Ralph Nader Radio Hour

In the aftermath of the U.S. bombing of Iranian nuclear facilities, we welcome back Theodore Postol, Professor of Science, Technology and National Security Policy Emeritus at MIT to give his expert technical assessment on where that assault leaves the Iranian nuclear program. Then, Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, gives us his analysis of the political side of the issue. Theodore Postol is Professor of Science, Technology and National Security Policy Emeritus in the Program in Science, Technology, and Society at MIT. His expertise is in nuclear weapon systems, including submarine warfare, applications of nuclear weapons, ballistic missile defense, and ballistic missiles more generally. No one at that point after the attack could have known whether or not there was success of any kind, even if there was success. And I doubt there was any success. Theodore Postol The Israelis have done everything in their power to create an internal argument among the political leadership in Iran to proceed to build a nuclear weapon so that this kind of thing won't happen again. So the Israeli grand strategy, if you want to call it that, shows no intelligence or thought of any kind. Theodore Postol Trita Parsi is the executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, and the co-founder and former President of the National Iranian American Council. He is an expert on US-Iranian relations, Iranian foreign policy, and the geopolitics of the Middle East. He has authored three books on US foreign policy in the Middle East, with a particular focus on Iran and Israel— Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Iran, Israel and the United States, A Single Roll of the Dice – Obama’s Diplomacy with Iran, and Losing an Enemy: Obama, Iran and the Triumph of Diplomacy. Israel is not enhancing American power in the Middle East. Israel is consuming it. Trita Parsi, Executive VP of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft If the (Iranian regime) were to collapse it would most likely be because there would be an internal coup. And the next regime would be coming from the very same regime. It would just be a much more aggressive and hardline. Trita Parsi 20 Worst Recent Trump Headlines 1. Trump Administration Abruptly Cuts Billions From State Health Services (Apoorva Mandavilli, Margot Sanger-Katz and Jan Hoffman, New York Times, March 26, 2025) 2. The EPA is canceling almost 800 environmental justice grants, court filing reveals (Maxine Joselow and Amudalat Ajasa, Washington Post, April 29, 2025) 3. Trump’s attack on federal unions a ‘test case’ for broader assault, warn lawyers (Michael Sainato, The Guardian, 5/1/25) 4. Trump fires all 3 Democrats on the Consumer Product Safety Commission (Jaclyn Diaz, NPR, 5/9/25) 5. Federal employee unions fight for survival as Trump tries to eviscerate them (Andrea Hsu, NPR, 5/11/25) 6. Trump’s DOJ agrees to let Boeing escape guilty plea. It was a deal victims’ families didn’t want. (Alexis Keenan, Yahoo Finance, 5/23/25) 7. Trump made a promise not to touch Medicare. His megabill just broke it. (Alan L. Cohen, NBC, 5/23/25) 8. Trump’s safety research cuts heighten workplace risks, federal workers warn (Michael Sainato, The Guardian, 5/27/25) 9. Provision in GOP budget bill puts millions at risk of losing SNAP benefits (Lisa Desjardins and Jackson Hudgins, PBS, 5/29/25) 10. White House proposes shutting down chemical safety agency (Maxine Joselow Washington Post, 6/3/25) 11. Trump tax bill would add $550 billion in interest payments to national debt (Jacob Bogage, Washington Post, 6/5/25) 12. RFK Jr. boots all members of the CDC's vaccine advisory committee (Will Stone, NPR, 6/9/25) 13. Vance, Rubio peddle fiction that 88 percent of foreign aid doesn’t go overseas (Glenn Kessler, Washington Post, 6/11/25) 14. Trump's EPA plans to repeal climate pollution limits on fossil fuel power plants (Jeff Brady, NPR,...

To give us the benefit of his vast experience as a diplomat, former Ambassador Chas Freeman, helps us sort through the escalating conflict between Israel and Iran. Then Christian Sorenson, military analyst from the Eisenhower Media Network, explains just how the military industrial complex works. Ambassador Chas Freeman is a retired career diplomat who has negotiated on behalf of the United States with over 100 foreign governments in East and South Asia, Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, and both Western and Eastern Europe. Ambassador Freeman served as U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense, U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, acting Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, and Deputy Chief of Mission and Chargé d’Affaires in the American embassies at both Bangkok and Beijing. He was Director for Chinese Affairs at the U.S. Department of State from 1979-1981. The claim that suddenly Iran was on the verge of building a nuclear weapon has no basis in fact. And neither the CIA nor the Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, agree with the statement of the President that Iran is about to build a bomb. Ambassador Chas Freeman The Israelis have a strange way of negotiating. They went into negotiations with Hamas, and they killed the top two people in charge of the negotiations. Then they go into negotiations – with U.S. auspices – with Iran. And in the middle of them, they kill the top military and scientific people in Iran. Ambassador Chas Freeman It’s as least as likely, maybe more likely, that there will be regime change in Jerusalem as there will be regime change in Tehran. Ambassador Chas Freeman Christian Sorensen is the Associate Director of the Eisenhower Media Network. He is an author and military affairs analyst covering the business of war. Mr. Sorenson is a former U.S. Air Force Arabic linguist, served at a variety of stateside posts and a tour in Qatar. He is the author of “Understanding the War Industry.” Since leaving the military, he has become the foremost expert studying military contracting and how corporations profit from war. The U.S. taxpayer gives any year around three to $4 billion of U.S. tax dollars to Israel, and then Israel is supposed to turn around and use that money to purchase from the U.S. war industry. So it is incredibly profitable for the U.S. ruling class to do that because it doesn't come out of the pockets of the U.S. ruling class because the U.S. ruling class doesn't pay their fair share of taxes. Christian Sorenson Per Ralph's call to action - Even non-veterans can sign up for Veterans for Peace Get full access to Ralph Nader Radio Hour at www.ralphnaderradiohour.com/subscribe

First up, Georgetown law professor and former national legal director at the ACLU, David Cole, joins us to discuss the legal response to the Trump Administration’s serial violations of the Constitution. Then Mike Ferner of Veterans for Peace checks in to update us halfway through his Fast for Gaza, 40 days of living on 250 calories per day, which is the average caloric intake of Palestinian survivors in Gaza. Finally, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, Joe Holley, stops by to pay tribute to his mentor and colleague, the late crusading journalist, Ronnie Dugger, founder of the progressive Texas Observer. David Cole is the Honorable George J. Mitchell Professor in Law and Public Policy and former National Legal Director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). He writes about and teaches constitutional law, freedom of speech, and constitutional criminal procedure. He is a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books and is the legal affairs correspondent for The Nation. Trump is obviously not concerned about antisemitism. He's concerned about targeting schools because they are places where people can criticize the president, where people can think independently, are taught to think independently, and often don't support what the president is doing. He's using his excuse to target a central institution of civil society. David Cole The decision on Trump versus the United States is only about criminal liability for criminal acts, not for unconstitutional acts. And violating the Constitution is not a crime. Every president has violated the Constitution probably since George Washington. That's not a crime. David Cole Mike Ferner served in the Navy during the Vietnam War, and he is former National Director and current Special Projects Coordinator for Veterans for Peace. He is the author of Inside the Red Zone: A Veteran for Peace Reports from Iraq. Two hundred and fifty calories is technically, officially, a starvation diet, and we're doing it for 40 days. The people in Gaza have been doing it for months and months and months, and they're dying like crazy. That's the whole concern that we're trying to raise. And I'll tell you at the end of this fast, on the 40th day, we are not just going out silently. There are going to be some fireworks before we're done with this thing. So all I'm saying is: stay tuned. Mike Ferner: Special Projects Coordinator of Veterans for Peace on “FastforGaza” They're (The Veterans Administration is) being defamed, Ralph, for the same reason that those right-wing corporatists defamed public education. So they can privatize it. And that's exactly what they're trying to do with the VA. And I can tell you every single member of Veterans for Peace has got nothing but praise for the VA. Mike Ferner Joe Holley was the editor of the Texas Observer in the early 1980s. A former staff writer at The Washington Post and a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial writer and columnist at the Houston Chronicle, he is the author of eight books, mostly about Texas. He would talk to people, and he would find out things going on about racial discrimination, about farm workers being mistreated, all kind of stories that the big papers weren't reporting. And this one guy, young Ronnie Dugger, would write these stories and expose things about Texas that a lot of Texans just did not know. Joe Holley on the late progressive journalist, Ronnie Dugger He knew the dark side of Texas, but he always had an upbeat personality. I had numerous conversations with Ronnie (Dugger), and he was ferociously independent. Ralph Nader News 6/13/25 1. On Monday, Israeli forces seized the Madleen, the ship carrying activist Greta Thunberg and others attempting to bring food and other supplies past the Israeli blockade into Gaza, and detained the crew. The ship was part of the Freedom Flotilla Coalition and Thunberg had been designated an “Ambassador of Conscience,” by Amnesty International. The group decried her detention, with...

