TrumpWatch with Jesse Lent

On December 7, 2016, “TrumpWatch with Jesse Lent” debuted on WBAI 99.5fm, New York City's Pacifica station. Through 127 episodes, we did our best to cut through the bluster coming from the White House to help you figure out the concrete ways that our country has been changed by Donald Trump and his administration. For our final show, we take your calls on how the resistance to this president has changed protest movements in the US.

Of all the consequences of climate change that we know about, one that rarely gets discussed is its affect on the affordable housing crisis. Back in June, President Trump (who has denied the existence of global warming throughout his presidency) signed an executive order aimed at “tearing down red tape in order to build more affordable housing.” But as reported in Teresa Wiltz's article for The Pew Charitable Trusts Statewide blog, “Climate Change Is Making the Affordable Housing Crunch Worse,” the administration's refusal to engage in efforts to reduce carbon emissions is creating larger issues than red tape to contend with. On this week's TrumpWatch, Teresa Wiltz explains why climate change is making the housing crunch even worse.

On Monday, attorneys general for 19 states and the District of Columbia announced a lawsuit against the Trump administration in the hopes of blocking a sweeping new rule which would allow Immigration and Customs Enforcement to indefinitely hold migrant families in detention. But will it work? On this week's TrumpWatch, immigration reporter for Reuters Mica Rosenberg unpacks this blue state attempt to block President Trump's border policy in the courts.

Veterans of the US Armed Forces will have a harder time receiving green cards than currently active service members, according to a new report from Yeganeh Torbati, Isaac Arnsdorf and Dara Lind of ProPublica. Since Veterans Affairs officials declined to step in to exempt their members from a Trump administration policy restricting green cards for low-income immigrants, vets will not be entitled to any of the exemptions open to currently enlisted military personnel. On this week's TrumpWatch, Yeganeh considers what the reporting of her and her ProPublica colleagues tells us about the way this federal agency is being run in the Trump era.

On Aug. 12, the Trump administration announced plans to change how it how it enforces the Endangered Species Act, the landmark 1974 law believed to have rescued the bald eagle, the grizzly bear and the American alligator from going extinct. On this week's TrumpWatch, Ben Lefebvre, author of the POLITICO article “Trump administration eases endangered species rules,” helps break down what this new interpretation will mean for the effort to save threatened animals.

With all eyes trained on former special counsel Robert Mueller's testimony before Congress, we take a look at the issue that got us here—Russian interference in the 2016 election. According to Adam Piore, author of the July 23 Newsweek article “Russia Is Using Cold War Strategy to Undermine the Faith of Americans in the 2020 Election—Will It Work?” the strategy being deployed ahead of the 2020 presidential election has disturbing echoes of 2016. While a July 18 Brennan Center for Justice report entitled “Federal Funding Needs for State Election Security” highlights dangerous vulnerabilities in the voting systems of six states. Join us for a conversation on the state of US elections today with Adam Piore of Newsweek and Christopher R. Deluzio, a co-author of the Brennan Center study, on this week's TrumpWatch.

Acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney reportedly told attendees at a recent fundraising retreat in Chicago that he doesn't attempt to control the President's tweeting, time or family. Instead, according to the July 15 Washington Post article “‘His own fiefdom," he is building his own power base in Washington through a formerly inactive White House office called the Domestic Policy Council. On this week's TrumpWatch, Lisa Rein, a reporter covering federal agencies and the management of government in the Trump administration for the Washington Post, helps break down her reporting on Mulvaney's efforts and considers their ramifications for American politics.

On July 1, when ProPublica reporter A.C. Thompson revealed the existence of a secret Facebook group of 9,500 Border Patrol agents with posts joking about migrant deaths and illustrations of the President sexually assaulting a Congresswoman, the public backlash was swift and severe. Acting secretary of Homeland Security Kevin McAleenan promised to hold accountable “any employee found to have compromised the public's trust.” But according to reporting by Ted Hesson and Cristiano Lima of POLITICO, the existence of the group had been an open secret among Customs and Border Protection officials for years. This week on TrumpWatch, Ted discusses what we know about the now-defunct group, who knew about it and what it tells us about the prevailing culture among Border Patrol agents.

