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  • Impeachment Symposium

    Impeachment Symposium
    2026/08/01
    Last week, Ralph, along with our constitutional law expert, Bruce Fein, organized another symposium in Washington DC on impeaching Donald Trump. On today’s program, we play you highlights from that symposium with eight of the participants, each of whom are going to give listeners their perspective on why Donald Trump should be impeached even before the midterm elections.The rhetoric from many Democratic leaders has not kept up with the horror and the urgency of what [Donald Trump] is inflicting on America and the American people. He has moved very, very quickly to develop a fascist dictatorship embodying a kleptocratic corporate state that is marked by non-regulation, tax cuts for the wealthy, and tax escapes for the wealthy and major corporations, as well as expanded corporate welfare in the midst of personal and institutional two-way bribery and extortion. It’s very important to punctuate the seriousness of what he’s already done.Ralph NaderCelinda Lake is a political strategist and president of Lake Research Partners.What I love about polling is: conventional wisdom is wrong about 90% of the time, plus or minus 5%. Beltway conventional wisdom is wrong about 100% of the time, plus or minus 5%. So, “Everybody knows impeachment is unpopular.” No, it’s not. It’s very popular. A majority of people support it. “Everyone knows that it’ll energize the other side.” No. The other side, to the extent they’re going to be energized, they’re already energized. We need to energize our side. We need to get our people out to vote… “Everyone knows it’s very volatile.” No, it’s not. Attitudes about impeachment track with job performance… And finally, “Everybody knows that nobody understands impeachment.” Well, frankly, voters understand it better than a lot of elected officials.Celinda LakeSuparna Reddy is the Senior Counsel for Free Speech For People.Let us be clear: Congress should impeach and remove Trump for each and every one of these hundreds of offenses. And we have a duty to record his every abuse of power. But in the process, we should not miss the forest for the trees— Trump is intentionally and systematically dismantling our democratic institutions to consolidate his own power and line his own pockets.Suparna ReddyRichard Painter is the S. Walter Richey professor of corporate law at the University of Minnesota Law School and was the chief White House ethics lawyer from 2005 to 2007.We have seen serious, indeed, tragic financial conflicts of interest in the executive branch never before seen in the history of our country—unless we look at our very early Presidents who held vast plantations with slave labor, a clear economic conflict of interest with their official duties. A conflict of interest shared by many Senators and Representatives and Justices of the Supreme Court, and indeed a tragic conflict of interest for the first eighty years of our history that ended only with a bloody civil war. But since then, we have not had at least a President who is embroiled in financial conflicts of interest with his official duties.Richard PainterDoug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, specializing in foreign policy and civil liberties.We need to make a persuasive argument for people, whether they like Donald Trump or not, to understand the Constitution transcends this President. The Constitution transcends future Presidents and future crises. We need to convince Americans across the political spectrum to stand with the rule of law, to stand with accountable government, to stand with an accountable executive, responsible legislatures. History tells us that one person making these decisions is not good. Plenty of authoritarians in the past have made these decisions and brought their countries to disaster.Douglas BandowErwin Chemerinsky is the Dean and Jesse H. Choper Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law.We’re now at a moment when the federal government is a threat to our rights. The actions of the Trump administration are unprecedented in the violations of the Constitution. And so I think it’s crucial that state and local governments step in so as to protect rights. It’s interesting that through American history, Federalism has always been equated, states’ rights have always been equated with regressive policies… But now it’s time for progressives to use states’ rights and look for the opportunities for states to safeguard our constitutionErwin ChemerinskyKeira Havens is a United States Air Force veteran, a former scientist, and a longtime political activist. She is the executive director of Citizens’ Impeachment.Everybody has agency. Everybody has a role that they can play. Everybody can take action. As a private citizen, I can say, “Man, there are a lot of things wrong with what’s happening.” In fact, I wrote several articles of impeachment: tyranny, treason, obstruction of justice, and of ...
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    1 時間 54 分
  • Judge Napolitano/ Listener Feedback

    Judge Napolitano/ Listener Feedback
    2026/07/25

    Ralph speaks to Judge Andrew Napolitano about two of Ralph’s abiding concerns: the death undercount in Gaza and the impeachment of Donald Trump. Then, Ralph responds to some of your listener feedback.

