, and it is just a superior system of representing the pluralism and diversity of our pluralistic and diverse society. Lee Drutman People like the idea of proportional representation as basic fairness—that people think that parties should get seats in proportion to the share of votes they get. I did some polling on it a few years ago, and I’m hoping to do a little bit more… But I think that one of the challenges is people don’t entirely understand how it works. And so it’s a challenge to poll people on a concept that they don’t know about. But I think more and more people understand it. And from the polling I’ve seen, at a principles-based level, people get the idea that proportionality is a form of fairness, and people like fairness. Lee Drutman Katy O’Donnell is the editorial director at Haymarket Books, a radical, independent, nonprofit book publisher based in Chicago. News 5/22/26 * Our first story this week has to do with what appears to be the impending downfall of ultrazionist media personality, Bari Weiss. Weiss, who resigned from the New York Times to found the Free Press and then sold that venture to become “Editor-in-Chief” for CBS News under the Ellison regime, is reportedly facing down the barrel of her role being scaled back substantially. Puck reports “As Paramount closes in on its acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery…members of the senior leadership team have had informal discussions about changing Bari’s mandate at CBS News—and, eventually, CNN—in ways that would give her less control over the linear product.” This piece cites her missteps stewarding CBS News, including her inability to improve the ratings for Evening News, even failing to secure new anchor Tony Dokoupil a travel visa to China in time for President Trump’s recent visit to the People’s Republic. While a total dismissal of Weiss seems unlikely in the near future, such a dramatic reduction in her clout would constitute a tremendous, humbling blow. * Moving to state-level news, last week, Colorado Democratic Governor Jared Polis announced he would be commuting the sentence of former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters, who was sentenced to nine years in prison for tampering with voting systems to overturn Joe Biden’s victory in the Centennial State. Peters will now be eligible for parole June 1st. This move has been widely condemned, most notably by the Colorado Democratic Party which voted by a margin of over 90% to officially censure Polis. In a statement, the CDP wrote, “Reducing [Peters’] sentence now, under pressure from Donald Trump, is not justice…It sends a message to future bad actors that election tampering has consequences, unless you’re friends with the president.” According to NBC, the CDP also banned Polis from being able to “participate as an honored guest, speaker or officially recognized representative of the Colorado Democratic Party at party-sponsored functions.” * In more positive state-level news, NPR reports Minnesota Governor Tim Walz has signed a bill banning prediction market sites like Polymarket and Kalshi – which allow consumers to “place…wager[s] on…future outcome[s], like sports, elections, live entertainment” – from operating in the North Star State. This makes Minnesota the first state in the nation to ban the prediction betting platforms. As this story notes, the Trump administration is pursuing legal action on behalf of the platforms, ensuring a legal battle over whether states can act to protect their own consumers from these predatory betting services. Minnesota Rep. Emma Greenman, who introduced the measure, is quoted as saying, “We as a state should decide how best and what regulations we think should attach to gambling, to protect public safety, to protect our kids.” The administration, meanwhile, specifically the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is arguing in court that prediction market industry regulation should be the sole preserve of the federal government. * Looking toward Congress, this week saw a number of high-profile primaries, including in the state of Pennsylvania. Leading up to that primary, the Pennsylvania machine went all out against the congressional campaign of State Representative Chris Rabb. Rabb, who had won the endorsements of everyone from AOC and Rashida Tlaib to Jamie Raskin and Philly DSA to the Philadelphia Inquirer, was targeted by a barrage of anonymous text messages to Philadelphia voters accusing him of “spreading conspiracy theories and holding extremist views,” per the Inquirer. What is remarkable about this smear campaign, however, is that it was organized by Philadelphia’s Democratic City Committee and that it violated federal election law by failing to disclose that fact. In another troubling portend of things to come, one of the texts featured an “AI-generated image of Rabb acknowledging his supposed lack of legislative accomplishments in Harrisburg.” Rumors have long circulated that Governor Josh Shapiro wanted Rabb to lose, and worked the backrooms to this end while avoiding public statements. * Yet, despite all of that, Rabb prevailed – winning over his two establishment-backed opponents with around 45% of the vote compared to his opponents, who each won approximately 30% and 24% respectively. The Pennsylvania primaries turned out to be a good night for progressives more generally, with Bob Brooks – a firefighter’s union chief and former state rep. who successfully united the Democratic Party behind him, winning the endorsements of both Governor Josh Shapiro and Senator Bernie Sanders. Brooks will face off against freshman Republican Congressman Ryan Mackenzie in November in the R+1 seventh district of Pennsylvania, while Rabb’s general election campaign is seen as little more than a formality in the D+40 PA-03. * Yet, if it was a good streak for Democratic progressives, it was a very bad one for Trump critics within the GOP. This week, Thomas Massie lost his primary in Kentucky’s fourth congressional district, buckling under the war chest deployed against him in what amounted to the most

