Current Affairs

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CODEPINK co-founders Medea Benjamin and Jodie Evans, along with national co-director Danaka Katovich, join Current Affairs to reflect on 25 years of the post-9/11 War on Terror, the founding of CODEPINK, and the politics of fear that have fueled endless war.

🌸 Pam Bailey's Current Affairs Article: https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/9/11-began-25-years-of-nonstop-war-and-abuses-of-power

🌸 Danaka Katovich's Common Dreams Article: https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/un-american-to-care

🌸 Medea Benjamin's Common Dreams Article: https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/was-the-us-reaction-to-9-11-wrong

0:00-10:56 Barbara Lee, 9/11, and the politics of fear

10:56-19:59 How CODEPINK was born from the War on Terror

19:59-25:51 Being smeared as foreign agents and terrorist sympathizers

25:51-32:30 Fighting fear and reclaiming political power

32:30-35:12 What CODEPINK is organizing around now

35:12-37:15 Why Yemen matters to the antiwar movement

37:15-45:42 Lessons from 25 years of antiwar activism

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Rachel Cohen is an attorney and organizer who previously resigned from the law firm Skadden Arps amid the Trump administration’s pressure campaign against major law firms.

She joins Current Affairs to discuss her article “Business as Usual at the Department of Injustice,” which examines how Trump has intensified the politicization of the Justice Department while relying on prosecutorial powers, institutional habits, and forms of state violence that long predate his administration.

🏛️ Follow Rachel on Instagram: https://cohen489.substack.com/

🏛️ Subscribe to Rachel's Substack: https://www.instagram.com/cohen.489/?hl=en

0:00-5:20 What’s happening at the DOJ under Trump?

5:20-8:08 Disturbing trends under Trump

8:08-13:36 What Trump didn’t change

13:36-18:21 The injustice was already built in

18:21-23:06 The problem goes beyond Trump

23:06-25:40 The “presumption of regularity”

25:40-31:26 Resistance and refusing conformity

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Astra Taylor is a writer, activist, and co-author of End Times Fascism, and Aaron Regunberg is a climate lawyer and contributing editor at The New Republic. They join Current Affairs to discuss how the right has begun co-opting animal welfare politics, why the left has neglected animal rights, and how abandoning climate politics risks leaving an opening for a much darker ecofascist response to ecological crisis.

🐄 Read the article: https://newrepublic.com/article/213747/maga-stole-animal-rights-left

🐄 Get Astra's book: https://naomiklein.org/end-times-fascism/

0:00-8:25 How MAGA is co-opting animal rights

8:25-14:18 P’Nut the Squirrel and the right’s animal politics

14:18-18:29 MAHA and the political vacuum on animal welfare

18:29-33:05 Why animal rights belong in left politics

33:05-37:59 Why the left stopped talking about climate

37:59-42:44 Ecofascism and the politics of climate collapse

42:44-49:14 Making climate politics impossible to ignore

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Mohammed el-Kurd is a Palestinian writer from Jerusalem, The Nation’s Palestine correspondent, and editor-at-large at Mondoweiss.

He joins Current Affairs to discuss his book, Perfect Victims and the Politics of Appeal, which examines how even sympathetic discourse about Palestine can reproduce racist assumptions, sanitize Palestinian resistance, and demand that Palestinians prove their innocence before being granted solidarity.

🇵🇸 Get the Book: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/2499-perfect-victims

🇵🇸 Article in The Nation: https://www.thenation.com/article/world/mohammed-el-kurd-book-excerpt/

0:00-3:04 deconstructing liberal solidarity with Palestine 3:04-6:30 the assumptions behind “women and children”

6:30-10:56 why Palestinian anger and resistance are legitimate

10:56-13:29 how the language of occupation shapes the debate

13:29-17:23 Ro Khanna and the double standard on resistance

17:23-19:49 the politics of the “perfect victim”

19:49-22:18 Refaat Alareer and the refusal to sanitize Palestinians

22:18-24:27 what Palestine’s allies still get wrong

24:27-27:22 Israel’s political prison system

27:22-31:46 Hamas members are entitled to human rights

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Track AIPAC is an advocacy and watchdog project that tracks AIPAC and other pro-Israel political spending in U.S. elections. Co-founders Cory Archibald and Casey Kennedy join Current Affairs to discuss how the Israel lobby intervenes in Democratic primaries, how its money is routed through a growing network of PACs and outside groups, and why more candidates are beginning to reject its support.

🔎 Track AIPAC: https://www.trackaipac.com/

0:00-5:53 Why Track AIPAC was founded

5:53-8:51 How AIPAC hides its money

8:51-13:04 How AIPAC intervenes in elections

13:04-17:33 How AIPAC corrupts the democratic process

17:33-21:45 Democrats are turning against AIPAC

21:45-24:58 Forcing Israel into the political conversation

24:58-31:40 Track AIPAC’s litmus test for candidates

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