Background Briefing: March 7, 2021

 

The GOP is Going the Way of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

We begin with the passage of Biden’s $1.9 trillion stimulus bill in the senate which was stalled by GOP antics and emerged without any Republican votes as the nasty all-white fraternity boys who dominate the party now owned by Trump, haze America with culture wars distractions involving Mr. Potatohead and Dr. Seuss while attempting to rewrite history to claim it was the Democrats who stormed the Capitol on January 6 to overturn their own victory in the election. Joining us is Thomas Nichols, a U.S. Naval War College University Professor and a columnist at USA Today who taught International Relations and Soviet/Russian affairs at Dartmouth College and Georgetown University. The author of The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters, and the forthcoming book Our Own Worst Enemy: The Assault From Within on Modern Democracy, we discuss his article at The Atlantic “The Republican Party Is Now in Its End Stages. The GOP has become, in form if not in content, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union of the late 1970’s.”

 

Biden Should Deal With the Source of the Problems at the Border, Starting With the Corrupt Regime in Honduras

Then with more migrants arriving on the Southern border, mostly escaping violence in Honduras, we will look into the problems facing the Biden Administration as it takes a new approach to border issues but appears wedded to failed past policies when it comes to dealing with the sources of the problem, which is clearly the corrupt governments and violent gangs in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras in collusion with drug cartels who are making life unbearable for ordinary folk who want to protect their children. Adrienne Pine, a Professor of Anthropology at American University and a self-described militant medical anthropologist and author of Working Hard, Drinking Hard: On Violence and Survival in Honduras, joins us to discuss the Honduran Human Rights and Anti-Corruption Act co-sponsored by Senators Jeff Merkely, Bernie Sanders, Patrick Leahy, Ed Markey, Elizabeth Warren, Dick Durbin, Sheldon Whitehouse and Chris Van Hollen.

 

Could The Derek Chauvin Trial End With an Eruption Like the Rodney King Verdict?

Then finally with the trial of Derek Chauvin, the police officer seen on video taking the life of George Floyd, due to begin in Minneapolis on Monday, we speak with Mark Osler, the Robert and Marion Short Professor of Law at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota and author of Contemporary Criminal Law, a casebook. He joins us to discuss his article at CNN “The missing elements in the George Floyd murder trial” and the fear that an aquittal could result in the kind of violent erruption after the Rodney King verdict, as well as the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act which recently passed in the House.