With the third acting defense secretary President Trump has placed in the position within the past month looking like he will be forced to temporarily resign and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo playing an increasingly active role in interactions with longtime US adversaries like Iran and North Korea, it is currently difficult to determine exactly where our foreign policy ends and military policy begins. On this week's TrumpWatch, Adam Weinstein, national security editor for The New Republic, helps untangle who has the President's ear when it comes to international relations.

With major news developments arriving fast and furiously theses days, it's easy to forget that the US is actively engaged in a trade war with China. President Trump will head to Osaka, Japan for the G-20 summit this week and he has threatened additional tariffs if Chinese President Xi Jinping won't meet with him there. On this week's TrumpWatch, Soumaya Keynes, US economics editor for The Economist and co-host of the Trade Talks podcast, examines what effect President Trump's tariffs on China are having on their economy and ours.

On June 13, two oil tankers that had just passed through the Strait of Hormuz were damaged after an explosion struck both ships. The US government was quick to blame Iran for the attack on The Kokuka Courageous, a tanker owned by Japan and en route to Singapore and The Front Altair, a Norwegian-owned tanker on its way to Taiwan. And while both President Trump and Iranian president Hassan Rouhani say they do not want war, the inflammatory statements coming from their respective administrations appear to be at odds with that goal. In this episode of TrumpWatch, Julian Borger, world affairs editor for the Guardian, breaks down what is happening to diplomatic relations between the two countries and explains how the President's decision to pull out of the Iran nuclear deal could affect what happens next.

As congressional Democrats clash over whether or not to impeach the President following the controversial release of the Mueller report, there appears to be one politician surprisingly supportive of the idea—the President himself. In his June 11 article “Trash-talking Trump aims to weaponize impeachment,” senior White House reporter for POLITICO Darren Samuelsohn spoke to a dozen people in President Trump's inner circle in an attempt find out why he appears to be so supportive of the idea. On this week's TrumpWatch, Darren explains why the President could be genuinely pleased if and when impeachment proceedings start up in the House.

Last week, President Trump announced plans to roll out a 5 percent tariff on “all goods coming into our country from Mexico” in retribution for what he described in a Twitter post as that nation's role in the “illegal immigration problem.” When the President threatened to tack on an additional 5 percent for every month Mexico refuses to engage in border enforcement up to his administration's standards, many Republican lawmakers, long seen as being from the party of free trade, clearly were not happy. Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma told POLITICO that the Trump administration is “trying to use tariffs to solve every problem but HIV and climate change.” But will their displeasure translate into action in Congress? In this episode of TrumpWatch, Amber Phillips, a reporter for the Washington Post political blog The Fix discusses the storm brewing on the hill over tariffs and considers whether it could affect the nearly unanimous support the President has enjoyed from his party throughout his time in office.

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court agreed to what the Washington Post described as a “compromise on a restrictive Indiana abortion law,” allowing the state to regulate disposal of the “remains” of an abortion. Nine other states have passed similar laws restricting women's reproductive rights. Will the Supreme Court, presumably a more conservative body now that President Trump's two appointments (Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch) have been sworn in, overturn or undermine Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 decision protecting access to a safe and legal abortion? In this installment of TrumpWatch, Staci Fox, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Southeast talks about where this fight is headed.

Last month, the Supreme Court heard arguments over whether to allow a question on the 2020 census that asks whether the person filling out the form is a US citizen. In this installment of TrumpWatch, Wennie Chin and Paul Westrick of the New York Immigration Coalition, one of the original plaintiffs in that case, discuss what the consequences of a citizenship question would look like.

When 2020 presidential hopeful Senator Bernie Sanders appeared in a Fox News town hall on April 15, many of his supporters saw it as an inspired attempt to reach across the political divide. Yet, for one regular viewer of the cable news channel, long decried by media critics as being a mouthpiece of the Republican agenda, Sen. Sanders was not welcome. “So weird to watch Crazy Bernie on Fox News,” President Trump tweeted the following morning. “Not surprisingly, Bret Baier and the ‘audience' was so smiley and nice. Very strange.” Trump even added, “what's with Fox News?” in a subsequent tweet later that day. As anyone who even remotely follows cable news knows, Fox News has given the President nearly blanket support for even his most controversial policies and was an enthusiastic booster throughout his campaign. Is a change brewing at the President's favorite network? On this week's TrumpWatch, Daniel Lippman discusses his recent POLITICO article co-written with Eliana Johnson “Trump's Fox News love fest hits a rough patch.”