    Judge Andrew Napolitano is a former Superior Court Judge, a syndicated columnist, and host of the Judging Freedom podcast. Judge Napolitano has taught constitutional law and jurisprudence at Delaware Law School and Seton Hall Law School, and he was Fox News’ Senior Judicial Analyst from 1997 to 2021. He is the author of several books on the U.S. Constitution, including Freedom’s Anchor: An Introduction to Natural Law Jurisprudence in American Constitutional History.

    Amongst the mainstream media, with respect to the Netanyahu regime and what it has been doing, there is no intellectual honesty. The mainstream media in the United States is controlled by the lobby. And the lobby, of course, is the Israeli and American donors who control the media and control the government. Our friend Pat Buchanan famously referred to the Congress as “Israeli-occupied territory”. The same may be said about the mainstream media… Don’t expect intellectual honesty from the mainstream media, because anybody who tries it will be looking for a job.

    Judge Andrew Napolitano

    [Donald Trump’s] behavior has simply been tyrannical to the nth degree. Look, he’s been impeached twice—both times for, compared to what he’s done in the second term, a pittance. What he’s done in the second term is absolutely and utterly profound. He has failed to take care that the laws be enforced. He has failed to abide due process. He has failed to protect the right to free speech. He has failed to protect the right to privacy. He has failed to seek Congressional approval before starting wars. He has ordered murders on the high seas. This is a long litany.

    Judge Andrew Napolitano



    Get full access to Ralph Nader Radio Hour at www.ralphnaderradiohour.com/subscribe
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    58 分
  • Hemp: The New Green Revolution

    Hemp: The New Green Revolution
    2026/07/18
    Ralph welcomes back his old running mate, Native American activist, Winona LaDuke, who has devoted her life to advocating for Indigenous control of their homelands, natural resources, and cultural practices to talk about her latest incarnation: hemp farmer. Then, we’ll speak to Hal Weitzman, from the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, about how Elon Musk’s feud with Delaware may transform corporate America. Plus, we tick off Robert Reich’s ten policy prescriptions the Democratic Party should fight for to beat the GOP in the upcoming midterms.Winona LaDuke is an activist, economist, and author, who has devoted her life to advocating for Indigenous control of their homelands, natural resources, and cultural practices. She is also a two-time vice-presidential candidate with Ralph Nader. Ms. LaDuke lives and works on the White Earth Ojibwe reservation in northern Minnesota, where she runs Winona’s Hemp & Heritage Farm. She is also a member of the Indigenous Hemp & Cannabis Farmer’s Cooperative.I’m looking first at seed sovereignty. We’re growing [European hemp] varieties and then we’re growing these feral hemp varieties. They’re called feral varieties (which of course, that’s something that I love) which means that when they eradicated hemp in the 1930s with the Marijuana Prohibition Act—well, they missed some spots. And those guys kept growing. And so 80 years of being illegal—isn’t that great? Something that’s illegal for 80 years is still with us, rocking out. And so I figure if you grew illegally for 80 years, you are really a tough hemp plant…And so we are growing out these hemp varieties and built a cooperative because we want to own the seeds and we want to own the technology (the value-added processing), and we want to use this hemp as a part of our future as tribes.Winona LaDukeMy grandsons are farming. I don’t know who else can say their grandchildren are farming—let me know. My grandchildren are farming. They’re running the horses. They’re running the farms. You know, that’s a retirement plan. My 401k will be worth nothing, but my grandchildren will feed me. This is my strategy.Winona LaDukeHal Weitzman is Executive Director for Intellectual Capital at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, editor-in-chief of Chicago Booth Review, and host of The Chicago Booth Review podcast. A former Financial Times editor and foreign correspondent, he is the author of Latin Lessons: How South America Stopped Listening to the United States and Started Prospering and What’s the Matter with Delaware?: How the First State Has Favored the Rich, Powerful, and Criminal—and How It Costs Us All.There is a race to the bottom. There’s been a race to the bottom for many decades. That’s not new. I think it’s accelerated somewhat. Delaware has joined that race from having been something of a “premium product” in terms of incorporating companies—Delaware has become a bit more “cut-price” I would say, and in that sense has followed Texas and Nevada. So the conclusion that we have a race to the bottom and it may be worse than Delaware—actually I think Delaware’s already there. So it’s not that it’s getting worse outside of Delaware, it’s getting worse including Delaware.Hal WeitzmanThe trend I think we’re seeing is the exclusion of small shareholders completely—regardless of the status of your shares, this is about how big you are. And if you’re a small shareholder there is no corporate democracy for you… It was practice in the past for activist groups, campaigning groups, to buy one share of a company and then to go to the shareholder meeting so they could make the point that they wanted to make. Now that kind of shareholder democracy is being encroached on. And the extent now is to say: unless you have a large position (regardless of the size of the company and the cost of the shares), you will not be allowed to bring suits against the executives for the correct running of the company.Hal WeitzmanNews 7/17/26* Our top story this week is New York Governor Kathy Hochul’s decision to impose a one-year “pause” on the construction of AI data centers across the state. ABC7 reports that this is the first such moratorium in the nation, despite similar attempts in several states, most notably Maine where Governor Janet Mills vetoed a bill to this effect. Hochul argues that the pause is necessary so lawmakers and regulators can formulate “Guardrails to reduce the risk to our energy grid, minimize land disruption, noise pollution, and protect our natural resources, especially our water supply.” Hochul’s move comes amidst a broader push against AI data centers from the left. Semafor reports Senator Bernie Sanders proposed a nationwide ban in March and many progressives running for state and local office in the midterms have made this a cornerstone of their campaigns. According to this piece, “In February, polling ...
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    1 時間 45 分
  • Israel: What Went Wrong?

