 LeVoe is with us on tech and we're going to have an exciting conversation. We have two guests to discuss the people's state of the union. Our first guest is Katie Halper, the host of the Katie Halper podcast. Medea will give more details on that because she has to go on, I believe, live in about 15 minutes. We're going to go first to Katie and then to Norman Solomon. We'll also have an update from WeU. Our China is not our enemy campaign coordinator on what's going on with the balloon and everything. OK, so Medea, go ahead. Wonderful. Nice to be with you all tonight. A very exciting night to see what Biden is going to say. And we're delighted to have Katie Halper with us. She is a writer, a podcast host and a video correspondent host of the Katie Halper Show live stream podcast and WBI radio show. She also co-hosts the podcast and YouTube show Useful Idiots, which she co-founded with Matt Taiibi. And you should definitely subscribe to it. Katie is funny, smart, wonderful friend. And we're so glad to have you on with us, Katie. So to start us out tonight, if you could just give us your view of what you think are Biden's greatest accomplishments and what are his biggest disappointments from a progressive point of view. Thank you so much for having me and I'm a huge fan of CodePink, so really honored to be here. And I just want to say quickly that at nine p.m., I'll be streaming the State of the Union. So you don't have to watch it alone. You can watch it at youtube.com. That's the Katie Halper Show. And then at 10 p.m., Medea and Norman will be joining me as guests, reacting to that State of the Union. So just so people know, we'll join us there. In terms of his biggest achievements and biggest failures, I think that, you know, a lot of people compare Biden to FDR. But I actually think a better analogy can be made with LBJ, with Lyndon B. Johnson, because I think that there's a big difference between Biden's domestic and foreign policy. I think that he's done some good things domestically, but foreign policy wise, he's been pretty disastrous. And I think that what makes that particularly dangerous is that unlike with Trump, there's no built in opposition to what he does. He gets away with things that I think if Trump had done, people would have been angry about. So I think that's a very dangerous thing. And I think that we've seen some real kind of brainworms when it comes to foreign policy in the American public. And I can't really blame them because the media has been so awful on this. But in terms of especially the war, the proxy war in Ukraine, people just are have no critical thinking skills. And again, I understand why that is. It's been presented to them in such a black and white and biased way. I think that some of the good things he's done is he withdrew the troops from Afghanistan, extended the federal loan pause, repealed the global gag rule. Did some good things with extending and renewing and granting TPS, temporary protective status to certain countries. The American Rescue Plan had some good things in it, some limited funding for a clean energy transition. But even with the with Afghanistan, for instance, and Code Pink and Medina know about this and they've talked about this and organized around this, of course, they have frozen the assets there. They're basically engaged in economic warfare. Things that he promised to do like return to the Iran nuclear deal. He hasn't done. He's maintained Trump's sanctions in several countries, especially in Cuba. He, despite vowing to to change, he's prolonged the US support of the Saudi war in Yemen. He fist bumped Mohammed bin Salman. And this is after promising to treat Saudi Arabia as a pariah state. And he forced rail workers to accept a contract without paid sick leave. And then, of course, the proxy war in Ukraine, which I already mentioned, but this is very scary as this is kind of ratcheting things up with China. So that's more or less what I would my summary. Well, oh, yeah, thanks. Let's talk about more on the domestic front for a minute. The student debt issue, the Inflation Reduction Act, the money put into infrastructure and green energy. What would you say about some of those? I mean, I think some of it's good, but he definitely didn't go far enough. And, you know, with the Build Back Better deal, they they were able to be played and things like the the parliamentarian, right, like saying that they couldn't raise the $15 minimum wage because the parliamentarian mean George Bush fired his parliamentarian. I think that one of the things that Biden does very well, which is dangerous, is that he makes it seem and the Democrats do this a lot. He makes it seem like it's not that he doesn't want to do these things. It's just that he can't do these things. And of course, if he wanted to do them, he could get them done. We've seen that in the past. So we have a five more. Well, yeah, we have a little more time with Katie, so you can put your questions in the in the chat or in the question area. But Marcy, you have a question. Sure. So how do we respond to the fact that Democrats are so I don't for want of a better word loyal to this Biden presidency that they're almost sleepwalking us into World War Three. Right. And suggestions, Katie, how do we wake people up? I think that there are a couple of different approaches. If if we're talking about like convincing people and persuading people, I've found it useful to make the argument, especially with Ukraine, that if we care about Ukrainians, we should want to end this war. People have been so primed to be empathetic towards Ukrainians, which is great. I