Background Briefing: July 28, 2024

With Democrats Reeling From Despair to Euphoria, Kamala Harris Steps Out of the Shadows Into the Limelight

We begin on this 100th day before the election as the Democrats have gone from despair to euphoria almost overnight with the emergence of Kamala Harris who as Vice President was the second fiddle whose main job was not to overshadow Biden and stick with his agenda. Now she is stepping out of the shadows into the limelight and so far has been impressive. Joining us to assess this change as Trump promises his “beautiful Christians” they will only have to vote once then he’ll fix everything is Adele Stan, an independent journalist who is a longtime chronicler of the right wing of U.S. politics. A winner of the Hillman Prize in Opinion & Analysis Journalism, her work has appeared in Mother Jones, The Nation, and The American Prospect as well as on the op-ed pages of The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times.

 

After Capturing Our Judiciary, Opus Dei Operatives Are Poised to Capture the Executive Branch With J.D. Vance and Kevin Roberts, the Leader of Project 2025

Then we examine the full circle of the shadowy power of Opus Dei wielded by the Prince of dark money Leonard Leo who has captured the judicial branch and seated the six right wing justices on the Supreme Court and now appears poised to capture the executive branch by placing J.D. Vance in the Oval Office to enact the agenda of Project 2025. Now we just learned from The Guardian that the Project 2025 leader Kevin Roberts is a member of Opus Dei. Joining us is Lisa Graves, the Executive Director of the new corporate watchdog group True North Research. She has served as a senior advisor in all three branches of the federal government–as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Justice Department, as Chief Counsel for Nominations on the Senate Judiciary Committee, and as a Deputy Chief of the article 3 judges division for the U.S. Courts.

Since He Should Lose Today’s Election in Venezuela, Will Maduro Do a Trump and Not Concede?

Then finally we check in on today’s elections in Venezuela where the opposition should win according to the polls but the corrupt and incompetent Maduro government is doing everything it can to hold onto power and, like Trump, may not concede. Joining us is David Smilde, the Professor of Human Relations and Senior Associate at the Center for Inter-American Policy and Research at Tulane University. His research focuses on violence, political conflict and peacemaking, and he recently published The Paradox of Violence in Venezuela: Revolution, Crime and Policing during Chavismo. He has researched Venezuela for over thirty years, living there a total of seventeen. From 2010-2012 he was the Chair of the Venezuelan Studies Section of the Latin American Studies Association and he founded the WOLA Venezuela Politics and Human Rights blog and curated it and he gave expert testimony on Venezuela in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He has an article at Responsible Statecraft, “Anything can happen in Venezuela’s presidential election.”