Ralph Nader Radio Hour

Ralph speaks to Dr. Feroze Sidhwa for an update on the death toll in Gaza as well as the new documentary film “American Doctor.” Then Ralph and economic William Lazonick discuss Nvidia’s planned $235 billion stock buyback.Dr. Feroze Sidhwa is a general, trauma, and critical care surgeon in California. He is also a humanitarian surgeon who has worked in Palestine, Ukraine, Haiti, Zimbabwe, and Burkina Faso. He most recently volunteered at Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis, Gaza. He was blocked from entering Gaza by Israel’s Shin Bet intelligence service in November 2025. His work in Gaza is featured in the new documentary film American Doctor.If I’m remembering the exact time right, March of 2016 was the deadliest month for children that [Airwars] had ever studied anywhere—so that’s the 31 days of March of 2016. In the first 25 days of the US-Israeli assault on Gaza, the rate of killing of children was 71 to 142 times higher than in the deadliest month they had ever studied for children anywhere else. And just to put these numbers in a little bit of perspective…If you look at Russia’s invasion of Ukraine versus Israel’s invasion of Gaza, Russian forces killed the same percentage of children in Ukraine in 10 months as the US and Israel kill in Gaza every 18 to 37 hours.Dr. Feroze SidhwaI want to emphasize to people that [American Doctor] is not a gory movie. This movie is nothing— Saving Private Ryan is a much bloodier movie than this. But nevertheless, this movie is a tough watch sometimes because the things you see (like what [Dr. Mark Perlmutter] shows at the very beginning) are difficult. They are scenes of dead bodies—not bodies that have been ripped to shreds, but bodies that are just dead. And it forces you to realize what our bombs do to people. You know, our bombs are not made of magic and pixie dust. They cause pressure waves, they cause blast injuries, they cause all sorts of death and destruction. And in that opening scene that’s what Mark is trying to get the director [Poh Si Teng] to understand—that if she blurs these images, if she pixelates them, if she refuses to show people what it looks like to kill children and what dead children actually look like and force people to look (to really just look), that she’ll be doing people a disservice. And you hear it at the end of the trailer when he’s saying “People have a right to know the truth.” Well, the truth is pretty uncomfortable.Dr. Feroze SidhwaThe most effective medical care that human beings provide to each other is provided to small children so that they can reach the age of five (at that point they become a bit more robust and they can survive the challenges that the world throws at them) and to pregnant women. Those are the two groups that benefit most from medical care. When you destroy a medical system…This is literally every hospital in Gaza, and not just the hospitals. Most of the clinics have been destroyed. Most of the pharmaceutical warehouses have been destroyed. Most of the veterinary medicine spots have been destroyed. So when you attack a health care system like this, you’re basically condemning women and children to die. There’s no other effect that it could even be expected to have. The same goes with the destruction of Gaza’s sewage system, it’s the destruction of its educational system, the destruction of the water treatment facilities, the destruction of almost all of the housing in Gaza, the destruction of the entire arable land and food distribution system, the destruction of almost every bakery in Gaza, the destruction of every chicken farm, it just goes on and on and on. Everything that sustains life, especially for an urbanized population, has been destroyed. And that’s why the vast majority of international experts consider this to be genocidal.Dr. Feroze SidhwaWilliam Lazonick is a professor emeritus of economics at the University of Massachusetts Lowell and co-founder and president of the Academic-Industry Research Network, a non-profit research organization . His recent work includes Predatory Value Extraction: How the Looting of the Business Corporation Became the US Norm and How Sustainable Prosperity Can Be Restored, and Investing in Innovation: Confronting Predatory Value Extraction in the U.S. Corporation.’When [Nvidia] issued this press release a couple days ago about the [$235 billion] buyback, one of the things it says is that it’s “returning capital to shareholders”. I mean, Jensen Huang (who’s a founder and CEO of Nvidia) knows that’s nonsense. The only time they ever raised money from shareholders on the stock market was in their IPO in 1999 (January 1999). And that was $40 million. One of his three co-founders, Curtis Priem, sold all his stock in 2006 for about $30 million. It’s estimated that if he had held the stock to the present, it would be worth $70 billion. So if those people who originally bought the stock at the IPO had held on to it, you don’t need to return anything else to them. They’ve got plenty and plenty of money for holding on. So this is just a manipulation of the stock market.William LazonickNews 10/2/26* Our first story this week comes to us from Florida, where Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Angie Nixon made news by saying in an interview with Newsweek that she thinks “there needs to be a moratorium [on the construction of data centers] until more research is done,” but that “if people want to build a data center, they should put it on Mar-a-Lago.” Nixon is careful to explain that she is open to data center construction given the appropriate safety guidelines and under the correct circumstances, such as “requiring or creating a mechanism for communities affected by data centers to receive some form of financial benefit.” While the invitation to build a data center on Mar-a-Lago is obviously incendiary, Nixon rejects the notion that her campaign is primarily about Trump, saying “I’m not pushing an anti-Trump message,” in the president’s adoptive home state, instead arguing that she is “pushing a message about how people should decide what their economies and communities look like.”