Month: April 2022

A Mega-Billionaire Buys a Public Media Company to Take it Private in the Name of Democracy?

We begin with the disconnect between the richest man in the world buying a public media company and taking it private and his pledge that he is doing so in the service of a functioning democracy. Joining us to discuss Elon Musk’s $44 billion purchase of Twitter is David Carroll, a professor of media design at the New School and director of its Design and Technology MFA program which explores the intersections between media design, culture, policy, industry, and education. His research and analysis examines major shifts in media as it relates to advertising, adtech, data rights, privacy, surveillance, social media, and journalism. We speculate how soon Donald Trump will return to Twitter under Musk even though the former president who was banned from Twitter for inciting the January 6 insurrection said he won’t rejoin because he has his own social media platform Truth Social, but like a lot of Trump’s business enterprises, it is heading for bankruptcy.

First OSHA Now the CDC, SCOTUS and Trump Judges are Deconstructing the Administrative State

Then we look into the right wing project underway to, as Steve Bannon suggested, “deconstruct the administrative state” following the Supreme Court’s attack on OSHA and now an unqualified Federalist judge appointed by Trump taking authority away from the CDC to make critical policy during a pandemic. Joining us is Lawrence Gostin, Director of the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law and University Professor at Georgetown University. He is the author of the new book, Global Health Security: A Blueprint for the Future and we discuss his article at The New York Times, “No Matter How You Feel About Masks, You Should Be Alarmed by This Judge’s Decision.”

What the Supreme Court’s Decision on Puerto Rico Could Open the Door to

Then finally we examine the ramifications of the recent Supreme Court decision that Puerto Ricans don’t have constitutional rights to some federal benefits and speak with Christina Ponsa-Kraus, a Professor of Legal History at Columbia Law School. Raised in Puerto Rico, she writes about the constitutional history of American territorial expansion and the political status of Puerto Rico and other U.S. territories. She is the co-editor of Foreign in a Domestic Sense: Puerto Rico, American Expansion, and the Constitution and we discuss how this case is both a big deal in terms of what it decided but more so for what it opens the door to.