On April 10, President Trump signed two executive orders meant to speed up the construction of pipelines like the Keystone XL (KXL) and other methods of transporting oil and natural gas across borders. For residents of the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, thousands of whom remain trapped after weeks of flooding caused by rising waters, the announcement was a slap in the face. Oglala Sioux Tribe Tribal Chair Julian Bear Runner told reporter Alleen Brown of The Intercept that Trump's latest executive orders felt "like being kicked while we're down.” In this episode of TrumpWatch, Cheyenne River tribal chairman Harold Frazier joins Alleen and Jesse for a discussion of how the President's actions will affect indigenous people throughout the region .

On Monday, White House officials reclassified the elite military force the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist group. It is the first time in US history that a sitting president has accused a foreign government of terrorism. But is this move, which raised eyebrows coming on the eve of Israeli elections, just another presidential norm left shredded on the floor of the Oval Office or something more significant? On this week's TrumpWatch, the diplomatic correspondent for the Washington Post Carol Morello examines what the reclassification of the IRGC will mean for relations between the US and Iran.

On Friday, President Trump stated in a series of tweets, “I will be closing the border, or large sections of the border, next week,” adding “we lose so much money with them, especially when you add in drug trafficking etc., that the border closing would be a good thing!” On this week's TrumpWatch, Fernando Garcia, founder and executive director of the Border Network for Human Rights (BNHR) an immigration reform and human rights advocacy organization based out of El Paso, Texas, talks about the way the proposed border closure would affect the work he and the BNHR are doing.

Last Friday, President Trump announced on Twitter that he was ordering the Treasury Department to withdraw new sanctions on North Korea. But as there were no “additional large-scale sanctions” on North Korea like the ones the President claimed were currently in the works, the tweet sent his staff into a state of confusion according to a report from Bloomberg News. On this week's TrumpWatch, Jenny Town, a research analyst at the Stimson Center and managing editor of 38 North, helps clarify what is happening in the murky waters of US-North Korea relations.

For the past two years, Republicans lawmakers in Congress have given the President nearly unanimous support. Yet, according to Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Michael Shear's March 14 New York Times article “Congress Has a Breaking Point. This Week, Trump Might Have Found It.” the seams are starting to show in the blanket support President Trump has been enjoying. On this week's TrumpWatch, Sheryl considers what three recent bipartisan measures, all passed with the help of defecting Republicans, tell us about the current state of Trump's influence on the Hill.

With both President Trump and former Attorney General Jeff Sessions previously vowing to reduce Department of Justice (DOJ) investigations into areas like local law enforcement, few Americans would be shocked to discover that civil rights enforcement has decreased at the agency under the Trump administration. Yet according to a VICE News report by Rob Arthur, DOJ civil rights prosecutions have dropped 60 percent in the first two years of the Trump administration compared to President Obama's time in office and are 50 percent lower than they were during George W. Bush's presidency. On this week's TrumpWatch, Rob considers what this reduction means for Americans' right to equal protection under the law.

With 16 states, the ACLU, the Sierra Club and the Southern Border Communities Coalition all suing President Trump in at least four different lawsuits over his declaration of a national emergency over what he describes as "illegal immigrants streaming across the southern border," this appears to be yet another battle headed for the Supreme Court. On this week's TrumpWatch, Washington Post reporter Amy B. Wang unpacks what the President declaring a national emergency means in both the long and short term.

According to a new Center for Public Integrity analysis, from the time the Republican tax plan was unveiled on November 2, 2017 until the end of the year, dozens of billionaires and millionaires gave a total of $31.1 million to Republican members of Congress, a sharp increase from what they gave in previous years during that same period. On this week's TrumpWatch, reporter Peter Cary, one of the authors of the Center for Public Integrity study, examines whether Republican donors bought the passage of the tax bill by withholding their political contributions until it was passed.

