Book Week
Ralph welcomes six authors to discuss their books: “Beyond Nuclear” founder Linda Gunter; trial lawyer Sean Simpson; law professor Elizabeth Burch; naturalist David Schmidt; industrial hygienist Marc Axelrod; and educator and advocate Jonathan Kozol.
Linda Gunter [https://beyondnuclear.org/about/] is the founder of the US-based non-profit Beyond Nuclear and serves as its international specialist. Previously, she was a journalist at USA Network, Reuters, and The Times. She launched, and writes for Beyond Nuclear’s online magazine, Beyond Nuclear International [https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/]. And she is the author of No To Nuclear: Why Nuclear Power Destroys Lives, Derails Climate Progress and Provokes War [https://www.plutobooks.com/product/no-to-nuclear/].
We need to reduce the most carbon, the fastest, for the least cost—and that’s renewables every time. But it’s also an issue of: as we divert funds towards nuclear power (new reactors, which are not here now, they’re just aspirational ideas on paper, none of the designs have certifications or licenses yet) as we divert time and our money towards waiting for something that will perhaps take a decade or two (or never) to materialize, and as we squeeze out renewables in the process, what do we do? We continue to burn fossil fuels. So actually, choosing nuclear as an answer to climate makes the climate crisis worse.
Linda Gunter
Sean Simpson [https://www.tl4j.com/sean-simpson/] is an attorney specializing in civil jury trials, representing individuals who have been harmed by someone else’s carelessness or intentional wrongdoing. He is the author of Punitive Damages: The Lawyer’s Tool for Shaping Society [https://www.corporatecrimereporter.com/news/200/sean-simpson-on-punitive-damages-as-a-lawyers-tool-for-shaping-society/].
[Punitive damages are] typically not covered by insurance. But oddly enough, there’s a trend coming now where these corporations—because they’re in control, we’ve let them have the reins, and now they’re getting insurance companies to sell them coverage to cover their punitive damages, which is totally a 180. If somebody else is going to pay your punishment for you, it’s not going to sting your rump if somebody gets spanked on somebody else’s behind.
Sean Simpson
Elizabeth Burch [https://www.elizabethchambleeburch.com/] is a professor at the University of Georgia School of Law [https://www.law.uga.edu/profile/elizabeth-chamblee-burch], and co-author of Perceptions of Justice in Multidistrict Litigation: Voices from the Crowd. She is the author of The Pain Brokers: How Con Men, Call Centers, and Rogue Doctors Fuel America’s Lawsuit Factory [https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Pain-Brokers/Elizabeth-Chamblee-Burch/9781668068861].
Imagine that you are sitting in your kitchen and you get a phone call one night. And you answer, and the person on the other end of the line knows an inordinate amount of information about you—they know your name, they know your birth date, they know the name of your doctor, the name of your hospital, the date and type of medical implant that you had put in you. And then they tell you that you have a ticking time bomb in you. And if you don’t have this removed immediately (that in this case was pelvic mesh, which is designed to deal with incontinence and pelvic organ prolapse) that you are going to die. But not to worry, they are setting up appointments down in South Florida to have the mesh removed. What they don’t say is all of the important things.
Elizabeth Burch
David Schmidt is lifelong San Francisco Bay Area resident, naturalist, and environmental historian. He worked as a writer in the public affairs office of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in San Francisco from 1991 to 2021, led dozens of hikes for the Greenbelt Alliance in the region’s extensive public parklands, and volunteered on habitat restoration projects for the Golden Gate National Parks and the California Native Plant Society. He is the author of San Francisco Bay Area: An Environmental History [https://backcountrypress.com/book/san-francisco-bay-area/].
I think [the environmental movement in the Bay Area] is the most successful regional environmental movement in US history. Its victories have had a tremendous impact on protecting the natural landscape, the agricultural landscape. And this is a landscape that is famous for its scenic beauty. It’s among the world’s most biodiverse landscapes with more than a thousand species of plants and wildlife. And persistence pays off. That is the theme that comes across time and again with environmental victories is: persistence pays off.