* Meanwhile the Hill reports Senate Democrats, led by Senators Mark Warner, Brian Schatz and Andy Kim, sought to pass a package of AI guardrails via unanimous consent this week, but were blocked by Ted Cruz. According to this report, the Artificial Intelligence Risk Management and Security Act of 2026 sought to “establish a permanent AI safety board within the Commerce Department,” which “would develop standards for evaluating frontier models and securing their testing environments, with developers required to give the panel access to models at least 45 days before they go public.” Cruz blocked the unanimous consent resolution on the basis that it would “give the executive branch too much power over private AI companies.”* For our final tech story for the week, the Huffington Post reports that shortly after the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute fiasco which saw the group accept, then reject major donations from Palantir, the controversial high-tech surveillance firm was apparently “acknowledged as a supporter of the annual gala” for the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, the CBC’s “charitable arm,” in Washington. Many remarked on the perverse symbolism of “one digital banner…[upon which] the firm was listed among the conference’s ‘top supporters…’...[while] The background featured a faded portrait of Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman elected to Congress, whose campaign motto ‘unbought and unbossed’ symbolized resistance to corporate influence.” This piece observes that Palantir has “long sought to curry favor with Democratic-aligned institutions,” while simultaneously cultivating close ties with ICE and the military and the firm’s founders, notably Peter Thiel, publicly espouse far-right ideas. In a statement, Palantir wrote that they are “proud and honored to support the CBC Foundation’s mission of creating pathways for promising young people to enter public service who may not have the networks or financial means to do so without support.”* Turning to local news, the first corruption trial for DC councilmember Trayon White has ended in a mistrial, according to WTOP. White represents Ward 8, Washington’s most heavily African-American and historically most impoverished district. United States Attorney for the District of Columbia and former Fox News host Jenine Pirro said in a statement that “We have video showing piles of cash being given to a D.C. councilmember as part of a $156,000 bribe. Rest assured that we will retry this case and every corruption case to verdict.” However, White maintains that “The prosecutors knew, and the FBI knew that they didn’t have a strong case…[because] there was never a quid pro quo.” White further posted on social media that the jury split was nine-to-three in favor of a not guilty verdict. White, who was reelected to the council last year after being unanimously expelled added that his “focus remains on serving our residents, and [his] office remains open to help with constituent concerns.”* In New York City, the legal battle over Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s pied-à-terre tax grinds on. This week, CNN reports Judge Wayne M. Ozzi of Staten Island ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, who “did not challenge the legality of the tax itself, but…alleged the city had incorrectly ‘identified their homes as potentially subject to the surcharge,’ despite being their primary residences.” The tax was intended to impose a “surcharge on non-primary residences in New York City valued over $5 million, as well as co-ops valued at $1 million.” In effect, this ruling cancels the 17,000 notices sent out to residents notifying them that they either had to file for exemption or submit to the tax. Judge Ozzi allowed that new notices can be sent out only if they comply with a particular list of rules. In a statement, Mamdani spokesperson Matt Rauschenbach said “The pied-à-terre surchar

Ralph welcomes Mary Berry the daughter of the late American novelist, poet, essayist, environmental activist, cultural critic, and farmer, Wendell Berry. Ms. Berry runs the non-profit Berry Center in New Castle, Kentucky, which serves as a repository for the study of small farm agriculture and preserves the legacy of her family’s work. Then, with the midterms on the horizon, Ralph and the team talk about how to be a smart voter. Plus, Ralph has some choice words for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s so-called “Free Enterprise Express.”Leave a comment about how you are a smart voter. We will collect these and discuss them on our next program.Click the button below to get Professor Laura Nader’s book Controlling Processes.Mary Berry is Executive Director of the Berry Center, a nonprofit organization dedicated to bringing focus, knowledge and cohesion to the work of changing our ruinous industrial agricultural system into a system and culture that uses nature as the standard, accepts no permanent damage to the ecosphere, and takes into consideration human health in local communities.[Wendell Berry] lived the way he thought one should live. He used to say to people when they kind of congratulated him for coming home to Kentucky to live and to farm (as if that was some kind of sacrifice), he would say, “I just did what I wanted to do.” So he was an exceptional person, an extraordinary person, and he’s left an absence that is going to be keenly felt for quite some time.Mary BerryWe have (since the end of the tobacco program) lost 15,000 farms in Kentucky. And we’ve lost the rural culture. And we’ve lost the rural culture that sustained good life here and good land use… Without an economic backstop, people begin to fall apart. It takes a lot to hold culture together. It takes a lot to hold people together. So I took a list to my father and said we’ve got to work on these things—the miseducation of farmers, access to capital, terrible land use, we’ve got to study the tobacco program (this is not about tobacco, this is about the principles of a program that protected farmers). And he said: well, it sounds like you’re starting a center.Mary BerryOne of the reasons I started the Berry Center is because I saw the local food movement as a failure. And I began to understand that we could not just have entrepreneurial farming or industrial farming, with nothing in the middle. We were going to have to try to put something in the middle that would take care of marketing and pricing and so on for farmers, so they didn’t have to do it all.Mary BerryI think one of the things that makes my father’s work singular is that he never talked about the land without talking about the people— talking about the people, talking about the land, the two never separated.Mary BerryNews 9/25/26* Our first two stories this week have to do with the Senate race in the state of Michigan. First up, Dropsite is out with an expose of “Michigan Jews Against Extremism,” a group that emerged in August which sought to astroturf opposition to Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed among Jewish voters. Yet, while the avowed members of this group purport to be “Democrats and Independents” Dropsite finds that in fact, “many of the Jewish community leaders involved have deep ties to the GOP, as well as to pro-Israel activist groups such as AIPAC.” Among the signatories, “Nearly 50 were involved in a nearly identical gambit in 2012 that went by the name ‘Jews for Mitt.’...[arguing that] Then-President Barack Obama…was so “anti-Israel” that their consciences drove them to abandon the Democratic Party to support Republican nominee Mitt Romney.” All in all, Dropsite finds that “nearly 90% of the first 430 signatories are either connected to pro-Israel activist groups, GOP aligned, Jews for Mitt voters, or may not live in Michigan,” at all. This piece notes that Jewish voters typically go for Democrats by a ratio of about 2:1, making them a key part of the Democratic coalition.* Helping to counter the narrative pushed by this group and others, this week Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel formally endorsed El-Sayed, the Detroit News reports. In an interview conducted side by side with him, Nessel said she “can’t be true to my values if I even consider voting for Mike Rogers,” adding that he is the “one candidate that I know is going to fight against the Trump administration…to protect…our physical security, our safety, our health and our futures.” Nessel has been critical of El-Sayed in the past; in August, she gave a private speech to Jewish Democrats in which she implied that Democrats critical of Israel, like El-Sayed, “have thrown us,” referring to Jewish Democrats, “under the bus, despite our lifelong contributions to our party.” Many Democrats worried that her disagreements with El-Sayed over Israel would undermine his candidacy. By coming around on the candidate, she immediately becomes one of his strongest surrogates in the Michigan Jewish community and helps to unite the often fractious Democratic coalition behind him. Recent polling has favored El-Sayed over Rogers by an increasing margin. While a Detroit News/WDIV-TV poll conducted in late August and early September found Rogers leading by one point, a Suffolk University poll conducted in mid-to-late September found El-Sayed ahead by seven.* In more Senate race news, this week saw the publication of a bombshell report of corruption on the part of longtime Maine Senator Susan Collins – and how Trump helped to cover it up. According to ProPublica Martin Kao, CEO of defense contractor Navatek, funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars to a Collins Super PAC through a shell company in exchange for her intervening on behalf of his company to secure lucrative military contracts, part of a “sweeping pay-to-play” scheme. When the feds caught onto Kao, leaving him staring down the barrel of a lengthy prison sentence, he told-all. This piece notes that while the Supreme Court has “narrowed what counts as bribery” to require “extraordinary proof of a quid pro quo arrangement,” the FBI “had enough evidence to pursue a sweeping bribery probe that could ensnare top lawmakers of both political parties,” by late 2024. After the election however, Trump “stacked the Department of Justice with his personal lawyers” and “eviscerated” the “specialized FBI and DOJ teams handling public corruption investigations,” because they had been involved in cases deemed lawfare against him specifically. The investigation based upon Kao’s story, substantiated by reams of evidence, is now regarded as dead in the water. In light of all of this, whether or not Collins faces accountability for this brazen corruption falls to the voters of Maine.* In our last Senate story of the week, the Texas Tribune reports the Senate Leadership Fund (SLF), the “main outside group affiliated with Senate Majority Leader John Thune,” will “book an additional $30 million in ads,” on behalf of Republican Senate candidate Ken Paxton through its connected entity, Texas PAC. Piled on top of SLF’s previous spending of nearly $70 million, this “will to bring its total spend to the $100 million mark.” This spending confirms that the GOP considers this race highly competitive and tracks with past predictions by SLF, which estimated that “a Paxton candidacy would cost $200 million to $250 million in order to keep the seat in Republican hands.” On top of the SLF’s $100 million spend, other groups have poured around $40 million into this race. Some wondered whether the Republicans, defending a broad array of seats, would be willing to bail out Paxton’s flailing candidacy. This new monetary commitment seems to confirm that they will throw as much money as they deem necessary to prevent the victory of James Talarico. While Talarico has raised and spent colossal amounts of money as well, this new infusion of Republican cash has swamped his spending thus far – with the Tribune reporting that in the “month of September, Texas PAC alone has spent nearly $66 million to Talarico’s approximately $22 million, with other Republican groups bringing the GOP’s spending total to about $103 million this month.” For now, Talarico maintains a slim but consistent lead in the polls, with even Republican polling firm Trafalgar Group finding him ahead by one point.* Turning to House races, the national Democratic Socialists of America have endorsed Angela Gonzales-Torres, who is challenging incumbent Congressman Jimmy Gomez in California’s 34th congressional district. In their announcement, DSA stated that it is “proud” to endorse Gonzales-Torres, touting her agenda which foregrounds “an arms embargo on Israel, labor protections, Medicare for All and abolishing ICE.” DSA also highlights Gonzales-Torres’ life story, having been “Born and raised in Highland Park…the daughter of a deportee and grew up with a single mother who relied on SNAP and Medicaid,” adding that “Her organizing work includes helping people move from prison into higher education.” Gonzales-Torres thanked DSA for backing her campaign, and took the opportunity to attack Gomez for being “complicit in genocide, endorsed by Leading the Future—the AI super PAC of Palantir and OpenAI co-founders—and…under investigation for sexual misconduct.” If Gonzales-Torres and Mai Vang, another DSA candidate in California’s seventh district, emerge victorious in November, they will be the eighth and ninth DSA members of the next Congress, a stunning number not rivaled ever before in American history.* Also in Los Angeles, new polling seems to show DSA-endorsed mayoral candidate Nithya Raman leading incumbent Mayor Karen Bass, according to the LA Times. The poll, conducted by the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies found Raman at 39%, over 10 points ahead of Bass at 28%. While this is certainly an encouraging result for Raman – who finished second against Bass in the June primary and has so far largely trailed the incumbent Mayor i

Ralph welcomes “New York Times” reporter Natasha Singer to discuss her new book, “Coding Kids: Big Tech’s Battle to Remake Public Schools.” Then, Ralph talks about Donald Trump’s midterm convention speeches and the latest impeachment drive with Constitutional law expert Bruce Fein.Natasha Singer is a New York Times reporter covering the intersection of technology, business and education. She has covered tech industry influence in schools for the New York Times for more than a decade, and her school tech reporting helped prompt California to enact a landmark student online data protection law. In 2019, she was part of a Times team whose tech coverage won a George Polk Award and was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for National Reporting. She is also the author of the book Coding Kids: Big Tech’s Battle to Remake Public Schools.It’s not about the companies immediately making money off schools. It’s about influencing kids, getting customers early and for life. But I think more importantly, it’s about imprinting Silicon Valley worldviews and values on young people. So that you get docile consumers who maybe aren’t worried about wholesale surveillance and data gathering, and docile employees who are not going to push back against being surveilled by their employer or using AI tools or having AI replace them. And so I think this story about tech companies capturing the classroom is not just about how they’re shaping learning. It’s about how some of the most powerful, wealthiest corporations on the planet are able to influence school systems.Natasha SingerSince the time of Steve Jobs, Silicon Valley has attached this fancy word “literacy” to whatever product they have, and then told schools they needed to teach it. So in the era of Steve Jobs, there was suddenly this fervor that we had to teach “computer literacy” because Japan was ahead and if we wanted our country to compete, we needed computer literacy. And then the internet came and we got “internet literacy” and “smartphone literacy” and then “digital literacy”... And now we’re in this moment where Silicon Valley and tech-funded nonprofit groups are pushing “AI literacy”, except we don’t know what AI literacy is and we don’t know how to teach AI. And so it makes it sound really fancy: “AI literacy”. But oftentimes the companies are really just talking about: “Learn how to use our chatbot.” And now you have asked: When are we going to stop listening to these people? When are we going to stop rushing to teach whatever product “literacy” Silicon Valley is pushing us to do this week, and then pivot with whiplash to whatever they’re pushing next week? And I think that’s the question of the hour.Natasha SingerBruce Fein is a Constitutional scholar and an expert on international law. Mr. Fein was Associate Deputy Attorney General under Ronald Reagan and he is the author of Constitutional Peril: The Life and Death Struggle for Our Constitution and Democracy, and American Empire: Before the Fall.They’re playing to dodge accountability by saying, “We’re neither for nor against this,” like someone who’s claiming they’re agnostic. Now, how you could be agnostic on Donald Trump, whose impeachable offenses are proven out of his own mouth? All these statements that he’s made are open and notorious. And so it’s almost implausible to suggest that these people don’t know that he has committed impeachable offenses and are deciding to duck for political, partisan purposes (their calculation as to what would help them politically). Now, that, of course, is directly contrary to their oaths of office. Hakeem Jeffries, like his colleagues, has taken an oath (without mental reservation or purpose of evasion) to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. At present, the Constitution is in flames under Donald Trump. And to sit and do nothing—to declare neutrality between the firefighter and the fire—is itself an impeachable offense for which they should be impeached and be prosecuted for perjury when they were sworn into office.Bruce FeinNews 9/18/26* Our first stories this week are about impeachment. On the Democratic side, outgoing Congressman Al Green, long a champion of impeachment, introduced a resolution which “sought to impeach Mr. Trump over the conduct of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection…[citing] the killings of Renee Good, Alex Pretti, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo and Johan Sebastian Duran Guerrero by federal immigration agents this year,” per CBS. House Democratic Leadership punted, announcing that they would neither whip votes for nor oppose the resolution, opting instead to simply vote “present” on the motion to table Green’s resolution. Ultimately 47 members voted present and 147 voted against tabling, but even put together it would not have been enough to overcome the 232 votes in favor of setting the resolution aside. Impeachment has resurfaced as a major question for Democrats as they appear poised to retake the House and perhaps even the Senate. Jamie Raskin, who would become Chair of the House Judiciary Committee if Democrats retake the majority, said earlier this month that Democrats “will not hesitate” to use the tool if needed and that Mr. Trump has “undoubtedly” committed impeachable offenses. However, House Democratic Caucus Chairman Pete Aguilar said this week that impeachment is “not anything that is top of the agenda for House Democrats.”