As President Trump weighs another government shutdown or declaration of a national emergency over his demands for a border wall and considers the increasingly expansive Special Counsel, there is no shortage of potential calamities swirling around his second State of the Union address. On this week's TrumpWatch, White House reporter for POLITICO Gabby Orr returns to the program to break down the President's remarks and consider what they tell us about his agenda.

The federal government is back open for business. But from the 15,000 migrant children being detained in the US, according to a report in the Guardian, to the Commerce Department effort to add a citizenship question to the 2020 Census to President Trump's threats of a second government shutdown over funding for a wall on the southern border, immigration remains the dominant political issue of the day. This week on TrumpWatch, Senior Director of Immigrant Rights Policy at the New York Immigration Coalition Anu Joshi explains the ways that activists are battling the Trump administration's punitive immigration policy in the courts.

With Democrats picking up 40 seats in the midterm elections, the party currently holds a commanding 36-seat majority in the House of Representatives. On this week's TrumpWatch, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and author of the book “It's Even Worse Than You Think: What the Trump Administration Is Doing to America” David Cay Johnston returns to the show to explore what the new House majority will mean for the mounting investigations of the President.

As President Donald Trump approaches the two-year anniversary of his inauguration, it is indisputable that he has changed many of the norms of the office. On this week's TrumpWatch, Robert Costa, the host of “Washington Week” on PBS and a national political reporter for the Washington Post, reflects on the ways this President has reshaped the executive branch in his first two years in office.

Donald Trump's prime-time Oval Office speech on Tuesday night employed a sensationalistic tone that was a departure from the way past presidents have used this forum. On this week's TrumpWatch, reporter Noah Lanard of Mother Jones fact checks the President's claims like “criminal gangs, drug smugglers and human traffickers are streaming across our southern border."

On Dec. 22, President Trump shut down the federal government in response to Senate Democrats' refusal to include $5 billion to fund a border wall as part of their 2019 budget. With national parks and museums closed along with all “nonessential” government agencies, the shutdown is being felt across all areas of public life. In this episode of TrumpWatch, White House reporter for POLITICO Gabby Orr explains the course of events that got us here.

With a President in the White House using social media in a way that's never seen before from a world leader, a difficult question has arose for broadcast journalists—who should be the voice of Donald Trump's Twitter account? On this week's TrumpWatch, we consider which voice would work best to verbalize President Trump's Twitter activity with some help from a very special guest.

In the new documentary “Our New President,” director Maxim Pozdorovkin (“The Truth About Killer Robots,” “Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer”) tells the story of Donald Trump's rise to political power entirely through the use of state-sponsored Russian TV news. Equal parts cautionary tale and absurdist farce, “Our New President” is the mirror image of the Russiagate coverage that has dominated American nightly newscasts for the last two years. In this episode of TrumpWatch, Maxim reflects on what the Russian media portrayal of Trump can tell us about that country's broader perceptions of the President.

On this week's TrumpWatch, White House correspondent for McClatchy News and board member of the White House Correspondents' Association Anita Kumar reflects on how a new set of rules for journalists covering the White House released by President Trump's communications staff have changed her job in the two weeks since they were issued.

Since 1990, American presidents have been required by law to oversee a major report on climate change called the National Climate Assessment featuring research from 13 federal agencies and 300 scientists. Despite plans to release the findings in December as is standard practice, the Trump administration opted to rush the 1,600-page report out the day after Thanksgiving. On Monday, President Trump told an AP reporter, “I don't believe it.” On this week's TrumpWatch, Umair Irfan, staff writer for Vox, considers the environmental consequences for a president who says he doesn't believe global warming is a threat.

You can find footage of President Donald Trump weighing in on just about any issue other than homelessness. Yet an increasing number of economists have raised the issue of whether Trump's budget cuts to the social safety net have led to a jump in the number of homeless people in America's richest cities unseen since President Ronald Reagan employed similar cost-cutting measures in the 1980s. On this week's TrumpWatch, Esme Deprez, co-author of the Bloomberg Businessweek article “The Homeless Crisis Is Getting Worse in America's Richest Cities,” explores what effect Trump administration policies are having to exacerbate the epidemic of homelessness in the most prosperous of the nation's urban centers.

