#1769 Politics Beyond the Ballot Box: Elections and the Movements that Power Them
Air Date: 2-1-2026
Today we examine what's actually working against the Trump regime and the role of this year's elections. Unsurprisingly, his own voter fraud investigation just proved him a liar, Democrats are overperforming expectations in House special elections, and Zohran Mamdani's campaign based on having fun in community needs to be a model for every movement against authoritarianism.
Our Top Takes this week are about 55 minutes, with the remainder of the show diving deeper into policing immigration, power and organizing, voting rights, and candidacy.
Read more#1768 The End of an Era: The International Rules-Based Order Gives Way to Trump's Might-Makes-Right Plutocracy
Air Date: 1-29-2026
Today we examine the collapse of the American-led, rules-based world order (such as it was) in real time. Canada’s Prime Minister pointed out that the emperor has no clothes and declared US hegemony over while Europe called Trump's bluff on Greenland... all the more reason why he would prefer a fake “Board of Peace” that he can rule over as a worldwide plutocracy.
Read more#1767 Wars Are Won By Teachers and Trump is Attacking Them Like a Foreign Adversary
Air Date: 1-25-2026
Today we examine education as the battleground for democracy itself. We'll hear how authoritarians erase history to maintain power, why liberal arts colleges don't exist in authoritarian societies, how the administration is punishing universities for their political views, and what the detention of student protesters reveals about the cost of dissent in Trump's America.
Read more#1766 The Fragility of State Violence: The ICE Occupation, Renee Good, and the Minneapolis Uprising
Air Date: 1-21-2026
Today, we look at ICE's reign of terror as a paramilitary occupation force and the communities pushing back. We'll hear about Renee Good, an unarmed woman shot dead by federal agents, and Keith Porter, killed by an off-duty agent on New Year's Eve, in addition to historical parallels from the Civil Rights-era Selma, Alabama, and the Boston Massacre. The signs of hope here are that the oppressed won those fights and the oppressors were forced to retreat - there's every reason to believe that the same pattern can repeat today.
Read more#1765 AI Capitalism Will Not Deliver an AI Utopia
Air Date: 1-17-2026
There's a lot to be concerned about with AI but the biggest concern is the economic system we have in place at the moment when AI is being introduced. Capitalism is not a good steward of new and potentially dangerous technology, as we've seen from Zuckerberg's move-fast-and-break-things era of social media that he later recognized as having triggered a genocide. When the profit drive necessitates light-speed growth, ethical and safety considerations are the first things to be jettisoned and things get broken.
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