Category: Briefings

Secretary of Defense Hegseth Needs to Step Down Now!

We begin the woefully unqualified and dangerously out-of-his-depth Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth in the hot seat for ordering a war crime which he is now trying to blame on the Admiral in charge of Special Operations Command. We explain why both Trump and Hegseth had such an overheated response to a video by Democratic lawmakers reiterating the fact that members of the military are required to disobey unlawful orders now that we know they knew they were guilty of such a war crime. Joining us is Thomas Nichols, a professor emeritus of national-security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College who previously taught international relations and Soviet/Russian affairs at Dartmouth College and Georgetown University. He is the author of The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters and his latest book, Our Own Worst Enemy: The Assault From Within on Modern Democracy. Currently a staff writer at The Atlantic, we discuss his latest article at the Atlantic, “Pete Hegseth Needs to Go—Now: A man with such contempt for the military should not run the Pentagon.”

Could the Democratic Underdog Win Today in Deep Red Tennessee?

Then we look into the special election for Congress in Tennessee today that has the Democrats stepping up to support an underdog candidate while Trump and Speaker Johnson are frantically campaigning for their guy because they can’t afford to lose another House seat given their razor-thin margin. Joining us is Jonathan Metzl, the Frederick B. Rentschler II professor of sociology and psychiatry at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee and director of its Center for Medicine, Health, and Society. A prominent expert on gun violence and mental illness, he is the author of several books including Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment Is Killing America’s Heartland, and his latest book is What We’ve Become: Living and Dying in a Country of Arms.

With Affordability the Big Issue, Why Can We Afford Guns and Not Butter?

Then finally we speak with William Hartung, a Senior Research Fellow at the Quincy Institute. His books include Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex, and his latest book, just out, The Trillion Dollar War Machine: How Runaway Military Spending Drives America into Foreign Wars and Bankrupts Us at Home. We discuss his article at The Nation, “Will Technology Save Us From a Nuclear Attack?” and, with affordability the big political issue of the day, how come we can afford the guns but not the butter?