    Israel: What Went Wrong?
    2026/07/11
    Ralph speaks to historian Omer Bartov about his new book “Israel: What Went Wrong?” with special guest, international law expert Bruce FeinBruce 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.Many of the things that you describe in Israel apply in spades in the United States. We also have an administration that says we’re being invaded militarily by Venezuela gangs, so we have to go kidnap their president and annex Venezuela. We’ve stated that Iran is an existential threat to the United States because at some future time, it’s conceivable they may get one nuclear weapon. We have 5,000, Israel probably has 300 or 400. Or make the argument that we are being invaded by defenseless immigrants across the southern border. And it does seem to me that all countries—I don’t think it’s unique anyway to the United States or Israel, but it’s generally true those in power are there to manufacture fear, to inflate fleas into elephants and say “My gosh, tomorrow the sky is falling down. We need to have national emergencies, rule by decree.” Everything is “an imminent danger”, the Communist domino theory. It’s a very challenging issue. I say what you’ve described in Israel is not unique to Israel. We confront it every day right in the United States. And it works.Bruce FeinOmer Bartov is the Dean’s Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Brown University. A historian, Professor Bartov was born on a kibbutz, grew up in Tel Aviv, and served in the Israel Defense Forces during the Yom Kippur War. He went on to become a leading scholar of the German army and the Holocaust, before turning his attention to his native country. His early research concerned the Nazi indoctrination of the Wehrmacht and the crimes it committed in World War II. He then turned to the links between total war and genocide and interethnic relations in the borderlands of Eastern Europe. His current interest is reflected in his recent books, Genocide, the Holocaust and Israel-Palestine: First-Person History in Times of Crisis, Israel: What Went Wrong?, and the forthcoming The Broken Promise: A Personal Political History of Israel and Palestine. The whole idea of creating a Jewish state (and it says so in the Proclamation of the State from May 1948) is that it would be a state for Jews—that it would be both Jewish and democratic. And that has proven to be not possible. A Jewish state can be both Jewish and democratic only if the overwhelming majority (if not all) of its citizens are Jews.Omer Bartov[Zionist zealots] believe that history is on their side—so in that sense, they are similar to Communists they’re similar to Fascists they’re similar to Nazis in that they believe that they can see the way forward, they know the logic of history, and the logic of history as they see it is on their side.Omer BartovIn Israel, since the 1980s (really since after the War of 1973, with the rise of the right wing in Israel in particular) the Holocaust has come to serve a particular purpose. Instead of being commemorated as an event that happened in the past that we should remember and commemorate and research, it’s become a kind of image of an imminent danger to Israel. And the farther Israel has moved from the actual event of the Holocaust, and the more the Israeli army has become the military hegemon in its region, the more this alleged threat of an “Auschwitz around the corner” has been used by Israeli governments. Why has it been used? Because Israel actually needs to explain to itself and to its citizens: Why is it bossing it over millions of Palestinians? Half of the population under Israeli control are Palestinians. Two million are citizens, but they don’t have equal rights, and the others have no rights at all (they’re simply under arbitrary military rule). So how do you explain that? You explain that by telling your population and the rest of the world that those Palestinians—who have no power, who can never pose a threat to you—are an existential threat. And in Israel, that has worked quite well.Omer BartovBecause of the focus on Hebrew—to create Hebrew as a mother tongue for children whose mothers didn’t speak Hebrew—because of that, there was a great antagonism towards speaking any other language. And the notion of having bilingual schools (that is, of having schools in Palestine where people would learn both Hebrew and Arabic, the language of the place) is not entertained by the vast majority of educators. Now, if you think about what would have been the result of having bilingual schools already in the 1920s and 30s, that children could speak each other’s language and recognize each other’s culture—that could have had a huge effect on how Zionism ...
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    1 時間 33 分
  • MAGA Inc.

