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Former British Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg and famed linguist and dissident Noam Chomsky joined others earlier this year calling on President Biden to drop charges against Julian Assange. The WikiLeaks founder has been languishing for over four years in the harsh Belmarsh prison in London while appealing extradition to the United States. If he is extradited, tried and convicted, Assange faces up to 175 years in jail for violating the U.S. Espionage Act for publishing documents that exposed U.S. war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Belmarsh Tribunal at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., in January was organized by the Progressive International and the Wau Holland Foundation. We spend the hour airing excerpts.

We look at the largely forgotten 1937 Memorial Day Massacre, when police in Chicago shot at and gassed a peaceful gathering of striking steelworkers and their supporters, killing 10 people, most of them shot in the back. It was a time like today, when unions were growing stronger. The workers were on strike against Republic Steel, and the police attacked them with weapons supplied by the company. The tragic story is told in a new PBS documentary. “The mass media, right up to The New York Times, was supporting the police story that they had no choice but to open fire on this mob,” says Greg Mitchell, who directed the new PBS documentary, Memorial Day Massacre: Workers Die, Film Buried, and edited a companion book that is the first oral history on the tragedy. The film can be viewed at PBS.org and was produced by Lyn Goldfarb.

The Republicans in the Texas House of Representatives lanced a boil yesterday, but as a longtime watcher, I'm still doubting that their MAGA fever has broken. The Nib's founder, cartoonist Matt Bors, announced that his website would close down in August. Editorial cartooning is an endangered species. If you enjoy reading them, please consider supporting them. * [...]

The only good day in court this week for rightwing extremist yutzes was at the U.S. Supreme Court today, unfortunately. Other than that, as detailed on today's BradCast, it's not going well for them. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.] Among the many stories of note covered on today's program... Last year, the corrupted, far-right, [...]

How has Hip Hop been a vehicle for social and racial justice and cultural power over the past half century?

A flashpoint in the Hollywood writers strike was a commencement speech at Boston University given over the weekend by David Zaslav, the CEO of Warner Brothers Discovery, who received an honorary doctorate.