Ralph welcomes Heidi Shierholz, president of the Economic Policy Institute, to break down the budget bill passing through Congress that is the largest transfer of wealth from the poor and working-class to the wealthy in United States history. Then, insurance expert, Robert Hunter returns to discuss the recent rise in auto insurance rates. Heidi Shierholz is the president of the Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank that uses the power of its research on economic trends and on the impact of economic policies to advance reforms that serve working people, deliver racial justice, and guarantee gender equity. In 2021 she became the fourth president EPI has had since its founding in 1986. We've never seen a budget that so plainly takes from the poor to give to the rich… The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office found that lower and lower middle-income people will actually lose out. They may get something of a tax break, but they lose benefits. So that on net, their after-tax income will be lower after this bill, while the rich just make out like bandits. Heidi Shierholz, President of the Economic Policy Institute The draconian cuts that we are seeing to the safety net are not big enough, because the tax increases are so huge that this bill also increases the deficit dramatically. Heidi Shierholz Many folks are calling this the MAGA Murder Bill. They're not wrong. People will die because of the cuts that we're seeing here. Heidi Shierholz Robert Hunter is the Director Emeritus of Insurance at the Consumer Federation of America. He has held many positions in the field, both public and private, including being the Commissioner of Insurance for the State of Texas being the President and Founder of the National Insurance Consumer Organization and served as United States Federal Insurance Administrator. Decide how much you need. Don't ask for more than you really need. And then once you have it, “I need this much for my car. I need this much if I hit somebody” and so on. And then you get that statistic, and you send it out to several companies and get quotes. Robert Hunter on buying auto insurance There isn't any program benefiting the American people that Trump is not cutting in order to turn the country over to the giant corporations and the super-rich. It's basically an overthrow of the government and an overthrow of the rule of law. Ralph Nader News 6/6/25 1. On May 23rd, the Trump administration Department of Justice officially announced it had reached an agreement with Boeing to drop its criminal case against the airline manufacturer related to the 2018 and 2019 crashes that killed 346 people, NPR reports. The turnover at the federal government in recent years has prolonged this case; the first Trump administration reached a deferred prosecution agreement with Boeing in 2021, but prosecutors revived the criminal case under President Biden, and as NPR notes, “Boeing agreed last year to plead guilty to defrauding regulators, but a federal judge rejected that proposed plea deal.” Just before the deal was reached, Senators Elizabeth Warren and Richard Blumenthal penned a letter calling on the DOJ not to “allow [Boeing] to weasel its way out of accountability for its failed corporate culture, and for any illegal behavior that has resulted in deadly consequence,” but this was clearly ignored. Paul Cassell, a law professor at the University of Utah and former federal judge who, according to NPR, is representing the families of victims for free, said, “This kind of non-prosecution deal is unprecedented and obviously wrong for the deadliest corporate crime in U.S. history…My families will object and hope to convince the court to reject [the deal]." 2. That same day, Trump signed a new executive order to “cut down on regulations and fast-track new licenses for [nuclear] reactors and power plants,” per Reuters. According to the wire service, “Shares of uranium mining companies Uranium Energy…Energy...

We hear from citizen activist, Diana Kastenbaum, who organized a town meeting in her congressional district in Western New York State filled with both Democrats and Republicans airing their concerns. How did the district’s representative respond? We’ll hear the whole story. Then, Ralph welcomes back Washington Post tech reporter, Geoffrey Fowler, to discuss his latest report about how Meta promised parents it would automatically shield teens from harmful content. Find out what happened when Mr. Fowler and a group of Gen Z users put that promise to the test. Plus, we hear from RootsAction.org director Norman Solomon about the petition his group and Progressive Democrats of America sent to the DNC for an emergency meeting challenging how the party elites are responding to the authoritarian creep of the Trump Administration. Finally, Ralph calls for listeners to flood the White House switchboard to exhort the Administration to end the indiscriminate slaughter in Gaza. Diana Kastenbaum lives in Batavia, New York, where she has been an owner in her family business, Pinnacle Manufacturing Company, Inc. for over 45 years. In 2014, she became the CEO of the company making her one of only a handful of women CEOs in the manufacturing field of tool and die casting in all of North America. In addition, she owned her own tech consulting company for 25 years. She has devoted herself to numerous national political endeavors and in 2016 ran for Congress in NY-27. It wasn't until January 20th when those executive orders started to come out, I started to get really, really nervous. And it woke me up from my hibernation here in Western New York. So I actually had many sleepless nights, and I reached out to some friends. They weren't sleeping too. They were worried. And so we decided to do something about it. Diana Kastenbaum on her summoning her congressperson for a town meeting It (the town meeting) was just for people to ask their questions and tell their stories. And I think that's sort of where we are now in town halls is trying to get our friends and our neighbors and our local communities to hear what will happen, what is happening to the people in their communities. There were Republicans there, and they didn't yell or shout or anything like that. There was no disruption, but everybody stayed until the last moment, and everybody listened to these people share their stories. Diana Kastenbaum Geoffrey Fowler is The Washington Post's technology columnist. Before joining the Post he spent sixteen years with the Wall Street Journal writing about consumer technology, Silicon Valley, national affairs and China. I performed an experiment on Instagram where I set up one of those accounts for a teenager that Instagram had promised us would be given special protections. And frankly, it took as little as ten minutes for me to swipe through and see what kinds of stuff Instagram was going to show this kid. And, oh boy, it really went off the rails quickly. Geoffrey Fowler It's like there's a dark commercial villain inside this company (Meta) that does whatever makes the most money for them. Geoffrey Fowler Norman Solomon is co-founder of RootsAction.org and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. He is the author of War Made Easy, Made Love, Got War, and his newest book, War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine. So we're hearing some mea culpas now about, "Oh, we should have told Biden not to run for re-election." But in point of fact, the same mentality, the same risk culture is still in place. And that's where I think the only change is going to come from the bottom up. It's going to come from us folks at the grassroots. Norman Solomon The Israelis bombed a home where they killed nine children out of ten children of parents who were both physicians with one American-made missile. That's just one of the tragedies that occurs every day, weaponized by the U.S. government – now Donald...