    MAGA Inc.
    2026/07/04
    Pratap Chatterjee, executive director of CorpWatch, joins us to discuss their latest report, MAGA Inc., which identifies the Crypto Czars, the Tech Titans and the Prison Profiteers who have bankrolled and benefited the most from Donald Trump’s corrupt regime. Then, Ralph welcomes Elliot Negin, executive editor of Money Trail to talk about how Donald Trump is trying to turn Washington DC into a monument to himself.Pratap Chatterjee is an investigative journalist, producer and executive director of CorpWatch, an organization that works to promote environmental, social and human rights by holding multinational corporations accountable for their actions. He is the author of several books, including Verax: The True History of Whistleblowers, Drone Warfare, and Mass Surveillance, Halliburton’s Army, and Iraq Inc.: A Profitable Occupation.Palantir is really critical to understanding how the surveillance state works, especially in identifying people to deport and locations and people to kill in Trump’s new wars overseas, such as in Iran…Palantir’s data analytical capabilities are actually extremely simplistic and terrible. But when it comes to looking for an easy solution, that’s what Palantir offers. And they’ve been able to offer this to the Trump administration—to have them speed up their political plans such as deportation, such as waging war against Iran by giving them easy answers.Pratap ChatterjeeThe biggest company behind the cryptocurrency used by criminals and drug dealers and gun traffickers has come out of the shadows, into the light, thanks specifically to the credibility offered by the Trump administration. And so this is really a sea change.Pratap ChatterjeeElliott Negin, executive editor of the Substack newsletter Money Trail, is an award-winning writer, illustrator and publication designer. Prior to co-founding Money Trail in February 2025, he was the managing editor of American Journalism Review, editor and art director of Public Citizen and Nuclear Times magazines, a news editor at NPR, and a regular contributor to HuffPost and the Union of Concerned Scientists’ Equation. His freelance articles have appeared in The Atlantic, Common Dreams, The Hill, L.A. Progressive, The Nation, Scientific American, the Washington Post and other publications.It turns out that there is a government-owned ballroom less than a mile from the White House that would serve the purposes of a state dinner, which is one of the only events that you would need a ballroom for. If Trump builds a ballroom, it will not be used probably 360 days out of the year… To have a building that big that’s going to be sitting empty for all that time makes no sense whatsoever.Elliott NeginRight now, the cost of this ballroom has been escalating… And half of it’s supposed to be covered by taxpayers. Give credit to Public Citizen. It did a report that found out that more than half the donors that were identified as donating to the project when it was pegged at $400 million (including Amazon, Lockheed Martin, Palantir) have gained contracts with the federal government worth more than $50 billion in the last six months. That’s a hell of a return on investment.Elliott NeginNews 7/3/26* Our top stories this week are the Colorado primaries. First, DSA-backed insurgent Melat Kiros successfully ousted 29-year incumbent Democratic Congresswoman Diana DeGette in the state’s first congressional district, winning in a surprise blowout of over 13 points. Kiros, a 29-year old Tigrayan-American lawyer and PhD student, was fired from Sidley Austin – a “biglaw” firm in 2023, after she “posted an open letter defending students protesting Israel’s war in Gaza from charges of antisemitism,” per Colorado Newsline. Axios reports many House Democrats, speaking anonymously, have bemoaned DeGette’s loss, with one accusing Kiros of trafficking in “performative politics,” but Usamah Andrabi, spokesperson for Justice Democrats, one of the main groups that backed Kiros, put it simply when he said “If DeGette didn’t deserve a primary, Denverites wouldn’t have elected Melat” by double digits.* Also in Colorado, state Attorney General Phil Weiser easily defeated Senator Michael Bennet in the primary to succeed Jared Polis as Governor. While Weiser did run to Bennet’s left, the real victory for progressives is that Bennet finishing out his own term means the Colorado Democratic establishment won’t be able to appoint someone – likely a centrist member of the House – to replace him, per Axios. Meanwhile, John Hickenlooper, a Colorado Democratic institution won his primary as well, fending off a challenge from his left by state Senator Julie Gonzales. However, Gonzales came within 6 points of Hickenlooper, according to Colorado Public Radio, a tantalizingly close margin. Moreover, not only has Hickenlooper vowed that this would be his final Senate term, many are speculating that Bennet himself won’t run ...
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    1 時間 32 分
  • KELP!

