Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Freedom Of Speech, Illegal Immigration
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Young Voters Support Openly Socialist Mayoral Candidate Zohran Mandani
In a spectacular primary victory with national implications, the 33-year-old charismatic socialist Zohran Mamdani won the Democratic primary race in New York City on June 24. He most assuredly will win the general election and become the next mayor of New York City in the fall. With broad support, especially amongst younger people, Mamdani came from way behind to win in a landslide over former 67-year-old former New York State governor Andrew Cuomo. Cuomo had name recognition and the support of the Democratic Party establishment. His campaign was well funded to the tune of $25 million donated by superpacs and billionaires. This included a last-minute $5 million infusion by billionaire Michael Bloomberg.
Cuomo was supported by most of the trade union bureaucracy, conservative Black leader Jim Clyburn of South Carolina, who is credited with getting Bernie Sanders defeated, and the charlatan Al Sharpton. Mamdani’s popularity skyrocketed when New Yorkers became aware of him and his platform. His campaign recruited 40,000 volunteers who knocked on 1,500,000 doors. 20,000 people contributed small amounts to his effort.
While Cuomo campaigned on fear supporting a policeman on every subway car Mamdani took a radically different approach. His campaign was anchored in the idea that New York should become an affordable city for the working and Middle class people who live there. He advocated a rent freeze; free, fast, buses; free childcare, and city run grocery stores in neighborhoods who need them. He stood up for Palestinians.
The core of Mamdani’s campaign workers resided in the Democratic Socialist of America. He was endorsed by Bernie Sanders, AOC, and Ilhan Omar. Mamdani is the Muslim son of South Asian immigrants. His father is a professor at Columbia University and his mother is a film director. Mamdani himself had served for four years as a State Assembly man from Astoria, Queens. He was born in Uganda and grew up on the west side of Manhattan. He had been active supporting taxi cab drivers who were financially ruined by the intrusion of Uber and Lyft into their businesses. Several committed suicide. Mamdami led a hunger strike and a successful effort to get financial help for them.
Guest – John Tarleton is a co-founder and editor in chief of the Indypendent, a free monthly newspaper and website publishing in New York City since 2000. He’s the cohost of the independent NewsHour on WBAI in New York City.
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Trump v Casa : Presidential Immunity
On June 27, the last day of the Supreme Court’s official term, the 6-member ultra-conservative majority issued one of the most dangerous decisions in its history, which the 3 dissenting judges called “shameful” and a “grave attack on our system of law.”
In three lawsuits consolidated as Trump v, CASA Inc, 22 state attorneys general, several pregnant women who are not American citizens, and a variety of civil rights organizations challenged Donald Trump’s Executive Order banning birthright citizenship. That’s the principle enshrined in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution that all babies born in the United States are American citizens regardless of the citizenship or immigration status of their mothers. But the June 27 decision didn’t reach the merits of that challenge.
Instead, it dealt with the scope of the injunctions which three different US District Courts in Maryland, Washington, and Mass issued enjoining Trump’s EO. All of those district courts found that to grant complete relief to the plaintiffs, it was necessary to issue “universal injunctions” which not only restrained Trump from implementing his EO against the specific plaintiffs named in those lawsuits but also restrained Trump from implementing it nationwide. Three different federal appellate court denied Trump’s request to stay those universal injunctions, but last week the conservative majority on the Supreme Court gave Trump a green light to proceed within 30 days against any mother who was not one of the named plaintiffs.
Guest – Stephen Rohde believes that Trump v CASA is a monumental decision that dangerously builds on last year’s disastrous decision in Trump v US, in which the same 6-member conservative majority invented absolute presidential criminal immunity. Steve practiced civil rights and civil liberties law for almost 50 years, and is a prolific author of two books and scores of articles and book reviews on constitutional law and history. He is former President of the ACLU of Southern California and is Special Advisor on Free Speech and the First Amendment for the Muslim Public Affairs Council. He is also host of the new podcast Speaking Freely produced by Ms Studios which is available on Spotify, I Heart Radio and other streaming platforms.
