Category: Briefings

Will Another Humiliation of Hezbollah and Iran Lead to a War in Lebanon?

We begin with 2,780 injured with 9 dead in Lebanon as pagers used by Hezbollah blew up simultaneously injuring faces, eyes and blowing off hands. We discuss whether this further humiliation of Iran and Hezbollah will provoke a retaliation against Israel or whether Israel is planning a larger war in Lebanon as Israel’s Defense Minister has suggested. Joining us is Thanassis Cambanis, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation and Director of the Center for International Research and Policy. Until recently, he was worked as a journalist based in Lebanon and his books include A Privilege to Die: Inside Hezbollah’s Legions and Their Endless War Against Israel, Once Upon a Revolution: An Egyptian Story, and most recently, Shia Power Comes of Age: The Transformation of Islamist Politics in Iraq, 2003-2023.

Chief Justice Roberts Does Not Call Balls and Strikes, He Rigs the Playing Field Before the Game

Then we look into the unprecedented leak to The New York Times from inside the right wing majority on the Supreme Court revealing that the supposed centrist Chief Justice Roberts, who only calls balls and strikes, is in fact a zealous Republican activist out to rig the playing field before the game begins. 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.

As Incendiary Hate, Racism and Paranoia From Trump and Vance Escalates, What Can We Expect If They Lose the Election?

Then finally we assess whether there will be a limit as incendiary claims by Trump and Vance ramp up blaming Biden and Harris for the assassination attempts on Trump while Musk complains that nobody has fired a shot against Biden or Kamala, a criminally reckless post he took down that apparently got the attention of the Secret Service. Joining us to discuss Trump’s weaponization of hatred, racism and paranoia is Jared Yates Sexton, the author of American Rule: How a Nation Conquered the World but Failed Its People and The People Are Going to Rise Like the Waters Upon Your Shore as well as three collections of fiction. The host of The Muckrake Podcast and author of the Substack “Dispatches From A Collapsing State“, his latest book is The Midnight Kingdom: A History of Power, Paranoia, and the Coming Crisis.