Ralph Nader Radio Hour

Ralph welcomes Dr. Alison Galvani, the founding director of the Yale Center for Infectious Disease Modeling and Analysis, and co-author of the forthcoming article, “Projected Economic Gains and Lives Saved Under Universal Health Care in the United States.” Then our constitutional law expert, Bruce Fein, stops by to tell us about a letter he and Ralph sent to states Attorneys General urging them to prosecute Donald Trump for exhorting his followers to commit voter fraud in the forthcoming midterm congressional elections. Finally, we respond to your feedback on how to be a smart voter.Alison Galvani is the founding director of the Yale Center for Infectious Disease Modeling and Analysis and the Burnett and Stender Families Professor of Epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health, Yale School of Medicine. She has applied her modelling and health economics skills to address public health challenges including HIV/AIDS, Zika, Ebola, influenza, and COVID-19. And she is co-author of the forthcoming article “Projected economic gains and lives saved under universal healthcare in the United States.”We analyze the American healthcare system as a national balance sheet. And on one side of the ledger, we have: covering the uninsured and expanding care for the uninsured (that costs money). And we took into account that utilization will increase for people that currently have inadequate health care… And when we initially started looking at this in 2019…I anticipated a hefty price tag as well. Our work has focused on the effectiveness and cost-efficiency of public health policy in the US and around the world, and usually we’re asking: How much will it cost to save lives? And we rarely get a no-brainer where you save money and you’re saving lives.Alison GalvaniCurrently, no country spends more on health care than America (even though millions of Americans are completely uninsured and many more have inadequate insurance). And despite spending so much, we trail dozens of nations in life expectancy, infant survival, maternal mortality, and deaths that timely medical care should prevent. The prevailing issue is that even though we’re spending so much, a lot of the money we’re spending isn’t going to health care delivery itself. So much of it is extracted by for-profit insurance companies and directed away from care towards shareholders. There’s a misalignment of incentives—insurers make more profit when health care is denied. So, Americans are literally forfeiting their health so that corporate shareholders can make more money. And that’s just the architecture of our current health care system by having for-profit companies at so many junctures, even beyond the health care insurers.Alison GalvaniPeople are dying not because their conditions couldn’t be prevented or treated, but because they couldn’t afford to see a doctor or fill their prescriptions. People without health insurance are more likely to die than insured people of the same age—that’s been empirically shown. So we took those empirical parameters and we applied that increased risk to the uninsured population in each age group, and then the difference between the deaths we have and the deaths we would be able to avert under universal health care coverage is more than 114,000 lives a year, we estimated. And last year’s Big Beautiful Bill, with its health care retractions, will only exacerbate the toll.Alison GalvaniBruce Fein is a Constitutional scholar and an expert on international law. Mr. Fein was Associate Deputy Attorney General under Ronald Reagan and he is the author of Constitutional Peril: The Life and Death Struggle for Our Constitution and Democracy, and American Empire: Before the Fall.[The US Supreme Court] issued this very broad immunity theory that Presidents have immunity from criminal prosecution for discharging Constitutional responsibilities entrusted to the President. And this was way outside that scope because it relates to Mr. Trump’s activity as the head of the Republican Party, trying to promote results in Congressional campaigns. And to the extent there’s any federal role in Congressional campaigns, it’s entrusted to Congress, not the President…Trump should not be subject to any different standard than any citizen who would likewise make such a claim of fraud. I can guarantee you, if you had a Democrat stand up and say, “Democrats should take a pledge to commit fraud, vote even if you’re not registered,” there’d be a grand jury at the federal level summoned within 24 hours. And why should it be any different with Mr. Trump—by state attorneys general, who have the same authority and requirement to enforce state laws against fraud at the state level as the President does at the federal level?Bruce FeinAction Alert!Call or write your state’s Attorney General about the following...September 15, 2026Connecticut Attorney General William Tong, President, National Association of Attorneys General (NAAG)Re: State prosecutions of Donald Trump for inciting or aiding and abetting state electoral fraud in the midterm 2026 congressional electionsDear Mr. Tong:We urge every member of NAAG to consider state prosecution of President Donald Trump under their respective state laws for urging, in his non-presidential capacity, to commit voter fraud in the forthcoming midterm congressional elections. Speaking in his capacity as a leader of the Republican Party in Dallas, Texas, on September 10, 2026, unprotected by the constitutional immunity shield of Trump v. United States (July 1, 2024), Mr. Trump urged attendees to take a pledge as follows: “I don’t care if I’m registered or not. I’m going to try and cheat like hell, like they do.”If an ordinary person uttered such an exhortation to industrial-scale electoral fraud, a state prosecution would be forthcoming. The United States abandoned “the King can do no wrong” doctrine of Great Britain 250 years ago on July 4, 1776.We are eager to explore this idea further with NAAG.Sincerely,Bruce Fein, Esq. | Ralph Nader, Esq.News 10/9/26* Our first stories this week concern the progressive campaigns underway in Michigan. In the Senate race, Abdul El-Sayed made headlines after he announced that he would be joined on the trail by former President Barack Obama. According to the Detroit Free Press, “President Obama will rally voters and encourage them to vote early for Democrats up and down the ballot,” in an event to be held October 24th. In addition to El-Sayed, Obama is expected to stump hard for Democratic Gubernatorial nominee Jocelyn Benson. At the same time, El-Sayed announced that he will also be joined on the campaign trail by New York progressive firebrands AOC and Zohran Mamdani, per the Washington Examiner. El-Sayed being able to bring together these factions of the fractious Democratic Party bodes well not only for his campaign but for his ability to govern effectively if he is ultimately elected to the Senate.