David Schmidt
Marc Axelrod is an award-winning front line industrial hygienist and workplace safety professional. He has developed and implemented programs to protect people from industry’s most hazardous technologies. He has worked for employers including Boeing, Kaiser Permanente, UCLA and the City of Beverly Hills. He is the author of The Flame Bucket: Adventures in Workplace Safety [https://www.amazon.com/Flame-Bucket-Adventures-Workplace-Safety/dp/B0GGXX1BNW].
You can lie down in the flame bucket and stop a [rocket] launch, but you can only do it once. So I decided that we had a very risky program [at the city of Beverly Hills]. It was for testing our commercial drivers for alcohol and drugs. And somehow they got a big percentage of them, almost a third of them, got left out of the program. And I can see, being backstage, what happens in city government where people leave and people come and how these kinds of things can occur. But when they do happen, what you’ve got to do is stop everything, blame the people that left, and then fix it right away. But this program—even though people knew that there was a big gap in it, they just didn’t want to fix it. But I knew as City Safety Officer, I was responsible. So after months of delay, I said, “Listen, these drivers can’t drive anymore. They can’t do their safety functions without a clearance test from our drug and alcohol program.” And so that got their attention, and we quickly fixed the program, and I got a lot of thank yous. And then a few days later, I was fired.
Marc Axelrod
Jonathan Kozol [https://www.jonathankozol.com/] is a leading advocate for child-centered learning, equality, and racial justice in our nation’s schools, and he travels and lectures about educational inequality and racial injustice. Mr. Kozol is the author of nearly a dozen books about young children and their public schools, including Death at an Early Age, An End to Inequality: Breaking Down the Walls of Apartheid Education in America [https://thenewpress.org/books/9781620978726/], and We Shall Not Bow Down: Children of Color Under Siege: An Invocation to Resistance [https://www.sevenstories.com/books/4781-we-shall-not-bow-down?srsltid=AfmBOooYGcUlk4MBiNWElh0pm3az5JgvlOKdtyjKgwXFeToWXUNNHJ8Z].
My book is not simply a polite description of these problems. It’s probably the most militant book I’ve ever written. It’s an open call for militant resistance. And, you know, I get condemned for that, but I’m not afraid to say that I’m an unregenerate activist, and I’m too old to change my stripes.
Jonathan Kozol
News 5/1/26
* Perhaps the biggest news of the week is the Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision in Louisiana v. Callais to gut Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which preserved majority-minority congressional districts. In practice, this ruling gives conservative Southern states license to draw these districts out of existence. Jonathan Cervas, a political scientist at Carnegie-Mellon University who has served as a special master in multiple Voting Rights Act cases, is quoted in AP [https://apnews.com/live/voting-rights-act-supreme-court-updates-04-29-2026] saying “The Voting Rights Act as a means to protect minority voters from vote dilution is essentially dead.” In the Washington Post [https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/04/29/supreme-court-voting-rights-act-louisiana-voting-maps/], NAACP President Derrick Johnson called the decision “a devastating blow to what remains of the Voting Rights Act, and a license for corrupt politicians who want to rig the system by silencing entire communities,” and “a major setback for our nation and…the hard-won victories we’ve fought, bled, and died for.” In practice, this ruling is sure to set off a new round of redrawing congressional districts, likely resulting in a net gain of 12 seats – half of the Southern Section 2 districts – for the GOP. In Louisiana itself, CNN [https://www.cnn.com/2026/04/30/politics/louisiana-primaries-supreme-court-ruling] reports Governor Jeff Landry has halted House primaries, where “Early voting was scheduled to begin Saturday and overseas ballots had already gone out.” Moreover, “Democratic Rep. Cleo Fields, whose district is at the center of the Supreme Court’s redistricting decision, said…Landry had told him he anticipated issuing an executive order to suspend the House election and call a new one.”
* Speaking of Southern congressional districts, in Florida’s 20th district, Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick has “defiantly” filed to run again in the special election for her former district, per NOTUS [https://www.notus.org/congress/florida-democrat-sheila-cherfilus-mccormick-resigned-reelection-congress-criminal-charges-pending]. Cherfilus-McCormick resigned her seat in Congress last week just minutes before the House Ethics Committee was scheduled to “recommend punishment on an array of charges.” She had previously been found guilty of “25 ethics violations, including allegedly stealing $5 million dollars in federal disaster-aid funds used to bolster her 2021 campaign,” following an extensive investigation running for two years and including “issuing 58 subpoenas, interviewing 28 witnesses and reviewing over 33,000 documents.” Elijah Manley, the young progressive running for the seat, is quoted saying “Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick resigned in disgrace moments before her colleagues were set to expel her from Congress…The last thing our community needs is a second round of chaos and instability. She should focus on her legal troubles.”
