Janine Jackson interviewed CEPR’s Dean Baker about China trade policy for the January 10, 2025, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.

Outside of a synagogue in West Orange, New Jersey, a hundred people with PAL-Awda NY/NJ, a local Palestinian rights organization, gathered to protest an Israeli real estate event taking place there on Nov. 13. The protesters accused the realtors from My Israel Home, an Israeli real estate company based outside of Jerusalem, of marketing Palestinian land. They also said that the company was discriminating against event attendees by religion, effectively excluding everyone except especially religious Jews.

Braun sworn in, becomes 4th Republican governor in a row

Mike Braun took the oath of office Monday, continuing a 20-year Republican control of the governorship. The addresses given by him and his lieutenant governor hinted at the administration's plans.

A few days ago, I participated in a panel discussion following a showing of “Bad Faith,” a documentary film about Christian Nationalism. Coming so soon after reading “The Kingdom, The Power and The Glory,” it was even more traumatizing.

The report, which said the special counsel’s office stood “fully behind” the merits of the prosecution, amounted to an extraordinary rebuke of the president-elect.

— Wondering why Trump is on a jeremiad against Panama? Some suggest his rant was timed to coincide with Jimmy Carter’s funeral to give rightwing media an excuse to trash Carter’s signing the Panama Canal Treaty that Nixon first started negotiating.

Ford died 18 years ago. But before he passed, the 38th president of the United States penned a eulogy for the 39th president. Prior to his death, Ford had asked Carter to deliver the eulogy at his funeral...

By Ralph Nader

Jimmy Carter was my last president. I believe that is true for progressive civic groups, too. He actively opened up the federal government to engagement and participation from long politically excluded American activists.

When he was campaigning in 1976, he would say that he wanted to be more of a consumer advocate than I am, that he would take seriously my recommendations for his nominations to head federal regulatory agencies. Pleasing rhetoric, I thought.

Janine Jackson: Welcome to The Best of CounterSpin 2024. I’m Janine Jackson.

President-elect Donald Trump speaks to the media before going to view the wildfire damage in the Los Angeles area.

(Saul Loeb / AFP via Getty Images)

The hearse carrying Jimmy Carter's body, Jimmy Carter, Jimmy Carter's casket. PHOTO: MEGAN VARNER/GETTY;ALEX BRANDON / POOL / AFP

Washington, D.C. — Today, President Jimmy Carter died at the age of 100. Following the announcement of his death Patrick Gaspard, president and CEO of the Center for American Progress, released the following statement:

The movement’s ultimate objective is to put an end to public responsibility for education entirely.

This article is part of a series from the Center for American Progress exposing how the sweeping Project 2025 policy agenda would harm all Americans. This new authoritarian playbook, published by the Heritage Foundation, would destroy the 250-year-old system of checks and balances upon which U.S. democracy has relied and give far-right politicians, judges, and corporations more control over Americans’ lives.

In a new 83-page report, members of the MIT Coalition for Palestine – made up of 20 different student and faculty groups on campus – are exposing the institutional ties between the elite Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Israeli military.

Even in healthy individuals, the American Heart Association said cold weather can constrict arteries, make blood clot more easily and increase heart rate and blood pressure. (Adobe Stock)

A photo of the Wabash River downstream of Logansport, Indiana. The river’s watershed is the subject of two water studies recently published by the state government. (Photo from the Indiana Department of Natural Resources)

Two newly published water studies from the state predict that supply will continue to outpace demand for the vital resource in coming decades, and both analyses urge stakeholders to consider more conservation measures to protect future supply. 

In the hours after the 2024 presidential election votes started coming in from across the nation, and once it appeared that Trump won, the man euphorically claimed a “massive mandate.” And in the days that followed, he crowed in his victory speech that “America has given us an unprecedented and powerful mandate.” At still another time, he dished it up as “the beauty is that we won by so much!” Also, out of the mouths of some others came similar ejaculations, like “an overwhelming mandate” (from S. Cheung, a Trump spokesman).

A homeless man sleeps under an American Flag blanket on a park bench. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

On any given night in January of 2024, more than 770,000 people were experiencing homelessness in the United States, according to new data from the Department of Housing and Urban Development. That value marks an 18% increase from 2023 and a new record high since HUD began reporting on homelessness in 2007.  

Mike Johnson, Donald Trump and Marjorie Taylor Greene (Photo illustration by Salon/Getty Images)

Workers advocate for $20 an hour minimum wage. November 1, 2022. Photo by Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images.

In September 2023, California passed a law to bring fast food workers’ minimum wage up from $16 to $20 an hour. A flurry of reports predictably followed from the likes of The Wall Street Journal, Employment Policies Institute, and the Hoover Institution claiming that restaurants and other businesses were already laying off workers based on the new law.

President-elect Donald Trump got his name splashed in news headlines all around the world last week. The reason is both humorous and worrisome. In one Truth Social ‘Christmas Message,’ he threatened the peace in three countries in one paragraph:

Americans were recently treated to the official results of the U.S. House’s ethics investigation of Matt Gaetz. The concluding paragraph of the 37 page report says it all:

The Committee determined there is substantial evidence that Representative Gaetz violated House Rules and other standards of conduct prohibiting prostitution, statutory rape, illicit drug use, impermissible gifts, special favors or privileges, and obstruction of Congress.

AMY GOODMAN: So, he already talked about the relevance of the concentration camps and World War II to what is happening today in Gaza.

In northern Gaza, the director of the besieged Kamal Adwan Hospital says five medical workers were among 50 people killed in Israeli strikes near the hospital. Israeli forces have since stormed the hospital and forced out 350 people at gunpoint, including about 75 remaining patients. Parts of the hospital were seen in flames. Kamal Adwan was one of the only medical facilities still operating in northern Gaza. The five medical workers killed were pediatrician Dr.

We can’t “save” a democracy we’ve already lost. (See yesterday’s post.) The real question is: can we regain it?

At exactly 1 p.m. on Oct. 7, 2023, Israel’s military leadership issued an order that unleashed one of the most intense bombing campaigns in contemporary warfare.

Effective immediately, the order granted mid-ranking Israeli officers the authority to strike thousands of militants and military sites that had never been a priority in previous wars in Gaza. Officers could now pursue not only the senior Hamas commanders, arms depots and rocket launchers that were the focus of earlier campaigns, but also the lowest-ranking fighters.

After a 15-year career in the Foreign Service, Michael Casey resigned from the State Department in July over U.S. policy on Gaza and is now speaking out publicly for the first time. He was deputy political counselor at the United States Office for Palestinian Affairs in Jerusalem for four years before he left. Casey says he resigned after “getting no action from Washington” for his recommendations on humanitarian actions for Palestinians and toward a workable two-state solution. “We don’t believe Palestinian sources of information,” Casey says about U.S. policymakers.

Quick summary:

• Twelve GOP-led states may reject $1.14 billion in federal funding from the Summer EBT program, risking hunger for nearly 10 million children.

• The Summer EBT program provides $120 per eligible child to buy food during summer months when school meal programs are unavailable.

• States like Tennessee, Texas, and Florida face criticism for refusing the funds despite widespread food insecurity and economic need.