* Meanwhile, in Michigan’s 7th Congressional District, incumbent Republican Congressman Tom Barrett faced off against his Democratic challenger, climate organizer William Lawrence, in the first debate of this race. Lawrence took the opportunity to tie Barrett to support for data centers and Trump’s tariffs – as well as Trump himself, who currently holds an approval rating of between 32% and 39% in Michigan, according to recent polling. On the issue of affordability, Lawrence argued that Barrett is “taking money from the corporations that are raising our costs and making our lives more challenging,” while Lawrence himself has “never taken a dime of corporate PAC money.” Barrett won this seat in 2024 by a margin of under 1%; this seat is considered a must-win for Democrats to retake the House. This from WLNS.* The first debate of the Senate campaign in Maine was held this week as well. CNN reports incumbent Senator Susan Collins “touted her ‘effective leadership’ securing federal funds for Maine, while [Democratic challenger Troy] Jackson sought to nationalize the race with persistent criticism of her relationship with Trump and 2018 vote to confirm Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who later voted to overturn the federal right to an abortion.” Collins refused to disavow her support of the Kavanaugh nomination, though she admitted that she “clearly doesn’t agree with how Brett Kavanaugh voted on Roe v. Wade,” per the Bangor Daily News. The most-watched moment of the night came when “Collins boasted that she has been the ‘most outspoken opponent of tariffs with Canada,’ noting she has won exemptions for products such as road salt.” Jackson retorted “what about everything else? We can’t eat road salt.” Collins has weathered extremely challenging political headwinds in the past, but many see the national conditions in this race as simply too much for her to overcome.* In other news, a nasty intra-party feud is roiling the Democratic Party in Brooklyn. At the center of the storm is Assemblywoman Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn, who became the first woman to lead the Brooklyn Democratic Party back in 2020. Since then, Bichotte Hermelyn has faced persistent criticism from progressive groups for operating the party as an old fashioned political machine. Following the June primaries, a gang of reformers calling themselves “Brooklyn Can’t Wait” won a controlling majority of seats on the party’s 42-member executive committee and sought to oust Bichotte Hermelyn. Instead, she retaliated by aggressively expanding the executive committee – adding 26 new seats and allocating those to loyalists. Facing enormous blowback from New York Democrats for this dictatorial move, Bichotte Hermelyn seemed to back down, announcing she would not seek re-election and declaring herself Chair Emeritus instead. However, legal battles over her actions continue to move their way through the courts. Last week, Bichotte Hermelyn and her allies suffered a major setback, when Supreme Court judge Lisa Lewis ruled that the legal head of the Brooklyn party was now powerful longtime Congresswoman Nydia Velázquez, while another court upheld the legal challenge on the rules fight thereby blocking the expansion of the executive committee. This from City and State NY. With all of that said, Bichotte Hermelyn and her clique organized yet another counterstrike over the weekend, convening via Zoom in the dead of night to elect Assemblywoman Nikki Lucas, a Bichotte Hermelyn ally, as party chair. Unsurprisingly, the reformers cried foul and are seeking a contempt-of-court ruling. We will surely continue to monitor this story closely.* In Washington, NBC4 reports Amazon will refund over $7 million to residents in the city’s Ward 7 and Ward 8, part of a settlement with the office of DC Attorney General Brian Schwalb. According to the lawsuit, Amazon “violated DC consumer protection law by secretly excluding two DC ZIP codes east of the Anacostia River from Amazon’s in-house, Amazon-branded delivery services — significantly slowing Prime deliveries to those areas — while continuing to charge tens of thousands of DC residents living there the full Prime subscription price.” Amazon denies any wrongdoing, with a spokesman maintaining that “In the zip codes at issue, drivers faced specific, documented safety threats, and we adjusted operations to protect them, while still supporting delivery through other carriers.” This settlement will apply to just under 70,000 residents of the District of Columbia. In addition to the refunds, Amazon will pay $1 million in penalties.* On the other side of Washington, this week the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) issued a statement decrying the latest round of layoffs at the Kennedy Center, this time targeting Box Office employees. In this statement, IATSE lays out that it “believes that the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts continues to use the temporary closure to permanently eliminate jobs, reduce services, and weaken its Box Office, whose employees have been represented by Local 868 for decades.” IATSE adds that the Kennedy Center’s justification for the layoffs, that “the existing and projected programming schedule provides insufficient Box Office work,” to keep on the employees “flies in the face of reality.” IATSE explains this further and outlines the myriad other ways the Kennedy Center has sought to undermine and undercut the institution’s collective bargaining agreements, and ends by noting they will file unfair labor practice charges, though given the Trump administration’s hollowing out of the NLRB it is not at all clear how effective this will be. The Kennedy Center itself remains closed for the foreseeable future.