In the midst of the terrible Trump tax bill moving through Congress, Ralph invites Sarah Anderson who directs the Global Economy Project at the Institute for Policy Studies to discuss the massive tax loopholes huge companies like Amazon get that allow them to pay far less in taxes than ordinary working people. Then, Greg LeRoy from Good Jobs First joins us to discuss how state taxpayers are footing the bill for these massive data centers companies like Google are building all over the country. Plus, Ralph has some choice words for passive unions and responds to listener feedback about our guest last week, Nadav Wieman. Sarah Anderson directs the Global Economy Project at the Institute for Policy Studies and is a co-editor of the IPS website Inequality.org. Her research covers a wide range of international and domestic economic issues, including inequality, CEO pay, taxes, labor, and Wall Street reform. They're (Congress is) planning to give huge new tax giveaways to large corporations like Amazon and wealthy people like Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. And partially paying for those tax cuts for the wealthy by slashing programs that mean so much to so many Americans like Medicaid and food assistance.” Sarah Anderson We're not going to have a healthy, thriving society and economy as long as we have the extreme levels of inequality that we have today. Sarah Anderson Dubbed “the leading national watchdog of state and local economic development subsidies,” “an encyclopedia of information regarding subsidies,” “God’s witness to corporate welfare,” and “the OG of ensuring that state and local tax policy actually supports good jobs, sustainability, and equity,”* Greg founded Good Jobs First in 1998 upon winning the Public Interest Pioneer Award. He has trained and consulted for state and local governments, associations of public officials, labor-management committees, unions, community groups, tax and budget watchdogs, environmentalists, and smart growth advocates more than 30 years. Public education and public health are the two biggest losers in every state giving away money to data centers right now. Greg Le Roy We know of no other form of state spending that is so out of control. Therefore, we recommend that states cancel their data center tax exemptions. Such subsidies are absolutely unnecessary for an extremely profitable industry dominated by some of the most valuable corporations on earth such as Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, and Google. Good Jobs First report: “Cloudy With a Loss of Spending Control” They've (Congress has) known for years that the ordinary worker pays a higher tax rate than these loophole-ridden corporations. Ralph Nader In my message to Trump, I ask him, "Why is he afraid of Netanyahu? And doesn't he want to come to the rescue of these innocent babies by saying, ‘Mr. Netanyahu, the taxpayers in this country are paying for thousands of trucks stalled at the border of Gaza full of medicine, food, water, electricity, fuel, and other critical necessities? We're going to put a little American flag on each one of these trucks, and don't you dare block them.’” …No answer. Ralph Nader News 5/23/25 1. It seems as though the dam in Israeli politics against acknowledging the horrors in Gaza is beginning to break. In an interview with the BBC this week, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert stated that what Israel "is currently doing in Gaza is very close to a war crime. Thousands of innocent Palestinians are being killed.” He went on to say, “the war has no objective and has no chance of achieving anything that could save the lives of the hostages.” These quotes come from the Jerusalem Post. And on May 21st, Haaretz reported that opposition party leader Yair Golan warned that Israel could become a “pariah state, like South Africa once was,” based on its actions in Gaza. Speaking a truth that American politicians appear incapable of articulating, he added, a “sane state does not wage war against...

We spend the whole program with Nadav Wieman, a former IDF sniper and now executive director of Breaking the Silence, an organization of Israeli veterans who expose the reality of life in the Occupied Territories and work to end the occupation. He and Ralph discuss Nadav’s experience in the IDF and his work trying to turn the tide of sentiment in Israel against the ongoing genocide. Nadav Weiman is the executive director of Breaking the Silence, an organization of Israeli veterans who expose the reality of life in the Occupied Territories and work to end the occupation. Mr. Weiman served in a sniper’s team in the special forces of the Nahal brigade and attained the rank of staff sergeant. He also worked as a history and literature teacher and was the legal guardian at a home for underprivileged teens in Tel Aviv. Now the soldiers that gave us testimonies told us that they came to the commander and said, "Okay, this is too much." And the commander said, "Listen, we lost too many dogs in the dog unit, so we're using Palestinians as human shields." Nadav Wieman former IDF sniper and Executive Director of Breaking the Silence When the first soldier came to us in December 2023 and told us about using Palestinians as human shields, I thought it was an isolated event. But then another soldier came and another soldier and another soldier, and then we understood. It's a new protocol. It's called the Mosquito Protocol. “Mosquito,” is a code name on the radio saying, take a Palestinian man and put him in an IDF uniform, and in some cases a GoPro camera on his chest. And then soldiers were ordered to send them into tunnels to sweep the tunnels or into homes to sweep the homes. Nadav Wieman You have another protocol called “Wasp”. The Wasp Protocol is Palestinians sweeping tunnels, but this time our Palestinians working with the IDF were brought from the West Bank. And they were told that they will get something from us, a permit or something like that. Nadav Wieman News 5/16/25 1. Trump has abruptly ended the American war on the Houthi militia in Yemen, saying in a press conference, “You know, we hit them very hard. They had a great capacity to withstand punishment…You can say there’s a lot of bravery there…It was amazing what they took. But we honor their commitment and their word,” per Prem Thakker. Behind the scenes, a New York Times report exposes the jaw-dropping waste that precipitated the U.S. backing down from this campaign. Some highlights include that the Houthis almost shot down an F-35 fighter jet – which run about $100 million apiece – that this campaign used so many precision munitions that Pentagon contingency planners grew “increasingly concerned about overall stocks,” and U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM)’s reported metric of success was “bombs dropped,” evoking the failed campaigns in Vietnam, per the Stimson Center’s Emma Ashburn. All in all, this campaign cost $1 billion over the course of just 30 days. 2. In more stunning news of Pentagon profligacy, CNN reported on May 6th that a SECOND F/A-18 Super Hornet fighter jet fell off the USS Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier into the Red Sea following the first lost jet by just over a week. Each of these planes bear a price tag of over $60 million, according to the Navy, just in case you were wondering where your tax dollars are going now that Trump and Musk have slashed the budget of anything resembling a social program. 3. In more foreign policy news, Edan Alexander, the last remaining U.S. citizen hostage in Gaza, has been released. Alexander was born and raised in New Jersey, then moved to Israel to serve in the IDF after graduating high school in 2022. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu was quoted saying “[Alexander’s release] was achieved thanks to our military pressure and the political pressure exerted by President Trump. This is a winning combination.” Meanwhile Trump posted on Truth Social “Edan Alexander, American hostage thought dead, to be released by...

