Month: October 2023

Emmer Gets the Nomination, Trump Calls Him a RINO, Then He Drops Out of the Race For Speaker

We begin with the attempt to elect another speaker with Tom Emmer getting the nomination, but with 26 House Republicans opposing him along with Trump, who is calling him a RINO, Emmer has decided to drop out of the race. So we are back to the chaos caucus as the shutdown of the legislative branch of government reaches an all time record of three weeks. Joining us is Lawrence Jacobs, the McKnight Presidential Chair in Public Affairs, the Walter F. and Joan Mondale Chair for Political Studies, and director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance in the Hubert H. Humphrey School and the Department of Political Science at the University of Minnesota. His books include Politicians Don’t Pander: Political Manipulation and the Loss of Democratic Responsiveness, Who Governs? Presidents, Public Opinion, and Manipulation and Democracy under Fire: Donald Trump and the Breaking of American History.

Are the Insurrectionist House Republicans Fascist or Nihilists, or Both?

Then we assess whether the insurrectionist House Republicans are fascist or nihilists, or both, and speak with Rebecca Gordon, who teaches in the Philosophy department at the University of San Francisco and for the university’s Leo T. McCarthy Center for Public Service and the Common Good. She is the author of Mainstreaming Torture, American Nuremberg: The U.S. Officials Who Should Stand Trial for Post-9/11 War Crimes and is now at work on a new book on the history of torture in the United States. A regular contributor to Tom Dispatch, we discuss her latest article, “Trump’s Schedule F (for “Failed State”)”

When Israel Invades Gaza They Will Cross Iran and Hezbollah’s Red Line

Then finally, with Secretary of State Blinken addressing the UN Security Council today insisting the US does not want to see the war between Israel and Hamas become a regional conflagration, we look into Iran’s role as an escalation looms following warnings from Tehran that a ground invasion of Gaza is a red line for Iran and its proxy Hezbollah. Joining us is Iranian/American historian Maziar Behrooz who was born in Tehran and has taught at UC Berkeley and Stanford University, and is currently a professor of History at San Francisco State University. He is the author of two books on the history of the Iranian left, Rebels with a Cause, followed by Perspectives on the History of Rebels with a Cause in Iran, a collection of interviews and articles on leftist movements in Iran that was translated into Persian and published in Iran. His latest book is Iran at War: Interaction with the modern world and the struggle with imperial Russia.