* Turning to international news, elections were held in Brazil this week resulting in a resounding victory of the right-wing. Al Jazeera reports the presidential election will head to a second round between incumbent leftist President Lula and Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, son of former right-wing president Jair Bolsonaro, currently serving 27 years for his attempt to overturn the 2022 election. The younger Bolsonaro won the most votes at 56 million, with Lula close behind at approximately 53 million. Neither won over 50% of the vote. If Lula ultimately does win the second round of the presidential election, he has little hope of pushing through legislation with this new, ultra-conservative Congress; on the other hand, if Flávio Bolsonaro wins, he will have a substantial legislative majority he can use to carry out his agenda, most notably amnesty for Jair Bolsonaro. Right-wing parties made huge gains in the Brazilian Congress as well, including victories for former First Lady Michelle Bolsonaro, who won a Senate seat, as did Carlos Bolsonaro. The right-wing has gained power throughout Latin America in the past several years, turning back a left-wing wave throughout the region. The major exception to this is Mexico, which has sustained a progressive supermajority for nearly a decade with no sign that the coalition that brought AMLO and now Claudia Sheinbaum to power is losing steam.* Elections were also held in Quebec this week, resulting in a huge victory for the Quebec separatist Parti Québécois (PQ). While the PQ won the most seats, it failed to win a majority, meaning “the separatists will need other parties’ support to achieve their aims - such as a new public vote on independence,” per the BBC. This is the first time in over a decade the PQ has been in power. This piece notes that despite the PQ’s victory, polls show only about 30% of Quebecers favor voting for an independence referendum. In a vote on the question in 1980, Quebecers rejected the proposition by a margin of around 60%-40%, though a 1995 referendum was far closer, falling short by only about 1%. Despite what is largely seen as a victory for the separatist right-wing, the “left-leaning sovereigntist party,” Quebec Solidaire held on to nine of its 11 seats and could potentially serve as a governing partner with the victorious PQ.* In an amusing story with dark undertones, Expression, the Substack affiliated with the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) is out with a story about a progressive blogger in Ohio named D.J. Byrnes who was jailed after sending critical text messages to State Senator Jerry Cirino. The messages included references to Cirino’s “oft-repeated and derisive nickname ‘Young Mussolini,’” as well as “a digitally altered version of Shrek, the ogre with a titular children’s movie franchise…‘fully nude with an exposed and erect humanlike penis engaged in an act of masturbation.” While perhaps in bad taste, it is hard to imagine that this constitutes “telecommunications harassment,” which is what Mr. Byrnes has been charged with and even arrested for. He was released after 23 hours in jail. Hopefully these far-fetched charges will be dismissed, but the fact that this case has gone even this far is a troubling indication of the status of free speech online in the modern era.* For our final story, we turn to the Wall Street Journal, which reports the Trump Justice Department is seeking to rewrite what it sees as the unfair railroading of a Republican President – this time however, instead of Trump, they are examining the investigation of Richard Nixon. Specifically, the Journal reports the DOJ is “reviewing whether the special prosecutor’s office that investigated the famed Watergate break-in committed misconduct.” Apparently, the DOJ recently hosted “Geoff Shepard, a former Nixon aide turned Watergate historian and revisionist,” to give a “two-hour presentation at Justice Department headquarters that laid out his theory that the deep state took Nixon down,” in a presentation titled “Watergate As Lawfare.” Vice President JD Vance echoed this line during a recent speech at the Nixon Library, where he said “If you look at the story of how the deep state took down Richard Nixon, it’s not all that different from what the same groups of people—the same institutions—tried to do to Donald Trump in the first Trump administration…There is a parallel.” The irony of this statement is of course that there is a parallel: Trump is every bit as paranoid, power hungry and hubristic as Nixon ever was. In a just world, Trump would face the same fate as the 37th president: forced to resign the office or face impeachment.This has been Francesco DeSantis, with In Case You Haven’t Heard. Get full access to Ralph Nader Radio Hour at www.ralphnaderradiohour.com/subscribe

Ralph welcomes Mary Berry the daughter of the late American novelist, poet, essayist, environmental activist, cultural critic, and farmer, Wendell Berry. Ms. Berry runs the non-profit Berry Center in New Castle, Kentucky, which serves as a repository for the study of small farm agriculture and preserves the legacy of her family’s work. Then, with the midterms on the horizon, Ralph and the team talk about how to be a smart voter. Plus, Ralph has some choice words for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s so-called “Free Enterprise Express.”Leave a comment about how you are a smart voter. We will collect these and discuss them on our next program.Click the button below to get Professor Laura Nader’s book Controlling Processes.Mary Berry is Executive Director of the Berry Center, a nonprofit organization dedicated to bringing focus, knowledge and cohesion to the work of changing our ruinous industrial agricultural system into a system and culture that uses nature as the standard, accepts no permanent damage to the ecosphere, and takes into consideration human health in local communities.[Wendell Berry] lived the way he thought one should live. He used to say to people when they kind of congratulated him for coming home to Kentucky to live and to farm (as if that was some kind of sacrifice), he would say, “I just did what I wanted to do.” So he was an exceptional person, an extraordinary person, and he’s left an absence that is going to be keenly felt for quite some time.Mary BerryWe have (since the end of the tobacco program) lost 15,000 farms in Kentucky. And we’ve lost the rural culture. And we’ve lost the rural culture that sustained good life here and good land use… Without an economic backstop, people begin to fall apart. It takes a lot to hold culture together. It takes a lot to hold people together. So I took a list to my father and said we’ve got to work on these things—the miseducation of farmers, access to capital, terrible land use, we’ve got to study the tobacco program (this is not about tobacco, this is about the principles of a program that protected farmers). And he said: well, it sounds like you’re starting a center.Mary BerryOne of the reasons I