Month: June 2022

Trump’s Pressure Campaign on the DOJ and Pardons Sought by the GOP’s Most Ardent Trumpsters

We begin with today’s hearing of the House select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection which focused on the pressure Trump put on the Department of Justice to get the DOJ to add its credibility to Trump’s bogus “stop the steal” lies. Joining us is Allan Lichtman, a political historian who teaches at American University and has studied both the American right and the presidency. His books include The Keys to the White House: A Surefire Way to Predicting the Next President.  His prediction system has correctly predicted the outcomes of all US presidential elections since 1984 including the 2016 election when against all odds, he predicted a Trump victory. The author of the national best-seller, The Case For Impeachment, his most recent books are The Embattled Vote in America and Repeal the Second Amendment: The Case for a Safer America, we discuss the revelations in the Oval Office from top DOJ officials appointed by Trump and how Republican Congressmen Perry, Gaetz, Brooks, Gohmert, Biggs and Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene all sought pardons from Trump presumably because they knew they broke the law. 

If Today’s Supreme Court Ruling Against Gun Safety Had Been in Effect on Jan. 6, Bullets and Bloodshed Would Have Ensued

Then we examine today’s unsurprising but devastatingly dangerous opinion by the Supreme Court to strike down gun safety laws in New York and other urban blue states like New Jersey, Maryland, Massachusetts and California. Joining us is Saul Cornell, the Paul and Diane Guenther Chair in American History at Fordham University and author of A Well-Regulated Militia: The Founding Fathers and the Origins of Gun Control in America; Whose Right to Bear Arms Did the Second Amendment Protect? His latest book is The Second Amendment Goes to Court and we discuss what would have happened on January 6 had this ruling been in effect meaning that the mob who attacked the Capitol would have been armed making the insurrection much more violent with bullets flying and untold bloodshed.

With Originalists Imposing Government by Judiciary, Liberals Must Find an Alternative Legal Doctrine

Then finally we assess what alternative legal doctrine to the Supreme Court’s majority of originalists and what other strategies liberals could employ against the right wing juggernaut of Federalist Society judges now dominating the Supreme Court and the federal judiciary. Joining us is Brad Snyder, a professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center where he teaches constitutional law, constitutional history, and sports law. He is the author of the forthcoming book, Democratic Justice: Felix Frankfurter, the Supreme Court, and the Making of the Liberal Establishment, and we discuss his article at CNN, “How liberals should rethink their view of the Supreme Court.”