Month: September 2021

Briefings

Background Briefing: September 13, 2021

On By gram

 

After Allowing a Partisan Anti-Abortion Law to Stand, Amy Coney Barrett Claims Nonpartisanship

We begin with comments made on Sunday by Justice Amy Coney Barrett after being introduced by Senator Mitch McConnell at the University of Louisville’s McConnell Center, who expressed concern that people may see the Supreme Court as a partisan institution, apparently wanting it both ways since she recently voted in the most partisan way to allow a flagrantly unconstitutional anti-abortion law to become law in Texas. Joining us to discuss the deeply religious one-time clerk to Justice Antonin Scalia who is behind the Texas law, Jonathan Mitchell, is Lisa Graves, the Executive Director of the new corporate watchdog group True North Research who was a Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Justice Department, Chief Counsel for Nominations on the Senate Judiciary Committee and Deputy Chief of the article 3 Judges Division for the US Courts. We discuss how this anti-union lawyer who has been praised for the ingenious way he created a law that evades judicial review, was only successful because he had a sympathetic audience on the Supreme Court looking for a way to overturn Roe v Wade and an eager Texas Fifth Circuit stacked with far-right Trump judges.

 

The House Proposal to Pay For the $3.5 Trillion Build Back Better Plan

Then we speak with Edward McCaffery, the Robert C. Packard trustee chair in law and a professor of law, economics and political science at the University of Southern California about the draft proposal by House Democrats on how to pay for the $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation bill the Biden Administration calls the Build Back Better plan. The author of Fair Not Flat: How to Make the Tax System Better and Simpler and the founder of the People’s Tax Page, he joins us to discuss how already the bill which started at $6 trillion is likely to be whittled down further and could end up at $2 trillion or less. 

 

The Heavily-Redacted FBI 9/11 Report Raises More Questions Than Answers

Then finally we examine the heavily-redacted FBI report made public on the 20th anniversary of 9/11 which reveals more of the FBI’s investigation into Saudi government officials who helped some of the 9/11 hijackers with money and lodging after claiming “chance encounters” with them at a restaurant in LA and a 7-Eleven in Virginia. Ali Al-Ahmed, the founder and director of the Institute for Gulf Affairs who is an expert on Saudi political affairs and Wahhabi islam joins us to discuss how there is still much more to be learned about the Saudi role in 9/11 and that the Saudi mindset as a result of Wahhabi indoctrination is at the heart of why 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudis.