On today’s show, we’ll discuss some headlines that might’ve slipped under the radar this week. First, most staff at the U.S. Agency for International Deveopment officially marked their final day with the agency. What might the dismantling of USAID mean for U.S. influence abroad? Plus, school districts are scrambling as federal education dollars are on hold. Then, we’ll smile about Andy Weir’s latest sci-fi novel being adapted for the big screen and the WNBA expanding into more cities!
Plus: President Trump strikes a trade agreement with Vietnam. And Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs was found not guilty of racketeering and sex trafficking. Anthony Bansie hosts.
Host Jennifer Sanasie breaks down the latest news in the crypto industry as corporates continue to explore bitcoin treasuries.
Publicly traded companies continue to explore bitcoin treasuries and they have been buying more BTC than ETF products for the third straight quarter according to a CNBC report. Plus, SEC green-lights Grayscale's new ETF products and Coinbase's new acquisition. CoinDesk’s Jennifer Sanasie hosts “CoinDesk Daily.”
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This episode was hosted by Jennifer Sanasie. “CoinDesk Daily” is produced by Jennifer Sanasie and edited by Victor Chen.
The Republican insistence on increasing military spending is the main reason Congress cannot cut taxes without increasing the debt, making cuts in domestic welfare programs, or both.
Mothers in the DRC struggling to raise children fathered and abandoned by UN peacekeepers amid fighting in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Also in the programme: we ask South Africa's minister of police whether he's lost control of the spiralling gang violence in Cape Town.
And the rising wave of South Korean culture sweeping across Africa.
Presenter: Richard Kagoe
Producers: Blessing Aderogba, Nyasha Michelle,
Bella Hassan Yvette Twagiramariya, Amie Liebowitz
Technical Producer: Philip Bull
Senior Journalist: Sunita Nahar
Editors: Andre Lombard and Alice Muthengi
Today, we have on Leigh Claire LaBerge, a professor at CUNY and the author of Fake Work: How I Began to Suspect Capitalism is a Joke, a funny and touching look back at what it was like to be young, naive, and have your whole life in front of you in 1999. We talk about the late 90s, the need for a bit of humor on the left, and start off with a few Zohran takes. Enjoy!
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Adam White joins us today to talk about the blockbuster cases that concluded this year's Supreme Court decision season. But before that, we discuss the proposal for a Gaza ceasefire and the shocking new evidence of how deep anti-Semitism continues to sink into the American school system, both for little kids and for post-doctoral students. Give a listen.
Politics, the concept not the American spectator sport, comes from Ancient Greek politiká or 'affairs of the cities' and is defined as “a set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups.”
Little is known about the lead up to the July First joint rally of Virginia’s three state-wide candidates, Winsome Earle-Sears the nominee for Governor, John Reid for Lieutenant Governor and Attorney General Jason Miyares running for re-election. Many insiders expressed concern over the media coverage of allegations of scandalous photographs or the nation-wide coverage that Reid was a gay would put a rift in the party.
However, one thing is sure, after rally after rally of standing room only crowds, the former George Allen aide proved that he had learned well from the former Senator and Governor how to focus on the positives ahead of them as he sits down with us on the eve of this kickoff rally.
America is turning 250. And we’re throwing a yearlong celebration of the greatest country on Earth. The greatest? Yes. The greatest.
We realize that’s not a popular thing to say these days. Americans have a way of taking this country for granted: a Gallup poll released earlier this week shows that American pride has reached a new low. And the world at large, which is wealthier and freer than it has ever been in history thanks to American power and largesse, often resents us. We get it. As journalists, we spend most of our time finding problems and exposing them. It’s what the job calls for.
But if you only focus on the negatives, you get a distorted view of reality. As America hits this milestone birthday, it’s worthwhile to take a moment to step back and look closely at where we actually are—and the reality of life in America today compared to other times and places. That reality is pretty spectacular.
Could Thomas Jefferson and the men gathered in Philadelphia who wrote down the words that made our world—“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”—ever have imagined what their Declaration of Independence would bring?
The Constitution. The end of slavery—and the defeat of Hitler. Astonishing wealth and medical breakthroughs. Silicon Valley. The most powerful military in the world. The moon landing. Hollywood. The Hoover Dam. The Statue of Liberty (a gift from France). Actual liberation (a thing we gave France). Humphrey Bogart and Tom Hanks. Josephine Baker and Beyoncé. Hot dogs. Corn dogs. American Chinese food. American Italian food. The Roosevelts and the Kennedys. The Barrymores and the Fondas. Winston Churchill (his mom was from Brooklyn). The Marshall Plan and Thurgood Marshall. Star Wars. Missile-defense shields. Baseball. Football. The military-industrial complex. Freedom of religion. UFO cults. Television. The internet. The Pill. The Pope. The automobile, the airplane, and AI. Jazz and the blues. The polio vaccine and GLP-1s, the UFC and Dolly Parton.
The list goes on because it’s really, truly endless. Ours is a country where you can hear 800 languages spoken in Queens, drive two hours and end up among the Amish in Pennsylvania. We are 330 million people, from California to New York Island, gathered together as one.
Each of those 330 million will tell you that ours is not a perfect country. But we suspect most of them would agree that their lives would not be possible without it. So for the next 12 months, we’re going to toast to our freedoms on the page, on this podcast and in real life. And we’re doing it the Free Press way: by delving into all of it—the bad and the good and the great, the strange and the wonderful and the wild.
And today—on America’s 249th birthday—we’re kicking off this yearlong event with none other than Akhil Reed Amar. Akhil has a unique understanding of this country—and our Constitution. Akhil is a Democrat who testified on behalf of Brett Kavanaugh, is a member of The Federalist Society, who is pro-choice but also anti-Roe—and these seeming contradictions make him perfectly suited to answer questions about the political and legal polarization we find ourselves in today.
Akhil is a constitutional law professor at Yale and the author of the brilliant book The Words That Made Us: America’s Constitutional Conversation, 1760–1840. He also hosts the podcast Amarica's Constitution, and you might recognize his name from his work in The Atlantic. I ask him about the unique history that created our founding document, the state of the country, our political polarization, the American legal system, and what this country means to him.
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