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Part One:
We speak with Mark David Stern, reporter for Slate, about ideas for reforming the US Supreme Court. We discuss the Court’s evolution in recent decades, away from being a neutral, balanced arbiter, and instead becoming a tool for upholding the right-wing agenda of corporate elites and the Republican Party.
In many important recent decisions, the Court has knowingly misinterpreted a statute in order to reach the result that the right-wing powers want them to reach. As an example, we look at the Court’s decision this week, upholding the decision by ICE under Pres. Trump to arrest and detain indefinitely — without a bond hearing — certain immigrants who committed even a minor crime decades ago, but who have been living peacefully in the US ever since, working and paying taxes.
Part Two:
We check in again with Steffen Schmidt, Professor of Political Science at Iowa State University, about the latest developments in politics, including:
— the increasing activism of America’s youth, and how to channel their concern about issues into meaningful action that will affect change;
— how crowds in Iowa are responding to Beto O’Rourke as he begins campaigning for the Democratic nomination for president of the United States;
— America’s need to acknowledge and understand white privilege and possibly to provide some kind of reparations for those who have suffered from our country’s “original sin” of slavery; and
— to what extent the federal government should take action to solve society’s problems such as climate change, gun violence, and eliminating the continuing barriers facing African Americans, Latinx, Native Americans, LGBTQ, Muslims, and other marginalized/vulnerable people.
