Category: Uncategorized

Background Briefing: August 28, 2025

Another Mass Murder of Children, This Time While They Were Praying in Church on Their First Day at School

We begin with the latest gun massacre of young children in a church, shot down as they were praying on the first day at school. While Trump and Project 2025 are eliminating what little restrictions exist on dangerous people purchasing military-style assault rifles, we are left to question the lack of family values when it comes to the blindness of parents with troubled kids who buy them guns not to mention Musk and Zuckerberg spreading the dark fantasies of these budding mass murderers on their social media platforms. Joining us from Minneapolis is David Schultz a Professor of Political Science at Hamline University and University of Minnesota School of Law. He is the author of 30 books and various articles on American politics, ethics, election law, and the media, most recently Presidential Swing States: Why Only Ten Matter, Election Law and Democratic Theory, and American Politics in the Age of Ignorance: Why Lawmakers Choose Belief Over Research. His latest book is Generational Politics in the United States From the Silents to Gen Z and Beyond.

 

The Sadistic Absurdity of Trump, Miller, Noem, Lewandowsky and Homan

Then we speak with Moira Donegan, writer in residence at the Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford University. Her work has appeared in The London Review of Books, Bookforum and The Paris Review. She is the co-host of the podcast In Bed With The Right and a columnist at The Guardian where her latest article we discuss is, “The case against Kilmar Abrego Garcia is a study in sadistic absurdity.”

Democrats Can Learn From Our Best President’s Strategic Shift in the Civil War to Save Our Democracy From America’s Worst President 

Then finally we examine how one of America’s best presidents shifted his strategy during the Civil War to save democracy which is what the Democrats must do today to save the United States from its worst president. Joining us is Kevin C. O’Leary, co-founder of the nonprofit Saving Democracy and lead writer of the new Substack: Courage: The Saving Democracy Newsletter. Kevin is a research fellow at the Center for the Study of Democracy at UC Irvine and a lecturer in the Political Science Department at Chapman University. He is the author of Madison’s Sorrow: Today’s War on the Founders and America’s Liberal Ideal and Saving Democracy: A Plan for Real Representation in America. We discuss his latest article at his substack, “Is This Our Second Civil War? Like Lincoln, we must shift to a more aggressive strategy in order to save democracy.”