    1h 52m

  4. May 16

    Varieties of Democracy

    Ralph speaks to Dr. Marina Nord of the V-Dem Institute about this year's V-Dem Democracy Report and how the Trump Administration is dismantling democracy in the US. Then, Ralph welcomes Dr. Ralph Estes to discuss corporations' shady accounting practices. Dr. Marina Nord is a postdoctoral research fellow at the V-Dem Institute. She is co-author of V-Dem’s Democracy Report 2026: “Unraveling The Democratic Era?”. Only six countries during the 21st century have registered larger one-year drops on the aggregate Liberal Democracy Index [than the United States] —and all of them are coups. If you look at the last almost 250 years (so for which we have data going back to 1789), there were only thirty-five instances of more rapid dismantling of democracy—almost all of them were either military coups or international interventions. Dr. Marina Nord We do not measure [Trump’s] words. We measure how institutions function de facto. And what is a lot more important for us is not only what he says, but how other institutions (checks and balances) function to constrain him. And one of the things that we see, for example, is that Congress is not constraining him in any way. And this is very, very serious, because if you have a President who violates the law, who violates the Constitution, you should have the judiciary who stand up, the Supreme Court who should stand up to protect the Constitution. You should have the Congress who is not allowed to [abdicate power to the executive]. And this is something that is very, very concerning, a lot more concerning than what Trump is saying. What I find a lot more concerning is that there are no checks and balances to constrain him. Dr. Marina Nord When looking at the data, we also looked at the countries who managed to stop autocrats similar to Trump. And we tried to analyze which factors contributed to stopping democratic backsliding and turning it around. So research shows that, of course, there is no single recipe, but there are several combinations of factors that may help. One of them is: use whatever institutional safeguards that you still have in the United States…The second thing that we know that still works quite well is robust societal action. And by that we mean not only demonstrations similar to the No Kings protests, but sustained protests, mass pro-democracy protests…And then, of course, one of the things that still should be a possibility to turn things around is the midterm elections. Dr. Marina Nord Dr. Ralph Estes is Emeritus professor of business and accounting at American University in Washington, D.C., co-founder and vice president of The Center for Advancement of Public Policy, and Emeritus Trustee at the Institute for Policy Studies. He is the author of several books, including Tyranny of the Bottom Line: Why Corporations Make Good People Do Bad Things and Fight the Corpocracy, Take Back Democracy: A Mad As Hell Guide for the 99%. The public has no way of fairly evaluating a corporation except through the press, what it sees in corporate press releases and their claims about being, for example, environmentally responsible and very favorable to customers. And there are no measures on that. Corporation doesn’t give us any. Corporation produces a set of financial statements. You won’t know how relevant those financial statements are to you and me. They’re not relevant at all… In terms of social performance, there’s nothing in the corporate reports, the formal reports, that is reliable. Again, you’re stuck with what the corporation claims or what the politicians who are lobbying for contributions will admit corporations do… But this is a problem. If the corporation doesn’t report it, if the citizens don’t know about it, the politicians can try to do something, but they have to start from scratch. Dr. Ralph Estes News 5/15/26 * We begin this week with a bombshell story from Latin America. This week, El País broke what they are calling “Hondurasgate,” an expose centering on leaked audio recordings of conversations between President Donald Trump, Argentinian President Javier Milei and former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández – who was convicted and sentenced to 45 years in prison on drug trafficking charges in the U.S. but pardoned by Trump last year. In these leaked recordings, the three current and former heads of state discuss the creation of a “channel of spreading fake news with the intention of misinforming and destabilizing” Leftist governments in the region, including those of Gustavo Petro in Colombia and Claudia Sheinbaum in Mexico. According to this report, the leaks reveal the involvement of another world leader – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – in the decision to pardon Hernández. El País writes the leaks prove the pardoning of Hernández was “not a gesture of clemency, but the down payment of a broader agreement.” Expect more damning information to come out as more recordings are unearthed, even if so far the American media has largely blacked out this stunning story. * At the same time the Trump administration is seeking to subtly undermine governments like Mexico’s, they are executing considerably less subtle covert operations there as well. On March 28th, an explosion blew up the car of alleged narco Francisco Beltran just outside Mexico City. CNN now reports that, while “Mexican authorities have maintained extreme secrecy around the explosion,” multiple sources confirm that this was “a targeted assassination,” carried out by the CIA. Not only that, this operation is reportedly just one of several assassinations carried out by the CIA against rank-and-file cartel members on foreign soil which began last year. Troublingly, CNN notes these operations could be illegal under Mexican law, which prohibits foreign agents from participating in law enforcement operations without the express permission of the federal government. Omar Garcia Harfuch, Mexico’s Secretary of Security released a statement indicating that the Mexican government has not granted any such permission, writing “The Government of Mexico categorically rejects any version that seeks to normalize, justify, or suggest the existence of lethal, covert, or unilateral operations by foreign agencies on national territory.” * One ironic aspect of the joint right-wing destabilization effort and CIA covert operations campaign both currently underway in Mexico is the fact that the Sheinbaum government has affected a stunning reduction in murders throughout the country. According to Mexico Solidarity Media, the daily average of intentional homicides has been reduced by 40% between the beginning of the Sheinbaum administration in October 2024 and April 30, 2026, with that last month hitting the lowest level in over a decade – comparable in fact to the United States. We can only hope that Sheinbaum is able to stay the course and continue to drive down the murder rate while simultaneously avoiding the destabilization campaigns being waged against her government. * In Colombia, another state targeted in the Hondurasgate plot, Ivan Cepeda continues to consolidate progressive forces in that country ahead of the presidential election, aiming for a first round victory. This week, Luis Gilberto Murillo, a center-left presidential candidate, dropped out and endorsed Cepeda. While Murillo never rose very high in the polls, he has held high positions in the Colombian government – including Minister of Environment and governor of the department of Choco as well as Colombia’s ambassador to the United States and later foreign minister under Gustavo Petro. Colombia One notes that this is the second such withdrawal in recent weeks, with Senator Clara López doing the same, indicating a serious intention among the progressive forces in Colombia to stave off a second round of the presidential election, which could see the right-wing consolidate against Cepeda in a way they have thus far been unable to do ahead of the first round. * Meanwhile, El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele, a standard bearer for the Latin American Right and a close ally of President Trump, is mired in a new scandal involving his dealings with the MS-13 gang and his ensuing attempts to silence the press. According to PBS, last month the Salvadoran outlet El Faro, in conjunction with PBS FRONTLINE released a documentary titled The Deal: Trump, Bukele & the Gangs of El Salvador, which “uncovered evidence that Bukele’s administration had offered privileges to gang leaders in prison in exchange for a reduction in homicides and voter support in territories the gangs controlled.” Now, in retaliation for publishing this story, Bukele has reportedly “frozen the personal assets of two of [El Faro’s] shareholders,” including editor-in-chief Carlos Dada who said in a press conference that “These are not fiscal measures…They are political measures trying to silence us.” This article notes that the facts presented in The Deal are particularly damning to Bukele, because of his public claims that he “would never negotiate with gangs” because it would grant them legitimacy. Just as it is ironic that the Trump administration is seeking to destabilize the Mexican government while it dramatically reduces murders, so too is it ironic that it is seeking to bolster the Bukele regime even as it carries out secretive deals with the very gangs the U.S. claims to be fighting. * In a wholly different part of the world, the centrist Labour Party government of Keir Starmer in the UK is teetering on the brink of collapse. Starmer’s popularity has been declining precipitously ever since he entered office, but the crisis of confidence from within his own party accelerated after the disastrous results of the May 7th local elections. Now, according to CNN, over 100 members of his party in Parliament are calling for him to resign, but the only way to trigger a leade

