Day: January 13, 2025

Hearings Begin on Tuesday For Trump’s Disastrously Unqualified Nominees

We begin with the confirmation hearings this week for top jobs in the Trump administration starting on Tuesday with his nominee for Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth. Joining us to discuss the dangerously unqualified nominees to the top national security positions in the country, with Hegseth at Defense, Tulsi Gabbard at Intelligence and Kash Patel at the FBI, is David Cay Johnston, a professor at The Rochester Institute of Technology. A Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter and bestselling author of The Making of Donald Trump, he is a 13 year veteran of The New York Times and 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. He’s also the co-founder of DCReport.org.

How Pete Hegseth Compares to Former Heads of the Pentagon

Then we speak with a former top official in the Pentagon to discuss how Hegseth shapes up compared to previous heads of the Pentagon and the results are alarming. Joining us is Lawrence Korb, a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress and a Senior Adviser to the Center for Defense Information. He served as Assistant Secretary of Defense and is the author of A New National Security Strategy in an Age of Terrorists, Tyrants, and Weapons of Mass Destruction. 

The Laken Riley Act Will Empower Anti-Immigrant Zealots like Texas AG Paxton

Then finally we look into the Laken Riley Act that has passed the House with votes from 48 Democrats and is making its way through the Senate which will give anti-immigrant state officials and federal judges new powers in immigration enforcement to detain individual migrants. Joining us to discuss the disastrous consequences of these new powers in the hands of people like the Texas AG Paxton and Texas Federal Judge Kaczmarek is Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a Senior Fellow at the American Immigration Council where he directs the Council’s administrative and legislative advocacy effort and works on border and immigration court issues.