* On the other side of the aisle, outgoing Congressman Thomas Massie also introduced articles of impeachment, with these singling out Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth for frustrating “Congress’s ability to exercise its most solemn constitutional responsibility” and allowing an “unlawful war” to continue in Iran. Axios notes that this resolution also includes articles concerning “U.S. military operations in Venezuela and Yemen, including accusing [Hegseth] of illegally directing the operation to capture Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro without congressional authorization.” Massie lost his re-election primary earlier this year to a Trump-backed opponent; he has since made noises about pursuing the creation of a third party in conjunction with other dissident right-wing figures like Tucker Carlson and Marjorie Taylor Greene. It remains to be seen what he will do once he is out of office come January.* Speaking of bucking one’s party, this week POLITICO reported that conservative House Democrats Jared Golden and Marie Glusenkamp-Perez again broke with leadership to “advance a slate of GOP bills in a procedural vote that was otherwise on track to fail.” The rules in question set up votes to grant yet more power to President Trump, including “new authorities to sanction Russia’s trading partners…[and] rolling back…EPA regulations.” This same duo voted with the GOP several weeks ago, after which House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries promised a “serious response.” However, he “later indicated that there would be no public consequences.” It is impossible to imagine a progressive being given this kind of long leash by leadership. For his part, Golden is not seeking re-election, but Gluesenkamp-Perez is and if she wins – no guarantee as her district went for Trump in 2024 – she will certainly come into the next Congress with a substantial amount of enmity built up from the rest of the Democratic caucus.* In more news from the Hill, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute (CHCI) went into crisis mode earlier this week when some of the high-profile progressives in the caucus, namely AOC and Nydia Velázquez, found out that the institute’s Annual Awards Gala – at which Velázquez, who is not seeking re-election is to be presented with a lifetime achievement award – had agreed to be sponsored by Palantir. Apparently, the deal was brokered by CEO and President of the CHCI Marco Davis and Velázquez went “ballistic” upon hearing the news. Congressman Darren Soto, the Chair of the CHCI claims to have been “unaware of the donation” and that as soon as he learned of it, Soto “ordered Davis to return the money.” CHCI “has not said publicly what tier Palantir bought, what it paid, or…whether CHCI has any written policy governing which corporations may sponsor its events.” Palantir is the corporation responsible for the “ImmigrationOS platform used to target immigrants for arrest and deportation.” This from Migrant Insider.* In a final story from the nation’s capital, AP reports the celebrated John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts will close, following a vote from the Trump-controlled board which came on the heels of a ruling blocking the president from returning his name to the building without the approval of Congress. According to this story, “Trump said the closure was needed for safety repairs. But he said the repairs, which Congress has allocated $257 million to cover, would only happen if the board was allowed to move forward with plans to add his name to the building.” All involved agree that the building is in need of major repairs. The administration however is hinting that if they do not move ahead with the plan to inscribe Trump’s name in multiple locations in the complex, “the building may need to be demolished,” a threat with added gravity in the wake of his demolition of the East Wing of the White House.* Turning to the campaign trail, this week former West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, Democrat-turned-Independent, endorsed his former colleague, Maine Republican Susan Collins. In a statement, he said “[if you] lose the Susan Collinses of the Senate, you’re losing the soul of the Senate.” Whether that “soul” is worth preserving is not something Manchin addresses. Manchin has also expressed support for Mike Rogers, the Republican nominee for Senate in Michigan, and Alaska Republican Lisa Murkowski. Collins for her part said she was “honored” to have Manchin’s support, calling him “a dear friend and trusted colleague,” though many have noted she never broke ranks to endorse her “dear frien

Ralph welcomes Keira Havens a United States Air Force veteran and the executive director of Citizens’ Impeachment a grassroots organization that lobbies Congress and supports candidates who are willing to impeach and convict Donald Trump for a myriad of Constitutional violations. Then Michael Marx, founder of the group CorpEthics that conducts marketing campaigns that apply public pressure to corporations to change their behavior, joins us to discuss his new book “Reining in the Bulls: How to Stop Corporate Abuse in an Age of Unbridled Greed.”Keira Havens is a United States Air Force veteran, a former scientist, and a longtime political activist. She is the executive director of Citizens’ Impeachment.I am a veteran. I was in the United States Air Force. My job was to launch nuclear missiles. I was an ICBM crew commander for four years. And that entire system, that entire weapons system is based on trust that the person at the top has a handle on what needs to be done and has good faith and good leadership to navigate this country. That is not the case right now. That cornerstone is beyond weakened—it has just crumbled straight into