    1h 26m

  5. May 9

    Race, Class & Gerrymandering

    Ralph welcomes back Adolph Reed, Professor Emeritus of political science at the University of Pennsylvania and Distinguished Visiting Professor at Mount Holyoke College to discuss the latest Supreme Court decision gutting the Voting Rights Act. Then, Ralph and our resident constitutional scholar, Bruce Fein, talk about what ordinary citizens can do to pressure their reps to impeach Donald Trump. Adolph Reed is Professor Emeritus of political science at the University of Pennsylvania and Distinguished Visiting Professor at Mount Holyoke College. His most recent books are The South: Jim Crow and Its Afterlives, No Politics but Class Politics (co-authored with Walter Benn Michaels), and Black Studies, Cultural Politics, and the Evasion of Inequality: The Farce this Time (co-authored with Kenneth W. Warren). I think the issues are a lot more complex than they seem to be or than seems to be the way that they are represented in the debate [over the Voting Rights Act]…To cut straight to the political case, I think there’s a distinction between the Act’s guarantee that black citizens and others (where pertinent) who live in areas where there’s been a history of suppression of the right to vote have the support of the federal government to make certain that Black voters have the ability to vote for and to elect candidates of their choosing. Which is not the same thing as a right of Black individuals to be elected to office. And I think that’s one of the confusions that characterizes, frankly, both sides of the debate at this point. And I think that’s definitely something that needs to be clarified. Adolph Reed Some of my friends and I have been talking about this, and have been bouncing this idea back and forth since, frankly, even before the court handed down the [Louisiana v Callais] decision. In thinking about developments in black politics across the board, the idea that all that Black voters are supposed to get out of politics is the representation of people who look like them and share in the same racial identification has also fueled backward turns. Like how all of a sudden the biggest issue in Black American politics supposedly had become the racial wealth gap, which boils down to a complaint that rich Black people aren’t as rich as rich white people are. So, yeah, shaking up or reshuffling the deck for how we might begin to try to determine the stakes of Black Americans’ engagement in national politics is something that needs to happen. No matter what brings it about. Adolph Reed Bruce Fein is a Constitutional scholar and an expert on international law. Mr. Fein was Associate Deputy Attorney General under Ronald Reagan and he is the author of Constitutional Peril: The Life and Death Struggle for Our Constitution and Democracy, and American Empire: Before the Fall. My website is www.lawofficesofbrucefein.com and my email address is Bruce@feinpoints.com. And I’ll respond and give you guidance as to how you can help be part of this effort to impeach and remove by far the most dangerous President in the history of the United States. And he’s most dangerous to the world as well. Bruce Fein News 5/8/26 * Our top story this week comes to us from the Bulwark, which reports that dissatisfaction with Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin is reaching a fever pitch. Martin has faced criticism over the course of his tenure for reneging on his promise to release an autopsy on the 2024 presidential campaign and for his decidedly lackluster fundraising efforts. The DNC has reportedly “spent more money than it has raised” and “has more debt than cash on hand,” while the Republican National Committee enjoys a “roughly seven-to-one money advantage.” According to this report, high-level DNC members are now privately discussing ousting Martin, only tabling these discussions “after members failed to identify an alternative candidate willing to step into the role.” Martin’s failures have even led Democrats to openly wonder “whether the 178-year-old committee should even exist anymore.” Martin was elected DNC Chair last year, beating out Wisconsin Democratic Party chair Ben Wikler, who helped rebuild the party and raise tremendous amounts of money in that critical swing state. * Speaking of money in politics, this week POLITICO released a damning report on End Citizens United, the good-government focused 501(c)(4) that has in past years been a “fundraising behemoth” but has now faded nearly into complete irrelevancy. The issues highlighted in this piece will be familiar to many who have worked in this world. Despite raising $14.8 million, the group’s PAC arm is burning through the money more quickly than it can raise it, having just $324,000 on hand at the end of March. What are they spending the money on? According to POLITICO, about $650,000 has gone to candidates and party groups and about the same amount has been bundled. Meanwhile, payments to fundraising firms have eaten up an astonishing $5.3 million. This is just another case of Democratic Party aligned consulting firms run amok and growing fat off of small dollar donations. * Another disappointing story comes to us from the Teamsters. According to Bloomberg, the union has forfeited a hard-won union foothold – the first ever unionized Chipotle – following three years of battling the company and failing to secure a contract. A Teamsters local president said in an email to the National Labor Relations Board that the union “officially withdraws and disclaims interest” at the Lansing, Michigan location. Legally speaking, this means the company will no longer be “required to recognize or negotiate with the union.” The employees of this location voted to unionize in 2022 by a margin of 11-to-3. Chipotle corporate has been decried for seeking to bust this union, with Biden NLRB General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo accusing them of employing illegal anti-union tactics like “withholding raises from the store’s staff and telling workers that the union was keeping their pay frozen…[and punishing] a pro-union employee to discourage activism.” However, it was the Teamsters themselves who ultimately gave up, paving the way for the demise of the workers’ heroic stand against corporate power. As the saying goes, with friends like these. * In more positive political news, during the Washington DC mayoral debate last week, the Washington Post reports democratic socialist mayoral hopeful Janeese Lewis George seemed to endorse the idea of opening municipal grocery stores in DC food deserts, including the impoverished and majority Black Wards 7 and 8. Asked about this topic, Councilmember Lewis George committed to bringing at least one more grocery store to Ward 7 and at least two more to Ward 8, noting that she would seek to shore up investor confidence with public dollars. If private options do not materialize however, she vowed that “we will work towards” a publicly-owned store. Municipally-owned grocery stores were a much publicized part of the Zohran Mamdani campaign platform and, if Lewis George is elected, his success or failure in carrying out that pledge is sure to impact her decision making on this issue. * Meanwhile, in media news, the New York Times reports Lupa Systems – the private holding company representing the interests of James Murdoch, son of conservative media mogul Rupert Murdoch – is “in talks to acquire major parts of Vox Media.” Vox, founded in the 2010s by journalists Ezra Klein, Matt Yglesias, and Melissa Bell, now owns major media properties including New York magazine, the Verge, Eater and a podcast network featuring Kara Swisher and others. Murdoch, through Lupa, owns a “majority stake in Tribeca Enterprises, the parent company of the Tribeca Film Festival.” Additionally, the Times notes that Quadrivium, the foundation founded by Mr. Murdoch and his wife, Kathryn, has financial interests in “The 19th, a nonprofit newsroom focused on gender and politics, and The Bulwark, a so-called ‘Never Trump’ digital media company.” James Murdoch, along with his sister Elisabeth, are seen as far more liberal than the Murdoch patriarch and his other son, Lachlan, who together successfully ousted the other family members from control of the family trust in a recent legal battle. * Turning to international news, yet another deadlocked presidential election in Peru is looming. A new Ipsos poll, taken near the end of April, shows an exact 50-50 split between the two candidates in the runoff: the left-wing member of Congress Roberto Sánchez and Keiko Fujimori, daughter of former Peruvian dictator Alberto Fujimori. This election was always going to be close – Peruvian politics have been deadlocked for years, resulting in ultra-narrow presidential victories frequently followed by impeachments. Fujimori has been a runoff candidate in every presidential election going back to 2011, losing each by extremely narrow margins. Most recently, she lost to Pedro Castillo by a margin of 50.13% to 49.87% in 2021. Castillo however was thwarted by, and ultimately ousted by, the Congress. The runoff will be held on June 7th. * In India, the Left suffered catastrophic defeats in this week’s state elections, Al Jazeera reports. The state of Kerala – “the first in the world to have a democratically elected communist government” and “the last state in India where communists were in power” – will now be led by the United Democratic Front, a coalition headed by the Congress party, which won over 100 out of 140 seats. The Left bloc will likely capture around 35 seats. Beyond Kerala however, the Left has seen setbacks throughout the country, with no state now being ruled by the Left for the first time since 1977 and the national parliamentary Left bloc declining from 62 in the 2004 election to just eight seats today. Different factors are cited for the general decline of the Left in India

