March 6 - Comey Asks Sessions to "Publicly Reject" Trump's Smear of Obama; Trump Imagines Violence By Foreigners While Ignoring Domestic Violence; Millionaire Money Backing Charter Schools

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with what appears to be a standoff between the FBI Director and the Attorney General following reports that FBI Director Comey asked the Justice Department to “publically reject” Trump’s claim that President Obama had wiretapped him, a charge that came in a Trump tweet calling Obama a “Bad (or sick) guy!” Julian Sanchez, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute who focuses on issues at the intersection of technology, privacy, civil liberties and new media, joins us to discuss his article at Just Security, “Tapping Trump”. We examine why we have not heard anything from the Justice Department yet, while the White House continues to insist that there is “something going on” without offering any evidence as to what that something is. Meanwhile, the Trump Administration is trying to equate the nothing that they are offering up in terms of evidence to support Trump’s smear against Obama, with something real that U.S. Intelligence agencies have established. And that is the reality that the Russians, directed by Putin, interfered with our election to help elect Trump.

Part 2

Then we speak with Aaron Rupar, a journalist at Think Progress where he just wrote the article “Trump to track “honor killings” by Muslim men while proposing cuts to violence against women grants.” We look into how Trump and his chief strategist Stephen Bannon, both of whom have been accused of domestic assault, demonize and stigmatize minorities like Muslims by instructing Homeland Security in the second Muslim ban signed today, to collect information on an imaginary epidemic of Muslim “honor killing” while cutting $480 million from the Department of Justice to eliminate Violence against Women grants when 1,500 American women are killed each year by their spouses. This follows Trump’ recent launch of an office at DOJ called VOICE, Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement, to solve another exaggerated problem of mayhem from Latino immigrants who are less likely to commit crimes than native-born Americans,

Part 3

Then finally we examine the money pouring into school board races in Los Angeles to enable the charter school movement backed by multi-millionaires like Eli Broad and the former LA Mayor Riordan, to attain a majority on the school board that will further the so-called “school choice” agenda of Trump and Betsy DeVos. Kevin Kumashiro, the Dean of the School of Education at the University of San Francisco joins us to discuss what kind of return on investment the funders of charter school candidates want.