Texas Puts Constitutional Rights Up For Sale With a Soviet-Style Regime of Informants

We begin with the furious political reaction to the Supreme Court’s efforts to kill the landmark Roe v Wade’s protection for women which President Biden warned will “unleash constitutional chaos and empower self-anointed enforcers to have devastating impacts.”  Joining us to discuss when and if this outrageous law can be overturned and whether Barrett, Kavanaugh, Gorsuch, Alito and Thomas can be stopped in their apparent determination to overturn Roe or have states render it void is Jamille Fields Allsbrook. She is the director of women’s health and rights with the Women’s Initiative at the Center for American Progress and was previously a senior policy analyst at Planned Parenthood Federation of America. With constitutional rights put up for sale in Texas as the just-passed bogus “heartbeat” bill creates a Soviet-style system of informants to rat out neighbors and friends, the in-your-face defiance of the five ultra-conservatives on the supreme court clearly shows how out of step this court is with the majority of the American people. As the U.S. heads in an undemocratic direction towards a tyranny of the minority, unless and until ordinary Americans stand up to the Taliban-like religious zeal of a self-righteous but active minority, we end up with one-party rule by a radical Republican minority sanctioned and sanctified by a reactionary supreme court.

 

he Bitter Bankruptcy Deal That Allows the Sackler Family to Keep Their Ill-Gotten Gains

Then we examine the bankruptcy deal that allows the Sackler family to keep their ill-gotten gains from the opioid crisis they and their company Purdue Pharma instigated which has caused the deaths of 500,000 Americans from 1999 to 2019. Dr. Andrew Kolodny, Medical Director of Opioid Policy Research at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University and the co-founder of Physicians for Responsible Opioid Prescribing joins us to discuss a settlement which the bankruptcy judge described as “a bitter result.” 

 

Afghanistan as the Latest Example of U.S. Arms Ending Up With U.S. Adversaries

Then finally we speak with William Hartung, Director of the Arms and Security Initiative at the Center for International Policy about his article at CNN, “US trained Khahoggi’s killers. A review of all military training programs is necessary” and another at Forbes, “Afghanistan is Just the Latest Case of U.S. Arms Ending Up With U.S. Adversaries.”