started the Berry Center is because I saw the local food movement as a failure. And I began to understand that we could not just have entrepreneurial farming or industrial farming, with nothing in the middle. We were going to have to try to put something in the middle that would take care of marketing and pricing and so on for farmers, so they didn’t have to do it all.Mary BerryI think one of the things that makes my father’s work singular is that he never talked about the land without talking about the people— talking about the people, talking about the land, the two never separated.Mary BerryNews 9/25/26* Our first two stories this week have to do with the Senate race in the state of Michigan. First up, Dropsite is out with an expose of “Michigan Jews Against Extremism,” a group that emerged in August which sought to astroturf opposition to Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed among Jewish voters. Yet, while the avowed members of this group purport to be “Democrats and Independents” Dropsite finds that in fact, “many of the Jewish community leaders involved have deep ties to the GOP, as well as to pro-Israel activist groups such as AIPAC.” Among the signatories, “Nearly 50 were involved in a nearly identical gambit in 2012 that went by the name ‘Jews for Mitt.’...[arguing that] Then-President Barack Obama…was so “anti-Israel” that their consciences drove them to abandon the Democratic Party to support Republican nominee Mitt Romney.” All in all, Dropsite finds that “nearly 90% of the first 430 signatories are either connected to pro-Israel activist groups, GOP aligned, Jews for Mitt voters, or may not live in Michigan,” at all. This piece notes that Jewish voters typically go for Democrats by a ratio of about 2:1, making them a key part of the Democratic coalition.* Helping to counter the narrative pushed by this group and others, this week Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel formally endorsed El-Sayed, the Detroit News reports. In an interview conducted side by side with him, Nessel said she “can’t be true to my values if I even consider voting for Mike Rogers,” adding that he is the “one candidate that I know is going to fight against the Trump administration…to protect…our physical security, our safety, our health and our futures.” Nessel has been critical of El-Sayed in the past; in August, she gave a private speech to Jewish Democrats in which she implied that Democrats critical of Israel, like El-Sayed, “have thrown us,” referring to Jewish Democrats, “under the bus, despite our lifelong contributions to our party.” Many Democrats worried that her disagreements with El-Sayed over Israel would undermine his candidacy. By coming around on the candidate, she immediately becomes one of his strongest surrogates in the Michigan Jewish community and helps to unite the often fractious Democratic coalition behind him. Recent polling has favored El-Sayed over Rogers by an increasing margin. While a Detroit News/WDIV-TV poll conducted in late August and early September found Rogers leading by one point, a Suffolk University poll conducted in mid-to-late September found El-Sayed ahead by seven.* In more Senate race news, this week saw the publication of a bombshell report of corruption on the part of longtime Maine Senator Susan Collins – and how Trump helped to cover it up. According to ProPublica Martin Kao, CEO of defense contractor Navatek, funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars to a Collins Super PAC through a shell company in exchange for her intervening on behalf of his company to secure lucrative military contracts, part of a “sweeping pay-to-play” scheme. When the feds caught onto Kao, leaving him staring down the barrel of a lengthy prison sentence, he told-all. This piece notes that while the Supreme Court has “narrowed what counts as bribery” to require “extraordinary proof of a quid pro quo arrangement,” the FBI “had enough evidence to pursue a sweeping bribery probe that could ensnare top lawmakers of both political parties,” by late 2024. After the election however, Trump “stacked the Department of Justice with his personal lawyers” and “eviscerated” the “specialized FBI and DOJ teams handling public corruption investigations,” because they had been involved in cases deemed lawfare against him specifically. The investigation based upon Kao’s story, substantiated by reams of evidence, is now regarded as dead in the water. In light of all of this, whether or not Collins faces accountability for this brazen corruption falls to the voters of Maine.* In our last Senate story of the week, the Texas Tribune reports the Senate Leadership Fund (SLF), the “main outside group affiliated with Senate Majority Leader John Thune,” will “book an additional $30 million in ads,” on behalf of Republican Senate candidate Ken Paxton through its connected entity, Texas PAC. Piled on top of SLF’s previous spending of nearly $70 million, this “will to bring its total spend to the $100 million mark.” This spending confirms that the GOP considers this race highly competitive and tracks with past predictions by SLF, which estimated that “a Paxton candidacy would cost $200 million to $250 million in order to keep the seat in Republican hands.” On top of the SLF’s $100 million spend, other groups have poured around $40 million into this race. Some wondered whether the Republicans, defending a broad array of seats, would be willing to bail out Paxton’s flailing candidacy. This new monetary commitment seems to confirm that they will throw as much money as they deem necessary to prevent the victory of James Talarico. While Talarico has raised and spent colossal amounts of money as well, this new infusion of Republican cash has swamped his spending thus far – with the Tribune reporting that in the “month of September, Texas PAC alone has spent nearly $66 million to Talarico’s approximately $22 million, with other Republican groups bringing the GOP’s spending total to about $103 million this month.” For now, Talarico maintains a slim but consistent lead in the polls, with even Republican polling firm Trafalgar Group finding him ahead by one point.