* In more positive news from Congress, Rep. Greg Casar announced this week that the Congressional Progressive Caucus he chairs is issuing a new Affordability Agenda [https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JTJG5viBybX-b_7-W7b6pdG-P_uY0ISZ7nCaQfaIyfY/edit?tab=t.0], bringing together a slew of bills sponsored by progressives – on topics ranging from housing to groceries to prescription drugs and more – into a unified package. In an introduction, the Caucus emphasizes that “Americans are facing a cost-of-living crisis and…At the same time, Democrats are searching for a vision that wins back the trust of working families and provides a mandate to deliver the big changes our country needs in 2026.” The question now is whether the Democratic Party will take up this banner and run with it or once again spurn their progressive base.
* Meanwhile, the Trump administration is occupied with their continuing efforts to persecute comedians for anodyne jokes. The latest on this front is the Federal Communications Commission ordering the Walt Disney Company’s ABC to seek early broadcast license renewals for the eight TV stations it owns, following a joke about Melania Trump on Jimmy Kimmel’s late night show, NPR [https://www.npr.org/2026/04/28/nx-s1-5802997/fcc-abc-license-renewal-melania-trump-jimmy-kimmel?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-us] reports. The joke, a “mock speech for an alternative White House Correspondents’ Dinner,” which went “Our first lady Melania is here. So beautiful. Mrs. Trump, you have a glow like an expectant widow,” aired three days before the actual White House Correspondents’ Dinner and the corresponding security threat. Kimmel has stressed that the joke was about the age difference between the President and First Lady “not, by any stretch of the definition, a call to assassination. And they know that.” FCC Commissioner Anna M. Gomez, sole Democrat still on the commission, issued a statement calling this “the most egregious action this FCC has taken in violation of the First Amendment to date…As part of its ongoing campaign of censorship and control, the White House called publicly for the silencing of a vocal critic, and this FCC has now answered that call.”
* Another scandalous act of corruption from inside the federal government came to light this week with Gannon Ken Van Dyke, a special operations soldier stationed at Fort Bragg being charged with insider trading. Specifically, Van Dyke is charged with three counts of violating the Commodity Exchange Account, one count of wire fraud and one count of an unlawful money transaction for using classified government information to win over $400,000 via prediction betting site Polymarket vis-a-vis the kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, per the Hill [https://thehill.com/business/5846393-solider-in-maduro-raid-charged-over-prediction-market-bets-on-operation-doj/]. U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Jay Clayton, also heading up the prosecution of President Maduro, is quoted saying “Prediction markets are not a haven for using misappropriated confidential or classified information for personal gain.” For their part, Polymarket has announced tightened insider trading rules, but continues to insist that “When we identified a user trading on classified government information, we referred the matter to the DOJ & cooperated with their investigation,” and that Van Dyke’s arrest is “proof the system works.”
* In more news related to Latin America, a new poll shows leftist Senator and presidential candidate Iván Cepeda with a substantial lead, according to the City Paper Bogotá [https://thecitypaperbogota.com/news/colombia-elections-cepeda-leads-valencia-doubles-in-race-down-to-three/]. In polls of the first round, Cepeda drew 44.3%, while his rivals, Abelardo de la Espriella and Paloma Valencia drew 21.5% and 19.8% respectively, an impressive showing for Valencia who has nearly doubled her support since the last poll was taken. In the second round, polling shows Cepeda besting both rivals, 54.6% to 42.6% against de la Espriella and a narrower 51.2% versus 46.6% against Valencia. A Cepeda victory would continue the leftward trend in Colombian politics begun with the election of Gustavo Petro in 2022, a remarkable turnaround for one of the most stalwart conservative countries in the region.
