We Decide: America at the Crossroads with Jenna Flanagan
Listen HereAs President Trump’s meeting with Ukrainian President Zelensky and European leaders grabbed headlines, Israel intensified its attacks on Gaza City in a final push to displace the population. Amnesty International maintains that Israel is “carrying out a deliberate campaign of starvation” in Gaza and is “systematically destroying the health, well being and social fabric of Palestinian life.”
Protests continue to grow around the world and even inside Israel, where a nationwide general strike by labor unions is underway calling for an end to Israel’s military siege of Gaza and the release of hostages taken in Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack that killed 1,200 people.
The Gaza healthcare system and basic public infrastructure have been decimated by the Israeli military. The official civilian death toll is over 60,000, although some experts insist the count is likely much higher.
Here at home, the Trump administration has backed off its attempt to consolidate a controversial takeover of the Washington, D.C., Police Department by putting the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration in charge of the municipal police force after a federal judge threatened to intervene.
The New York Times is reporting that despite the latest threat of judicial intervention, federal agents and the National Guard are free to continue patrolling the streets of the nation’s capital, a move Trump says is necessary despite a widely reported drop in crime.
Our reporters’ roundtable with Dave Levinthal, Laura Jedeed, and WMNF’s Randi Zimmerman reflects on Trump 2.0 at its seven‑month mark. D.C.-based Levinthal reports the military deployment actually avoids higher-crime neighborhoods. Veteran MAGA tracker Jedeed discusses how targeting cities with Black mayors—despite declining crime—still feeds the president’s racist base.
Zimmerman notes that even in Florida, where Trump bested Vice President Harris by more than a million votes, Pacifica’s WMNF rebounded with massive listener support after both Governor DeSantis and the Trump administration zeroed out financial support for stations that carry programs like Democracy Now!
In the B Block we look at the implications for both rural and urban America when the Trump regime takes aim at the federal civil service, particularly the career experts who track unemployment and payroll data.
We spoke with labor economist Valerie Wilson, director of the Economic Policy Institute’s Program on Race, Ethnicity and the Economy. She was joined by Theresa Purcell, co‑founder and CEO of Long View Action and founder of the Rural Strong Network. Purcell is working to build local power to create a democracy, government, and economy that works for all of us.
Wilson and Purcell describe how essential accurate economic data is for both urban and rural America, where there is already so much income disparity and inequality.
As protests over Gaza continue to gain traction inside and outside Israel, peace activists Kathy Kelly and Dr. John Reuwer share their sense of urgency with Jenna.
In our Pacifica Radio Network reporters’ notebook, KPFA reports on street demonstrations in San Francisco over the targeted killing of the entire Al Jazeera reporting team in Gaza last week. We hear from KPFA’s Rami Almaghari, who continues to risk his life to report from Gaza for KPFA as he has for 17 years.
Then Rosie Boltman reports on how the local community is rallying to support a Palestinian restaurant in Oakland that’s been charged by the U.S. Department of Justice with antisemitism.
We close with a dispatch from WMNF in Tampa, Florida, on a local boycott of the Chevron Corporation for its role in fueling Israel’s siege of Gaza.
