April 3 - McConnell Can't Wait to Blow Up the Senate; The Dismal Choices Facing Senate Democrats; Trump's Lavish Praise For Egypt's Military Dictator

Full Program

Part 1

We  begin with the looming showdown in the U.S. Senate now that it is clear the Democrats will filibuster the nomination of Judge Gorsuch to the Supreme Court and in return Mitch McConnell, whose finger is itchy on the trigger, will go nuclear and blow up the Senate rules eliminating the filibuster.  A 21 year veteran of the Senate, Jim Manley, who served as a senior advisor to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid for six years and before that served for 12 years as an aide to the late Senator Ted Kennedy, joins us to discuss the recognition that it no longer makes sense to pretend that normal business can be conducted with the Trump presidency. He argues against going along with the Republican charade pretending their Supreme Court nominees are not judicial activists like John Roberts who promised to uphold president then made radical changes to increase corporate power and perpetuate Republican rule while restricting worker’s rights and weakening political competition.   

Part 2

Then we speak with Aziz Huq, a Professor of Law at the University of Chicago and a former clerk to Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. He joins us to discuss the difficult and dismal choices facing Senate Democrats and the increasingly phony nature of Supreme Court confirmation hearings in which candidates now say as little as possible in as many words as they can muster.

Part 3

Then finally with Donald Trump’s lavish praise in a White House greeting for the Egyptian military dictator General Sisi who overthrew the country’s first freely elected president in a coup, we examine Trump’s disregard for human rights and the throttling of a free press and the filling of prisons with political opponents. Mokhtar Awad, a Research Fellow in the Program on Extremism at George Washington University who specializes in Islamist and Salafist groups and insurgencies in Egypt, joins us to discuss his article at Politico “What Trump Should Ask Sisi” and whether this new era of transactional politics with bring about the peace that both leaders promised today.