    1h 45m

  6. May 2

    Book Week

    Ralph welcomes six authors to discuss their books: “Beyond Nuclear” founder Linda Gunter; trial lawyer Sean Simpson; law professor Elizabeth Burch; naturalist David Schmidt; industrial hygienist Marc Axelrod; and educator and advocate Jonathan Kozol. Linda Gunter is the founder of the US-based non-profit Beyond Nuclear and serves as its international specialist. Previously, she was a journalist at USA Network, Reuters, and The Times. She launched, and writes for Beyond Nuclear’s online magazine, Beyond Nuclear International. And she is the author of No To Nuclear: Why Nuclear Power Destroys Lives, Derails Climate Progress and Provokes War. We need to reduce the most carbon, the fastest, for the least cost—and that’s renewables every time. But it’s also an issue of: as we divert funds towards nuclear power (new reactors, which are not here now, they’re just aspirational ideas on paper, none of the designs have certifications or licenses yet) as we divert time and our money towards waiting for something that will perhaps take a decade or two (or never) to materialize, and as we squeeze out renewables in the process, what do we do? We continue to burn fossil fuels. So actually, choosing nuclear as an answer to climate makes the climate crisis worse. Linda Gunter Sean Simpson is an attorney specializing in civil jury trials, representing individuals who have been harmed by someone else’s carelessness or intentional wrongdoing. He is the author of Punitive Damages: The Lawyer’s Tool for Shaping Society. [Punitive damages are] typically not covered by insurance. But oddly enough, there’s a trend coming now where these corporations—because they’re in control, we’ve let them have the reins, and now they’re getting insurance companies to sell them coverage to cover their punitive damages, which is totally a 180. If somebody else is going to pay your punishment for you, it’s not going to sting your rump if somebody gets spanked on somebody else’s behind. Sean Simpson Elizabeth Burch is a professor at the University of Georgia School of Law, and co-author of Perceptions of Justice in Multidistrict Litigation: Voices from the Crowd. She is the author of The Pain Brokers: How Con Men, Call Centers, and Rogue Doctors Fuel America’s Lawsuit Factory. Imagine that you are sitting in your kitchen and you get a phone call one night. And you answer, and the person on the other end of the line knows an inordinate amount of information about you—they know your name, they know your birth date, they know the name of your doctor, the name of your hospital, the date and type of medical implant that you had put in you. And then they tell you that you have a ticking time bomb in you. And if you don’t have this removed immediately (that in this case was pelvic mesh, which is designed to deal with incontinence and pelvic organ prolapse) that you are going to die. But not to worry, they are setting up appointments down in South Florida to have the mesh removed. What they don’t say is all of the important things. Elizabeth Burch David Schmidt is lifelong San Francisco Bay Area resident, naturalist, and environmental historian. He worked as a writer in the public affairs office of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in San Francisco from 1991 to 2021, led dozens of hikes for the Greenbelt Alliance in the region’s extensive public parklands, and volunteered on habitat restoration projects for the Golden Gate National Parks and the California Native Plant Society. He is the author of San Francisco Bay Area: An Environmental History. I think [the environmental movement in the Bay Area] is the most successful regional environmental movement in US history. Its victories have had a tremendous impact on protecting the natural landscape, the agricultural landscape. And this is a landscape that is famous for its scenic beauty. It’s among the world’s most biodiverse landscapes with more than a thousand species of plants and wildlife. And persistence pays off. That is the theme that comes across time and again with environmental victories is: persistence pays off. David Schmidt Marc Axelrod is an award-winning front line industrial hygienist and workplace safety professional. He has developed and implemented programs to protect people from industry’s most hazardous technologies. He has worked for employers including Boeing, Kaiser Permanente, UCLA and the City of Beverly Hills. He is the author of The Flame Bucket: Adventures in Workplace Safety. You can lie down in the flame bucket and stop a [rocket] launch, but you can only do it once. So I decided that we had a very risky program [at the city of Beverly Hills]. It was for testing our commercial drivers for alcohol and drugs. And somehow they got a big percentage of them, almost a third of them, got left out of the program. And I can see, being backstage, what happens in city government where people leave and people come and how these kinds of things can occur. But when they do happen, what you’ve got to do is stop everything, blame the people that left, and then fix it right away. But this program—even though people knew that there was a big gap in it, they just didn’t want to fix it. But I knew as City Safety Officer, I was responsible. So after months of delay, I said, “Listen, these drivers can’t drive anymore. They can’t do their safety functions without a clearance test from our drug and alcohol program.” And so that got their attention, and we quickly fixed the program, and I got a lot of thank yous. And then a few days later, I was fired. Marc Axelrod Jonathan Kozol is a leading advocate for child-centered learning, equality, and racial justice in our nation’s schools, and he travels and lectures about educational inequality and racial injustice. Mr. Kozol is the author of nearly a dozen books about young children and their public schools, including Death at an Early Age, An End to Inequality: Breaking Down the Walls of Apartheid Education in America, and We Shall Not Bow Down: Children of Color Under Siege: An Invocation to Resistance. My book is not simply a polite description of these problems. It’s probably the most militant book I’ve ever written. It’s an open call for militant resistance. And, you know, I get condemned for that, but I’m not afraid to say that I’m an unregenerate activist, and I’m too old to change my stripes. Jonathan Kozol News 5/1/26 * Perhaps the biggest news of the week is the Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision in Louisiana v. Callais to gut Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which preserved majority-minority congressional districts. In practice, this ruling gives conservative Southern states license to draw these districts out of existence. Jonathan Cervas, a political scientist at Carnegie-Mellon University who has served as a special master in multiple Voting Rights Act cases, is quoted in AP saying “The Voting Rights Act as a means to protect minority voters from vote dilution is essentially dead.” In the Washington Post, NAACP President Derrick Johnson called the decision “a devastating blow to what remains of the Voting Rights Act, and a license for corrupt politicians who want to rig the system by silencing entire communities,” and “a major setback for our nation and…the hard-won victories we’ve fought, bled, and died for.” In practice, this ruling is sure to set off a new round of redrawing congressional districts, likely resulting in a net gain of 12 seats – half of the Southern Section 2 districts – for the GOP. In Louisiana itself, CNN reports Governor Jeff Landry has halted House primaries, where “Early voting was scheduled to begin Saturday and overseas ballots had already gone out.” Moreover, “Democratic Rep. Cleo Fields, whose district is at the center of the Supreme Court’s redistricting decision, said…Landry had told him he anticipated issuing an executive order to suspend the House election and call a new one.” * Speaking of Southern congressional districts, in Florida’s 20th district, Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick has “defiantly” filed to run again in the special election for her former district, per NOTUS. Cherfilus-McCormick resigned her seat in Congress last week just minutes before the House Ethics Committee was scheduled to “recommend punishment on an array of charges.” She had previously been found guilty of “25 ethics violations, including allegedly stealing $5 million dollars in federal disaster-aid funds used to bolster her 2021 campaign,” following an extensive investigation running for two years and including “issuing 58 subpoenas, interviewing 28 witnesses and reviewing over 33,000 documents.” Elijah Manley, the young progressive running for the seat, is quoted saying “Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick resigned in disgrace moments before her colleagues were set to expel her from Congress…The last thing our community needs is a second round of chaos and instability. She should focus on her legal troubles.” * In more positive news from Congress, Rep. Greg Casar announced this week that the Congressional Progressive Caucus he chairs is issuing a new Affordability Agenda, bringing together a slew of bills sponsored by progressives – on topics ranging from housing to groceries to prescription drugs and more – into a unified package. In an introduction, the Caucus emphasizes that “Americans are facing a cost-of-living crisis and…At the same time, Democrats are searching for a vision that wins back the trust of working families and provides a mandate to deliver the big changes our country needs in 2026.” The question now is whether the Democratic Party will take up this banner and run with it or once again spurn their progressive base. * Meanwhile, the Trump administration is occupied with their continuing efforts to persecute comedians for anodyne jokes. The latest on this front is the Federal Commu

