WPKN: Politics, Policy, and Planet Podcast

Interview with Helena Olea, deputy director, Alianza Americas, conducted by Scott Harris.Helena Olea discusses concerns about the growing humanitarian crisis impacting the Cuban people resulting from Donald Trump’s recent executive order blocking oil shipments to the island, shutting down their energy-generating capacity while threatening secondary sanctions on any nation that provides Cuba oil supplies.

Interview with David Daley, senior fellow in communications at the group FairVote and author of the national best-seller Ratf**ked: Why Your Vote Doesn't Count, conducted by Scott Harris.David Daley examines Donald Trump’s recent threats to “nationalize” this November’s midterm elections and Steve Bannon’s recent warning that ICE agents will surround polling places — all driven by MAGA’s false claims of massive voter fraud. He shares his views on what steps could and should be taken now to implement safeguards to protect the nation from these threats and ensure we have a free and fair election.

Interview with Christopher Vials, professor in the English Department at the University of Connecticut at Storrs, conducted by Scott Harris.Professor Vials, who studies the cultural impact of the U.S. far right, is the author of Haunted by Hitler: Liberals, the Left and the Fight against Fascism in the U.S. and co-editor of The U.S. Antifascism Reader. He assesses Donald Trump’s first 12 months back in the White House of his second term and the threat he now clearly poses to the 2026 midterm election, democracy and our republic, touching on some of the issues examined in a recent commentary he co-authored with Bill Mullen, Donald Trump and the MAGA Movement’s Aspirational Fascism.

Interview with Silvia Baldwin, elected bargaining delegate and a strike captain with Starbucks Workers United union, conducted by Melinda Tuhus.Between The Lines’ Melinda Tuhus spoke with Silvia Baldwin, a barista who’s worked at a Starbucks store on the university of Pennsylvania campus in West Philadelphia for the past 3 1/2 years. She’s an elected bargaining delegate and a strike captain. Here she explains her decision to work at Starbucks and then to go out on strike — and what the union is demanding.

Interview with Mike Tork, Veterans for Peace treasurer, and Anthony Aguilar, a retired U.S. Special Forces officer, conducted by Scott Harris.Mike Tork and Anthony Aguilar discuss the Veterans For Peace education campaign, including billboards, and reaching out to active-duty U.S. soldiers and National Guard troops, urging them to “follow the law and their conscience” and refuse to obey illegal orders. This veterans campaign comes in the face of Donald Trump’s ordering the U.S. military to attack civilian boats, seize oil tankers in international waters, kidnap Venezuela’s president, threats to occupy Greenland and deploy ICE secret police force to U.S. cities, while warning of a future invocation of the Insurrection Act that could send the US Army or Marines to states across the country.

Interview with Jon B. Wolfsthal, director of global risk at the Federation of American Scientists, conducted by Scott Harris.Jon Wolfsthal discusses the Bulletin of the American Scientists’ announcement that their Doomsday Clock was recently set at 85 seconds to midnight, “the closest the Clock has ever been to midnight in its history, while calling for urgent action to limit nuclear arsenals, create international guidelines on the use of AI and form multilateral agreements to address global biological threats.”

Interview with Steve Descano, Fairfax County Virginia Commonwealth’s attorney and co-founder of the new group, Fight Against Federal Overreach, conducted by Scott Harris.Steve Descano talks about the mission of the Fight Against Federal Overreach (FAFO) national coalition of district attorneys collaborating to ensure federal officials are held accountable when they exceed their lawful authority—violating the U.S. Constitution and ignoring the Bill of Rights, the rule of law and basic human decency. The group’s goal is to hold all federal officials, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) agents and their commanders accountable for illegal actions.

Interview with Pastor Doug Pagitt, executive director of the Minneapolis-based organization Vote Common Good, conducted by Scott Harris.Pastor Doug Pagitt talks about the extraordinary courage and resilience the nation has witnessed among his city’s ordinary citizens standing up to the brutal and cruel ICE secret police force that engages in lethal violence. He discusses what people across the country can learn from the incredible grassroots organizing going on in Minneapolis to meet the current crisis and how Americans can adapt those skills, tactics and logistics to their own local efforts in defense of the rule of law and democracy.

Interview with Eddie Lejuine, a 62-year-old fisherman from Cameron, Louisiana, conducted by Melinda Tuhus.Under the Trump administration’s push for U.S. “energy dominance” — albeit one that excludes renewable sources like wind and solar — there’s a building frenzy along the Louisiana and Texas Gulf Coast where construction of six liquified natural gas or LNG export terminals are now underway or planned. That’s in addition to six terminals currently operating.Between The Lines’ Melinda Tuhus spoke with Eddie Lejuine, a fisherman from Cameron, who talks about all the fossil fuel projects now under development in his community and what fisherfolk and their supporters are doing to fight back.

Interview with Stan Cox, a research scholar in ecosphere studies at the Land Institute, conducted by Scott Harris.Stan Cox, who formerly served as lead scientist at the Land Institute for 20 years, talks about his new book Anthropause: The Beauty of Degrowth, which indicts our obsession with endless expansion and poses a new model of degrowth to protect the Earth from climate collapse.Stan is the author of eight books including, The Path to a Livable Future, Sick Planet and How the World Breaks.