Day: July 3, 2025

The Republican’s Cynical Ploy to Give Billionaires Tax Breaks Immediately While Delaying Cuts to Medicaid and Food Assistance Until After the Midterms

We begin with Republican cynicism as they try to push through Trump’s megabill without even their own members having time to read it so they can give tax breaks to billionaires immediately but delay cuts to Medicaid and Food Stamps until after the midterm elections in the hope their own voters won’t wake up and feel the pain until after the 2026 election. 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 founder of the People’s Tax Page.

In Spite of Ratcliffe’s Spin to Please His Boss, the CIA Report Finds That Putin Did Help Trump and Hurt Hillary Clinton in the 2016 Election

Then with yesterday’s release of a report investigating Russia’s involvement in the 2016 election by CIA Director Ratcliffe in which he spun the findings to please his boss who has been trying to obfuscate the damning facts in what Trump calls “Russiagate,” only to have the report support “the quality and credibility” of the CIA’s findings that Putin helped Trump and hurt Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election. Joining us is Gregory Treverton, who as the National Intelligence Council’s Chairman oversaw the creation of the report in 2016-2017. He is now a senior adviser with the Transnational Threats Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a professor of the practice of international relations at the University of Southern California. He has served in government for the first Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, handling Europe for the National Security Council, and was chairman of the National Intelligence Council from 2014 to 2017. His books include Dividing Divided States, and  National Intelligence and Science: Beyond the Great Divide in Analysis and Policy.

US Contractors Shoot Gazans For Sport as Hamas Approves the US Plan for a Hostage Release

Then finally we look into the appalling behavior of US contractors with the Israeli/American aid distribution company GHF who shot down desperate starving Gazans seeking food, apparently for fun, and speak with Raed Jarrar, Advocacy Director at Democracy for the Arab World Now based in Washington, DC. Raised in countries all across the Middle East, since immigrating to the United States in 2005, he has worked as a lobbyist on political issues pertaining to the U.S. engagement in the Arab world and we discuss the US hostage release deal which Hamas has agreed to and the possibility it will lead to a ceasefire.