Background Briefing: November 23, 2022

 

Finally Trump is Forced to Release His Tax Returns Just Before the House Republicans Shut Down Investigations

We begin with the Supreme Court’s decision to release six years of Trump’s tax returns to the House Ways and Means Committee after Trump’s Treasury Secretary Mnuchin refused a statutory and subpoena request for Trump’s tax returns. Joining us is Edward McCaffery, the Robert C. Packard trustee chair in law and a professor of law, economics and political science at the University of Southern California. He is the author of Fair Not Flat: How to Make the Tax System Better and Simpler and the founder of the People’s Tax Page. With the new Republican House sure to shut down the investigation into the only president since Nixon who has refused to make his tax returns public, we assess whether the returns can be expeditiously turned over to the Senate.

 

Food Insecurity on Thanksgiving in the World’s Richest Country

Then, with tomorrow’s Thanksgiving impacted by rising food prices and the scarcity of turkeys, we examine the shameful extent of food insecurity in the world’s richest country and speak with Michael J. Wilson, Director of Maryland Hunger Solutions, an initiative of the Food Research & Action Center, where he leads Maryland’s premier hunger advocacy, education, and outreach organization as it works to end hunger and improve the nutrition, health, economic security, and well-being of low-income families.

 

As Trump Attacks the FBI, We Look Into the Life and Legacy of J. Edgar Hoover

Then finally, with the FBI under attack from Trump and his cult followers in congress, we look into the history of the FBI revealed in a new book on its founder and director from 1924 to 1972, J Edgar Hoover. Joining us is Beverly Gage, a professor of 20th-century American history at Yale University. She writes frequently for the New York Times, the Washington Post, the New York Times Magazine and The New Yorker, among other publications, and is the author of The Day Wall Street Exploded, which examined the history of terrorism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. We discuss her latest book, just out, G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century.