dust. The trust and faith in the American President as a capable leader, capable of effective leadership, is an assumption we can no longer make.Keira HavensHis entire cabinet, everybody that gets appointed to the judicial system under his people, everybody that is building out the roadmap for what the economy looks like, all of these failures of leadership—yes, they roll upward to the President. But it is an entire administration of people that do not respect the Constitution, and are not planning on upholding it, and require impeachment, removal and conviction at the bare minimum. Because these folks have had a taste of power now, and they will be back for more. And impeachment is the only way to insist that they never be allowed to hold power again.Keira Havens[Democrats] will talk about how bad things are (and they will fundraise off it repeatedly over and over again), but they will not take the additional step and say: “And that is why I will impose consequences.” Our recommended consequence is: impeachment, conviction, removal. But there is more that can be done. There is their making a more plain-spoken assessment of the current situation. And people are hungry to hear it. You don’t have to pretend that this is business as usual. You can actually identify this as a crisis for the Constitution and for this democracy and outline the steps that you will take in your own legislative power.Keira HavensMichael Marx is one of the world’s premier environmental corporate campaigners. He served as campaign director for both Rainforest Action Network and Sierra Club. He was the co-founder and executive director of ForestEthics (now Stand.earth) and founder of CorpEthics. He is the author of  Reining in the Bulls: How to Stop Corporate Abuse in an Age of Unbridled Greed.I think we’re a corporatocracy. I think we have the illusion of being a democracy, but really we’re controlled by corporations. Because from the beginning, they control the way we think with their advertising, with the kind of programs they put on, with their investments in local and state and federal political campaigns. And then, they own the government. I mean…not only can they literally get away with murder (particularly not just in the U.S., but worldwide) but the government protects them from liability.Michael MarxIf you want to fight these companies—right now we’re on the defense, and particularly on the defense in the government. And the only thing saving us right now is legal cases in the courts by Earth Justice and NRDC and Sierra Club and groups like that. And we need to go on offense even stronger in the marketplace because companies don’t own civil society. They can’t buy the advocacy wing, the more ethical wing of civil society. And they don’t know how to play that game as well as they know how to play the government game.Michael MarxNews 9/11/26* Our first story this week comes to us from New York City, where Mayor Zohran Mamdani used the occasion of Labor Day to launch the Mayor’s Office of Worker Power (MOWP). According to the city’s website, the MOWP is the “first office of its kind in the nation, [designed] to use the resources and convening power of City Hall to help workers get informed, connected and organized.” The MOWP will be led by Tony Perlstein, a former longshoreman and United Auto Workers (UAW) organizing director. Mayor Mamdani is quoted saying, “Every day, working New Yorkers show up, do their jobs, and keep this city running. Too often, they have no say in the conditions they work under…The Mayor’s Office of Worker Power will make sure workers have a seat at the table before exploitation becomes a crisis and violations become routine. We’re connecting workers to their rights, to each other and to the organizations ready to stand with them. Because when workers have power, this city works better for everyone.” Deputy Mayor for Economic Justice and former Acting Secretary of Labor Julie Su added “This office allows us to get ahead of exploitation instead of simply responding to it…By building relationships with workers, unions and worker centers, we can understand what is happening on the ground and act before problems become crises. That is how we build an economy that delivers for working people.”* On the other end of the spectrum, ProPublica is out with a new report on the abject capitulation of the Trump administration to corporate interests in the field of consumer protection. This piece explains how Russell Vought – Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and Acting Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) until August of this year – previously “boasted” that he’d “refashioned” the CFPB’s approach to pursuing banks and other financial companies accused of exploiting Americans, focusing instead on deregulation, embracing “humility” and adopting a “collaborative approach” to its dealings with companies that harm consumers. This article highlights the example of Bilt, which “fumbled a critical transition” earlier in the year, and instead of using the tools the CFPB might have in the past, such as investigating Bilt’s technology platforms for potential flaws, questioning its third-party contractors or issuing subpoenas, Vought’s hollowed out shell of a CFPB instead bragged that they were able to solve the issue “before it got to the adversarial part of the process.” Lo and behold, just two weeks later “Bilt cardholders received mistaken debt collection notices and saw their credit scores go down as a result, sparking more embarrassing news stories and angry complaints.” This story just goes to show that whatever issues the CFPB might have had in the past, companies simply will not change their bad behavior if there is no proverbial stick in the incentive structure. This piece characterizes Vought’s plan as turning the Bureau from a watchdog into a golden retriever; the problem here is that the retriever has no bite.