The Biden administration has been pursuing a reckless policy in the Middle East in which Israel’s massacres in Gaza and now in Lebanon are unconditionally supported with deliveries of 2,000 lb bunker-busting bombs and diplomatic cover. Col. Larry Wilkerson, who served as former Chief of Staff to U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, discusses Iran’s policy of strategic patience in which a response to Israel’s extra-judicial killing of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran in July, as well as a fatal strike on Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, possibly came too late according to Iran’s hardliners. 

The “US Government” has made an ad about the 2024 election, and it’s surprisingly honest and informative (biting political satire).

Given voters’ concerns over rising food and housing costs, Kamala Harris has pledged to combat price gouging if elected president, though she has yet to clearly lay out the hallmarks of the rest of her economic policy. In part 2, Bob Pollin, economist and advisor to U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Pramila Jayapal on Medicare For All, explains the meaning of price gouging and delves into the causes of inflation during the COVID pandemic. 

The issue of banning (or not banning) fracking has been at the forefront of the 2024 presidential debates between former President Trump and Democratic nominee Kamala Harris. Fracking, a technique that involves horizontal drilling to extract gas and oil from shale rock, risks methane leaks and other environmental hazards. Professor Bob Pollin, economist and Co-Director of the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI), lays out the elements of a Global Green New Deal to avert climate catastrophe and achieve net zero emissions by 2050. Can we frack and still reach this goal? 

The First Amendment guarantees religious freedom and the separation of Church and State, basic tenets of American democracy which conservative think-tank the Heritage Foundation is intent on undermining. Mikey Weinstein, founder of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, describes how the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 would upend military protocols to eliminate civilian oversight. He believes a dystopian future in which the rights of racialized and marginalized groups are denied would be in store under a second Trump presidency. 

In this essay, Paul Jay unravels the alliance of tech billionaires and religious zealots behind the Trump/Vance campaign and their plans to build an American “Iron Dome,” a new ABM system that threatens nuclear war. This exposé reveals why Silicon Valley tycoons like Peter Thiel and Elon Musk are bankrolling a Trump/Vance ticket that promises to make voting obsolete and impose a religious techno-authoritarian state. Does this represent the teachings of Jesus?

Throughout his recent presidential campaigns, former President Trump has garnered widespread conservative Evangelical support and the endorsement of powerful televangelists such as Paula White-Cain. André Gagné, Professor of Theology at Concordia University, explains the New Apostolic Reformation and its ties to the Neo-Charismatic Pentecostal movement, which constitutes the largest growing sector of Christianity both globally and within the United States. In the U.S., Neo-Charismatic Christianity has been largely hijacked by New Apostolic Reformation firebrand Trump supporters who push a radical conservative agenda. 

Phil Donahue died on August 18, 2024. Mr. Donahue says he believed he was blessed, living in the greatest country on earth – but through hosting his show and speaking to people like Chomsky and the Black Panthers, he came to question what he had thought was true. This is an episode of Reality Asserts Itself, produced on September 30, 2014.