June 8 - Obama Criticizes SCOTUS for Taking Up Case to Kill Obamacare; The Kurds Thwart Erdogan's Power Grab; Results of the G-7 Summit

Full Program

Part 1

We be begin with the remarks by President Obama at the G-7 summit where he criticized the Supreme Court saying they should not have taken up the second challenge to the Affordable Care Act or Obamacare, in a legal challenge Obama described as “bizarre” because the law is working, pointing out the ambiguous phrasing that is the basis of the King v. Burwell case brought by conservative activists could be fixed “with a one-sentence provision”. A legal scholar who frequently argues before the Supreme Court, Erwin Chemerinsky, the founding dean and distinguished professor of law at the University of California, Irvine School of Law joins us to discuss whether Obama is preparing the country for the possibility the Supreme Court will make a politically-charged ruling to destroy his signature achievement resulting in the denial of healthcare for 6.4 million Americans.

Part 2

Then we examine the surprising upset in the Turkish parliamentary elections that thwarted President Erdogan’s plans to become the country’s all-powerful leader as president of a republic with a weakened parliament and a ceremonial Prime Minister. Edmund Ghareeb, an internationally recognized expert on the Kurds and the first Mustafa Barzani Scholar of Global Kurdish Studies at the Center for Global Peace at American University joins us to discuss the key role that Turkey’s Kurdish party, the People’s Democratic Party played in stopping Erdogan’s power grab.

Part 3

Then finally we look into the results of the G-7 summit at a castle in the Bavarian alps where German Chancellor Angela Merkel managed to get a recalcitrant Japan and Canada to sign onto a commitment to “decarbonize the global economy” by phasing out the use of fossil fuels by the end of the century. Daniel Keleman, the Jean Monnet Chair, Director of the Center for European Studies and a Professor of Political Science at Rutgers University joins us to discuss the embarrassing comparison that the small German state of Bavaria produces more solar power than the entire United States.