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CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Freedom Of Speech, Human Rights, Targeting Muslims, U.S. Militarism, War Resister
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Dangerous Threshold: Long Range Implications Of Bombing Iran’s Nuclear Facilities
In a dangerous escalation of U.S. foreign policy, Donald Trump announced on June 22 that the U.S. had bombed 13 Iranian nuclear facilities in support of Israel. The Israeli-Iranian conflict has already left hundreds dead—including scores of civilians—and now risks igniting a wider regional, if not global, war.
While Trump claimed to broker a ceasefire, Israeli missiles struck Iranian targets just hours later. Iran denied any retaliation but was quickly blamed for alleged missile fire—charges used to justify further Israeli attacks. Trump publicly rebuked both nations, saying he’s “not happy with Israel,” even as White House officials praised his supposed diplomatic intervention. With the region in crisis, global powers maneuvering, and questions mounting over legality and legitimacy, we examine the broader implications for peace, international law, and U.S. democracy. BreakthroughNews
Guest – Brian Becker, national coordinator of the ANSWER Coalition and a longtime critic of U.S. imperialism and military intervention. A leader of the Party for Socialism and Liberation, he’s also a leading voice in the movement to end the occupation of Palestine.
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Cyber Citizens: Saving Democracy with Digital Literacy
Cyber Citizens: Saving Democracy with Digital Literacy is a new book by our own co-host Heidi Boghosian. Heidi explains how the erosion of civics education combined with widespread digital illiteracy, leaves Americans vulnerable to manipulation—by Big Tech, foreign adversaries, extremist movements, and even our own government. She argues that we’re not just under-informed—we’re being actively rewired by the very systems we depend on daily.
Yet people are fighting back and taking cyber citizenship seriously. They include librarians teaching patrons to use Tor, activists leveraging open-source tools, educators using justice-themed games to teach critical thinking, and whistleblowers risking everything to expose abuses by governments and tech giants. Heidi’s earlier books include Spying on Democracy and I Have Nothing to Hide, and her writing has appeared in outlets like the LA Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and the ABA Human Rights Journal. She’s on the Advisory Board of the Georgetown Center on Privacy and Technology and the Media Freedom Foundation.
Guest – Heidi Boghosian is executive director of the A.J. Muste Foundation for Peace and Justice, a charitable organization providing support to activist organizations. Before that she was executive director of the National Lawyers Guild. Her book ““I Have Nothing to Hide”: And 20 Other Myths About Surveillance and Privacy was published in 2021 (Beacon Press). She received her JD from Temple Law School where she was editor-in-chief of the Temple Political & Civil Rights Law Review. She has an MS from Boston University’s College of Communication and a BA from Brown University.
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Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Freedom Of Speech, Human Rights, Right To Dissent, Surveillance, U.S. Militarism
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Law Firms Targeted By Trump Administration
Trump and the MAGA movement behind him have taken huge steps to upend and overturn the kind of democracy, however limited by race and class, that we have lived with since our independence from England some 250 years ago. In order to secure their rule, these fascists, like those in the Hitler movement 90 years ago, attempted to get control of the various apparatuses of our society. They aimed at the major media, the universities, the states like California, the scientific establishment, the medical profession, the cultural apparatus, the top brass in the military, and the big law firms.
Hitler’s fascist party in Germany called this effort “bringing it into line”. What we are going to examine today is Trump’s efforts to dominate the major law firms in America. He has succeeded in dominating some, but not all, of these law firms, which are known as “big law.“ The resistance has been impressive and a tribute to the spirit of fairness in the American legal tradition.
What did Trump do? He told the big law firms that he would sign an executive order banning them from federal buildings, including the courthouses where they practiced. Further, he would take away their security clearances and he would cancel any contracts they had with the federal government. This was calculated to break these firms and they knew it. A target was the venerable firm of Paul Weiss, established in 1875, which was active in the civil rights movement in the 50s. It helped to win the landmark desegregation victory in “Brown vs the Board of Education.” Paul Weiss initially tried to resist. It asked other firms for help. But to no avail.
