Month: February 2024

How to Get Around Speaker Johnson’s Servility to Trump as He Blocks Aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan

We begin with House Speaker Johnson refusing to move on the bipartisan bill of aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan that passed the senate 70 to 29 and speak with Thomas Kahn, who worked in Congress for 33 years where he served as staff director and chief counsel of the House Budget Committee. He is a fellow at the Center for the Study of Congress and the Presidency at American University and we assess the chances of a work-around Johnson’s servility to Trump to get a bipartisan majority vote on the floor via a discharge partition.

A Resounding Win For Democrats and a Rebuke of Trump and the Republicans on the Border Issue

Then, following yesterday’s resounding election win for the Democrats in a rebuke of Trump and the Republicans attempt to make the border the issue, we speak with David Cay Johnston, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter and bestselling author of The Making of Donald Trump.  A 13 year veteran of The New York Times, he won the Pulitzer Prize for reporting that uncovered loopholes and inequities in the U.S. tax code and he has uncovered so many tax dodges that he has been called the “de facto tax enforcement officer of the United States”. His latest book is The Big Cheat: How Donald Trump Fleeced America and Enriched Himself and His Family and he is the co-founder of DCReport.org where his latest article, which we discuss is, “Will GOP Leaders Speak Truth to Trump?”

Will the Far Right Supreme Court’s Majority Delay the Cases Trump is Facing in Federal Court?

Then finally we look into whether the far-right Supreme Court majority are Republican political activists in robes and will rule to help Trump delay the cases he is facing in federal court. Joining us is Sidney Blumenthal, the former assistant and senior adviser to President Bill Clinton, and senior adviser to Hillary Clinton. He has been a national staff reporter for The Washington Post, Washington editor and staff writer for The New Yorker and his books include the bestsellers The Clinton Wars, The Rise of the Counter-Establishment and The Permanent Campaign. His latest book is All the Powers on Earth, The Political Life of Abraham Lincoln 1856-1860, and we discuss his article at The Guardian, “The US supreme court may turn this election into a constitutional crisis.”