* Turning to House races, the national Democratic Socialists of America have endorsed Angela Gonzales-Torres, who is challenging incumbent Congressman Jimmy Gomez in California’s 34th congressional district. In their announcement, DSA stated that it is “proud” to endorse Gonzales-Torres, touting her agenda which foregrounds “an arms embargo on Israel, labor protections, Medicare for All and abolishing ICE.” DSA also highlights Gonzales-Torres’ life story, having been “Born and raised in Highland Park…the daughter of a deportee and grew up with a single mother who relied on SNAP and Medicaid,” adding that “Her organizing work includes helping people move from prison into higher education.” Gonzales-Torres thanked DSA for backing her campaign, and took the opportunity to attack Gomez for being “complicit in genocide, endorsed by Leading the Future—the AI super PAC of Palantir and OpenAI co-founders—and…under investigation for sexual misconduct.” If Gonzales-Torres and Mai Vang, another DSA candidate in California’s seventh district, emerge victorious in November, they will be the eighth and ninth DSA members of the next Congress, a stunning number not rivaled ever before in American history.* Also in Los Angeles, new polling seems to show DSA-endorsed mayoral candidate Nithya Raman leading incumbent Mayor Karen Bass, according to the LA Times. The poll, conducted by the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies found Raman at 39%, over 10 points ahead of Bass at 28%. While this is certainly an encouraging result for Raman – who finished second against Bass in the June primary and has so far largely trailed the incumbent Mayor in the polls – Raman is still far off from 50% + 1 and 33% of voters in the poll responded that they were undecided about whom they would ultimately back in November. However, numbers besides the raw support tallies are encouraging for Raman as well. This poll found Bass far underwater, with 63% unfavorable ratings, compared to just 28% favorable and 9% having no opinion. Raman’s favorables, 40%, outweigh her unfavorables, 39%, if just barely, while 21% registered no opinion. In short, this race is far from over but as Mark DiCamillo, the director of the Berkeley IGS Poll says in this piece, “Raman clearly has the advantage. Her task is…less onerous than Bass’.”* Meanwhile, in New York City, Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced this week that DoorDash will pay an enormous settlement of $131.5 million, including more than $115 million directly to delivery workers and more than $16 million in civil penalties and costs, for the widespread underpayment of 260,000 workers including “workers who were not paid at all or were paid late for work they had already performed.” The Mayor’s office notes that this is the “largest worker settlement in New York City history and the largest settlement involving food delivery workers in the United States.” Samuel A.A. Levine, Commissioner of the city’s Department of Consumer and Worker Protection (DCWP), is quoted saying “New York City’s delivery workers are showing that opaque algorithms will not have the final word when it comes to how much they are paid for the hard work they do…With this record-breaking settlement and innovative compliance monitoring strategy, the Mamdani administration is demonstrating what it looks like to build an economy that puts working people first.” Moreover, the agency announced they will be partnering with the “Workers Justice Project and the Workers’ Algorithm Observatory to develop software that will allow workers to share their DoorDash trip and earnings data directly with the agency.” This “new worker-driven compliance system will give DCWP an independent way to identify underpayment and other violations rather than waiting for workers to discover problems after they have occurred.”* In some local news from abroad, the city of Berlin held elections this week, resulting in Die Linke – literally ‘The Left’ – winning the plurality of the vote, “more than doubling its score in the previous contest in 2023.” Die Linke rode to victory on a platform focused on the cost of living, namely doing something to arrest skyrocketing rents, with Jacobin noting that “the sell-off of the public housing stock to private profiteers in the 1990s–2000s, plus a lack of new builds, has pushed up costs.” As the top vote-getter, Die Linke’s mayoral candidate – Elif Eralp, whom the media has christened Berlin’s Zohran Mamdani – is poised to assume the chief executive job as part of a “red-red-green” coalition with the German Green Party and the Social Democrats (SPD). Perhaps surprisingly given Berlin’s modern reputation as a bastion of progressivism, these three parties combined won a mere 52% of the vote, while the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) won 16% of the vote, an increase of seven points since 2023. Eralp herself is the daughter of Turkish “trade unionists and socialists from Istanbul who were imprisoned after a military coup for their political beliefs…[and] only allowed out of jail because [her mother] was heavily pregnant with Eralp.” Eralp became a human rights lawyer and joined Die Linke after the AfD entered the Bundestag in 2017, per the Guardian.* Turning back to the U.S., this week the Democratic State Attorneys General, after talking a big game, caved and allowed the Paramount acquisition of Warner Bros. to proceed. Bloomberg reports the terms of the settlement reached between Paramount and the states will “include a financial penalty if the company fails to make good on a promise to distribute 30 films per year in theaters,” with this financial penalty said to be “$30 million for each film that falls short of that goal.” Bloomberg also notes that “If the final terms are approved, the agreement would spare Paramount from having to pay late fees to Warner Bros. of $7 million a day, which were to begin on Oct. 1.” Even with these concessions, it is hard to see how the deal will avoid the concerns raised in the lawsuit, brought by 12 state attorneys general and the Writers Guild, who argued it would “stifle competition for film and cable-TV distribution, raise prices for consumers and in the writers’ case, lower their wages.” This settlement was reached despite a heroic last stand by some of the more progressive state AGs, including Minnesota’s Keith Ellison as well as those of Massachusetts, New York and Connecticut – who argued that the terms of the settlement were “too lenient to Paramount.” However, this gang of four were undercut by California AG Rob Bonta, who was under immense pressure to settle the case after Paramount announced they would leave California, Deadline reports. In addition to acquiring the vast intellectual property catalogue of Warner Bros., including Batman, Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings, Paramount will now add CNN to its portfolio, in addition to CBS which it has already purchased and put under the editorial guidance of arch-zionist Bari Weiss. According to these reports, the gang of four did secure a concession on this point, with Paramount agreeing to establish “independent editorial boards for CBS and CNN” – though what this will mean in practice remains unclear.