Background Briefing: December 22, 2022

 

Ukraine’s President Zelensky’s Rousing Speech to a Joint Session of Congress

We begin with the rousing address by Ukraine’s President Zelensky last night to a joint session of Congress in which the wartime leader tied the fate of his embattled country to the professed American values of freedom, liberty, justice and democracy. Joining us to discuss Zelensky’s speech and the unhinged critique on Fox News from Putin’s propagandist Tucker Carlson is Emily Channell-Justice, the Director of the Temerty Contemporary Ukraine Program at the Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard University. A sociocultural anthropologist who has been doing research in Ukraine since 2012, her current research focuses on political activism and social movements among students and feminists during the 2013 to 2014 Euromaidan mobilizations. Her new book is Without the State: Self-Organization and Political Activism in Ukraine and we assess the likely impact of Zelensky’s visit on the passage of $45 billion in aid for Ukraine before the new Republican House takes over with promises to question and possibly cut the amount and type of aid Ukraine is getting from the US.

 

An Update on the Public Release of the House January 6 Committee Report

Then we get an update on the public release of the January 6 Committee’s much anticipated report and speak with Jennifer Taub, a legal scholar and professor of law at Western New England School of Law who previously taught at Harvard Law School. Her writing focuses on corporate governance, banking and financial market regulation, white collar crime and corruption. She has testified as a banking law expert before Congress and her latest book is Big Dirty Money: Making White Collar Criminals Pay, now out in paperback, and is the host of the new podcast “Booked Up with Jen Taub.”

 

Democratic Party Leaders Need to Understand What They are Up Against and Build a Massive Grassroots Movement Against a Radicalized GOP

 Then finally we look into the 50 year-long radicalization of the Republican party and the need to defeat it overwhelmingly which the top-down leadership of the Democratic party appears neither to comprehend what they are up against or have a plan to create a massive grassroots movement to defeat GOP extremism. Joining us is Lisa Graves, the Executive Director of the new corporate watchdog group True North Research.  She has served as a senior advisor in all three branches of the federal government–as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Justice Department, as Chief Counsel for Nominations on the Senate Judiciary Committee, and as a Deputy Chief of the article 3 judges division for the U.S. Courts.