This week is mainly devoted to listener questions and feedback. First, Ralph answers some of the questions you have submitted over the past few weeks. Then we invite back last week’s guest, Erica Payne, of Patriotic Millionaires, to respond to your very thoughtful comments on the interview we did with that group's plan for preserving democracy by taxing the rich. Plus, Ralph highlights the outrages of the Trump/Musk assault on government programs that help ordinary people. Erica Payne is the founder and president of Patriotic Millionaires, an organization of high-net-worth individuals that aims to restructure America’s political economy to suit the needs of all Americans. Their work includes advocating for a highly progressive tax system, a livable minimum wage, and equal political representation for all citizens. She is the co-author, with Morris Pearl, of Tax the Rich: How Lies, Loopholes and Lobbyists Make the Rich Even Richer. The real reason for taxation is democracy protection. Erica Payne I think the question is not: do we need to fix the estate tax? The question is: what is the best, most defensible mechanism through which you can tax the transfer of wealth from one generation to the other in order to protect American democracy from dynastic wealth—that is sufficient that you find five generations from now Elon Musk’s kid isn’t spending as much money on these elections as their great great great great great granddaddy is. Erica Payne Austerity applied at a federal level to a society that is in distress does the exact opposite of what the proponents of austerity are saying it should do. The tightening of the belt actually cuts off the circulation of the society. Erica Payne News 5/9/25 1. While the Catholic clergy convene in Rome for the Papal Conclave, Pope Francis graces the world with one final gift. Vatican News reports, “His popemobile, the very vehicle from which he waved and was close to millions of faithful all around the world, is being transformed into a mobile health unit for the children of Gaza.” This article states this was Francis’ “final wish,” and quotes his refrain that “Children are not numbers. They are faces. Names. Stories. And each one is sacred.” The vehicle is reportedly being outfitted with equipment for “diagnosis, examination, and treatment – including rapid tests for infections, diagnostic instruments, vaccines, suture kits, and other life-saving supplies,” and it will be staffed by doctors and medics. Yet, given Israel’s track record for the destruction of medical facilities in Gaza, it is unclear how long this mobile health unit itself will survive. 2. In more distressing news from Gaza, CNN reports that “A Gaza-bound activist aid ship [part of the Freedom Flotilla Coalition] caught fire and issued an SOS, after what its organizers claimed was an Israeli drone attack off the coast of Malta…[on] Friday.” Per CNN, the ship was due to make port in Malta and pick up “a large contingent of activists” there before departing for Gaza. These included environmental activist Greta Thunberg and retired US Army Colonel Mary Ann Wright. Thunberg said this flotilla “is one of many attempts to open up a humanitarian corridor and…[try] to break Israel’s illegal siege on Gaza,” adding “for two months now, not a single bottle of water has entered Gaza…it’s a systematic starvation of 2 million people.” The United Nations World Food Programme said this week “its warehouses are…empty; soup kitchens that are still running are severely rationing their last stocks; and what little food remains in Gaza’s markets is being sold for exorbitant prices that most cannot afford.” 3. Pro-Palestine activists scored a major victory in Michigan this week. The Guardian reports, “Michigan’s attorney general, Dana Nessel, announced on Monday that she was dropping all charges against seven pro-[Palestine] demonstrators arrested last May at a University of Michigan encampment.” As this report notes, “The announcement...

Ralph welcomes back Erica Payne, founder of Patriotic Millionaires, to update us on that group’s latest efforts to save American democracy by lobbying to raise wages for workers and tax the rich. Plus, according to our resident constitutional expert, Bruce Fein, the count of Trump’s impeachable offenses is now up to twenty-two and rising faster than a Space X rocket. Erica Payne is the founder and president of Patriotic Millionaires, an organization of high-net-worth individuals that aims to restructure America’s political economy to suit the needs of all Americans. Their work includes advocating for a highly progressive tax system, a livable minimum wage, and equal political representation for all citizens. She is the co-author, with Morris Pearl, of Tax the Rich: How Lies, Loopholes and Lobbyists Make the Rich Even Richer. What we saw on January 20th, I believe, was the result of a global oligarchical coup who just took the Queen on the chessboard. When you've got three people whose combined worth is around a trillion dollars standing behind who is an unethical at least, criminal at worst billionaire president, Houston, we have a problem here. And the problem is not actually Donald Trump. The problem is the preconditions that led to the rise of a vulnerability to an authoritarian leader and an oligarchy. And that vulnerability was brought about by the actions of both parties over decades. Erica Payne If you ran a business, Ralph, would you ever fire your accounts receivable department? No. It would be the last department you would cut. So then it says he's either stupid because that's what he's cutting, which I think is probably inaccurate. So if he's not stupid, then why is he doing it? And he's doing it for the same reason that lawmakers have hacked at the IRS budget forever—they don't want their donors to get taxed. They don't want their donors to be audited. And so they cut the cops. So all these folks who are griping about black Americans calling to defund the police are actually defunding the police that is keeping them in line and keeping them honest. Erica Payne At a divided moment in America, I think we can agree that the federal government shouldn't tax people into poverty, and (to the extent necessary) rich people should pick up the difference. Erica Payne Bruce Fein is a Constitutional scholar and an expert on international law. Mr. Fein was Associate Deputy Attorney General under Ronald Reagan and he is the author of Constitutional Peril: The Life and Death Struggle for Our Constitution and Democracy, and American Empire: Before the Fall. I start out with the fundamental idea of due process—you simply cannot deprive someone of liberty without giving them an opportunity to explain or to refute what allegations the government has made. And the reason why I start out with that, Ralph, is we've had an experiment in World War II with what happens when you have no due process. We did that with 120,000 Japanese Americans. No, we just said that they're all likely to commit espionage or sabotage, got to put them in concentration camps. We made 120,000 errors (and later apologized for it in 1988). So there's a reason due process is not simply an academic concept. It's essential to preventing these kinds of egregious instances of injustice from happening. Bruce Fein The Democrats and a lot of liberal economists are not keeping up with the horror show that's going on. They don't use words like cruel and vicious. They don't turn Trump's words like deranged, crazed, corrupt on him. They're still using words like authoritarian practices, or problematic, or distressing, or disconcerting, or concerning. They're not catching up with the horror show here. That's why Trump continues to have a soliloquy. The Democratic Party is now having gatherings to see how are they going to collectively deal with Trump? How does a bank deal with a bank robber? They let the bank robber rob the bank and flee with the gold while they...

First, Ralph welcomes Washington Post tech journalist Faiz Siddiqui to discuss his new book "Hubris Maximus: The Shattering of Elon Musk." Then, our resident legal expert Bruce Fein stops by to explain how Elon Musk and DOGE are breaking the law. Finally, David picks up our interview with Ralph about Ralph's new book "Civic Self-Respect." Faiz Siddiqui is a technology journalist who writes for the Washington Post and has covered companies such as Tesla, Uber, and Twitter (now X) for the Business Desk. His reporting has focused on transportation, social media and government transformation, among other issues. He is the author of Hubris Maximus: The Shattering of Elon Musk (excerpted here). Over and over throughout this book, there's this recurring theme of victimhood, or at least Elon feeling like his back is against the wall. And why? For what? He and his fans felt they were doing the right things, and yet they were being scrutinized and punished for it. Faiz Siddiqui In the wake of many Facebook scandals, many Uber scandals, Tesla was the company to work for. Elon was the person to work for. There was no figure as magnetic, who inspired people in the way that Elon did. So recruiting was a strong suit of that company. And the pitch was: come here and change the world. Faiz Siddiqui I think what this book brings is a healthy dose of reality and skepticism… that so far has been lacking from the overall conversation around Musk. And what I you'll find is (I hope you'll find) that you can identify with some of the folks in the book who were lured in by the promises (or just enamored by the guy and what he might be able to bring to society if his goals were ultimately realized) but then ended up feeling disappointed or feeling like—hey, this guy was not all he was cracked up to be. Even if the goals were noble, even if the ambitions were the right ones, the ends might not have justified the means. And so I want people to find, ideally, that their understanding of one of the most powerful people in society today is enriched. Faiz Siddiqui Bruce Fein is a Constitutional scholar and an expert on international law. Mr. Fein was Associate Deputy Attorney General under Ronald Reagan and he is the author of Constitutional Peril: The Life and Death Struggle for Our Constitution and Democracy, and American Empire: Before the Fall. [Elon Musk is] just a walking violation of the federal code. Bruce Fein There's nowhere to go but up in terms of being a smart consumer. Unfortunately, our Elementary and high schools don't teach consumer skills (they prefer to teach computer skills) and consumer skills result in what is, in effect, a pay raise. Ralph Nader Adam Smith once said many centuries ago that the purpose of production is consumption. And if consumption is informed and feeds back, it can lead to a high-quality economy. It can lead to more integrity to your consumer dollar and to your health and safety. It can lead to less environmental damage. It could lead to stronger regulation of product defects and services that are harmful. It's sort of a bottom-up economic democracy. Ralph Nader Complexity is a tool of power. Complex tax regulations are often blamed on the federal bureaucracy. No, it's the corporate tax lawyers. Ralph Nader News 4/25/25 1. On Monday, April 21st, Vatican News announced the death of Pope Francis. This came just one day after Easter Sunday, when Francis met with Vice-President JD Vance. The day prior, Francis had snubbed the VP, sending in his place Cardinal Pietro Parolintoto to “deliver a lecture on compassion,” per the Daily Beast. Pope Francis led the Catholic Church since 2013 and during his tenure sought to move the church in a vastly more progressive direction – preaching against capitalism’s destruction of the environment, advocating for abolition of the death penalty and greater acceptance for LGBTQ Catholics within the church, and expanding the reach of the church into non-traditional areas...