* For our final story this week, let us consider a new poll from the Center for Strategic Politics which shows Democrats support removing Trump by almost any means necessary. The vast preponderance of Democrats favor impeachment, with 86% positive and only 7% negative. The second most popular option is removal via the 25th amendment, which is favored by 84% of Democrats with, again, only 7% negative on the idea. President Trump dying in his sleep registers at +40% net sentiment, and even a hypothetical officers coup, framed as “a group of U.S. military leaders” removing President Trump from power and assuming “control of the United States” in order to “safeguard the Constitution,” wins 59% positive ratings compared to just 28% negative. In fact, the only option under water is an assassination attempt, which still scores 31% positive, though outweighed by the 43% negative response. This and many more insights are available from Liberal Currents.This has been Francesco DeSantis, with In Case You Haven’t Heard. Get full access to Ralph Nader Radio Hour at www.ralphnaderradiohour.com/subscribe

Ralph welcomes Keira Havens a United States Air Force veteran and the executive director of Citizens’ Impeachment a grassroots organization that lobbies Congress and supports candidates who are willing to impeach and convict Donald Trump for a myriad of Constitutional violations. Then Michael Marx, founder of the group CorpEthics that conducts marketing campaigns that apply public pressure to corporations to change their behavior, joins us to discuss his new book “Reining in the Bulls: How to Stop Corporate Abuse in an Age of Unbridled Greed.”Keira Havens is a United States Air Force veteran, a former scientist, and a longtime political activist. She is the executive director of Citizens’ Impeachment.I am a veteran. I was in the United States Air Force. My job was to launch nuclear missiles. I was an ICBM crew commander for four years. And that entire system, that entire weapons system is based on trust that the person at the top has a handle on what needs to be done and has good faith and good leadership to navigate this country. That is not the case right now. That cornerstone is beyond weakened—it has just crumbled straight into dust. The trust and faith in the American President as a capable leader, capable of effective leadership, is an assumption we can no longer make.Keira HavensHis entire cabinet, everybody that gets appointed to the judicial system under his people, everybody that is building out the roadmap for what the economy looks like, all of these failures of leadership—yes, they roll upward to the President. But it is an entire administration of people that do not respect the Constitution, and are not planning on upholding it, and require impeachment, removal and conviction at the bare minimum. Because these folks have had a taste of power now, and they will be back for more. And impeachment is the only way to insist that they never be allowed to hold power again.Keira Havens[Democrats] will talk about how bad things are (and they will fundraise off it repeatedly over and over again), but they will not take the additional step and say: “And that is why I will impose consequences.” Our recommended consequence is: impeachment, conviction, removal. But there is more that can be done. There is their making a more plain-spoken assessment of the current situation. And people are hungry to hear it. You don’t have to pretend that this is business as usual. You can actually identify this as a crisis for the Constitution and for this democracy and outline the steps that you will take in your own legislative power.Keira HavensMichael Marx is one of the world’s premier environmental corporate campaigners. He served as campaign director for both Rainforest Action Network and Sierra Club. He was the co-founder and executive director of ForestEthics (now Stand.earth) and founder of CorpEthics. He is the author of Reining in the Bulls: How to Stop Corporate Abuse in an Age of Unbridled Greed.I think we’re a corporatocracy. I think we have the illusion of being a democracy, but really we’re controlled by corporations. Because from the beginning, they control the way we think with their advertising, with the kind of programs they put on, with their investments in local and state and federal political campaigns. And then, they own the government. I mean…not only can they literally get away with murder (particularly not just in the U.S., but worldwide) but the government protects them from liability.Michael MarxIf you want to fight these companies—right now we’re on the defense, and particularly on the defense in the government. And the only thing saving us right now is legal cases in the courts by Earth Justice and NRDC and Sierra Club and groups like that. And we need to go on offense even stronger in the marketplace because companies don’t own civil society. They can’t buy the advocacy wing, the more ethical wing of civil society. And they don’t know how to play that game as well as they know how to play the government game.Michael MarxNews 9/11/26* Our first story this week comes to us from New York City, where Mayor Zohran Mamdani used the occasion of Labor Day to launch the Mayor’s Office of Worker Power (MOWP). According to the city’s website, the MOWP is the “first office of its kind in the nation, [designed] to use the resources and convening power of City Hall to help workers get informed, connected and organized.” The MOWP will be led by Tony Perlstein, a former longshoreman and United Auto Workers (UAW) organizing director. Mayor Mamdani is quoted saying, “Every day, working New Yorkers show up, do their jobs, and keep this city running. Too often, they have no say in the conditions they work under…The Mayor’s Office of Worker Power will make sure workers have a seat at the table before exploitation becomes a crisis and violations become routine. We’re connecting workers to their rights, to each other and to the organizations ready to stand with them. Because when workers have power, this city works better for everyone.” Deputy Mayor for Economic Justice and former Acting Secretary of Labor Julie Su added “This office allows us to get ahead of exploitation instead of simply responding to it…By building relationships with workers, unions and worker centers, we can understand what is happening on the ground and act before problems become crises. That is how we build an economy that delivers for working people.”