Forty years ago. Bill Astor was commissioned a second lieutenant in the U.S. Air Force. In this conversation with Dick Price, himself a Vietnam Veteran, the two military veterans reflect on two decades of military service and their participation in a system deeply embedded in America’s military-industrial complex. While Bill Astor never directly engaged in violence, he critically examines the paradoxes of serving in an institution that preaches peace through overwhelming firepower. Drawing on his experiences and historical scholarship, he critiques America's reliance on military force as a default solution to global problems—from Vietnam to Iraq to Gaza. Dick Price, on the other hand, is a combat veteran. He returned from Vietnam an anti-war protestor. The two veterans challenge the mythology of American exceptionalism and question whether the U.S. has become the very "evil empire" it once opposed, with an ever-expanding global military presence and an insatiable appetite for war cloaked in the language of defense and democracy.

This conversation was launched as a result of an essay written by William J. Astore and published by the LA Progressive titled, Too Much Bombing, Not Enough Brains.

The LA Progressive is a daily digital publication. Our website is https://www.laprogressive.com

Is Donald Trump Bullying Judges and Law Firms? Has he taken a page from Hitler’s playbook?

It appears that Trump is bullying America's legal system. Nine of America’s largest and most powerful law firms have surrendered to President Donald Trump’s illegal threats. They demeaned themselves by agreeing to provide an astonishing $940 million in free legal services to causes chosen by Trump and the firms while also agreeing to discontinue their DEI policies. Fortunately, other firms refused and are fighting back. Trump bullied the legal system by following Hitler's playbook. The most ominous parallel is to Nazi Germany, where Adolf Hitler successfully bent the German legal system to his will, with the complicity of German lawyers and judges, just as Trump bullied America's legal system.

Dick Price and Sharon Kyle interview Stephen Rohde —a writer, lecturer, and political activist. For almost 50 years, Stephen Rohde practiced civil rights, civil liberties, and intellectual property law and has won significant First Amendment victories in state and federal appellate courts. He is a past chair of the ACLU Foundation of Southern California and past national chair of Bend the Arc, a Jewish Partnership for Justice.

See read articles written by Stephen Rohde, go to:

https://www.laprogressive.com/author/stephen-rohde

On April 25th, the FBI arrested Hannah Dugan, a circuit court judge who serves on the Milwaukee County Circuit Court in Wisconsin. She was taken away in handcuffs, a highly unusual maneuver–specifically, Judge Dugan was handcuffed and arrested by FBI agents at the courthouse where she presides, during court hours. The arrest was conducted publicly within the courthouse premises. She was led out in handcuffs, a move that has drawn criticism from legal professionals and observers who questioned the necessity and manner of the arrest.

Because this arrest is raising ire in the legal community, we asked former judge Bill Blum to give us a sense of whether the Trump administration's behavior was unwarranted. Is this behavior a sign that Donald Trump is launching an attack against the judiciary branch of government?

You can read more on this issue by going to:

https://www.laprogressive.com/law-and-justice/trump-administration-arrests-wisconsin-judge

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Former CIA counterterrorism officer and a former senior investigator with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, John Kiriakou, engaged in a great conversation with Dick and Sharon a while back. We are republishing it here. John became the sixth whistleblower indicted by the Obama administration under the Espionage Act—a law designed to punish spies. He served 23 months in prison as a result of his attempts to oppose the Bush administration's torture program. In this discussion with Dick Price and Sharon Kyle of the LA Progressive, John covers a wide range of topics. John also has given Dick and Sharon permission to publish his content on the LA Progressive. You can find his writings here: https://www.laprogressive.com/author/john-kiriakou

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The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) played a vital role in U.S. foreign relations for over six decades. What began as a Cold War instrument to allegedly "curb communism" through economic development grew into a global agency addressing some of the world's most pressing challenges. This support was not met without criticism or opposition, as was recently reported here at the LA Progressive. But, like almost anything, USAID was a complex organization. It also provided essential support services and supplies across the globe by supporting development, healthcare, reducing poverty, and responding to emergencies.

This is Sharon Kyle, the publisher of the LAProgressive.com. I spent some time in conversation with Matt Kavanaugh about his experience with USAID. Matt is a public health professional who has had more than a dozen years of experience working with the organization. The recent dismantling of USAID by the Trump administration will impact millions of lives and perhaps affect international stability and goodwill toward the United States. Matt knows something about this. To read this article in its entirety, click here.

Stephen Rohde offers a review of Corey Brettschneider’s engaging new book The Presidents and the People: Five Leaders Who Threatened Democracy and the Citizens Who Fought to Defend It. Brettschneider offers lucid and revealing profiles of five presidents - John Adams, James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, Woodrow Wilson, and Richard Nixon - who “stoked the fire of a constitutional crisis” and “wielded the nation’s most powerful office to undermine a core aspect of democracy.” Given the “fragile pillars of American democracy,” Brettschneider believes each of these presidents stands “as a conspicuous example of the damage a single president can do.”

Fortunately, Brettschneider doesn’t leave it there. He also explains in vivid detail how, in each of these fraught moments, “democratic constitutional constituencies” - or, one might say, activists - fought back to ensure a “democratic recovery.” Here we can learn important lessons that make the threat posed by Trump “a time ripe for constitutional recovery.” Brettschneider sees hope for democracy in the “cycle of constitutional reckoning and recovery.”

In this conversation with Dick Price and Sharon Kyle of the LA Progressive, Constitutional scholar Stephen Rohde explains where we are headed as a nation by also discussing Mahmoud Khalil

Author and longtime journalist, Desi Cortez, joins Dick Price and Sharon Kyle of the LA Progressive to discuss the role of Black professional athletes in the fight for civil liberties and civil rights, particularly when the Black community is under fire. Speaking of recent actions taken by the Trump administration, Cortez says, “The alarms are blaring. The sirens are wailing. The enemy isn’t just at the gate—it has the keys to the kingdom.

And yet, Black America’s most powerful, most visible athletes—the ones who have built empires from the very culture this country tries to erase—are silent.

It’s so quiet… You can hear a rat piss on cotton….” Then Desi asks, why?

Why, in this moment of rising fascism, open white nationalism, and judicial rollbacks on civil rights, are our biggest Black sports figures still playing it safe?

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https://www.laprogressive.com/racism/trump-is-waging-war-against-black-people

Thought leader, writer, lecturer and political activist, Stephen Rohde joins Sharon Kyle and Dick Price of the LA Progressive to discuss the perils we find ourselves facing with the current supremem court. Rohde maintains that throughout his rise to power, Trump has recruited obedient enablers to do his bidding. He says that Trump’s henchmen have compliantly cleared the way for him to lie, steal, and conspire to get whatever he wants.

The three, Stephen, Dick and Sharon discuss whether there is evidence to suggest that Trump has enlisted the six conservative Republican justices on the United States Supreme Court to grant him the freedom to brazenly break the law with absolute impunity. Rohde, who practiced law for almost 50 years and is a former president of the ACLU Foundation of Southern California, says while Trump is rolling out his authoritarian Executive Orders and dangerous new policies, it is important to understand exactly what the Court did and how Trump 2.0 will unfold without one of the traditional guardrails on which our democracy depends – the deterrent threat of criminal prosecution. This interview was triggered by an article written by Stephen Rohde. To read the article, go to: Consiglieres in Black Robes

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