Month: June 2024

Will Biden’s Executive Order to Close the Border Win or Lose Votes?

We begin with President Biden’s Executive Order today allowing temporary border closures to migrants once the seven day average of illegal entries reaches 2,500 per day. Joining us to discuss this thorny issue for the White House is Margaret Hu, a Professor of Law and the Director of the Digital Democracy Lab at William & Mary Law School. Previously, she served as senior policy advisor for the White House Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, and also served as special policy counsel in the Office of Special Counsel for Immigration-Related Unfair Employment Practices at the Civil Rights Division of the U. S. Department of Justice. She is author of several works, including Biometric Cyberintelligence and the Posse Comitatus Act and Algorithmic Jim Crow, and she is also the editor of Pandemic Surveillance: Privacy, Security, and Ethics.

Although Trump and Biden are Raising Billions, Money Will Have Little Effect on the Presidential Race

Then, with Trump getting a post-conviction windfall in campaign donations from billionaires, we speak with Justin Buchler, a Professor of Political Science at Case Western University where he teaches elections, political parties and Congress. His books include Hiring and Firing Public Officials: Rethinking the Purpose of Elections and Incremental Polarization: A Unified Spatial Theory of Legislative Elections, Parties and Roll Call Voting. He joins us to explode the myth of money in politics arguing that the billions raised by Trump and Biden will have little effect on the presidential race.

Following the CIA, The Pentagon Falls For Silicon Valley’s Promise of AI Miracle Weapons

Then finally we speak with Michael Brenes, Interim Director of the Brady-Johnson Program in Grand Strategy and Lecturer in History at Yale University. He is the author of For Might and Right: Cold War Defense Spending and the Remaking of American Democracy. We discuss his article at The New Republic, “A.I. Won’t Transform War. It’ll Only Make Venture Capitalists Richer” and how the big five defense contractors, Lockheed Martin, RTX, Boeing, General Dynamics and Northrop Grumman are being challenged by Silicon Valley players like Thiel and Musk who are promising AI miracle weapons.