Ralph talks about his new book, “Civic Self Respect” which reminds us that our civic lives have different primary roles—not only voter, but also worker, taxpayer, consumer, sometimes soldier and sometimes parent—and how each one offers special opportunities for people to organize to make change. Plus, we welcome back former commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, John Koskinen, who tells us exactly how the Trump/Musk cabal is both gutting and weaponizing the IRS. John Koskinen served as the IRS Commissioner from 2013 to 2017. This is not a how-to book. It starts at a much more elementary level and therefore should interest a much greater number of people. Because, as I say, if you can expand your civic dimension as a part of your daily role without disrupting the rhythms of your daily life (in fact, actually making them more gratifying and more interesting, less boring), you're on your way. Ralph Nader author of Civic Self-Respect The people who really fight for justice in this country have to fight for recognition, they have to fight for media, they have to fight an onslaught. And the people who lie and cheat and say the most terrible things and do the most terrible things are really the best-known people in the country. I mean, if you say who are the best-known people in Congress? They're the blowhards, the cruel and vicious people who've said things that are illegal, outrageous against innocent groups here and abroad. Ralph Nader I used to say to the Congress (trying to get appropriations) that the IRS is the only agency where if you give it money, it gives you more money back. Because the more you can actually audit people who aren't paying the proper amount or aren't filing at all, the better off you are. So no one has ever disagreed with that. John Koskinen Going back a thousand years, tax collectors have never been particularly popular. And so when you talk about the IRS, people say, "Oh, the poor old IRS." In some ways, they don't understand just the points you're making about the impact on them, on the country, of an ineffective IRS going forward. And that's why my thought is this move toward using the IRS to attack people ought to be a way for everyone to say, "You know, I may not love paying taxes, but I certainly don't want the government and the president or the treasury secretary or somebody else ordering an audit of my taxes just because they don't like my political position or what I'm teaching in my course.” John Koskinen Ralph Nader’s new book Civic Self-respect is available now from Seven Stories Press. News 4/16/25 1. On Thursday April 17th, Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland departed for El Salvador in an effort to personally track down Maryland resident Kilmar Abrego Garcia, an immigrant who was arrested and deported to CECOT, the notorious Salvadoran prison camp, WUSA9 reports. Garcia was legally protected against deportation by a 2019 court order and a Trump administration official admitted in court that he “should never have been on that plane.” Last week, the Supreme Court unanimously ordered that he be returned to the U.S. Van Hollen is quoted saying “You go out, you get disappeared, they say they did it in error, but they're not helping bring you back…it's a very short road to tyranny.” Gracia has not been heard from since he was deported, raising concerns about his health and wellbeing. This comes after ICE Director Todd Lyons said he wanted to see a deportation process “like [Amazon] Prime, but with human beings,” per the Guardian. This episode is among the most chilling in American history and we are less than four months into a four-year term. 2. Another gut-wrenching immigration story concerns Palestinian Columbia University student, Mohsen Mahdawi who was tricked, trapped, and abducted by ICE. The Intercept reports “Even before his friend and fellow Columbia activist Mahmoud Khalil was arrested by immigration authorities, Mahdawi asked university administrators to help...

Ralph speaks to Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank about the Trump Administration's path of destruction in our federal government. Then, Ralph welcomes legendary public interest lawyer Alan Morrison to discuss the President's authority to impose tariffs and other constitutional questions. Dana Milbank is a nationally syndicated op-ed columnist for the Washington Post. He also provides political commentary for various TV outlets, and he is the author of five books on politics, including the New York Times bestseller The Destructionists and the national bestseller Homo Politicus. His latest book is Fools on the Hill: The Hooligans, Saboteurs, Conspiracy Theories and Dunces who Burned Down the House. I shouldn't be amazed, but Mike Johnson never ceases to amaze me with the rapidity with which he'll just drop to his knees whenever Trump says something. Dana Milbank We're going to know this shortly, but it does appear that Trump's honeymoon may be over in the House as the conservatives finally seem to be finding their backbones. But I've thought that might happen before and then only to find out that they, in fact, they could not locate their backbones. So I don't want to be premature. Dana Milbank Trump seems to be gambling (and the administration seems to be gambling) that ultimately the Supreme Court is going to a wholesale reinterpretation of the Constitution to grant these never-before-seen executive powers, and it's possible that he's right about that. We're not going to know that. There have been a couple of preliminary rulings that seem friendly to Trump, but none of those is final, so we can't really be sure of it. Dana Milbank My guess is that Chief Justice Roberts is seeing his legacy heading toward the ditch after his decision of Trump v. United States, where he said that Presidents cannot be criminally prosecuted….My guess is he's going to unpleasantly surprise Trump in the coming months. Ralph Nader Alan Morrison is the Lerner Family Associate Dean for Public Interest & Public Service at George Washington Law School. He currently teaches civil procedure and constitutional law, and previously taught at Harvard, NYU, Stanford, Hawaii, and American University law schools. He has argued 20 cases in the Supreme Court and co-founded the Public Citizen Litigation Group in 1972, which he directed for more than 25 years. It's inevitable that even for a non-economist like myself to understand that [the costs of tariffs] are going to be passed on. Other than Donald Trump, I don't think there's anybody who believes that these taxes are not going to be passed on and that they're going to be borne by the country from which the company did the exporting. Alan Morrison It's an uphill battle on both the statutory interpretation and the undue delegation grounds, but our position is rather simple: If the Congress doesn't write a statute so that there's something that the government can't order or do, then it's gone too far. In effect, it has surrendered to the President its power to set policy and do the legislative function. Interestingly, Trump has trumpeted the breadth of what he's doing here. He calls it a revolution. Well, if we have revolutions in this country, my copy of the Constitution says that the Congress has to enact revolution and the President can't do it on its own. So we think we've got a pretty strong case if we can get it to court. Alan Morrison One of the things that I've been struck by is that laws alone cannot make this country governable. That we can't write laws to cover every situation and every quirk that any person has, especially the President. We depend on the norms of government—that people will do things not exactly the way everybody did them before, but along the same general lines, and that when we make change, we make them in moderation, because that's what the people expect. Trump has shed all norms. Alan Morrison News 4/9/25 1. Our top story this week is the killing of Omar...

