Fulfilling a campaign promise to “free the vaccine”, US President Joe Biden said he would support lifting patent protection on coronavirus vaccines, to make it easier for vaccines to get to people around the world who need them quickly. But several Western governments and most drug manufacturers opposed his stance, arguing that Big Pharma would have little incentive to produce a vaccine in record time the next time a new global health emergency arises. Host Steve Clemons speaks to Dr Michelle Mc...
May 13, 2021•25 min
Dimitri Simes has been in the thick of United States-Russia relations for the past five decades. Born in Moscow, he arrived in Washington in the 1970s and never left. He has advised US Presidents Richard Nixon and Donald Trump, and met with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Simes says relations will not “reset” between the two countries unless they compromise on Ukraine, which both consider part of their “backyard”. Until then, they can only talk about cooperating on climate change and nuclear p...
May 06, 2021•25 min
As a presidential candidate, Joe Biden made all sorts of campaign promises in the run-up to the 2020 US election. Some, like the $1.9 trillion stimulus package and the accelerated COVID-19 vaccination programme, have come to pass. Others, like police reform, gun control, and the federal minimum wage, are unchanged. On immigration, the Biden White House has adopted a softer tone, but nothing to remove the complications enforced by Donald Trump. Host Steve Clemons speaks with pundits Liz Mair, a f...
Apr 29, 2021•26 min
As Americans watched the murder trial of Derek Chauvin unfold, after the killing of unarmed Black man George Floyd last year, several new cases of the police killing minorities – one as young as 13 years old – were unfolding. The United States is in the middle of an honest debate about the intersection of racism and policing, but reform for the sake of better race relations and more stable communities is elusive. In this episode, host Steve Clemons speaks with Nana Gyamfi, the president of the N...
Apr 22, 2021•25 min
President Joe Biden faces resistance to key immigration policy reform in the United States, not only from “secure border” Republicans but from politicians in his own Democratic Party. Lorella Praeli arrived in the US with her family from Peru as a child and lived as an undocumented immigrant for years. Today, she advocates for immigration as a co-president of Community Change. And Francisco E González, who teaches about the political economies of Latin America at the Johns Hopkins University, ar...
Apr 15, 2021•25 min
Former French Ambassador Gérard Araud sees the United States-China rivalry as the biggest diplomatic challenge ahead, and his advice for US policymakers is: Don’t force countries to pick sides. At the same time, he warns against overestimating China’s power or underestimating US power. Araud warns that Donald Trump’s victory in 2016 was not a fluke, as more people in Western societies consider their political systems “rigged”. In this wide-ranging conversation with host Steve Clemons, Araud open...
Apr 08, 2021•25 min
Despite his campaign promises to “bring the vast majority of our troops home from Afghanistan”, US President Joe Biden is finding that ending the 20-year-old Afghan war is easier said than done. At one point before the elections former President Donald Trump was ready to leave without much regard for the consequences, in fulfilment of his campaign promise to end the “forever wars”. Political scientist Stephen Walt tells host Steve Clemons that the biggest fear Biden faces is the possibility that...
Apr 01, 2021•25 min
Election reform is one of the biggest political battles of the year in the United States after former President Donald Trump and his fans insisted the last election was “stolen". Republican lawmakers in 33 states are proposing restrictions on voter registration and voting. Senate Democrats are pushing the “For the People Act” to greatly increase the number of registered voters and make voting easier. So which way will the United States go? Join host Steve Clemons as he speaks with Sadiqa Reynold...
Mar 25, 2021•25 min
Will the United States wind up sharing world domination with China, or will China eventually accept the US as the world’s sole superpower? The Biden administration - just like the Trump administration before it - hopes to contain China’s growth and influence. President Joe Biden is trying to do the job by creating an alliance of four countries, the "Quad": Japan, India, Australia and the US. Join host Steve Clemons and his guests, China experts Deborah Lehr and Randall Schriver, as they discuss ...
Mar 18, 2021•25 min
A Democratic Party-led proposal to raise the minimum wage in the United States would double the income of millions of Americans. But opponents fear that many small business owners would choose to fire some of their employees, outsource labour to other countries, slow down hiring, or decide to shut down if it passes. Supporters say that the current federal minimum wage does not provide a liveable salary to millions of Americans and should be pushed to $15 an hour in phases. Host Steve Clemons is ...
Mar 11, 2021•25 min
Donald Trump adviser Jason Miller talks to host Steve Clemons about the former United States president's role in politics and the conservative agenda. Republican leaders are still split on Trump: House Republicans defend his legacy and coordinate closely with him, with their leaders travelling back and forth to see him at his resort in Florida; but Senate Republicans are trying their best to minimise his influence over the party. In his first major speech after leaving office, given at the Conse...
