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Part One:
A humanitarian crisis for refugees. No it’s not on our southern border. We speak with Lisa Khoury, a freelance reporter in Lebanon (yes, the country!), about her article in Washington Monthly, “The Next Chapter of the Syrian Refugee Crisis.” Lebanon is about to kick 1.5 million Syrian refugees out of the country (Lebanon), where they had been living since they fled their war-torn homeland. The Lebanese economy and government are unable to support their own citizens (and Syrians add an extra 30% to that population).
The Syrian refugees have no safe place to go now. Even the industrial world may not have the resources to observe all people needing help, and the smaller economies in the Middle East are overburdened already. What will the world do about this?
Part Two:
The sudden upheaval in U.S. politics. We visit with “Dr. Politics,” Steffen Schmidt, professor of political science at Iowa State University. As the formal “impeachment inquiry” begins in Congress, we consider why it took so long; what is so different now; and what might the fallout look like?
And what does America’s experiment with Donald Trump indicate about the vibrancy of American democracy? What can we learn by looking at the larger picture, in the context of history?
We also discuss the U.S.-China trade war, through the lens of the gamesmanship being carried out by the respective leaders. The strategies are based less on economic theory and more on real-world effects (e.g., can one trader circumvent any tariffs by selling to a third country which acts as the “middle man”? Can they successfully evade the tariffs without too many damaging repercussions?).