The other firms refused and instead began to pick off their clients. Faced with financial ruin Paul Weiss gave in and agreed to donate millions of dollars in free legal work to projects of Trump‘s choice. So did other famous firms. Collectively, these firms agreed to furnish Trump with over $1 billion in pro bono assistance to Trump and his projects, like defending cops in cases of police abuse and murder, as in the George Floyd case.
Guest – Los Angeles attorney John Burton was the president of the Board of Directors of the National Police Accountability Project, an organization representing more than 600 police misconduct, lawyers and other professionals throughout the United States. He established his law firm in 1984. Mr. Burton has covered the story for the World Socialist Website. As he has written, the battle Trump started is not over. Four judges have ruled against him. 24 friend of the court amicus briefs have been filed. 1000 law firms have come on board.
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Strengthening and Unleashing America’s Law Enforcement to Pursue Criminals and Protect Innocent Citizens
Among the tsunami of Trump‘s executive orders is EO number 14288. Trump signed it on April 25, 2025. It is ominous. The order is titled Strengthening and Unleashing America’s Law Enforcement to Pursue Criminals and Protect Innocent Citizens.
It orders review and likely cancellation of police/citizen consent decrees like the one the movement in Minneapolis won against the Minneapolis Police Department after they murdered George Floyd several years ago. It militarizes law-enforcement by distributing military assets to local police forces and encouraging coordination between the Department of Defense and Federal-local law-enforcement. One of its core objectives is to establish pro bono representation by some of the biggest law firms in America to help shield offending police from suits against them for abuse of local citizens. Trump previously secured agreements with these firms to provide over $1 billion with a representation for free to entities that he designates.
Guest – Russ Bellant has researched rightist, fascist, and the Nazi forces in the United States for over 50 years. He has published articles in many magazines and has written three books based on his research. They include Old Nazis, The New Right and the Republican Party and The Religious Right In Michigan Politics. Email: RussBellant (at) gmail.com (reply that you want to be on the email list)
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Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Freedom Of Speech, Gaza, U.S. Militarism, Violations of U.S. and International Law, War Resister
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A New Nuclear Non-Proliferation Agreement Amid Tension
In 2015 the United States and Iran negotiated an agreement designed to allow Iran to develop peaceful uses of nuclear energy, but not nuclear weapons. That agreement was terminated in 2018 during Trump’s first administration, and sanctions on Iran were re-imposed, sanctions that have proven to be very damaging to Iran’s financial well-being. Now, Trump has said his new administration is prepared to enter into a new nuclear non-proliferation agreement with Iran. But at the recent conclusion of what was the third round of U.S.-Iran negotiations on the issue, negotiations that appear to have gathered momentum, Israel’s Netanyahu has demanded that even Iran’s nuclear program for peaceful uses be dismantled, something Iran has steadfastly refused to consider.
Will Israel be successful in opposing Iran’s development of a nuclear program even if it is limited to peaceful uses? If Iran will not agree to give up its peaceful uses of nuclear energy, is a war between Israel and Iran inevitable? Meanwhile, the back-and-forth attacks by Israel on Iran and Iran on Israel continue. Just last week the Houthis, an Iran proxy, dropped a missile near Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport. All of this raises the question, “Would the Trump Administration join Israel if it waged war on Iran, perhaps including its nuclear facilities and how would other Middle Eastern nations respond if war did break out between Israel and Iran and, perhaps, with the United States fighting alongside Israel?”
Guest – Richard Becker is the Western Regional Coordinator of the ANSWER—Act Now to Stop War and End Racism—Coalition, and the author of Palestine, Israel the U.S. Empire and of the book The Myth of Democracy and the Rule of the Banks.