Mar 04, 2021•25 min
US President Joe Biden says he wants to restart negotiations on Iran’s nuclear programme, and Iran extended its permission for nuclear watchdogs. This is the most progress the two parties have made since former President Donald Trump tore up the 2015 deal reached after years of negotiations, but there are no guarantees a new deal is imminent. Cambridge University lecturer Dr Roxane Farmanfarmaian and Bloomberg columnist Eli Lake lay out the possible scenarios for Iran-US relations over the next ...
Feb 25, 2021•24 min
The idea that the United States should be "made great" for white people is as old as the US itself, and today this notion is represented by almost 200 groups around the country. Michael German was infiltrating white supremacist movements in the 1990s as a special agent for the FBI. His story was made into a film, Imperium, by director Daniel Ragussis. In this episode, German and Ragussis tell host Steve Clemons about the challenges facing the Biden administration in confronting an ideology that ...
Feb 18, 2021•25 min
Retired Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to US Secretary of State Colin Powell, sees a number of challenges for the United States worldwide. President Joe Biden outlined his foreign policy priorities in a speech on February 4, where he said he would like to see more refugees accepted into the United States, an end to the war in Yemen, and more support for LGBTQ rights worldwide. Wilkerson believes domestic concerns, especially confronting the “white supremacist, evangelical” tak...
Feb 11, 2021•24 min
American labour leader and civil rights activist Dolores Huerta knows a thing or two about the plight of the working poor. In 1962 she and Cesar Chavez co-founded the first labour union for farmworkers in the United States. Most of its members did not speak English and had never dreamed they had the power to stand up to huge corporations, which had money, political connections, and the local police on their side. Now in her 90s, Huerta is still teaching America’s poor how to organise themselves ...
Feb 04, 2021•25 min
COVID-19. Ebola. Zika. All diseases that started in animals, but spread to humans. “We’ve created conditions where these pathogens can jump from animals to people,” says Jane Goodall, the British primatologist and one of the world’s most vocal activists for wildlife and habitat preservation. Goodall says she sees hope for the future of the planet because people are finding new and improved ways to farm, treat animals, and push for social justice. But she also tells host Steve Clemons that the en...
Jan 28, 2021•25 min
John Bellinger served as a legal adviser to the White House and State Department during the George W Bush administration. He was a prominent member of the “never-Trumpers”, the small group of Republicans who opposed Donald Trump’s candidacy in 2015 and voted for Joe Biden in 2020, arguing that Trump was a threat to US security and stability. Bellinger tells host Steve Clemons that he is surprised by how widespread QAnon and other conspiracy theories are among Republican voters and leaders, inclu...
Jan 21, 2021•26 min
Misinformation, disinformation and conspiracy theories have filled the vacuum left by the mistrust of media and politicians, which makes people doubt all information - both good and bad. This has led to real-world consequences, such as the belief among some Americans that the results of the 2020 election could and should be overturned, and the hesitancy of at least one-third of the global population to take the coronavirus vaccine. Watch the full interview with Richard Edelman, CEO of the public...
Jan 14, 2021•25 min
On January 6, 2021 - a day that will be marked in the history books - supporters of Donald Trump stormed the United States Capitol in Washington, DC. That morning the outgoing president had fired up his supporters during a rally called Save America, by repeating his promises to “never concede” election defeat and demanding that his devotees “show strength.” So what do recent events mean for Trump's political future? Congressman Joaquin Castro (Democrat-Texas) and Republican strategist John Feehe...
Jan 08, 2021•25 min
Dr Anthony Fauci tells host Steve Clemons that the United States can go back to “normal” in the fall (autumn, which starts in September) of 2021 if 70-85 percent of Americans get vaccinated by the summer. Warning that “things will likely get worse as we go into January” due to holiday gatherings, the chief medical adviser for President-elect Joe Biden said that more must be done to convince Americans that the global pandemic is a public health issue, not an issue of individual rights. In this wi...
Dec 31, 2020•25 min
A coalition of 50 grassroots movements across the United States is demanding a “fundamental shift” in US national security and foreign policy. Progressives are a minority in the Democratic Party and they have been trying to pull the establishment to the left for years. Some progressives have been hired to the Joe Biden administration, along with a majority of traditional bureaucrats. Yasmine Taeb, a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy in Washington, DC, tells host Steve Clemons ...
Dec 24, 2020•25 min
Daniel Yergin, an expert on energy, geopolitics and the global economy, explains how the advent of US shale oil has changed the dynamics of power, forcing Gulf states to rethink their futures, and how the transition to a zero-carbon world is still far-fetched. Nations and corporations are increasingly torn between allegiance to the US or China, and this trend will shape the 21st century. Yergin tells host Steve Clemons that although there is no competitor to US military power or the dollar now, ...
Dec 17, 2020•25 min
