Background Briefing: July 26, 2026*
Trump’s Latest Attack on Our Good Neighbor to the North
We begin with Friday’s opening of the Gordie Howe International Bridge between Canada and the U.S. which Trump delayed, then after boycotting the ceremony, slapped a 50% tariff on Canada. Joining us to discuss Trump’s stupid and unnecessary war with our good neighbor is Andrew Latham, a professor of international relations at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota specializing in the politics of international conflict and security. He was formerly the Nonproliferation, Arms Control, and Disarmament Fellow at the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, and a lecturer at the Canadian Armed Forces School of Aerospace Studies. He has a recent article at The Conversation, “Is Trump heading to a Pyrrhic victory in Iran?”
How to Survive Tyranny and Redeem America
Then, with Trump’s painfully embarrassing and pathetic attempt at humor at Friday’s White House Correspondents banquet further evidence we didn’t need that we have a raving lunatic in the Oval Office, we speak with Robert Kuttner,the co-founder and co-editor of The American Prospect and the Ida and Meyer Kirstein Chair at Brandeis University. He was formerly an assistant to the legendary I.F. Stone, a chief investigator for the Senate Banking Committee, and for 20 years wrote a column at Business Week. His books include Can Democracy Survive Global Capitalism? and Going Big: FDR’s Legacy, Biden’s New Deal, and the Struggle to Save Democracy. He has a new memoir we discuss, Notes for Next Time: Surviving Tyranny, Redeeming America.
The Release of a Cuban Dissident Artist While Rubio Turns the Screws on Collective Punishment
Then finally we be joined by guest host Anna Leah who will be speaking with Coco Fusco, a Cuban-American artist and writer based in New York, discussing the release of the Cuban dissident artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara who helped found a political movement that Secretary of State Marco Rubio characterized as “a beacon of hope for a generation of Cubans who refused to live under tyranny.” However Coco does not give Rubio credit, instead it was the artists’ friends not the State Department that made the release happen.