    KELP!
    2026/06/27
    Ralph speaks to economist Dean Baker about the hypocrisies behind the supposed Social Security shortfall and Republicans' "waste, fraud, and abuse" panic. Then, Ralph talks to journalist and ocean activist David Helvarg about his new book: Forest of the Sea: The Remarkable Life and Imperiled Future of Kelp.Offer for Ralph Nader Radio Hour Listeners— Armistice Day and the Empire by Matthew HohDean Baker is a Senior Economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, where he authors “Beat the Press,” his regular commentary on economic reporting. He has written several books, including Getting Back to Full Employment: A Better Bargain for Working People, The End of Loser Liberalism: Making Markets Progressive, False Profits: Recovering from the Bubble Economy, and The Conservative Nanny State: How the Wealthy Use the Government to Stay Rich and Get Richer.People will hear big numbers. They’ll hear “$300 billion” and they’ll go “Oh my God, that’s a lot of money. That’s money out of my pocket. It’s causing the government deficit,” whatever. That’s because they haven’t given it any context…If we could, in any conceivable world, afford to pay $500 billion to increase the military budget, surely we can afford to pay $300 billion to ensure that everyone gets their Social Security benefits. It’s just a case of: put it in context. I’m not going to say it’s a small number. It isn’t. But it’s smaller— $300 billion is smaller than $500 billion, and that’s really not a disputable point.Dean BakerWhere [DOGE] had the biggest consequences is with foreign aid. [Musk] just got a big kick out of that— USAID, he just shut it down. He boasted about that. He goes, “Last weekend I fed USAID into the wood chipper.” That’s almost verbatim what he said. Now, what this meant was that you have people— and you could find waste in that program just like any other program, but this is a program that provided millions of people with medicine, with nutrition, with healthcare. And suddenly they couldn’t get it…And Elon Musk was boasting that he killed that program. That’s great. But millions of people, I mean, thankfully, I don’t think it’s millions yet, but if that program doesn’t get restarted or funded somewhere else, you’re going to see millions of people lose their lives.Dean BakerSo we’re saying we have people on Medicaid that are committing fraud? No one gets a check from Medicaid. What would that even mean? Like, you signed up for Medicaid and you weren’t eligible, so that would mean that they might be making a payment to a doctor or hospital that they don’t actually have to make because you didn’t qualify? I’m sure that happens sometimes but it’s not like someone’s living high on the hog because they were able to get Medicaid to pay for their doctor’s visit when it actually shouldn’t have.Dean BakerDavid Helvarg is a journalist and ocean activist. He is the founder and executive director of Blue Frontier, an ocean policy and media group, and producer of Rising Tide: The Ocean Podcast. He has produced more than 40 documentaries for media outlets, including PBS and the Discovery Channel. And he has written several books, including Blue Frontier, The War Against the Greens, and Forest of the Sea: The Remarkable Life and Imperiled Future of Kelp.I’ve been pushing with my colleagues in journalism the idea of the “blue beat.” The only resource in the ocean not fully exploited at this point is good investigative reporting and narrative storytelling. Because people don’t connect with it, a lot of people think the environment ends at the shoreline. And that’s really where 95% of the living space on the planet begins.David HelvargPeople at least know that corals are in trouble and they have some sense of what a coral reef is. People don’t know that the planet has this other forest crisis—that kelp forests cover an area larger than the Amazon basin, and they’re also being impacted by these marine heat waves that are growing every year. And as you add more heat to the system, it gets more energetic, which is why we have more and more extreme storms. I covered Katrina in 2005. I thought that would be a turning point (we had 1,800 people killed and a million environmental refugees). But the propaganda by the oil and gas industry is such that we keep having these disasters from a warming ocean planet, we see the melting of the Arctic ice, and instead of an alarm bell, it became a dinner bell for all the shipping industries and people who want to exploit the oil and gas in the increasingly open Arctic waters. So we’re in this crisis point. I’m more frustrated than despairing because we know what the solutions are. It’s creating the political will to enact them.David HelvargWhen I started Blue Frontier 20 years ago, the main threats were overfishing and pollution—oil, chemical, plastic, nutrient pollution. Today, that’s being ...
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    1 時間 52 分
  • A Progressive Compact for America