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Entrenching Authoritarianism: Expanding the Terrorism Framework and the Infrastructure of Surveillance to Repress Expression and Stifle Dissent
Recently, the Center For Constitutional Rights along with a group of four human rights organizations together with legal clinics published a new report urging the United Nations to denounce the accelerated disintegration of democracy in the US. The report focuses on the US government’s increasing criminalization and repression of free speech, dissent, and protest under the guise of “national security.” The report was then submitted to the United Nations Human Rights Council, which is scheduled to formally review the United States compliance with its human rights obligations in November. The link to the report is above.
Guest – Attorney Nadia Ben-Youssef, the Advocacy Director at the Center for Constitutional Rights is quoted saying “Our hope is that the report sounds the alarm for the international community to act with greater urgency to challenge this administration and its belligerent efforts to dismantle constitutional protections and international law.” She directs all advocacy around issues related to the promotion of civil and human rights. Together with the legal, advocacy, and communication teams, Nadia identifies opportunities for the Center for Constitutional Rights to make strategic cultural and political interventions that shift public narrative and policy on our issues.
Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Freedom Of Speech, Gaza, Human Rights, U.S. Militarism, War Resister
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A Constitutional Crisis In The United States
America is in the midst of a constitutional crisis. More than 200 lawsuits have been filed against the Trump administration during his first 100 days in office, resulting in more than 100 injunctions and stays, as he lays waste to fundamental constitutional protections and laws passed by Congress.
On the first day of his second term, Donald Trump had the audacity to sign an executive order claiming he was “restoring freedom of speech.” Instead, his administration is systematically destroying the right to speak freely, to write freely, to dissent freely, and to protest freely.
Trump ordered the elimination of “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) policies in both the public and private sectors and targeted several leading American universities, threatening to withhold federal funding for indoctrinating students with “woke” ideology, and for failing to combat antisemitism, by which he means criticism of Israel. He shut down the Voice of America and the Smithsonian Museum. He canceled the security clearances, government contracts, and access to federal buildings of several prominent law firms because he didn’t like the clients they represented. He even excluded the Associated Press from the White House because it refused to call the Gulf of Mexico, the Gulf of America.
In one of the most egregious violations of the First Amendment, the Trump administration canceled foreign student visas and deported legal permanent residents, claiming their campus protests were contrary to U.S. foreign policy interests.
Guest – Dahlia Taha, is a Policy Manager at the Muslim Public Affairs Council, where she leads the First Amendment and Civil Liberties work. Dahlia is a Palestinian-American Muslim. Prior to joining the MPAC team, she served as a Project Manager at The Texas A&M Foundation, where she researched and analyzed maternal health policy. At MPAC, Dahlia works to champion policies and initiatives that uplift and advocate for the Muslim Community nationwide, with a particular focus on protecting the First Amendment, academic institutions, and the next generation of American Muslims.
I am particularly pleased to have Dahlia with us today, because she and I are about to launch a podcast called Rapid Response, sponsored by MPAC, in which we will examine the struggle of students and community members – Muslims, Jews, and allies -, who have been targeted by the Trump administration for expressing political views in favor of Palestinian rights and sovereignty which the government is seeking to suppress.
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Base Nation: How U.S. Military Bases Abroad Harm America and the World
One of the most consequential pillars of U.S. military power is also one of its most overlooked: our vast network of overseas military bases. In his meticulously researched book Base Nation: How U.S. Military Bases Abroad Harm America and the World, author and anthropologist David Vine reveals how more than 800 U.S. military installations scattered across foreign lands are not merely symbols of strength—they’re often sources of harm. From the Pacific islands to the Middle East and Europe, these bases have become fixtures of American empire. However, they rarely receive the scrutiny they deserve from policymakers or the public.
Vine documents how this sprawling base network fuels geopolitical tension, fosters anti-American resentment, and props up authoritarian regimes. He shows how bases displace local populations, pollute ecosystems, and even affect the mental health and family lives of U.S. troops stationed abroad. And while Pentagon officials downplay the cost, Vine’s analysis reveals that maintaining these foreign outposts drains nearly $100 billion each year from U.S. taxpayers—money that could instead fund urgent domestic priorities.
