October 27 - Will the Republican Senate Shut Down the Supreme Court?; Two-Thirds of the Planet's Wild Animals Will be Extinct by 2020; A Prediction That Trump Could Still Win the Presidency

Full Program

Part 1

Following recent declarations by Senators McCain and Cruz that Republicans should hunker down for the next four years and refuse to allow anyone Hillary Clinton nominates to sit on the Supreme Court, we will begin with the rumors of war on the Supreme Court  coming from Senate Republicans who apparently are prepared to let the judiciary wither and die as threats of a total blockade on any and all of Hillary Clinton’s nominees to the Supreme Court gather momentum. Erwin Chemerinsky, the founding Dean  and Professor of Law at the University of California, Irvine School of Law, with a joint appointment in Political Science, joins us to discuss how the no-hearings–no-vote stance of the Republican Senate in holding up Judge Garland’s nomination for over a year that is unprecedented in American history, is now taking on an even more partisan and obstructionist tone. We assess whether threatening a constitutional crisis to rile up Republicans will also motivate Democrats to vote in sufficient numbers to take away the senate from Republican control. 

Part 2

Then we examine the latest report from the World Wildlife Fund’s Living Planet Index that shows vertebrate populations are set to decline by 67% from 1970 levels and unless urgent action is taken to reduce human impact, we are on track to lose two-thirds of wild animals on the planet by 2020. Stuart Pimm, a Professor of Conservation Ecology at Duke University who is a world leader in the study of present day extinctions and what can be done to prevent them, joins us. With just 15% left of the natural world that is protected, we will discuss how to stop the destruction of wild areas for farming and logging and reverse the impact of unsustainable fishing.

Part 3

Then finally we speak with Helmut Norpoth, a Professor of Political Science at Stony Brook University whose research includes Electoral Behavior, Public Opinion and Electoral Forecasting. He has developed a model that has accurately predicted the winner of the popular vote in presidential elections that applied retroactively, goes back to 1912. We will discuss his prediction of a Trump win back in February and why he is sticking by that prediction today, in spite of all the polls that favor a Hillary Clinton win.