democracy-now

We get an update from South Texas, where Elon Musk’s SpaceX rocket blew up four minutes after launch Friday and residents reported particulates or ash rained down on their neighborhoods near the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge. We speak with Bekah Hinojosa of Another Gulf Is Possible, who has been targeted for participating in protests against SpaceX. She says, “We’re clearly being exploited by a billionaire and his pet project.

We discuss the U.S. gun violence epidemic with historian Andrew McKevitt, who says, “We ought to conceive of our gun problem as a problem of gun capitalism.” He covers the history of the proliferation of individual gun ownership since World War II in his forthcoming book, Gun Country: Gun Capitalism, Culture & Control in Cold War America.

We look at the historic settlement reached this week in Dominion Voting Systems’s lawsuit against Fox News for promoting lies about voting machines being rigged against Trump in the 2020 election.

In Yemen, at least 79 people were killed and over 300 injured in a stampede on Wednesday in the capital city of Sana’a. The crowd crush began after armed Houthis fired into the air to control the crowd, striking electrical equipment and causing it to explode. The tragic deaths come as Yemen continues to face one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises following years of fighting between U.S.-backed Saudi forces and the Houthi rebels.

We get an update from South Texas, where Elon Musk’s SpaceX rocket blew up four minutes after launch Friday and residents reported particulates or ash rained down on their neighborhoods near the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge. We speak with Bekah Hinojosa of Another Gulf Is Possible, who has been targeted for participating in protests against SpaceX. She says, “We’re clearly being exploited by a billionaire and his pet project.

We discuss the U.S. gun violence epidemic with historian Andrew McKevitt, who says, “We ought to conceive of our gun problem as a problem of gun capitalism.” He covers the history of the proliferation of individual gun ownership since World War II in his forthcoming book, Gun Country: Gun Capitalism, Culture & Control in Cold War America.

We look at the historic settlement reached this week in Dominion Voting Systems’s lawsuit against Fox News for promoting lies about voting machines being rigged against Trump in the 2020 election.

We look at the historic settlement reached this week in Dominion Voting Systems’s lawsuit against Fox News for promoting lies about voting machines being rigged against Trump in the 2020 election.

In Yemen, at least 79 people were killed and over 300 injured in a stampede on Wednesday in the capital city of Sana’a. The crowd crush began after armed Houthis fired into the air to control the crowd, striking electrical equipment and causing it to explode. The tragic deaths come as Yemen continues to face one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises following years of fighting between U.S.-backed Saudi forces and the Houthi rebels.

We get an update from South Texas, where Elon Musk’s SpaceX rocket blew up four minutes after launch Friday and residents reported particulates or ash rained down on their neighborhoods near the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge. We speak with Bekah Hinojosa of Another Gulf Is Possible, who has been targeted for participating in protests against SpaceX. She says, “We’re clearly being exploited by a billionaire and his pet project.

We discuss the U.S. gun violence epidemic with historian Andrew McKevitt, who says, “We ought to conceive of our gun problem as a problem of gun capitalism.” He covers the history of the proliferation of individual gun ownership since World War II in his forthcoming book, Gun Country: Gun Capitalism, Culture & Control in Cold War America.

As pressure grows on Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to resign over his decades-long relationship with a billionaire benefactor, we speak with legal journalist Adam Cohen, who says there is a precedent that should guide lawmakers in how to address the growing scandal. In 1969, Justice Abe Fortas was forced to resign after his financial relationship came to light with businessman Louis Wolfson, who paid Fortas to consult for his foundation.

We look at the historic settlement reached this week in Dominion Voting Systems’s lawsuit against Fox News for promoting lies about voting machines being rigged against Trump in the 2020 election.

As the Supreme Court weighs whether to keep mifepristone available nationwide, we speak with Julie Burkhart, who is on the frontlines of the fight for reproductive justice. Burkhart is president of Wellspring Health Access, the only full-service abortion clinic in Wyoming, that was firebombed by an anti-abortion activist last year, as well as co-owner of Hope Clinic in Granite City, Illinois. Burkhart previously worked for eight years with Dr. George Tiller before his assassination in 2009.

As the abortion pill mifepristone remains available for at least another two days after a delayed U.S. Supreme Court ruling, we discuss the case with law professor Michele Goodwin. She notes the push to force more people to give birth is taking place against a backdrop of poor maternal health outcomes.

As pressure grows on Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to resign over his decades-long relationship with a billionaire benefactor, we speak with legal journalist Adam Cohen, who says there is a precedent that should guide lawmakers in how to address the growing scandal. In 1969, Justice Abe Fortas was forced to resign after his financial relationship came to light with businessman Louis Wolfson, who paid Fortas to consult for his foundation.

