Full Program

Part 1

We begin with what appears to be a standoff between the FBI Director and the Attorney General following reports that FBI Director Comey asked the Justice Department to “publically reject” Trump’s claim that President Obama had wiretapped him, a charge that came in a Trump tweet calling Obama a “Bad (or sick) guy!” Julian Sanchez, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute who focuses on issues at the intersection of technology, privacy, civil liberties and new media, joins us to discuss his article at Just Security, “Tapping Trump”. We examine why we have not heard anything from the Justice Department yet, while the White House continues to insist that there is “something going on” without offering any evidence as to what that something is. Meanwhile, the Trump Administration is trying to equate the nothing that they are offering up in terms of evidence to support Trump’s smear against Obama, with something real that U.S. Intelligence agencies have established. And that is the reality that the Russians, directed by Putin, interfered with our election to help elect Trump.

Part 2

Then we speak with Aaron Rupar, a journalist at Think Progress where he just wrote the article “Trump to track “honor killings” by Muslim men while proposing cuts to violence against women grants.” We look into how Trump and his chief strategist Stephen Bannon, both of whom have been accused of domestic assault, demonize and stigmatize minorities like Muslims by instructing Homeland Security in the second Muslim ban signed today, to collect information on an imaginary epidemic of Muslim “honor killing” while cutting $480 million from the Department of Justice to eliminate Violence against Women grants when 1,500 American women are killed each year by their spouses. This follows Trump’ recent launch of an office at DOJ called VOICE, Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement, to solve another exaggerated problem of mayhem from Latino immigrants who are less likely to commit crimes than native-born Americans,

Part 3

Then finally we examine the money pouring into school board races in Los Angeles to enable the charter school movement backed by multi-millionaires like Eli Broad and the former LA Mayor Riordan, to attain a majority on the school board that will further the so-called “school choice” agenda of Trump and Betsy DeVos. Kevin Kumashiro, the Dean of the School of Education at the University of San Francisco joins us to discuss what kind of return on investment the funders of charter school candidates want.

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with the Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ recusal he announced today from investigations into Russian involvement in the election following news reports from The Washington Post and Wall Street Journal that appear to have caught him in a lie during his confirmation testimony before the senate. Ed Kilgore, a political columnist for New York Magazine joins us to discuss his latest article at New York Magazine, “Sessions Executes Strategic Retreat on Recusal but Leaves Some Big Questions Unanswered”. We discuss the questions that loom over the country’s top law enforcement official who has many Democratic political leaders and some Republicans calling for his resignation or for a special prosecutor to investigate possible ties to Trump and the Russians.

Part 2

Then we speak with John Nichols, The Nation magazine’s Washington Correspondent and co-author of "People Get Ready: The Fight Against a Jobless Economy and a Citizenless Democracy”. He joins us to discuss his article at The Nation “If Jeff Sessions Will Not Resign, He Should Be Impeached” and the extent to which the “failing New York Times as Trump calls it, is leading a comeback for print journalism with its investigative reporting on Trump that is causing the paper’s subscriptions to soar, and the growing possibility that Sessions could be impeached.

Part 3

Then finally we examine the failure of the Democratic Party to offer an effective response to Donald Trump’s successful address to Congress and contrast former Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear’s folksy rebuttal to the powerful takedown that Bernie Sanders offered up in a point-by-point list of the critical issues facing the nation and the world that Trump did not mention. Investigative journalist Robert Dreyfuss joins us to discuss thepopulist.buzz, a new online news platform he has co-founded that is devoted to reporting on and analyzing post-2016 efforts to rethink and rebuild the Democratic Party.