President Donald Trump, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer clashed today over funding for the border wall, an explosive Oval Office encounter that ended with Trump declaring he'd be proud to shut down the government to get what he wants. How does this portend for the future of our politics with a Democratic House coming in January? We'll examine Trump saying that he will do anything for his wall, the military, whatever it takes.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai went before Congress today and answered questions about alleged political bias in the company's search results and actions, the location tracking enabled by its services and its reported plans to launch a search engine in China. Pichai faced a number of questions about alleged political bias at Google and the possibility that individual employees could manipulate search results. He said several times that such influence was not possible, but would follow up with members of Congress to assure them this was the case. In addition, Pichai received a number of questions about location tracking of users, occasioned by a new report from the New York Times showing that location data about individual app users can be purchased without their explicit knowledge or consent.
The US Senate will take up a revised criminal justice bill this month, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said on the chamber's floor today, reversing his previous resistance to acting on the measure. McConnell (R-KY) said on Tuesday that he will bring a bipartisan criminal justice bill up for a vote, marking a significant win for the legislation's supporters, including President Trump. Backers and advocates have been publicly and privately lobbying McConnell for months to bring the bill to the floor, arguing that they have at least 70 votes in support of the legislation. The bill, spearheaded by Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Dick Durbin (D-IL), merges a House-passed prison reform bill aimed at reducing recidivism with four changes to sentencing laws. McConnell's remarks are a dramatic turnaround from last week, when he appeared to warn at a Wall Street Journal event that he did not have time to move the criminal justice bill this year, which he said could take up to 10 days.
GUESTS:
Margaret Flowers — Co-director of Popular Resistance, co-host of Clearing the FOG and former candidate for US Senate.
Brian Williams — Co-founder and partner at Wayne and Reed, a tech consultancy and venture builder.
Daniel Lazare — Journalist and author of three books: The Frozen Republic, The Velvet Coup, and America's Undeclared War.
Kara Gotsch — Director of strategic initiatives at The Sentencing Project, for which she oversees federal advocacy work and develops special projects and partnerships to advance the organizational mission of reducing mass incarceration.
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