Ralph welcomes Robert Weissman, co-president of Public Citizen, whose group has filed eight lawsuits that have significantly slowed the Trump/Musk cabal’s attempt to dismantle the government. Then, our resident Constitutional scholar Bruce Fein reports on Public Interest Law Day at Harvard Law School and how important it is for law schools in general to step up to meet this constitutional crisis. Plus, Ralph answers listener questions! Robert Weissman is a staunch public interest advocate and activist, as well as an expert on a wide variety of issues ranging from corporate accountability and government transparency, to trade and globalization, to economic and regulatory policy. As the President of Public Citizen, he has spearheaded the effort to loosen the chokehold corporations and the wealthy have over our democracy. The efforts in the courts are really vital to stem the illegal, unconstitutional actions of the administration, but also to show that there's a way to fight back. In these early days and months of the administration, there's been a sense that Trump is inevitable and unstoppable. And the actions in the courts, I think, have been really critical to illustrating that that's not true. Robert Weissman It's open season for the polluters. And of course, they're also promoting in a variety of ways a rush towards climate catastrophe by undoing the positive measures that have come recently from the Biden administration to deal with the climate crisis. Robert Weissman If you pull back all the enforcement rules, and you say we're not going to enforce the rules that are left over, corporations get the message. And they're going to be more reckless, and it's a near certainty that we're going to have many more serious industrial disasters as a direct result of what they're doing at EPA and other agencies. Robert Weissman Bruce Fein is a Constitutional scholar and an expert on international law. Mr. Fein was Associate Deputy Attorney General under Ronald Reagan and he is the author of Constitutional Peril: The Life and Death Struggle for Our Constitution and Democracy, and American Empire: Before the Fall. If we don't inform the public (with the law students as well as others in the lead), we're not going to have rule of law and Harvard Law School will become an irrelevancy. It will be a museum piece. Bruce Fein I think the country and the law students are going to pay a price. They're being very narrow and myopic with regard to their immediate preoccupation with their trade school, where they're going to work the next day, and very little given to the fact that if we don't have a country anymore, they aren’t going to have a legal career. Bruce Fein It's a more cowardly, timid type of law school whose explanations are still ready to be discovered. It's a real puzzle…because they have tenure, they have status, they have wealth, and they have the ability to defend themselves because they're skilled lawyers. Ralph Nader News 4/2/25 1. Our top stories this week are on the topic of corporate crime. First, the American Prospect reports that the Trump administration is seeking to reverse a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau case against Townstone, a mortgage brokerage firm that blatantly discouraged potential Black borrowers. According to the Prospect, Townstone’s owners Barry Sturner and David Hochberg vigorously promoted their firm though “personal-finance call-in infomercials,” on Chicago’s WGN radio station. During these infomercials, which generated 90 percent of Townstone’s business, Sturner and Hochberg “characterized the South Side of Chicago as a ‘war zone,’ downtown Chicago as a ‘jungle’ that turned on Friday and Saturday into ‘hoodlum weekend,’” and so on. As the Prospect notes, if Sturner and Hochberg were simply airing these views that would be perfectly legal, however unsavory. Instead, this program is “an informercial, which generates 90 percent of the brokerage’s leads, which the brokerage pays WGN...

Ralph welcomes journalist Chris Hedges to talk about his new book "A Genocide Foretold: Reporting on Survival and Resistance in Occupied Palestine." Then, Ralph speaks to David Swanson of World BEYOND War about what his organization is doing to resist this country’s casual acceptance of being constantly at war. Finally, Ralph checks in with our resident constitutional scholar Bruce Fein. Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, who spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. He is the host of The Chris Hedges Report, and he is a prolific author— his latest book is A Genocide Foretold: Reporting on Survival and Resistance in Occupied Palestine. We not only blocked the effort by most countries on the globe to halt the genocide or at least censure Israel to the genocide, but of course have continued to sendbillions of dollars in weapons and to shut down critics within the United States… And that sends a very, very ominous message to the global south, especiallyas the climate breaks down, that these are the kind of draconian murderous measuresthat we will employ. Chris Hedges It's a very, very ominous chapter in the history of historic Palestine. In some ways, far worse even than the 1948 Nakba (or “Catastrophe”) that saw massacres carried out against Palestinians in their villages and 750,000 Palestinians displaced. What we're watching now is probably the worst catastrophe to ever beset the Palestinian people. Chris Hedges It's a bit like attacking somebody for writing about Auschwitz and not giving the SS guards enough play to voice their side. We're writing about a genocide and, frankly, there isn't a lot of nuance. There's a lot of context (which is in the book). But I expect either to be blanked out or attacked because lifting up the voices of Palestinians is something at this point within American society that is considered by the dominant media platforms and those within positions of power to be unacceptable. Chris Hedges It eventually comes down to us, the American people. And it's not just the Middle East. It's a sprawling empire with hundreds of military bases, sapping the energy of our public budgets and of our ability to relate in an empathetic and humanitarian way to the rest of the world. Ralph Nader David Swanson is an author, activist, journalist, radio host and Nobel Peace Prize nominee. He is executive director of World BEYOND War and campaign coordinator for RootsAction. His books include War Is A Lie and When the World Outlawed War. The biggest scandal of the past two days in the United States is not government officials secretly discussing plans for mass killing, for war making, but how they did it on a group chat. You can imagine if they were talking about blowing up buildings in the United States, at least the victims would get a little mention in there. David Swanson The Democrats are the least popular they've been. They're way less popular than the Republicans because some of the Republicans' supporters actually support the horrendous behavior they're engaged in. Whereas Democrats want somebody to try anything, anything at all, and you're not getting it. David Swanson You know how many cases across the world across the decades in every hospital and health center there are of PTSD or any sort of injury from war deprivation? Not a one. Not a single one, ever. People survive just fine. And people do their damnedest to stay out of it, even in the most warmongering nations in the world. People try their very hardest to stay out of war personally, because it does great damage. David Swanson Bruce Fein is a Constitutional scholar and an expert on international law. Mr. Fein was Associate Deputy Attorney General under Ronald Reagan and he is the author of Constitutional Peril: The Life and Death Struggle for Our Constitution and Democracy, and American Empire: Before the Fall. If there were really an attorney...

Ralph welcomes New York Times journalist, David Enrich, author of “Murder the Truth” an in-depth exposé of the attack on freedom of the press as protected by the landmark Supreme Court decision “Sullivan v. The New York Times.” Also, Professor Michael Graetz a leading authority on tax politics and policy joins to discuss his book “The Power to Destroy: How the Antitax Movement Hijacked America.” Plus, our resident constitutional scholar, Bruce Fein, updates us on his latest efforts to push for the impeachment of Donald Trump. David Enrich is the business investigations editor for The New York Times. He writes about the intersection of law and business, including the power wielded by giant corporate law firms and the changing contours of the First Amendment and libel law. His latest book is titled Murder the Truth: Fear, the First Amendment, and a Secret Campaign to Protect the Powerful, an in-depth exposé of the broad campaign—orchestrated by elite Americans—to overturn sixty years of Supreme Court precedent, weaponize our speech laws, and silence dissent. When all the institutions are crushed by a dictator in the White House, it's only the people that can save the people. Ralph Nader The interesting thing was that Fox, and these other right-wing outlets for years had been kind of banging the drum against New York Times v. Sullivan and against the protections that many journalists have come to count on. And then they get sued and their immediate fallback is to very happily cite New York Times v. Sullivan. David Enrich These threats and these lawsuits have become an extremely popular weapon among everyone from the President down to mayors, city council members, local real estate development companies, on and on and on…And the direct result of that will be that powerful people, companies, organizations, institutions are going to be able to do bad things without anyone knowing about it. David Enrich People keep asking me what they can do, what they should do. And I think the answer is really to try and understand these issues. They're complicated, but they're also getting deliberately misframed and misrepresented often, especially on the right, but sometimes not on the right. And I think it's really important for people to understand the importance of New York Times v. Sullivan, and to understand the grave threats facing journalists, especially at the local level right now, and the consequences that could have for our democracy. David Enrich Michael Graetz is professor emeritus at Columbia Law School and Yale Law School and a leading authority on tax politics and policy. He served in the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Tax Policy and is the author and coauthor of many books, including Death by a Thousand Cuts: The Fight over Taxing Inherited Wealth and The Burger Court and the Rise of the Judicial Right. His latest book is The Power to Destroy: How the Antitax Movement Hijacked America. I spent a lot of time asking people to name the most important political and social movements of the last half century. And no surprise, they named the civil rights movement, the women's movement, the LGBTQ movement, the Christian Evangelical movement, the MAGA movement lately, but no one ever mentioned the anti-tax movement. And unlike the other movements I've named, the anti-tax movement is really the only one that has not suffered a serious setback in the past half century. Michael Graetz The anti-tax movement has always relied on a false dichotomy between “us” (those who pay taxes) and “them” (those who receive government benefits). Michael Graetz The Democrats now don't want to tax 98% of the people and the Republicans don't want to tax 100% of the people and the question is: how do you get anywhere with those kinds of firm “no new taxes” pledges? And that's a problem. And I think it's a problem that the Democrats have fallen into basically based on the success of the Republicans antitax coalition. Michael Graetz You're going to...

