Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, has broad powers to detain and hold people indefinitely at the country’s borders. It has the power to imprison them, to expel them, or to release them to their families in the United States. In the age of the coronavirus, however, ICE also has the power to decide who lives and who dies. It has the power to decide who enters the country and who must deal with the ravages of the disease in the agency’s teeming, filthy, and overcrowded border prisons. That’s what’s happening in California, where some detainees are on a hunger strike.
Bernie Sanders this week formally dropped out of the Democratic presidential race and endorsed Joe Biden for president. Elizabeth Warren, who had been uncommitted, did the same thing. The endorsements are a result of a hard push by Democratic National Committee officials to unify the party around Joe Biden, a longtime moderate with a solid pro-war, pro-capitalist record. What do the endorsements mean for the American left? Was there a quid pro quo in the endorsements or will they be left in the cold? Ben Norton, a journalist with the Grayzone and co-host of the Moderate Rebels podcast, joins the show.
Thursday’s weekly series “Criminal Injustice” is about the most egregious conduct of our courts and prosecutors and how justice is denied to so many people in this country. Paul Wright, the founder and executive director of the Human Rights Defense Center and editor of Prison Legal News (PLN), and Kevin Gosztola, a writer for Shadowproof.com and co-host of the podcast Unauthorized Disclosure, join the show.
Loud & Clear’s series, In the News, is where the hosts look at the most important ongoing developments of the week and put them into perspective, including the biggest recent developments related to the pandemic and the economic crisis it has sparked. Sputnik news analysts Nicole Roussell and Walter Smolarek join the show.
A regular Thursday segment deals with the ongoing militarization of space. As the US continues to withdraw from international arms treaties, will the weaponization and militarization of space bring the world closer to catastrophe? Brian and John speak with Prof. Karl Grossman, a full professor of journalism at the State University of New York, College at Old Westbury and the host of a nationally aired television program focused on environmental, energy, and space issues, and with Bruce Gagnon, coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space and a contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus.
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