Background Briefing: April 26, 2026
A Celebration of the First Amendment Upended by the Unregulated Second Amendment
We begin with the latest presidential assassination attempt last night at the same site where 40 years ago President Reagan was shot. We discuss how a bipartisan gathering to celebrate the First Amendment turned into yet another example of how the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Second Amendment is failing us. Joining us is Adele Stan, an independent journalist and longtime chronicler of the right wing of U.S. politics. A winner of the Hillman Prize in Opinion & Analysis Journalism, her work has appeared in Mother Jones, The Nation, and The American Prospect as well as on the op-ed pages of The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times.
Trump’s Latest Diplomatic Dance Without a Partner
Then we assess the latest diplomatic dance without a partner as Trump cancels Witkoff and Kushner’s latest planned trip for talks in Pakistan to meet nobody at the table since the Iranian Foreign Minister had already left and Iran has no plans to send another delegation. Joining us is Matthew Petti, an assistant editor at Reason Magazine who has previously reported for the BBC (in Persian and English), The Intercept, The Daily Beast, New Lines magazine, Responsible Statecraft, Middle East Eye, and The National Interest, among other publications. He covers U.S. national security policy and its interactions with American society and domestic politics and his latest articles at Reason include “Neither War nor Peace With Iran” and “Trump’s Iran Deal Looks a Lot Like the Previous Ones He Hated.”
Will Iran be the Death Rattle of the American Empire?
Then finally we speak with Alfred McCoy, who holds the Harrington chair in history at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and is the author of two dozen books including The Politics of Heroin in South East Asia, In the Shadows of the American Century and To Govern the Globe. His latest book is Cold War on Five Continents: A Global History of Empire and Espionage and we discuss his article at TomDispatch, “Trump’s Iran War Is Exactly the Kind of Military Misadventure That Ends Empires.”