* On the other end of the spectrum, ProPublica is out with a new report on the abject capitulation of the Trump administration to corporate interests in the field of consumer protection. This piece explains how Russell Vought – Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and Acting Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) until August of this year – previously “boasted” that he’d “refashioned” the CFPB’s approach to pursuing banks and other financial companies accused of exploiting Americans, focusing instead on deregulation, embracing “humility” and adopting a “collaborative approach” to its dealings with companies that harm consumers. This article highlights the example of Bilt, which “fumbled a critical transition” earlier in the year, and instead of using the tools the CFPB might have in the past, such as investigating Bilt’s technology platforms for potential flaws, questioning its third-party contractors or issuing subpoenas, Vought’s hollowed out shell of a CFPB instead bragged that they were able to solve the issue “before it got to the adversarial part of the process.” Lo and behold, just two weeks later “Bilt cardholders received mistaken debt collection notices and saw their credit scores go down as a result, sparking more embarrassing news stories and angry complaints.” This story just goes to show that whatever issues the CFPB might have had in the past, companies simply will not change their bad behavior if there is no proverbial stick in the incentive structure. This piece characterizes Vought’s plan as turning the Bureau from a watchdog into a golden retriever; the problem here is that the retriever has no bite.* Meanwhile, at least one Democrat is courting a key faction of Trump’s base: POLITICO reports Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is seeking inroads into the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) world. According to this story, AOC’s team has undertaken a monthslong effort behind the scenes to find common ground with this slice of the MAGA base on “pesticides, corporate power and access to safe food,” among other issues. AOC’s team argue that pesticides and chemicals are issues “the traditional left has cared about for decades.” Additionally, influential figures in this world are coming to the realization that these issues transcend partisan politics, something Ralph Nader has preached for his entire career. Zen Honeycutt of Moms Across America is quoted saying “I don’t agree with socialism…but…do believe in corporate responsibility…Even if somebody is intosocialism or a conservative, I think we should agree that everyone should have access tonontoxic food.” Even Alex Clark of Turning Point USA is quoted saying “MAHA voters are not Republican…They’re so focused on health issues. They don’t care who it is that is saying they’re going to get it done.”* In more democratic socialist news, the LA Times reports DSA LA has voted to endorse mayoral candidate Nithya Raman in her race against incumbent Mayor Karen Bass. DSA LA requires a 60% yes vote in order to endorse a candidate; Raman came in just over that threshold, with 937 yes votes out of almost 1,500 cast. Raman’s relationship with DSA LA has been rocky in the past. She was a member before she ever ran for city council in 2020, becoming the first DSA member on the council following her victory, but was formally censured by DSA in 2024 for seeking the endorsement of the liberal zionist group Democrats for Israel-Los Angeles. This complicated relationship led many to wonder whether or not DSA LA would ultimately vote to endorse Raman in this election. However, Tal Levy a member of DSA-LA’s electoral politics committee, which voted 3 to 2 to recommend the endorsement of Raman, is quoted saying that “socialists are fed up with the status quo and really want to see a significant change in how the city is run,” and while acknowledging Raman’s imperfections, maintained that “there is near-unanimity that she is the better candidate in the race in the general election.” Bass and Raman finished first and second respectively in the June primary, meaning they will face each other head-to-head in November; Republican candidate and former reality TV star Spencer Pratt failed to advance to the general election.* DSA LA endorsed other candidates as well, most notably Angela Gonzales-Torres, who is running for Congress against incumbent Jimmy Gomez in California 34th congressional district. Gomez has come under intense scrutiny by progressives for his ties to AIPAC – which spent heavily on his behalf last cycle to help him fend off a primary challenge from his left – as well as the cryptocurrency industry and his previously close relationship with fellow California Democrat Eric Swalwell. In August, NPR reported that Gomez was under investigation by the House Ethics Committee over “allegations of sexual misconduct” including “inappropriate sexual contact with a House staffer.” As for his AIPAC connections, Track AIPAC estimates Gomez has received over $2.6 million from pro-Israel PACs. The LA Times, in a piece about Justice Democrats also endorsing Gonzales-Torres, notes that Gomez fended off a challenge from his left by David Kim in the last three cycles. Kim has now endorsed Gonzales-Torres.* In more local democratic socialist news, state legislator David Morales emerged victorious from this week’s mayoral primary in Providence, Rhode Island, defeating incumbent Mayor Brett Smiley by approximately five percentage points. A POLITICO article published shortly before the election, which framed Morales as the Mamdani of Providence, drew attention to the fact that Providence is considered the least affordable rental market in the country, with the “average cost of an apartment topping $2,000 per month while the median income for renters was roughly $50,000.” Morales ran on “establishing a rent-regulation system that would cap annual increases at 4 percent,” to be enacted within his first 100 days; Mayor Smiley “vetoed a similar proposal passed by the Council earlier this year.” Smiley also drew the ire of progressives for his support of Flock camera deployment. The Rhode Island primaries were also notable because they saw the first successful primary challenge against a sitting governor since 2018, with Dan McKee losing nearly two-to-one against Helena Foulkes, scion of the Dodd political dynasty. The final primary elections for this cycle will be held in Delaware next week. Then, it is on to November.