On Tuesday, the FBI revealed that hate crimes in the U.S. rose 17 percent in 2017, the third consecutive year that figure has gone up. The report cites 7,175 hate crimes for the year, yet according to Arjun Singh Sethi, author of “American Hate: Survivors Speak Out,” considering the tendency of state and federal agencies to underreport such incidents, the number is most likely much higher. On this week's TrumpWatch, Arjun looks at the role President Trump has played in the spike in hate violence observed in this country since his rise to power and considers what can be done to reverse this disturbing trend.

The 2018 election was the most hotly anticipated midterm in decades. But what do the results mean for the President and his policy agenda? On this week's TrumpWatch, Paul Kane, senior congressional reporter for the Washington Post, helps break down how the first Democratic majority in the House of Representatives in eight years and a larger Republican majority in the Senate will shape the next two years of the Trump presidency.

On Saturday, the New York Times revealed a Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) memo on a proposed Trump administration plan to redefine the way the federal government recognizes gender. By reclassifying a person's sex based solely on the genitalia they were born with in the federal civil rights law called Title IX, HHS could restrict access to civil rights protections in schools, health care and other social services. On this week's TrumpWatch, Sarah McBride, national press secretary for the Human Rights Campaign, the largest civil rights organization for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people in the US, explains what this change in federal policy would mean.

“If hackers target this November's midterm elections, the consequences could be far more serious than the mostly quiet probing of 2016 and would fall on an electorate that has yet to receive a full reckoning of Russia's attack,” reads Mother Jones reporters AJ Vicens and Pema Levy's latest article “The Midterm Elections Are in Serious Danger of Being Hacked, Thanks to Trump. Hackers could try to create chaos by causing machines to malfunction, deleting properly registered voters, or even going so far as manipulating vote totals.” On this week's TrumpWatch, Pema discusses critical vulnerabilities in America's voting system.

When Justice Brett Kavanaugh was confirmed to the Supreme Court on Saturday, despite moving Senate testimony from Dr. Christine Blassey Ford that he had sexually assaulted her when they were teens, the country divided along mostly partisan lines on whom they believed and what they thought of the outcome. One issue that got little discussion in the controversy over Kavanaugh was the 5-4 conservative majority he brings to the highest court in the land will mean for environmental regulation in America. On this week's TrumpWatch, Jay Michaelson, legal affairs columnist for The Daily Beast, discusses his op-ed "Kavanaugh and Supreme Court to Planet: Drop Dead."

According to most major surveys, Republican candidates for the US House of Representatives have a tough hill to climb in November in districts without overwhelming support for the President. Attempting to put some daylight between them and Trump to appeal to independents, while not alienating the President's core base of supporters is no small task. But in an article published Oct. 2 entitled “The double lives of vulnerable House Republicans: A recording obtained by POLITICO highlights the conflicting advice GOP members in tough districts are getting,” Rachael Bade reveals that some members of the House's right-wing Freedom Caucus, namely Virginia Congressman Dave Brat, appear to be attempting to have it both ways—painting themselves as moderate Republicans while praising extreme right views and personalities at private campaign rallies. On this week's TrumpWatch, Rachel considers what this phenomenon means for the 2018 election.

Much of the mainstream news coverage about President Trump's second address to the United Nations General Assembly focused on the waves of laughter heard in the audience of world leaders after he made the claim that he “has accomplished more than almost any administration in the history of our country.” But, after telling the crowd he “didn't expect that reaction, but that's okay,” the President proceeded to lay out a plan for US foreign policy more isolationist than anything seen from the US in decades. On this week's TrumpWatch, White House reporter David Nakamura of the Washington Post examines the greater significance of what was said in President Trump's speech and what it means for US foreign policy moving forward.

Back in July, when President Trump nominated Brett Kavanaugh to replace Justice Anthony Kennedy on the Supreme Court, he appeared poised to sail through his Senate confirmation hearing thanks to a solid Republican majority. Yet, days before the Senate vote on Kavanaugh ascending to the high court, a confidential letter sent to Sen. Diane Feinstein written by Clinical Psychology Professor at Palo Alto University Christine Blasey Ford alleged that the Supreme Court nominee attacked her and tried to remove her clothing while he was drunk at a party in 1982 when they were both high school students, allegations Kavanaugh has told Reuters were “completely false." On this week's TrumpWatch, Stef W. Kight of Axios considers whether the allegations could sink Kavanaugh's nomination.