    A Progressive Compact for America
    2026/06/20
    Ralph welcomes political consultant and pollster, Celinda Lake, to outline a ten-point Progressive Contract for America that she and Ralph believe – if adopted by Democratic candidates— will ensure they landslide the Republicans in the midterms. Then, Ben Cohen stops by to fill us in on his “Free Ben & Jerry!” campaign to take back the brand from the conglomerate that no longer retains the social justice values of their original company. Plus, Marine Corp veteran, Matthew Hoh, tells us about the provocative speech he made on Veterans Day entitled “Armistice Day and the Empire.”Celinda Lake is a political strategist and president of Lake Research Partners. She and her firm are known for cutting-edge research on issues including the economy, health care, the environment and education, and have worked for a number of institutions including the Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Governor’s Association, AFL-CIO, SEIU, CWA, Sierra Club, NARAL, Human Rights Campaign, Planned Parenthood, VoteVets Action Fund, and the Kaiser Family Foundation. Her international work has included work in Liberia, Kyrgyzstan, Belarus Ukraine, South Africa, and Central America.I think [a Compact for America] is a really, really, really important idea, and it’s absolutely essential to winning…And it should include concrete economic proposals. And it is noticeable that the two people who won governorships in 2025—Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill—both had contracts with their voters.Celinda LakeDemocrats need to lay out ten concrete proposals and run on them. We have the critique of what’s going on. We understand what’s happening in real people’s lives. The third leg of the stool is offering our alternative—and a concrete alternative that people can pass on to their friends and family, that people can hold us accountable for. And the last of the ten proposals in the contract needs to be something about campaign finance reform. We have to get corporate money out of politics, or our system will continue to be rigged against us and rotting from the middle.Celinda LakeBen Cohen is an entrepreneur, philanthropist, and longtime anti-war activist. He is a co-founder of the ice cream company Ben & Jerry’s and a prominent supporter of progressive causes. He is co-founder of Up In Arms, a public education and advocacy campaign pushing for a common-sense approach to military budgeting.What’s happened is that the company recently got owned by the Magnum Corporation, and the Magnum Corporation has disbanded that independent board of directors. I mean, it’s kind of a crazy, stupid move because it’s under that independent board (which has legal authority over the social mission and the quality of the product and the use of the trademark) it’s under that independent board that the company has grown and done so well. But they’ve gotten rid of the independent board.Ben CohenWhen Ben & Jerry’s was in the midst of trying to fend off this acquisition, there were some new laws that were passed in Vermont that allowed a consideration of the benefit of the community with regard to a potential sale. And after the sale happened, B Corporation started. And I’ve talked with the founder of B Corp, and he was saying that one of the inspirations for starting B Corporations was what happened to Ben & Jerry’s. So B Corporations are a different legal structure for corporations which requires them to take into account the social benefit to the community and legally makes it easier to resist these efforts to have the company taken over.Ben CohenMatthew Hoh is a disabled Marine Corps veteran of the Iraq War and former Afghan War State Department Officer. In 2009, after being appointed to the Foreign Service, Hoh resigned his post in Afghanistan over the Obama administration’s escalation of the Afghan War. He is now an analyst and commentator on foreign and military policy issues as a senior fellow with the Eisenhower Media Network. He serves on the advisory boards of many peace organizations, including Veterans for Peace and World Beyond War, and is an associate member of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.The United States recognized Armistice Day as a holiday until after the Second World War. And then in the height of the Cold War in the early 1950s, this idea of a holiday dedicated to peace, a holiday dedicated to the abrogation of warfare, a holiday that exposed just how false the motives for war are—oh that was incredibly troublesome. That was very problematic for the American empire (again, at the height of the Cold War). So there was this campaign to rename Armistice Day to Veterans Day. And this way, it became not a remembrance of the horrors of war, of what war entailed, of who profited from war. But rather a celebration of American veterans, that they have won freedoms, they have protected us from overseas enemies—and utilizing veterans, then, as a tool to crush dissent, to ...
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    1 時間 44 分
  • Leo XIV on AI / SOS C.S.B.