Ralph welcomes Peter Beinart, to discuss his book Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza. An observant Jew, Beinart argues “We are not history’s permanent virtuous victims. We are not hardwired to forever endure evil but never commit it.” Plus, premier global trade expert, Lori Wallach, joins to help sort out the on again, off again tariffs Donald Trump is assessing U.S. trade partners. What kind of a tool is a tariff? When should it be used? Who should it be used against? And are the current tariff threats on Canada really about stopping fentanyl? Peter Beinart is Professor of Journalism and Political Science at the Newmark School of Journalism at the City University of New York. He is also Editor-at-Large of Jewish Currents, an MSNBC political commentator, a frequent contributor to The New York Times, and a Non-Resident Fellow at the Foundation for Middle East Peace. His latest book is entitled “Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza” and his recent op-ed in the New York Times is “States Don’t Have a Right To Exist. People Do.” We are not history’s permanent virtuous victims. We are not hardwired to forever endure evil but never commit it. That false innocence, which pervades contemporary Jewish life, camouflages domination as self-defense. It exempts Jews from external judgment. It offers infinite license to fallible human beings. Excerpt from Being Jewish After The Destruction of Gaza by Peter Beinart Israel can't destroy Hamas. Israel has totally laid waste to Gaza, and yet Hamas is still there. And Hamas will have new recruits from all of these people whose family members were killed by Israel. And Hamas will reconstitute its weapons, because I think actually a lot of the Hamas weapons now are coming from assembling Israeli weapons that were dropped on Gaza, just like the Viet Cong did in Vietnam. They reassemble to make their own weapons. So Hamas will still be there as a force for Israel to continue to fight. And I think Netanyahu will continue this war for as long as he can. Peter Beinart So what I think Israel is trying to do, to various degrees of self-consciousness, is to try to reduce the population in Gaza and the West Bank. And that's why the Trump plan was so popular in Israel, not just among Netanyahu, but even among his centrist opponents, like Benny Gantz and Yair Lapid, who embraced the idea. Because for them, it solves the problem. Israel doesn't have a way of solving the Palestinian problem. So if you have fewer Palestinians, then they're less of a problem. This is, after all, how the United States solved its problem with Native Americans in the 19th century. Peter Beinart Lori Wallach is a 30-year veteran of international and U.S. congressional trade battles starting with the 1990s fights over NAFTA and WTO where she founded the Global Trade Watch group at Public Citizen. She is now the director of the Rethink Trade program at American Economic Liberties Project and is also Senior Advisor to the Citizens Trade Campaign, the U.S. national trade justice coalition of unions and environmental, consumer, faith, family farm and other groups. He (Trump) also closed a thing called the de minimis loophole. That is this lunatic trade loophole that allows in uninspected (under $800 value) imports to every American every day… And then four days later, Trump met with the Federal Express CEO, who apparently was not happy because they deliver a bunch of those de minimis packages… This has become a superhighway for fentanyl… He (Trump) basically reversed the ability to stop fentanyl coming from China and to enforce his own China tariffs at the behest of the CEO of Federal Express. Lori Wallach So the difference between whether tariffs raise the consumer price has a lot to do with the same corporate price gouging that we've been seeing over the last couple of years. And we can see right now, for instance, on eggs. The actual supply of egg laying chickens and the actual supply of eggs is not a greatly...

First up, Ralph welcomes former FBI agent Mike German to discuss his new book (co-written with Beth Zasloff), Policing White Supremacy: The Enemy Within. Then, Ralph speaks to Dr. Bandy Lee about her psychological analysis of the second Trump presidency. Finally, Ralph talks about Trump's latest Congressional address. Mike German is a fellow with the Liberty and National Security program at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law School. He has worked at the ACLU and served sixteen years as an FBI special agent. He left the FBI in 2004 after reporting continuing deficiencies in the bureau’s counterterrorism operations to Congress. He is the author of Thinking Like a Terrorist, Disrupt, Discredit, and Divide: How the New FBI Damages Our Democracy, and his latest book (co-authored with Beth Zasloff) is Policing White Supremacy: The Enemy Within. It's important to understand that the white supremacist movement is quite fractured and I refer to it in the book as the white supremacist and far right militant movement because it does have a number of different factions that have specific goals that in many cases differ from one another. But as a movement, essentially what they're looking for is a return to a legally-supported racial caste system where white people dominate without question and impunity to act violently towards anyone who would challenge that racial hierarchy. Mike German It's fascinating because I think there's an assumption that many have that these white supremacists or far-right militant groups are Trump supporters, but I don't believe many of them are. They understand that right-wing populism, that those racist (I would have said “dog whistles” of previous administrations, but racist) rhetoric helps promote them and gives them media attention that allows them to recruit and expand their ranks. But they don't support Donald Trump. They don't support the Republican Party. Mike German You have a situation now where these people that led the movement into a ditch on January 6th (and they had to scramble and all go underground and then slowly restore these groups) all of a sudden these people who led them into the ditch come out ofprison and want to be the leaders again. Mike German There comes a time when the flattering of the citizens by rogue criminal politicians has got to be exposed for what it is. First, they flatter the citizenry, then they flummox the citizenry, then they fool the citizenry into supporting them. And the reaction to that has got to be: you’d better start doing your homework, voters, regardless who you vote for. You’ve got to spend more time on the records of these politicians, not their rhetoric. Ralph Nader Dr. Bandy Lee is a medical doctor, a forensic psychiatrist, and a world expert on violence who taught at Yale School of Medicine and Yale Law School for 17 years before joining the Harvard Program in Psychiatry and the Law. She is currently president of the World Mental Health Coalition, an educational organization that assembles mental health experts to collaborate with other disciplines for the betterment of public mental health and public safety. She is the editor of The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 37 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President and Profile of a Nation: Trump’s Mind, America’s Soul. This is a problem of mental pathology. That is why [Trump] has to place mental health labels on his opponents, why he has to call himself a stable genius, and why he has to take on the most powerful position on the planet (the US presidency). It is to hide his unfitness and his mental pathology. That's what it comes down to. Dr. Bandy Lee [Trump’s] been in the public arena and influential positions for a decade now, but we have to address it in mental health terms. His goal is to alter reality and through threats, intimidation and co-optation, he has not only taken over the press and is in the process of buying it out, but he has also subdued…corrupted the...

