Background Briefing: March 28, 2021

 

Republican Lawmakers Shamelessly Set About Stealing Democracy

We begin with the outrageous voter suppression bill Georgia’s governor signed into law at the same time having a Georgia state legislator arrested for knocking on the door to witness the secret signing. An expert on election law who focuses particularly on election administration and redistricting, Justin Levitt, Professor of Law at Loyola University Law School in Los Angeles, joins us to discuss how the focus on making it a crime to hand out water to voters waiting in long lines misses the point that there should not be long lines in the first place. We also look into how this bill and others Republicans are pushing through state legislatures, takes away to power to count and certify votes from elected Secretaries of State and puts tallying the vote on the hands of partisan Republican politicians, many of whom were leaned on by Trump in the last election to not certify Biden’s victory while others who acted with decency and fairness, now find themselves under attack from Trump’s GOP.

 

How Diplomacy Could Have Shortened World War I and How it Can Prevent Wars and End Them

Then we look into the road not taken in ending World War 1 in 1916 which would have spared millions of lives wasted in a brutal stalemate and perhaps prevented the Bolshevik revolution in Russia and later the rise of Hitler. Philip Zelikow, Professor of History and Governance at the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia who was executive director of the 9/11 Commission and worked on international policy in each of five administrations from Reagan through Obama, joins us to discuss his new book, just out, The Road Less Travelled: The Secret Battle to End the Great War 1916 -1917. We discuss the importance of diplomacy in both preventing wars and ending them.

 

Energy Transformation in Coal Country as a Win-Win For Joe Manchin

Then finally we discuss how Biden can quickly phase out coal-fired power plants and work with key Senators in coal country like Joe Manchin to create high-paying union jobs to switch to wind and solar without burdening the taxpayer. Robert Bell, former Chair of the Finance and Business Management Department at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York, joins us from Paris to discuss his latest article at Le Monde “Joe Biden’s 100 Days: How big will energy transformation policy be?