Perhaps most troubling is how these bases have enabled decades of interventionist wars, making it easier for the U.S. to engage militarily across the globe without addressing root causes of conflict or engaging in genuine diplomacy.Our guest will discuss what a post-base foreign policy might look like, who benefits from the current system, and what’s behind the emerging bipartisan calls to rein it in
Guest – David Vine is a writer and political anthropologist. David was a professor of anthropology at American University for 18 years (2006-2024), He is also the author of Island of Shame: The Secret History of the US Military Base on Diego Garcia.
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Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Freedom Of Speech, Human Rights, Supreme Court
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James Goodale: Fighting for the Press and Freedom of Speech
Donald Trump has wasted no time in his second term attacking free speech and freedom of the press. He arrested Mahmoud Khalil, a permanent US resident with a green card and a student visa, and is trying to deport him (until restrained by a federal judge) because Khalil led pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University. He has threatened to deport other students for their pro-Palestinian protests. Trump banned the Associated Press from White House press briefings and Air Force One for using the term “Gulf of Mexico” instead of “Gulf of America.”
He also banned Reuters News Service and Huffington Post from the press pool. He has issued Executive Orders which federal agencies have cited as authority to ban forbidden words from government websites such as the words Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. He’s threaten to pull federal funding from over 50 universities for teaching aspects of American history such as slavery and racism, which he labels “divisive.” He has encouraged congressional investigations against Democrats who served on the January 6 Committee.
He has promoted a definition of “antisemitism” which would punish political criticism of Israel. And he has filed lawsuits seeking hundreds of million of dollars in damages against ABC, CBS, Media Matters for America, and newspapers based on how they have reported on him, his candidacy, and his actions as President.
Guest – James Goodale is the former vice president and general counsel for The New York Times and, later, the Times’ vice chairman. He is the author of Fighting for the Press: The Inside Story of the Pentagon Papers and Other Battles. Goodale represented The New York Times in four of its United States Supreme Court cases, including Branzburg v. Hayes, in which the Times intervened on behalf of its reporter Earl Caldwell. The other cases were New York Times v. Sullivan, New York Times Co. v. United States (the Pentagon Papers case), and New York Times Co. v. Tasini. He has been called “the father of the reporter’s privilege” in the Hastings Law Journal because of his interpretation of the Branzburg case.
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Pushing The Limit Of Presidential Power
Since being sworn in for his second term on January 20, 2025, Donald Trump has signed (with a big black marker) almost 90 Executive Orders or EOs, stretching the limits of Presidential power. In response, over 100 lawsuits have been filed challenging the most egregious and questionable EOs. Some of the most sweeping orders seek to totally dismantle over 70 years of laws, policies, and programs promoting Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility. These EOs were immediately challenged in court. Meanwhile, some companies have surrendered to Trump and terminated their Diversity programs, while civil rights groups are fighting back.
Stephen’s recent article – First They Came For Mahmoud Khalil
Guest – Stephen Rohde is a writer, lecturer and political activist. For almost 50 years, he practiced civil rights, civil liberties, and intellectual property law and has won significant First Amendment victories in state and federal appellate courts. He is a past chair of the ACLU Foundation of Southern California and past National Chair of Bend the Arc, a Jewish Partnership for Justice. He is a founder and current chair of Interfaith Communities United for Justice and Peace; member of the Board of Directors of Death Penalty Focus, and a member of the Black Jewish Justice Alliance. He is the Special Advisor on Free Speech and the First Amendment for the Muslim Public Affairs Council.
Mr. Rohde is the author of the books American Words of Freedom: The Words That Define Our Nation and Freedom of Assembly and numerous articles and book reviews on civil liberties and constitutional history for the Los Angeles Review of Books, American Prospect, LA Times, Ms. Magazine, Los Angeles Lawyer, LA Progressive, Truthdig and other publications.
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