Background Briefing: March 25, 2021

On By gram

 

At Today’s First Press Conference Biden Calls GOP Voter Suppression “Un-American” and “It’s Sick”

We begin with President Biden’s first press conference today at which he lambasted the Republicans for their blatant nationwide voter suppression putsch which he described as “It’s sick. It’s sick,” mentioning a bill just passed today by Georgia Republicans that would make it a misdemeanor crime to give food or water to voters waiting in long lines. Lawrence Lessig, Professor of Law and Leadership at Harvard Law School, host of the podcast Another Way and author of They Don’t Represent Us: Reclaiming Our Democracy, joins us to discuss his article at The Washington Post, “This is no time to compromise on democracy.” We discuss Biden’s apparent determination to get HR-1 and SB-1 passed in spite of what he describes as massive “un-American” Republican voter suppression which “I’m convinced that we’ll be able to stop this, because it is the most pernicious thing. This makes Jim Crow look like Jim Eagle. I mean, this is gigantic, what they are trying to do. And it cannot be sustained.”

 

Biden’s Ambitious Infrastructure Plans

Then we look into the ambitious infrastructure program Biden outlined today with new better paying jobs in the future that will allow Americans to benefit from U.S. innovation instead of the Chinese, that will also address global warming like capping the thousands of wells spewing methane, about the worst global warming gas imaginable. Robert Hockett, Professor of Law and a Professor of Public Policy at Cornell University and a regular contributor to Forbes magazine where he has an article “Building Back Better Phase Two – Time Now to Jumpstart Domestic Production“, joins us to anticipate Republicans bringing up Solyndra as an example of bad public investment when a little firm named Tesla also got money from the same Obama program and it is now the most heavily capitalized firm in the world. 

 

Biden Reveals Many Long Conversations With Xi and How We Can Win the Struggle Between Democracy and Autocracy

Then finally, with Biden revealing today how he and China’s Xi Jinping have had many long conversations and know where each other stands in the struggle between democracy and autocracy, we speak with Trevor Sutton, a senior fellow for National Security and International Policy at the Center for American Progress. He joins us to discuss his article at Foreign Policy, “Great Power Competition is Not Enough. The United States needs to show it can make a cleaner world than China’s.”