    1h 24m

  7. Apr 25

    It’s On You

    Ralph welcomes Professor Nicholas Chater, co-author of “It's on You: How Corporations and Behavioral Scientists Have Convinced Us That We’re to Blame for Society's Deepest Problems.” Then, as most of the media turns its attention to Iran, we return to the ongoing genocide in Gaza and welcome back Dr. Feroze Sidhwa to break down his three-part series published in Zeteo called “The Truth About Gaza's Dead.” Nick Chater is Professor of Behavioural Science at Warwick Business School. He has written and co-written more than two hundred research papers and six books, including It’s on You: How Corporations and Behavioral Scientists Have Convinced Us That We’re to Blame for Society’s Deepest Problems (co-written with George Loewenstein). I was on a UK government committee as the representative of behavioural science for six years, where my role was (at least I understood my role to be) coming up with smart-aleck ideas about what individual nudges or bits of useful information we could give to the public—how that would help people reduce their carbon emissions. And I came away from that experience extremely chastened. Because almost all the interesting issues were nothing to do whatsoever with individual behavior. They were all about big systemic changes… And the shock for me was realizing that the tools that I was hoping to wield were in fact completely ineffective. Nick Chater I think it’s absolutely true that many of the things that behavioral scientists are supposedly “discovering” [are] the things that campaigners and activists and indeed people in the political world generally and journalists intuitively have long known, and indeed probably have good evidence for. It’s simply— it’s sort of a sad process of trailing-along-behind which I think the academic world has been engaged in, where we’ve been slowly realizing that things that everybody else knew initially are actually true after all. Nick Chater One of the most powerful things that each of us has is the ability to propagate our own perspective and to campaign for change…I think getting people pulling together and pushing for change can be incredibly powerful. So seeing ourselves as citizens who are actively able to have our voice, make our voices heard, I think that’s where the real power lies. And I think that the campaigners and political activists and so on have always known this. And of course, also, big businesses have always known this too. And they certainly don’t want us to be doing too much of that. They want us to be focusing on quite the opposite. They want us to be focusing on our own gardens and not worrying about the big picture. They don’t want organized opposition. Nick Chater Dr. Feroze Sidhwa is a general, trauma, and critical care surgeon in California. He is also a humanitarian surgeon who has worked in Palestine, Ukraine, Haiti, Zimbabwe, and Burkina Faso. He most recently volunteered at Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis, Gaza. He was blocked from entering Gaza by Israel’s Shin Bet intelligence service in November 2025. In the first 25 days of the assault on Gaza, more children were killed than in the entire worst year of conflict that Airwars had ever studied previously, which was Syria in 2016. In the first 25 days in Gaza, between 2,200 and 2,600 children were killed in Gaza, compared to 1,900 in Syria. So again, if you adjust for the size of the population (because Syria is a much bigger country than Gaza is a territory), the rate of killing of children in Gaza was 71 to 142 times higher than it was in the worst year on record for children in conflict—Syria in 2016. Dr. Feroze Sidhwa Gaza is a place where infants freeze to death if they are not sheltered. Well, there are no sheltered infants in Gaza for any practical purposes. They’re all unsheltered. So we have a list of the actual names of a dozen or two dozen children who have actually frozen to death…And there is shelter—ready-made mobile shelters for hundreds of thousands of people right outside of Gaza. It’s in Egypt and it’s in Jordan. The only thing that’s stopping anybody from bringing it in is the US and Israel…This is just dastardly. We should think about it for a second—we (meaning Americans) [are] living in a country where neither political party seems to care that we are freezing infants to death. Dr. Feroze Sidhwa Right now, the Israelis are blocking cough medicine from going into Gaza. And the reason (they say) is because it contains glycerin. Now, glycerin, in theory, can be used to make explosives. But it’s one picogram or something—it’s just part of a pill or the syrup that goes into it, right? This is children’s cough medicine. The idea that Hamas or Islamic Jihad or anybody else in Gaza has the laboratory equipment and facilities that would be needed to extract the 0.01% of glycerin that’s in a pill or a medical syrup to then make a bomb is beyond idiotic. Furthermore, we all