Month: June 2021

Background Briefing: June 30, 2021

 

The Republicans Fail to Stop a Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Insurrection

We begin with the vote of 222 to 190 in the House today to form a select committee to investigate the January 6 attack on the Capitol which will have 8 Democrats and 5 Republicans with Speaker Pelosi having veto power over Republicans chosen by minority leader McCarthy if they are like Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Gaetz or Jim Jordan, chosen to disrupt not investigate. Joining us is Michael Greenberger, the Director of the the Center for Health and Homeland Security at the University of Maryland, and we will discuss how only two Republicans, Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger voted with the Democrats, with the rest complaining the commission won’t be bipartisan enough which is a hollow claim since it is the Republicans in the Senate and now in the House who are making sure it is not bipartisan.  With evidence that Republican Congressmen Biggs, Gosar and Brooks took part in the planning of the attack and that the insurgents planned to secure the capitol and hold onto it through force of arms with heavy weaponry brought in from Virginia, the full extent of what could have happened, along with what did happen, should get the attention of the American people and that is exactly what the Republicans don’t want.

 

A Red State Governor Sends a Private Army to the Border Paid For By a Billionaire Donor

Then, with a former President with delusions that he still is president and Texas Governor Abbott grandstanding on the border today in front of Trump’s unfinished wall, we look into how a billionaire donor to Governor Kristi Noem of South Dakota is paying for the deployment of South Dakota National Guard troops to the Southern border to carry out federal functions for a partisan political purpose. It is no secret Noem hopes to be the Trumpiest of the wannabe Trump successors vying for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. Elizabeth Goitein, the co-director of the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice and author of The New Era of Secret Law, joins us to discuss the urgent need to stop turning our military into the private army of partisan billionaires and Red State governors.

 

Human Rights Atrocities in Ethiopia, a Country on the Verge of Collapse

Then finally, with the Ethiopian government having been driven out of Tigray province, the full extent of the barbarous slaughter of civilians is coming to light but the Nobel Prize-winning President of Ethiopia is still not letting humanitarian aid into Tigray where an engineered famine could soon kill millions. Abadir Ibrahim, a law professor at Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia who recently served as Director of the Center for the Advancement of Human Rights and Democracy in Ethiopia who represents victims of human rights violations at the United Nations Human Right Council, joins us to discuss the likelihood of Ethiopia collapsing as a country.