Month: June 2024

Background Briefing: June 11, 2024

The Undercover Activist Who Captured the Real Justice Alito as a Christian Nationalist 

We begin with the mask coming off the right wing Supreme Court Justices who claim to be fair and impartial but in the cases of Thomas and Alito it is increasingly obvious that they are ideologues if not political hacks and now the true face of Justice Alito is exposed in an audio tape secretly recorded by Lauren Windsor, the executive producer of The Undercurrent, a grassroots political news program. She is the creative director of American Family Voices, a progressive non-profit focusing on banking and campaign finance reform, blogs under the name Lady Libertine and is at work on the documentary, “Gonzo for Democracy.” Last Monday she went undercover to the Supreme Court Historical Society’s annual dinner where she secretly recorded Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Samuel Alito and his wife Martha-Ann. We discuss how the Chief Justice in private appears reasonable while Alito comes off as an uncompromising Christian Nationalist and his wife a vengeful bigot who vows to get back at the press and her critics.

 

The Hypocrisy of MAGA Republicans Celebrating Hunter Biden’s Convictions on Gun Laws They Violently Oppose

Then we assess today’s conviction of Hunter Biden on all three felony counts for lying on a mandatory gun-purchasing form in a trial that the Republican prosecutor used to highlight Hunter’s personal failings in humiliating detail with embarrassing evidence of his cocaine addiction. Joining us to discuss how the MAGA Republicans celebrating Hunter’s convictions passionately oppose the same gun control laws the president’s son was convicted on is Joshua Horwitz, the Dana Feidler professor of the practice and co-director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions. He has spent more than three decades working on gun violence prevention issues and is the author of Guns, Democracy and the Insurrectionist Idea.

 

President Macron’s Call For a Snap Election Already Appears to be Backfiring

Then finally we examine the alarming gains of the French far-right in the recent EU elections and President Macron’s immediate response to his party’s humiliating defeat to call for a snap election that now looks more tenuous as the head of the conservative Republicans has called for his party to join with Marine Le Pen’s neo-Fascist National Rally. Joining us is Philippe Marlière, a professor of French and European politics at University College, London. In 2007, he was awarded the Marcel Liebman Chair in political science by the Université Libre de Bruxelles. His main publications are about the French Socialist Party, French politics and European social democracy.