know that there’s (and I’m speaking literally) hundreds of tons of unexploded Israeli bombs—actually I should say unexploded US bombs—all over the Gaza Strip. That’s where Hamas gets all of its explosives from. It just repurposes unexploded Israeli munitions. So all of this is just sheer nonsense. Dr. Feroze Sidhwa News 4/24/26 * Our top stories this week have to do with people losing their jobs. First up, Apple CEO Tim Cook – the handpicked successor of Steve Jobs who has led the tech giant for the past 15 years – announced this week that he would transition away from the CEO role. While he will remain on as Executive Chairman, John Ternus, the company’s head of hardware engineering, will take over at the helm, PBS reports. Cook’s tenure at Apple has received mixed evaluations, with many applauding the steady handed executive for adding an estimated $3.6 trillion in market value to the company, while others have critiqued his supposed lack of innovation compared to his predecessor. Some hope his more technical-minded successor will put more emphasis on product development moving forward. Like many tech CEOs, Cook went to great lengths to ingratiate himself with President Trump in his second term, donating $1 million to his inaugural committee and gifting Trump a glass plaque set in 24-karat gold last August. * Meanwhile, Secretary of Labor Lori Chavez-DeRemer resigned this week amid “an internal investigation into her conduct,” which included “instructing staff to buy her bottles of sauvignon blanc on work trips… [stashing] liquor in her office, [encouraging] young female staffers to ‘pay attention’ to her father and husband, [having] an affair with a member of her security detail, and [arranging] work travel to visit family and friends,” per Vox. For the time being, the Labor Department will be headed by Keith Sonderling, whom POLITICO calls a “quintessential Washington insider who is well-connected in the capital’s Republican circles and his home state of Florida.” Sources quoted in this piece identify Sonderling as a key behind-the-scenes player in the administration whose accumulated influence “extends well beyond DOL.” The choice of Chavez-DeRemer, a former Congresswoman who was seen as perhaps the most labor-friendly Republican in the House, was supported at the time by Trump-aligned Teamster boss Sean O’Brien; her ouster therefore, represents the latest humiliating setback for his strategy of cozying up to Trump to win favorable treatment for his membership. In the words of a recent Current Affairs piece published before the downfall of Chavez-DeRemer, “Sean O’Brien Sold Labor to Trump, and Got Nothing.” * In the House, Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick resigned her seat this week, just minutes before the House Ethics Committee was set to weigh punishment for the Congresswoman, whom the panel had previously found guilty of “a slew of ethics violations, including accusations that she stole millions in pandemic relief funds and used it to bolster her 2021 campaign,” according to CNN. Cherfilus-McCormick was one of the four Members of Congress included in the proposed bipartisan expulsion deal some weeks ago, along with Representatives Swalwell, Gonzales, and Mills. With the first two gone, a tremendous amount of pressure is sure to be exerted on Congressman Mills to resign as well. Prior to resigning, Cherfilus-McCormick was already facing a stiff primary challenge from young progressive Elijah Manley. Now, it seems her seat – representing hundreds of thousands in Broward and Palm Beach counties – could remain vacant until a new member is sworn in next January, with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis unlikely to call a special election before then. * Also in Congress, Axios reports Representative David Scott of Georgia, a powerful Black Georgia Democrat who served in the lower house for over 20 years, passed away this week at age 80. Scott, who rose to become the first Black chair of the key House Committee on Agriculture, had filed to run again in 2026 despite rumored resistance from his colleagues. His death leaves Georgia’s 13th district without representation in the House and amounts to a stunning fourth death-based Democratic House vacancy in the past year. Like the ones that preceded it, this must be seen as a bright red warning signal to Democratic leadership. * In DC more broadly, the employment picture looks even worse. According to a new report in the Guardian, the combined purging of 300,000 jobs from the federal government – the piece notes this is the “region’s largest employer” – by Elon Musk’s absurd Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) initiative, with another 13,000 job cuts in the private sector, has left DC with the highest unemployment rate in the nation at 6.7%. With little sign of increased hiring in the public or private sectors, there is no indication this trend will reverse itself any time soon. * Elsewh

