Settlement Expansion in Golan Heights; Voting Rights Bills; Gender Economic Inequalities & Aging

Voting rights bills stall in Congress. How the filibuster, internecine fighting, and Republican opposition could doom these proposals.

Richard Becker, author of "Palestine, Israel and the U.S. Empire," joins us to talk about Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett announcing that Israel intends to double the number of settlers in the occupied Golan Heights with a multimillion-dollar plan meant to further consolidate Israel’s hold on the territory it captured from Syria more than 50 years ago. We talk about how the Trump administration's moves in the region gave the green light for these moves, and how the Biden administration has not walked back any of the support for further expansion of settlements in the Golan, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem despite widespread international condemnation. We also talk about the still-unfolding stories of spies within the Council on American-Islamic Relations who were paid by anti-Muslim groups in the US.

Greg Palast, independent journalist on corporate malfeasance and labor, and author of “The Best Democracy Money Can Buy,” talks to us about the two bills before the Senate to protect the right to vote: the Freedom to Vote Act, which permits all voters to cast mail-in ballots in federal elections and also makes Election Day a federal holiday, among other measures; and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which would impose pre-clearance procedures for states that want to change the way voting is done in their states, and the uphill battle these bills face in Congress.

Jon Jeter, author, two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist and former Washington Post bureau chief, joins us to talk about about a report on why older women face greater financial hardships than older men, along with 30 percent of women over age 65 reported feeling very or somewhat worried about their financial situation, how these discrepancies increase when taking class and race as factors, and what could be done to ensure dignity for our aging population. We also talk about the Office of National Drug Control Policy subsidizing major network TV shows in exchange for helping push War on Drugs propaganda in the late 1990s, and the tragic police shooting in Los Angeles that killed an innocent bystander.

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