Though his backstory is largely unknown, Vice President Mike Pence is often portrayed as the rational tactician, a mirror image to President Trump's unrestrained id. But in his new book "The Shadow President: The Truth About Mike Pence,” co-written with Michael D'Antonio, Peter Eisner pushes back on this public perception and fleshes out the VP's backstory with results that are illuminating. A former political editor for the Washington Post, Peter looks at exactly who Mike Pence is and what has motivated him in his career path in this installment of Leonard Lopate at Large on WBAI.

On this week's TrumpWatch, health and environment reporter Sharon Lerner of The Intercept discusses her latest article “How a DuPont Spinoff Lobbied the EPA to Stave Off the Use of Environmentally Friendly Coolants” and explains how a new generation of DuPont coolants could threaten public safety for decades to come.

On Tuesday, US Court of Appeals judge for the DC Circuit Brett Kavanaugh will head to Capitol Hill for his Senate confirmation hearing to become the next US Supreme Court justice. But as Kavanaugh appears poised to sail through the Senate thanks to a narrow Republican majority in the Senate, a new report from the nonprofit organization Public Citizen has uncovered a striking pattern of deference to corporate power in his 12 years as an appellate judge. In this episode of TrumpWatch, Mother Jones staff writer Stephanie Mencimer discusses her August 29 article “Study says Brett Kavanaugh Inevitably Rules for Whoever Is More Powerful” and examines the ways that the Supreme Court could shift if he is confirmed.

“I have watched with dismay and increasing horror as my nephew [President Trump's senior advisor for policy Stephen Miller], an educated man who is well aware of his heritage, has become the architect of immigration policies that repudiate the very foundation of our family's life in this country,” writes Dr. David S. Glosser in his August 13 op-ed for the online publication POLITICO entitled "Stephen Miller Is an Immigration Hypocrite. I Know Because I'm His Uncle." A retired neuropsychologist and former faculty member of Boston University School of Medicine and Jefferson Medical College, Dr. Glosser felt he could no longer remain silent on the Trump administration's immigration policies which Miller helped to formulate and that he felt would have kept his own relatives out of the country. On this week's TrumpWatch, Dr. Glosser talks about what drove him to write a scathing indictment of his own nephew and shares the migration story of of Stephen Miller's family.

In this episode of TrumpWatch, Professor of Politics at Occidental College Peter Dreier discusses his article for the nonprofit online publication Rewire.News entitled “Want White Working Class Voters to Support Democrats? Strengthen Unions” and explains why statistical data prove that labor unions hold the key to Democrats succeeding at the ballot box in 2020 and beyond.

President Donald Trump tweeted back in March that “trade wars are good and easy to win.” But from alienating America's closest allies to his increasingly hard-line rhetoric towards China and Iran, is the President making irreversible changes to the global economy? On this week's TrumpWatch, US economics editor for The Economist and co-host of the weekly podcast “Trade Talks” Soumaya Keynes considers what it means that “the world trading system is under attack,” as the title of one of her recent articles reads, and what the permanent fallout could be.

In less than two weeks, Republicans in Congress have put forth 12 different measures aiming at loosening enforcement of the Endangered Species Act. As reported by Mother Jones assistant editor Jackie Flynn Mogensen, “on Thursday, the House passed an Interior appropriations bill that would cut funding for environmental and science programs by $400 million, prohibit funding to introduce grizzly bears into the North Cascades (one of only five grizzly ‘recovery zones') and remove the gray wolf from the List of Endangered and Threatened Wildlife under federal law.” On this week's TrumpWatch, Jackie describes multitude of ways that GOP lawmakers are attempting to loosen protections for animals facing extinction.

While most of the coverage of the President's joint press conference with Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, Finland on Monday focused on what was widely seen as Trump's deference towards the Russian president, the former KGB officer was hardly a shrinking violet when his time came to take the microphone. On this week's TrumpWatch, Joshua Keating, a reporter for Slate and author of the book “Invisible Countries: Journeys to the Edge of Nationhood,” takes a deep dive on what Putin could be trying to say with his comments in Helsinki.