    2h 6m

  8. Apr 18

    Bad Company

    Ralph welcomes journalist and author Megan Greenwell to discuss her book "Bad Company: Private Equity and the Death of the American Dream." Then, Ralph speaks to James Zogby (co-founder and president of the Arab American Institute) about the recent Israeli attacks on Lebanon. Megan Greenwell is a journalist who has written or edited for publications including the New York Times, the Washington Post, New York Magazine, WIRED, and ESPN. She is also the deputy director of the Princeton Summer Journalism Program, a workshop and college-access initiative for students from low-income backgrounds. She is the author of Bad Company: Private Equity and the Death of the American Dream. The real trick with private equity (and this was the thing that made me want to write a book on it) is that when they take out those billions of dollars worth of loans (if you’re buying a bigger company), the private equity firm is not responsible for paying those loans back. Only the portfolio company in whose name the private equity firm has taken the money out is on the hook for that money. And so what you end up with is this split in incentive where what’s good for the private equity firm is not necessarily what’s good for its own portfolio company. Megan Greenwell [Congress hasn’t repealed the carried interest loophole] because Congress is in the pocket of the private equity industry. 88% of members of the House and Senate take donations from private equity. Interestingly, Donald Trump has called twice for the carried interest loophole to be closed. And still, even he, as much of a stranglehold as he has on the Republican Party, he can’t build support for it among Republicans. Because they’re all taking private equity money, as are the vast majority of the Democrats. So this is not a partisan issue. Megan Greenwell One of the reasons I was really interested to write this book as a series of narrative profiles of people trying to do something about [private equity] is: none of them are trying to do something about it through the federal government. And I think when we talk about “Only the federal government can save us,” we really risk turning people away from trying to do anything. And I think we’ve seen on the private equity issue there has been some really interesting movement on the state level in several places—real reforms that are much easier to accomplish on the state level than on the federal level. Megan Greenwell James Zogby is co-founder and president of the Arab American Institute, and he is featured frequently on national and international media as an expert on Middle East affairs. Since 1992, he has written a weekly column— “Washington Watch” —that is published in 12 countries. He is the author of several books, including Looking at Iran: The Rise and Fall of Iran in Arab Public Opinion, The Tumultuous Decade: Arab, Turkish, and Iranian Public Opinion - 2010-2019, Arab Voices: What They Are Saying to Us, and Why it Matters, and Palestinians: The Invisible Victims. Not only are thousands being killed [in Lebanon], but there’s a process underway of demolishing villages, obviously expelling lots of people, creating internal refugees and sectarian tension as a result of it. And clearly (as Israel has stated, and I think we have to believe them), that they actually want to annex the territory up to the Litani River and maybe even further. They call it a buffer zone, but we’ve heard that buffer zone stuff before. It’s merely a way of taking new land and providing opportunities for settlements. James Zogby As we saw ourselves in Vietnam, as we saw in Iraq and Afghanistan, Israel is now getting PTSD reports that are deeply disturbing to them. They’re getting suicides. They’re getting an exhausted military. They’re not exhausted with the weapons that they’re losing (because they’re losing a lot and they’re using a lot), they’re getting emotionally and physically exhausted. Look, when the soldiers do what they’ve been doing—which is basically inhuman behavior, I mean, it’s disgraceful behavior—it begins to eat away at the soul. You get these suicides. You get these emotional collapses. And what gets me upset is that—72,000 Palestinians dead, a few Israeli soldiers having PTSD and trauma and committing suicide becomes a news story? My feeling has to be with the Lebanese and Palestinians. James Zogby When I hear on the DNC from other members who say to me, “When you talk about Israeli genocide, that’s anti-Semitic, it makes me uncomfortable,” I said, “You know what makes me uncomfortable? That genocide is actually taking place. And it makes me equally uncomfortable that you won’t admit it or even want us to talk about it.” James Zogby News 4/17/26 * Our top story this week comes to us from New York City, where Mayor Zohran Mamdani is delivering on yet another campaign promise thought impossible by mainstream pundits and beltway insiders: the creation of municipal grocery stores. Capping off his first 100 days in office, Mayor Mamdani delivered remarks in front of La Marqueta in East Harlem, the site of one of the original city-run grocery stores created