* Meanwhile, at least one Democrat is courting a key faction of Trump’s base: POLITICO reports Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is seeking inroads into the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) world. According to this story, AOC’s team has undertaken a monthslong effort behind the scenes to find common ground with this slice of the MAGA base on “pesticides, corporate power and access to safe food,” among other issues. AOC’s team argue that pesticides and chemicals are issues “the traditional left has cared about for decades.” Additionally, influential figures in this world are coming to the realization that these issues transcend partisan politics, something Ralph Nader has preached for his entire career. Zen Honeycutt of Moms Across America is quoted saying “I don’t agree with socialism…but…do believe in corporate responsibility…Even if somebody is intosocialism or a conservative, I think we should agree that everyone should have access tonontoxic food.” Even Alex Clark of Turning Point USA is quoted saying “MAHA voters are not Republican…They’re so focused on health issues. They don’t care who it is that is saying they’re going to get it done.”* In more democratic socialist news, the LA Times reports DSA LA has voted to endorse mayoral candidate Nithya Raman in her race against incumbent Mayor Karen Bass. DSA LA requires a 60% yes vote in order to endorse a candidate; Raman came in just over that threshold, with 937 yes votes out of almost 1,500 cast. Raman’s relationship with DSA LA has been rocky in the past. She was a member before she ever ran for city council in 2020, becoming the first DSA member on the council following her victory, but was formally censured by DSA in 2024 for seeking the endorsement of the liberal zionist group Democrats for Israel-Los Angeles. This complicated relationship led many to wonder whether or not DSA LA would ultimately vote to endorse Raman in this election. However, Tal Levy a member of DSA-LA’s electoral politics committee, which voted 3 to 2 to recommend the endorsement of Raman, is quoted saying that “socialists are fed up with the status quo and really want to see a significant change in how the city is run,” and while acknowledging Raman’s imperfections, maintained that “there is near-unanimity that she is the better candidate in the race in the general election.” Bass and Raman finished first and second respectively in the June primary, meaning they will face each other head-to-head in November; Republican candidate and former reality TV star Spencer Pratt failed to advance to the general election.* DSA LA endorsed other candidates as well, most notably Angela Gonzales-Torres, who is running for Congress against incumbent Jimmy Gomez in California 34th congressional district. Gomez has come under intense scrutiny by progressives for his ties to AIPAC – which spent heavily on his behalf last cycle to help him fe

Ralph welcomes sportswriter Dave Zirin to talk about his new book, "The People's Historian: The Outsized Life of Howard Zinn." Then Ralph speaks to labor activist Gene Bruskin about their upcoming Labor Day event at Busboys and Poets in DC, "Galvanizing Labor Day for a Workers’ Compact."Dave Zirin is the sports editor for The Nation, a columnist for the Progressive, and the author of eight books on the politics of sports, including What’s My Name, Fool?: Sports and Resistance in the United States and A People’s History of Sports in the United States. His new book is The People’s Historian: The Outsized Life of Howard Zinn.There’s a despondency that exists now, I believe, among people who are also very angry about the state of our politics. And the thing that Howard always insisted upon—he was an activist who happened to be a historian, not a historian who was an activist. And that doesn’t denigrate his incredible skills as a historian, it just says where his priorities were in his time on this planet. And one of the things that Howard believed so strongly is that the movements themselves needed to have a strong sense of history. The movements needed to know that we live in a time of great ups and downs.Dave ZirinPeople did step up to create the Zinn Education Project. And every book event I’m doing, I’m showing up with copies of their materials and they usually have somebody on the ground doing the organizing at the event. And at the very least, we’re helping it be a little bit sticky. You know what I’m saying? Like, it’s not just a book event. It’s not just celebrating Howard. But it’s also something that allows us to be able to make it matter in a way that it otherwise would not—because it’s not just about selling books, it really is about building a movement.Dave ZirinGene Bruskin is a veteran of the labor movement as a local union president, an organizer, and campaign coordinator for numerous local and national unions. He has done extensive international labor solidarity work, including with Iraqi workers and unions, and is a founder of US Labor Against the War.What we’re breaking through here now (and partly this has been the definition of this resistance movement) it’s workers versus billionaires. And I think the labor movement in general coming out of World War II has been captured by this mythology that “What’s good for General Electric is good for the nation.” And the more the economy “prospers,” the more it’s good for everybody. And it turns out that that’s not really the case, because we don’t have that kind of equality. And also what’s in the national interest in terms of our foreign policy is not in the interest of the average working class person. A lot of that stuff is being challenged and reversed—not enough, but it’s forcing some of the more moderate forces to the left, just as we’re seeing in some of these Senate and House elections.Gene BruskinI think this is a really important moment for Labor Day because Labor Day, among other things, is generally the kickoff for whatever elections are happening in November. And it’s going to be that on steroids this year. But I think the important thing is that, of course, we want to throw out a bunch of these Neanderthal Republicans in the House and Senate. But it’s not just a matter of restoring a Democratic majority in the House and Senate. The question is: to what end? And what is on the agenda of a Democratic-majority Congress at this minute? What is the vision that we have for our future that we have to be fighting for? … We have to change this whole climate so that people have some kind of hope, some kind of vision for what we want and what we deserve. And the same old, same old, whether it’s a Democratic