Calls continue to grow for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to step down or to be impeached, after ProPublica uncovered more damning information about his relationship with Republican megadonor Harlan Crow. According to the new report, Thomas and his family sold a house and two vacant lots in Savannah, Georgia, to Crow for around $130,000 but never disclosed the sale, which appears to be a violation of the 1978 Ethics in Government Act.

A New York immigration judge on Tuesday ruled that Jean Montrevil, a Haitian immigrant and longtime activist, will no longer face deportation, after a decade of being targeted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement for his activism. Montrevil was deported to Haiti in 2018 under the Trump administration but got a second chance in 2021, when Virginia Governor Ralph Northam granted him a pardon for two drug convictions from three decades earlier, which ICE had used as a pretext to deport him.

Our guest Hannah Dreier, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter at The New York Times, has published a bombshell new investigation headlined “As Migrant Children Were Put to Work, U.S. Ignored Warnings.” It reports that the Biden administration has repeatedly ignored or missed warnings about a surge of migrant children as young as 12 working in factories across the United States under grueling and often dangerous working conditions in serious violation of child labor laws.

We discuss climate solutions and the need for broad involvement in the fight to avert climate catastrophe with writer and activist Rebecca Solnit and longtime Filipino climate activist Renato “Red” Constantino. Solnit is the co-editor of Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility, which features an essay by Constantino about his role in the Paris Climate Agreement titled “How the Ants Moved the Elephants in Paris.

We speak with Ugandan LGBTQ activist Frank Mugisha about a draconian new anti-gay bill the country is on the verge of imposing, which makes it a crime to identify as queer, considers all same-sex conduct to be nonconsensual, and even allows for the death penalty in certain cases. Both the Biden administration and the U.N. secretary-general are urging Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni not to sign the bill into law.

A new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association finds that poverty is the fourth-greatest cause of death in the United States. Roughly 500 people die from poverty in the U.S. every day. Our guest, sociologist Matthew Desmond, is the author of the new book, Poverty, by America, the follow-up to his Pulitzer Prize-winning book Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City.

In Atlanta, Georgia, the family of a prisoner says he was “eaten alive” by insects and bedbugs in his cell there last year. The family of 35-year-old Lashawn Thompson, who was being held in the jail’s psychiatric wing, is demanding a criminal investigation and that the jail be shut down. In an exclusive interview, we speak to Thompson’s brother Brad McCrae and sister Shenita Thompson, as well as Michael Harper, a lawyer representing the family.

We look at U.S. policy toward Cuba as U.S. and Cuban officials met Wednesday to discuss migration from the island. This January, the U.S. Embassy in Havana began processing immigrant visas for the first time in more than five years in an attempt to control the extent of undocumented migration from the island. Meanwhile, the U.S. continues to face pressure to lift the embargo that has severely limited trade and more with Cuba for decades.

We discuss climate solutions and the need for broad involvement in the fight to avert climate catastrophe with writer and activist Rebecca Solnit and longtime Filipino climate activist Renato “Red” Constantino. Solnit is the co-editor of Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility, which features an essay by Constantino about his role in the Paris Climate Agreement titled “How the Ants Moved the Elephants in Paris.

We speak with Ugandan LGBTQ activist Frank Mugisha about a draconian new anti-gay bill the country is on the verge of imposing, which makes it a crime to identify as queer, considers all same-sex conduct to be nonconsensual, and even allows for the death penalty in certain cases. Both the Biden administration and the U.N. secretary-general are urging Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni not to sign the bill into law.

We go to Khartoum, Sudan, for an update on fighting that began Saturday between the Sudanese military and a rival paramilitary force that has left at least 97 civilians dead and hundreds more injured. The fighting pits Sudan’s military against a powerful paramilitary group and has dashed hopes of a civilian-led, democratically elected government — a key demand of protesters who led Sudan’s mass mobilizations in 2019 — and sparked fears of civil war.

We look at U.S. policy toward Cuba as U.S. and Cuban officials met Wednesday to discuss migration from the island. This January, the U.S. Embassy in Havana began processing immigrant visas for the first time in more than five years in an attempt to control the extent of undocumented migration from the island. Meanwhile, the U.S. continues to face pressure to lift the embargo that has severely limited trade and more with Cuba for decades.

Faculty at the state-run Rutgers University in New Jersey have entered their fifth day of a historic strike — the first faculty strike in the school’s 257-year history. Organizers of three unions, representing more than 9,000 professors, lecturers and graduate assistants, are demanding increased pay and better job security, especially for poorly paid graduate workers and adjunct faculty.

President Biden was in Ireland this week to mark the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement, the U.S.-brokered peace deal that ended three decades of fighting in Northern Ireland, known as the Troubles.