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  • MAGA Inc.

    MAGA Inc.
    Jul 4 2026
    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 Std. und 32 Min.
  • KELP!

    KELP!
    Jun 27 2026
    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 Std. und 52 Min.
  • A Progressive Compact for America

    A Progressive Compact for America
    Jun 20 2026
    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 Std. und 44 Min.
  • Leo XIV on AI / SOS C.S.B.

    Leo XIV on AI / SOS C.S.B.
    Jun 13 2026
    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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    1 Std. und 33 Min.
  • AI Backlash

    AI Backlash
    Jun 6 2026
    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 NaderI 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 SlocumAnd 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 SlocumDavid 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-WellsThis (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-WellsNews 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 ...
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    1 Std. und 33 Min.
  • The Assault on Lebanon

    The Assault on Lebanon
    May 30 2026
    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 YounesThe 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 YounesRobin 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 AndersenTheir 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 AndersenNews 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 “...
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    1 Std. und 21 Min.
  • Unions Hiding/A Solution to Gerrymandering

    Unions Hiding/A Solution to Gerrymandering
    May 23 2026
    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 TownsendThe 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 TownsendLee 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 DrutmanPeople 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 DrutmanKaty 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...
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    1 Std. und 52 Min.
  • Varieties of Democracy

    Varieties of Democracy
    May 16 2026
    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 NordWe 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 NordWhen 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 NordDr. 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 EstesNews 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 ...
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