Congress or not, is not acceptable anymore.Gene BruskinGalvanizing Labor Day for a Workers’ Compact (Sep 7, 2026 2:00 pm ET): Busboys and Poets and Ralph Nader present Galvanizing Labor Day for a Workers’ Compact, a discussion of how unions can maximize the impact of Labor Day to mobilize workers and voters ahead of the 2026 midterm elections and afterwards. (Event is in-person @ Busboys and Poets 14th & V + Livestreamed. Free and open to all, but registration is required.)News 9/4/26* Our top story this week is the neo-colonial oil extraction deal that has been struck between the Trump administration and the government of Delcy Rodríguez in Venezuela. This government has been running the country under the barrel of a gun since Trump sent Delta Force to kidnap President Nicolás Maduro from his home in the Bolivarian Republic in January. According to the BBC, the new deal “grants a US-led company 100-year concessions over 17 oilfields in Venezuela, amounting to a staggering 65 billion barrels of crude,” or over one-fifth of the country’s proven oil reserves. The White House has released a fact sheet, stating that much of the new extraction will be conducted by North American Blue Energy Partners (Nabep), and that the U.S. government will have “veto power over the appointment of any member of the board of directors, and a majority of Nabep’s board of directors must be US citizens.” The announcement of this deal drew scorn from a wide variety of sources. These range from Trump’s former special representative on Venezuela and Iran, Elliott Abrams who called the deal “terrible” and sees it as Rodríguez “simply complying with the demands she’s getting from Washington,” to Rafael Ramírez, who served as the head of the state-run energy firm, PDVSA, and as the oil minister under former President Hugo Chávez, who is quoted saying the deal “hands over [the oil] and opens the doors to a new colonialism of the United States.”* In more outrageous foreign policy news, Reuters reports the Trump administration has designated the United Kingdom-based pro-Palestine activist group Palestine Action a ”terrorist organization,” part of the administration’s “campaign to crack down on left-wing groups” using post-9/11 anti-terrorism laws. The United Nations has decried this move, with the UN’s human rights office chief Volker Turk calling it a “disproportionate and unnecessary ⁠restriction on the rights to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and association as well as the right ​to participate in public affairs,” adding that the “expansive use ​of the term ‘terrorism’ has been documented to have a chilling effect on civic space.” The UK has sought to bring the legal hammer down on Palestine Action, though these efforts have been somewhat stymied by the courts. Sarah McLaughlin, senior scholar of global expression at free speech group Foundation for Individual Rights and Free Expression (FIRE), ​said that the US “must reject that censorship - not import it.” Reuters notes that “Israel’s foreign ministry welcomed the designation.”* This is not the only case wherein the Trump administration has gone to extreme lengths to punish pro-Palestine activism. California District Judge Noel Wise highlighted this in her recent decision, excoriating the State Department and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for their attempts to deport noncitizens over protected speech. This ruling, stemming from a lawsuit filed by FIRE, “centred on how the second Trump administration revoked visas and detained international students studying in the US after they engaged in pro-Palestinian advocacy.” Judge Wise stated in her decision that “in the United States, freedom of speech belongs to the people..It is not the government’s to take.” She added that the strength of our democracy is “diminished when members of our society — citizens and noncitizens alike — must self-censor and ‘behave’ or suffer the government’s retaliation.” Mahmoud Khalil, the most prominent victim of the administration’s policy of seeking to deport activists they want to silence, applauded the decision, saying “No one should fear speaking up for Palestine.” This from Al Jazeera.* Our final Palestine-related story for this week takes us to Hollywood, where prominent actor and activist Mark Ruffalo’s recent comments in opposition to the Paramount Skydance-Warner Bros. merger, related to Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison’s ties to his father’s software company Oracle, have been cynically branded as “antisemitic tropes.” According to the LA Times, Ruffalo shared a clip of Safra Catz, Oracle’s former CEO and a current Paramount board member speaking at an Israeli-American Council National Summit conference, where she said that “she couldn’t discuss Oracle’s work with Israel’s military, but ‘we have some profoundly scary technology at Oracle and we wanted to make sure that it was available’ to Israel,” after October 7th. Paramount’s lawyers quickly sought to smear Ruffalo with the charge of antisemitism, including by deploying their allies in pro-Israel groups like the Simon Wiesenthal Center and the Anti-Defamation League. In response, over 150 Jewish filmmakers, academics, writers and even rabbis, signed an open letter which reads, in part, “Pointing out the crucial connections between what is happening in Gaza and what is happening in Hollywood is the exact opposite of antisemitism. It is, for us, the very essence of Jewish ethical duty.”* In other news, NBC reports the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled Friday that “federal commodities-trading law does not preempt Nevada’s gambling law as to the regulation of placing wagers on sports.” This piece notes that the 3-0 ruling marks the prediction markets industry’s most significant legal setback yet and sets up a showdown at the Supreme Court, since the Third Circuit has already ruled that New Jersey cannot regulate Kalshi. The Trump administration has sought to keep regulation of betting markets under the jurisdiction of the federal body known as the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). Notably, the commission, usually composed of five appointees, currently boasts only one single member: Michael S. Selig. Selig is extremely friendly to th