* Yet, despite – or perhaps because – of the Left’s success, the Democratic Party refuses to provide the support infrastructure for these progressive candidates the way they would others. This is manifesting very clearly in the case of Will Lawrence, the climate activist who won the Democratic nomination in Michigan’s seventh congressional district. CNN reports that progressives are “fuming that…The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee [DCCC] has so far declined to add Lawrence to a coveted list of their priority House candidates,” called 2026 Red to Blue – widely seen as effectively a “stamp of approval” from party leaders. According to CNN’s sources, this reluctance to promote Lawrence is being driven by the Congressional Black Caucus over Lawrence’s past comments about moderate Black Democrats’ “defang[ing] the White left.” Lawrence has apologized for his “choice of words.” Ironically, this blacklisting of Lawrence would seem to support that very hypothesis. This article also notes that, for as much as the left is a thorn in the side of the establishment party leadership, it was the “centrist bloc that humiliated leadership last week when some of its members showed they were willing to defy the party line on key priorities — even if it meant helping Republicans…[triggering] a messy internal feud” and prompting House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and his team to discuss “ways to crack down on any of their members voting for procedural motions that hurt the party – a proposal that has infuriated the left and centrists alike.” Jeffries, who took over the top spot in the House Democratic Caucus in 2023, has never had to lead the caucus while they held a majority in the chamber. He will no doubt face a trial by fire from multiple sides if the Democrats do successfully retake the House, as they seem poised to do.* Turning to foreign affairs, Bloomberg reports, “The European Union and Canada are working toward a new, all-encompassing relationship that will range from trade to security, as the transatlantic partners seek to build a new alliance to offset the global power politics dominated by the U.S. and China.” This new relationship, which could include “everything short of actual membership,” in the EU is particularly focused on areas of cooperation in defense, space exploration and scientific research. This piece notes that “Canada is the first country outside of the EU to join the EU’s…$174 billion…military procurement fund last year.” More details are set to be announced at European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s state of the union address in Strasbourg, France set for September 16th. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney will “attend the speech then address European lawmakers the following day.” The two parties are also scheduled to hold a summit in Canada in October.* In addition to strengthening trade and security relationships, Canada also seems to be willing to throw their diplomatic weight behind EU priorities. Le Monde reports that this week, Canada and a large group of European nations – including France, Spain, Ireland, the Scandinavian countries, and more – agreed to impose “sanctions against products originating from Israeli settlements in the West Bank.” This piece notes this group is taking their own independent actions, still to be defined, because the 27 EU member states could not agree on a joint action plan. However, as Le Monde puts it, this move “signals a shift toward sanctioning all settlements – not just a handful of violent actors and organizations – while rejecting the gradual normalization on which Israel had long relied.” Joining Canada and the EU member states in this agreement is the United Kingdom, where Foreign Secretary and former Labour Party Leader Ed Miliband – himself the Jewish grandson of a Holocaust survivor – is promising a “broad reset” of the UK’s relations with Israel, centering a more active approach by the Labour government of Andy Burnham in supporting the Palestinian cause, the Guardian reports. Le Monde also emphasized Miliband’s speech to the British Parliament, wherein he used far stronger language than previous administrations, including words like “Ethnic cleansing,” “war crimes,” “violations” of “international humanitarian law,”and “settler terrorists.” In Israel, the Guardian adds, the country’s far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, appeared to respond to the reports by saying: “Expel the British ambassador tonight!”* Finally, in more Israel news, Haaretz is out with a bombshell report showing that United Arab Emirates President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed explicitly warned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about the Hamas attacks planned for October 7th before they occurred. According to this piece, bin Zayed – commonly called MBZ – called Netanyahu from the Presidential Palace in Abu Dhabi a week and a half before October 7th and spoke with him for 45 minutes. In that conversation, MBZ “warned that Hamas’ leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, was planning a major operation against Israel,” and “expressed concern that the event in question would not only lead to bloodshed but also destabilize the entire region and undermine the Abraham Accords,” an impressively accurate and far-sighted prediction. MBZ, who signed the Abraham Accords in 2020, urged Netanyahu to “find an economic solution for the Strip and calming the West Bank to prevent escalation.” Netanyahu apparently brushed off not only this but the warning itself, saying “Hamas intended to operate in the West Bank area,” and assuring bin Zayed that Israel was “prepared for any scenario.” This article goes on to detail meetings between UAE mediators and Sinwar, who told them in no uncertain terms: “Convey a message to [Israel] that I am preparing the mother of all surprises. A terrifying operation. Something extraordinary…[a] zilzal [an earthquake]...Please convey to the Israelis what I am saying word for word.” This reporting has sent shockwaves through the Israeli political class, but it remains to be seen whether even such a clear example of Netanyahu’s malevolent cynicism will be enough to dislodge him politically – either due to domestic resistance or a withdrawal of support from the United States.This has been Francesco DeSantis, with In Case You Haven’t Heard. Get full access to Ralph Nader Radio Hour at www.ralphnaderradiohour.com/subscribe