Ralph welcomes acclaimed investigative report, Jeremy Scahill of Drop Site News to give us his report on the state of the ceasefire in Gaza, why both sides tend to undercount the deaths and casualties, the nature of the October 7th assault, and the threat of a wider war with Iran. Plus, Ralph responds to a DOGE supporter, who on social media called him a hypocrite. Jeremy Scahill is an investigative reporter, war correspondent, and author of the books Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield and Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army. He was one of the founding editors of The Intercept and he is co-founder (with Ryan Grim) of Drop Site News, a non-aligned, investigative news organization dedicated to exposing the crimes of the powerful — particularly in overt and secret conflicts where the U.S. government is playing a key role. If you study the past 76, 77 years of history of the Palestinians, there is no chance that they are going to voluntarily leave their land. There is no chance that they are going to lay down their arms in a struggle for national liberation. And I think that the only certainty here is that the Palestinians are not going to give up. Jeremy Scahill When you're talking about 2,000 families being wiped out, when you're talking about thousands upon thousands of people buried under the rubble of what used to be their homes. And then the Israelis come in with their utterly sadistic macabre tactics where they then bulldozed people, put them in mass graves. I don't think we right now have any sense of the scope of the killing that has happened. Jeremy Scahill A friend of mine, Ali Abunima who runs Electronic Intifada, said that the Germans have been punishing the Palestinians for the German mass murder of Jews for many decades now. Jeremy Scahill There's more outrage among what I call blue MAGA, these sort of cultish partisan Democrats, over Trump's proposal to take over Gaza as a Middle East Riviera than most of these people ever said during Biden and Harris actively facilitating a genocide. Jeremy Scahill Get full access to Ralph Nader Radio Hour at www.ralphnaderradiohour.com/subscribe

First, Ralph welcomes economist James Henry to discuss the Trump administration's latest attempts to disable our corporate watchdogs and dismantle the IRS. Then, Ralph is joined by America's Number One Populist Jim Hightower to get his take on what's been happening in our government, and how to fight back. James Henry is an economist, attorney, and investigative journalist who has written numerous articles and several books about international private banking, offshore havens, debt, capital flight, and development. He is a Global Justice Fellow at Yale, and a Senior Fellow at Columbia University’s Center for Sustainable Investment. And he is a Senior Advisor to the Tax Justice Network, an international NGO that has led the fight to dismantle tax havens. He has also been an active pro bono environmental and constitutional lawyer in New York. In the past, when so-called business elites (Wall Street, and so on) saw the US government discomforting them, they would send a delegation to the White House. They've done it on matters far less serious than the massive destabilization and disruption that's occurring now. Ralph Nader Corporations are not known (and CEOs are not known) for their courage. But when they see their whole world starting to convulse into chaos… you've got to believe they're going to make their efforts known. Ralph Nader One thing that I'm just shocked by—it's hard to be shocked by this administration any more than by anything else, but he's basically dismantling the IRS... A lot of what we're talking about here is illegal activity. It isn't even a question. James Henry Countries are pushing back at this bullying tactic. And so this is going to hurt growth. It's going to raise inflation. It's going to blow the deficit targets through the roof. And it's going to also hurt millions of Americans who depend on the government for all kinds of vital, essential assistance…So if you thought there was a rational reason behind Trump's economic plans, this is very hard to justify. James Henry Jim Hightower is a syndicated columnist, national radio commentator, and America’s Number One populist. He is a board member of Public Citizen, and he is a founding member of Our Revolution, an organization inspired by the issues brought up in the Bernie Sanders campaign. He has written several books including Swim Against the Current: Even a Dead Fish Can Go With The Flow, and his newsletter The Hightower Lowdown publishes twice a week on Substack. Well, the good news, as you point out, is that the people are revolting (in the very best sense of that word, by the way). And it is happening in rural towns, counties, as well as big cities, as well as college towns, working class communities, immigrant communities, et cetera. The rebellion is on. And the people are doing it themselves. Jim Hightower Big money happened. And that big money took over the Democratic Party. My party decided, “Well, you know, we could get some of that corporate money too.” The corporations were willing to fund our campaigns. Well, I can tell you that if you accept a corporate check, written on the back of it is the corporate agenda. And they cash the check, not you. And so that led to my party's abandonment of its populist values, its working class constituency, its values—economic fairness, social justice, equal opportunity for all—those are the populist values. And my party turned into a Republican-light organization. But the people keep rebelling. Jim Hightower People are in the streets in state after state and community after community all across our country because people know this is the undoing of the common good. And that is essentially what's at stake here. The billionaires have decided that the common good doesn't matter, only their good matters. Jim Hightower Get full access to Ralph Nader Radio Hour at www.ralphnaderradiohour.com/subscribe

Ralph welcomes back Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson to share his view of Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense and to get his take on the military and political situation in the Middle East. Then, from Tel Aviv we are joined by Alon-Lee Green, co-director of the Israeli peace organization “Standing Together” a progressive grassroots movement based in Israel that organizes Jewish and Palestinian citizens against the occupation and the ethnic cleansing of Gaza. Lawrence Wilkerson is a retired U.S. Army colonel. Over his 31 years of service, Colonel Wilkerson served as Secretary of State Colin Powell's Chief of Staff from 2002 to 2005, and Special Assistant to General Powell when he was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 1989 to 1993. Colonel Wilkerson also served as Deputy Director and Director of the U.S. Marine Corps War College at Quantico, Virginia, and for fifteen years he was the Distinguished Visiting Professor of Government and Public Policy at the College of William and Mary. He is currently a Senior Fellow at the Eisenhower Media Network, senior advisor to the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, and co-founder of the All-Volunteer Force Forum. The Pentagon is now led by one of the least-qualified persons ever to be Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth. He was exposed by the Democrats and the media when he was going through the congressional-confirmation process as ignorant, belligerent, vengeful, a woman-abuser denounced by his own mother, and a financial mismanager of the two groups that he directed. He's now Secretary of Defense. Ralph Nader What I'd like to see Hegseth do is try his best to get Trump to help him refuse that money (the $150 billion that Congressional Republicans have proposed adding to the military budget). Gordon Adams—a man for whom I have a lot of respect, who was an OMB-type for a long, long time and knows more about the defense budget than probably anyone alive—said the truth the other day when he said: when Defense gets tons of money, it's polluted, weakened, and turns into a place that can't do its job. When it has periods of scarcity—and the better the scarcity, the deeper the scarcity, the better the Defense Department—it turns out to operate pretty well. So I think that's stupid. I think it's the Congress doing it because the Congress has become a wholly paid subsidiary of the military-industrial complex. Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson Alon-Lee Green is National Co-Director of Standing Together, a progressive Jewish-Arab grassroots movement. Previously, he worked for five years as a political and parliamentary adviser in the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, and was involved in the legislative process and the building of citizens’ campaigns that influenced parliamentary decisions. During that time, he was responsible for laws advancing the rights of workers, students, and the LGBT community. It devastates me to know that I'm part—as an Israeli citizen, as a citizen that wants to take responsibility of the society, the Israeli society, it makes me devastated and sick and so, so, so heartbroken to know that we are a part of and a reason for so many tens of thousands reported people that died… I do not understand how someone can come to us Israelis and tell us that this is in the name of our security. I cannot understand how someone can promise us that this will better our lives or create a good or a reality that is livable. I understand it as just something that promises more death. Alon-Lee Green It is a given fact, especially after October 7th, a lot of the soldiers went there and did what they did believing that they're fighting to defend, they're fighting monsters. But a lot of soldiers died there. A lot of mothers lost their sons. A lot of families joined the circle of grief. And this is something that changed people's perspectives and people's opinion about the war. A lot of soldiers came back wounded. A lot of soldiers came back with PTSD. And we are hearing voices right...