under Fiorello LaGuardia. Mamdani laid out how the stores will operate, noting that while “A private operator will run the store,” they will “answer to the standards the city will set…[including] requirements that at our stores bread will be cheaper. Eggs will be cheaper. Grocery shopping will no longer be an unsolvable equation. And workers will be treated with dignity.” Mamdani plans to have the first of these stores open in 2027 and stores in all five boroughs open by the end of his term in 2029. This from NBC4 New York. * Meanwhile, in New York’s 10th congressional district, former NYC Comptroller and Mamdani ally Brad Lander is aligning himself with AOC and calling for an end to U.S. aid to Israel. In a meeting with a group of local journalists, Lander said “We need to follow the Leahy Law and condition all of our foreign policy aid on human rights and international law compliance…At the moment, Israel is very far from complying with human rights and international law. So I would not vote for any more aid,” adding that he “hopes” Israel will “[get] there.” The Forward notes that this is an evolution from the position he took during his mayoral candidacy last year. At that time Lander opposed sending offensive weapons to Israel, but believed that the US should keep funding Israel’s Iron Dome, per the New York Post. Through a representative, Lander’s opponent in this race, incumbent Congressman Dan Goldman, told the Forward he “will always support defensive systems,” like Iron Dome. * The liberal Zionist organization J Street is also shifting its position. The Middle East Eye reports the group is calling for an end to “direct” US military support to Israel, according to a new policy paper. To be clear however, while this does mark a shift from J Street’s previous position that the U.S. should provide defensive weapons systems – like resupply for Iron Dome, at no cost to Israelis – J Street now argues that Israel should simply purchase these weapons instead. In short, J Street is arguing that Israel is rich enough to provide for its own defense and that the American financial subsidies are “unnecessary and politically counterproductive, creating avoidable tensions in US domestic politics and in the bilateral relationship.” This is in line with statements by Netanyahu himself, who has made it clear that Israel wants to reduce its reliance on U.S. military aid “all the way down to zero.” * In other news, Reuters reports Apple is closing several of its brick-and-mortar stores, including the first ever unionized Apple store. Over 100 workers at the store, located in Towson Town Center mall in Maryland, voted to join the International Association of Machinists & Aerospace Workers (IAM) in 2022; Reuters notes that “a similar union drive in Atlanta [around that same time] was withdrawn, ‌with ⁠Apple workers alleging intimidation.”At the other stores being shuttered, employees were offered the option to continue their jobs at other nearby Apple stores. At the Towson store however, Apple is claiming that the collective bargaining agreement prevents relocation. The union says this is “false” and is reportedly exploring all legal options. IAM also expressed “serious concerns that ​this closure is a cynical attempt to ​bust ⁠the union.” * Elsewhere in Maryland, the state legislature has passed the Protection from Predatory Pricing Act. This bill, which Gov. Wes Moore has vowed to sign into law, is designed to prohibit surveillance pricing, the practice of retailers charging different shoppers different prices for the same item at the same time based on information the store knows about them as an individual. While crucial and innovative legislation, Consumer Reports – which “engaged on the bill…throughout the legislative process,” argues that it has been watered down to the point of inadequacy via lobbying by the Maryland Retail Alliance. Some of the added exceptions include failing to establish any baseline or standard price – given that “with no set standard price, everything can be marketed as a discount” — and exempting any pricing associated with loyalty or membership programs or subscriptions. The bill also does not contain strong enforcement provisions, such as a private right of action. So, while this bill is a start – and you have to start somewhere – we echo Consumer Reports’ urging that “other state legislatures considering personalized pricing legislation to build in stronger consumer protections and avoid loopholes that weakened this bill.” * In more consumer news, the scourge of sports betting continues to metastasize. A new report from Siena Research Institute has produced staggering findings: “27%

    1h 17m
See All (644)

Hosts & Guests

4.8
out of 5
1,180 Ratings

About

Ralph Nader talks about what’s happening in America, what’s happening around the world, and most importantly what’s happening underneath it all. www.ralphnaderradiohour.com

Information

  • Creator
    Ralph Nader
  • Years Active
    2014 - 2026
  • Episodes
    644
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Ralph Nader
  • Show Website
    Ralph Nader Radio Hour

You Might Also Like