Day: October 29, 2025

As Trump Rewards Billionaires and Mike Johnson Protects Pedophiles, Americans and Their Children Are About to Go Hungry 

We begin with SNAP food stamp payments to one in eight Americans stopping on November 1 since the House of Representatives is shut down which will result in millions of kids going hungry so that Speaker Johnson can protect pedophiles by avoiding a vote on the Epstein files. Similarly the recently-minted billionaire Trump and his cabinet of billionaires and multimillionaires have no qualms about 42 million Americans running out of food which they blame Democrats for, pushing the lie that the Democrats are shutting down the government so that illegal immigrants can get healthcare. Joining us is Gina Plata-Nino, the interim director for SNAP at the Food Research & Action Center, or FRAC, a nonprofit where she works to address food insecurity in America and strengthen SNAP access and benefits. Previously, she served as a Senior Policy Advisor for Nutrition and Agriculture in the Biden-Harris Administration’s Domestic Policy Council, where she helped lead the National Strategy on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health.

The CEO to Worker Pay Ratio Has Gone From 20 to 1 to 360 to 1 But Now Musk Expects a $1 Trillion Paycheck

Then with the ratio of CEO pay to the average worker skyrocketing from 20 to 1 in 1965 to over 360 to 1 today, we examine Elon Muck’s $1 trillion pay package the Tesla board of Musk’s friends and family will push through at the annual Tesla shareholders meeting on November 6. Joining us is Bartlett Naylor, a financial policy advocate at Public Citizen’s Congress Watch division and the principal of Capital Strategies Consulting, Inc., which works with progressive organizations attempting to reform public policies where corporations play a key role. Formerly, he served as chief of investigations for the U.S. Senate Banking Committee, where he led probes of the savings-and-loan crisis, corporate takeovers, and insider trading. His forthcoming report at Public Citizen is The Unfathomable Explained: Elon Musk’s $1 Trillion Pay Package and How We Got There.

Trump’s Theatrical War on Drugs Has Key Ally Colombia Exiting the Stage

Then finally we assess the price we are paying for the theatrics of Trump and Hegseth blowing up small boats in their war on drugs as they build up military forces for a land war in Venezuela which has the Trump Administration demonizing the key drug-producing country of Colombia to the point they are no longer cooperating as allies in the war on drugs. Joining us is Dennis Hogan, a writer, academic, and organizer based in Providence, Rhode Island who teaches in the History and Literature Program at Harvard University and serves as the Higher Education section editor for Public Books. His research focuses on Central America and the United States in the 19th and 20th centuries, and we discuss his op-ed at The New York Times, “Venezuela Will Be No Panama.”