Background Briefing: August 31, 2026
The Same DHS Trying to Rig the Election For Trump Increases Its Cruelty, Sending Haitians Back to a Failed State Run By Violent Gangs
We begin with the DHS increasing its cruelty with electric shock gloves to grab immigrants and robot dogs to chase them down as Trump leans on the Supreme Court to allow him and the partisan thug in charge of DHS to create a master list of who can vote which is to be turned over to the USPS to mail out ballots to a whittled-down list of Democratic voters. We will discuss the latest and sickest example of U.S. Government cruelty, the deportation last week of 160 Haitians to a failed state run by violent gangs who murdered 47 people on the day after the U.S. abandoned the Haitians who were promised protection to a cruel fate. Joining us is Sasha Abramsky, who writes the Authoritarian Watch column for The Nation, and is the author of several books, including Inside Obama’s Brain, Breadline USA, American Furies, The American Way of Poverty, and Chaos Comes Calling: The Battle Against the Far-Right Takeover of Small-Town America. His latest book is American Carnage: How Trump, Musk and DOGE Butchered the US Government and his latest article at The Nation we discuss is “Trump Is Waging War on Haitians.”
Pentagon Leaders Try to Stop Hegseth Escalating a War He’s Lost But Claims He’s Won Many Times
Then with Secretary of War Hegseth hiring far-right wing military trolls to promote his image in fawning articles as he wages war against the media while gutting the military’s officer corps, we speak with William Hartung, a principal advisor at the Project on Government Oversight and a former Senior Research Fellow at the Quincy Institute. His books include, Lessons from Iraq: Avoiding the Next War, and Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex, and his latest book co-authored with Ben Freeman is The Trillion Dollar War Machine: How Runaway Military Spending Drives America into Foreign Wars and Bankrupts Us at Home. He has an article at Forbes, “The Pentagon’s Proposed Nuclear Shift Is Costly And Dangerous” and we look into efforts by military leaders to stop Hegseth from escalating operations in a losing war in which he and Trump have declared victory on multiple occasions.
Trump’s $100 Billion Venezuelan Oil Deal With an Illegitimate Leader and a Shady Businessman Accused of Money Laundering and Black Market Oil Sales
Then finally we investigate the $100 billion oil deal Trump has struck with the illegitimate leader of Venezuela which is supposed to replenish America’s strategic reserves in a partnership with a shady Venezuelan businessman accused of money laundering and black market oil sales. Joining us is Javier Corrales, a professor of Political Science at Amherst College who serves on the editorial board of Latin American Politics and Society and Americas Quarterly and has also been a consultant for the United Nations, the Center for Global Development, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The author of Dragon in the Tropics: Hugo Chavez and the Political Economy of Revolution in Venezuela, and most recently Autocracy Rising: How Venezuela Transitioned to Authoritarianism, he has an article at Foreign Affairs “Venezuela Needs Regime Change: The Narrow Path to a Democratic Transition.”