* Elsewhere on the globe, a new poll shows Jeremy Corbyn – the British left icon, former Labour Party leader and founder of Your Party – in danger of losing his long-held seat in the riding of Islington North. Corbyn, who was first elected to the seat in 1983, was able to keep his seat as an independent MP even after his expulsion from the Labour Party following the hostile takeover of the party by the centrist Keir Starmer regime. Yet now, with Your Party coming apart at the seams, the Greens look poised to capture the seat. However, the Canary [https://www.thecanary.co/trending/2026/04/27/corbyn-polling-islington/] notes that this poll only asked voters about their partisan voting intentions, with no mention of individual candidates. This means even if voters in Islington North are more sympathetic to the Greens overall, they could still return Corbyn himself to Parliament. Nevertheless, this poll gives some indication of how successfully the Greens have outmaneuvered Your Party, even in what should be their most solid riding.
* Another iconic British public figure – King Charles III – is in America this week for a royal visit in which he addressed a joint session of Congress, met with President Trump and enjoyed a White House dinner. On Wednesday, the King attended a wreath-laying ceremony at Ground Zero in New York City, along with New York Governor Kathy Hochul, New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill and, most strikingly, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani. This unlikely pairing has clearly piqued the interest of the press, who asked Mayor Mamdani what he would talk about with the King if they were to have a private moment together. While the duo did not ultimately have a private meeting, Mamdani responded that he would “probably encourage [the King] to return the Kohinoor diamond,” which POLITICO [https://www.politico.com/news/2026/04/29/mamdani-would-ask-king-charles-to-return-crown-jewel-to-india-00898523] identifies as “an enormous bauble set into a royal crown on display in the Tower of London,” noting that the diamond has “become a point of contention between England and India.”
* In more local news, with the protracted California gubernatorial primary on the horizon at last, the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees or IATSE, has thrown their weight behind progressive billionaire Tom Steyer, Variety [https://variety.com/2026/politics/news/iatse-tom-steyer-california-governor-endorsement-1236728164/] reports. This piece notes Steyer’s pledge to keep film and television production in Los Angeles along with his outspoken criticism of the merger between Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. as well as his proposal to levy a tax on AI computations and use the proceeds to “fund training for displaced workers.” IATSE represents around 50,000 workers in California and 130,000 workers nationwide. Steyer has amassed considerable union support in his bid for perhaps the second most powerful political executive position in the country after the presidency, including the California Teachers Association, the California Federation of Teachers, and the California Nurses Association. Steyer’s closest Democratic rival in the open primary, former Congressman, state Attorney General and HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra is racking up endorsements as well, including from Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California and powerful California politicianss such as Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas. With a close race between the top four leading Democrats and Republicans, the June 2nd primary is sure to conclude with a photo finish.
* Finally, in Washington DC, the Democratic Mayoral primary continues to grow more acrimonious. This week, former Councilmember Kenyan McDuffie, the candidate backed by corporate donors and the DC political establishment, criticized progressive Councilmember Janeese Lewis-George in a fundraising email for supposedly accepting “dark money from outside interest groups.” Which groups you may ask? Local unions, representing tens of thousands of DC workers, including local branches of the AFL-CIO, UFCW, transit workers, teachers, the building trades and more. In a stinging rebuke [https://x.com/ATULocal689/status/2048824961947615244?s=20], the unions excoriated McDuffie for his “disturbing pattern of anti-union talking points and votes” including opposition to wage increases for DC restaurant and child-care workers – while simultaneously accepting donations from “MAGA developers…[and] utility and energy executives.” Moreover, Axios [https://www.axios.com/local/washington-dc/2026/04/22/labor-super-pac-mcduffie-attack-ads] reports Safe & Affordable DC, a labor-aligned super PAC, is launching a half-million dollar ad blitz attacking McDuffie on his record of favoritism towards the utilities at a moment when bills are higher than ever. Tensions mounted even higher this week, when the D.C. Office of Campaign Finance opened an investigation to determine whether Lewis George’s campaign is collaborating too closely with her union allies – an allegation she has dismissed as “baseless [https://www.axios.com/local/washington-dc/2026/04/29/janeese-lewis-george-mayoral-campaign-investigation].” It is worth noting that DC progressives have had this accusation leveled at them in the past, only for it to indeed prove baseless. Expect this race to get more heated, and more expensive, the closer we get to the June 16th primary.
This has been Francesco DeSantis, with In Case You Haven’t Heard.
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