    Leo XIV on AI / SOS C.S.B.
    2026/06/13
    Ralph talks to journalist and M.Div. Chris Hedges about Pope Leo XIV's encyclical on artificial intelligence. Then, Ralph speaks with Rick Engler (former member of the US Chemical Safety and Hazards Investigation Board) about Trump's proposed closing of that agency. Finally, Ralph pays tribute to some recently departed friends.Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, who spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. He is the host of The Chris Hedges Report, and he is a prolific author— his latest book is A Genocide Foretold: Reporting on Survival and Resistance in Occupied Palestine.I think that Pope Leo kind of missed the point of AI. In that he describes that it could be a positive force for Catholic education (these are his words), compassionate health care, creative platforms that tell the Christian story with truth and beauty. I think those were all indications to me that he didn’t quite understand what AI is about. It’s not about education, it’s not about compassion, it’s not about truth, and it’s not about beauty. It is a very pernicious force that will go beyond, of course, replacing all sorts of labor, but creating a world where fact and fiction are blurred together.Chris HedgesI think that mass organization is kind of all we have left as we barrel towards an authoritarian state. Congress doesn’t function, certainly doesn’t function as Congress was designed to function. They have surrendered their traditional constitutional authority, including, of course, the call for Congress to declare war. And this kind of unitary executive branch—this was put into place, by the way, before Trump. He’s just taken advantage of it…And I think that it’s absolutely fundamental that we recapture that kind of militancy, that kind of organized workforce that has traditionally throughout our history been such an important corrective to democracy—along with, of course, journalism.Chris HedgesRick Engler is a former U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board member and labor advocate who founded the New Jersey Work Environment Council. He has advocated for successful landmark state and national public policies that ensure workers and the public’s “right to know” about potential chemical dangers, and that promote safer processes, chemical incident prevention, and whistleblower protection.The CSB is unique. I mean, nobody would think of abolishing the National Transportation Safety Board. And no one should think about abolishing the Chemical Safety Board, which does the same thing. It’s not about issuing, in this case, fines or violations. It’s about trying to understand the underlying causes of what led to these incidents.Rick Engler[Trump’s allies] have a certain religious fervor about this. When I talk to plant managers, the plant managers of the corporations are much more careful and nuanced in most cases. They don’t want their own plants to explode. But somewhere at the higher corporate levels, I think they’re just willing to take the risks that the tradeoff for them is: Trump is supporting them in so many ways, why interfere? Why become part of some nuanced opposition to the most extreme EPA attacks? But I do think the elimination of the CSB is driven by the Trump administration in a way that wouldn’t be happening if it was just left to the chemical industry trade associations alone. I’m not sure that’s an adequate answer. I’m actually kind of puzzled by it. Because it’s also really clear that if there was any one major incident, it would cost so much money—not only in the human tragedy of the lives lost and neighbors harmed and evacuations and shelter-in-place and property damage, but these incidents destroy facilities.Rick EnglerNews 6/12/26* Our top stories this week come to us from California, where, after an excruciatingly protracted wait, authorities have finally called some of the most high-profile races. In Los Angeles, Democratic Socialist City Councilwoman Nithya Raman has secured the second slot in the mayoral race, beating out reactionary former reality television star Spencer Pratt, PBS reports. Pratt garnered significant attention from conservative media for his slick AI-generated ads and his false claims about living in an airstream trailer after his LA home burned down in the recent fires. In actuality, he was living in the posh Bel Air hotel, billed as a campaign expense, per TMZ. Now the question becomes whether or not Raman will be able to expand her coalition to unseat incumbent Mayor Karen Bass in November.* If Raman’s victory is the good news however, the bad news is that Trump-endorsed Republican Steve Hilton will advance in the gubernatorial race. He will face off against former California Attorney General and Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra, who has accepted large campaign contributions from the California Association of ...
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