We Decide: America at the Crossroads 2025 with Jenna FlanaganListen Here
TRUMP CRIME PRETEXT; UNSUNG RAILROAD HEROES – TEXAS VOTER 2-STEP – DIVIDE & CONQUER; ALASKA PROTESTS TRUMP-PUTIN SUMMIT WHILE GAZA STARVES
Our weekly reporters’ roundtable regulars — DC-based investigative reporter Dave Levinthal and Laura JeDeed, who tracks the MAGA movement — discuss President Trump's threats to expand his controversial takeover of Washington D.C.'s Police Department to Chicago and New York City, which are also led by Black democratically elected mayors presiding over a decline in crime.
Meanwhile, UN food security experts confirm Palestinian civilians caught in the Israeli military’s siege of Gaza City are now officially suffering from famine. The mass starvation and acute malnutrition experienced by half a million men, women, and children are likely to spread throughout the territory, resulting in more avoidable deaths.
Planes and tanks continue to pound Gaza City as Israel plans to seize the territory’s largest population center. Protests within Israel continue to grow over Netanyahu’s conduct of the war and that country’s draft.
Labor in Action Segment
We hear from Tony Cardwell, President of the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees Division, representing 35,000 workers who keep America’s passenger and freight rail tracks clear and safe in all kinds of weather, 24/7. Cardwell recounts the awful occupational health price paid by his members during the 2023 East Palestine vinyl chloride rail disaster.
The National Transportation Safety Board's final report on Norfolk Southern’s actions in East Palestine found that the railroad “demonstrated complete disregard” for rules and regulations when they decided to vent and burn the highly toxic vinyl chloride.
Cardwell also describes the real dangers of railroad consolidation — with just seven Class One railroads controlling the industry — and the push to automate, which poses catastrophic risks to workers and the communities through which hazardous cargo travels.
C Block
At KPFK Radio in Los Angeles, Brad Friedman speaks with David Daley, former Salon editor and author of Anti-democratic: Inside the Far Right's 50-Year Plot to Control American Elections. Daley places the radical Texas Republican push to disenfranchise voters of color by redrawing Congressional district lines into a much broader historical context.
We finish up with an empowering report from Alaska, where a savvy network of progressives organized several high-profile protests — including homemade Ukrainian flags. Pacifica Radio Network's Ursula Ruedenberg reports.