mean, they're sympathetic in a way that they're not towards people of Yemen and Palestine, for instance. The answer to that isn't don't care about Ukrainians. It's care about others as much as Ukrainians. And also because you care about Ukrainians, you should want negotiation and diplomacy. I think that when I've told people how the West has gotten in the way of peace negotiations and Medea, of course, you wrote about this in your book. But I think that that sometimes allows people to wake up to a reality that they otherwise wouldn't see. Once they realize that it's kind of a game changer. And I think it's kind of allows for a like a paradigm shift. And all of a sudden they can question all of the assumptions that they had. Because what really is happening when you have people who are willing to bleed Russia, bleed Ukrainians in order to, you know, degrade Russia militarily? And I think people are very surprised by that. I think also the Hitlerification of Putin, which we've seen a lot, is something that needs to be pushed back against. Of course, you can explain to people that if he's if he's Hitler, which he's not, but if he is Hitler, the usefulness in that trope is that, first of all, we've seen this before and America, the US government loves to pretend that whoever they're at odds with is the next Hitler. But the takeaway from that is no negotiation or no diplomacy. And that's obviously something that what's the end game then? What do they want to have happened? So I think that's another way just in terms of trying to meet people where they're at. I appreciate that because, you know, we all hear that he's Hitler. And then, you know, so I'm glad that you shared how you would come back. I also appreciate your analogy, Biden to LBJ. I think that's perfect because LBJ promised to end the war in Vietnam, and yet he escalated it. And we saw war in Laos and Cambodia, you know, all over into China. So what changed the course of history, in part, was not only the GI resistance movement, the anti-war movement in this country, but there was a primary challenge. Right? Right. There was, yeah. And we'll we'll get into that with Norman, but I have a question for you, Katie, which is with all the criticisms you have of not only Biden, but the Democratic Party, do you consider yourself a member of the Democratic Party? I don't know, honestly. I think I am technically I am technically. And what do you advise people who are very cynical about the state of our two party system, but are looking at the Republicans with horror, especially after January 6th of last year? Right. Well, I think we have to make it so that politicians, you know, we have to organize and we have to come together and organize in a strategic way so that politicians pay a price if they don't do the right thing. And I think we also have to admit not victim blaming like this is not. We're not the corrupt people at fault. We're not the sellouts or the kind of enablers of of oligarchy, but we have to be smart and look at what we can do because for better or for worse, those are the people in power. And we have to look at the way that we can influence them. I've had third party people on my show. I think that there's a role in kind of running outside the system. I also think we do live in a two party system and whatever. I mean, I think on a presidential level, it's an interesting question. I think on other levels, it's harder to make headway. But can I just respond to something that was in the comments also? Surely someone wrote that they they support Ukraine and it was they were offended or didn't like the fact that I said that the mainstream media is is kind of giving people brain worms. I'm not saying don't support Ukrainians or Ukraine. I'm not saying you should be cheerleading what Putin did. I mean, I've said many times that it was predictable, but not justifiable. But the question is, we're here now. So so now what? Like we can vilify Putin all we want. What does that do? What's the end game again? That's what I want to know. I think said, thank you. I think Brian has a question if we can bring him in from it. Sure. Thanks. Thanks, I'm wondering, Katie, what you think of the opposition to our deeper involvement in the war in Ukraine that comes from the right way, that comes from Republicans and even even more establishment of Republicans and some of the outcomes even. Is it real? Is it just a way to score political points? What's your take on it? Um, I mean, I think that you. You have, I guess it depends on the individual, but I think that there are people who from the right wing will oppose intervention. They may not oppose it for the reasons that we do. I think that sometimes if you point to that, people will say, like, well, they're not really left, they're not progressive, they're not anti-war. I think there are people who aren't not anti-war per se, but who, for economic reasons or other reasons, don't want to be more involved in foreign wars. And I think the question is, how do we have politicians work with those people? There's a difference between us out in the streets. I mean, there's a lot of talk about this, like who do we work with and who are our allies and are certain people too toxic to be working with? But, you know, politicians are working, whether or not we like it. They're going to be voting for things. So I think we should embrace whatever bipartisan opposition there is to war. That doesn't mean that we then become fans of these people or we think that they're even genuine sincere people. I mean, there are still politicians at the end of the day, but whatever needs to happen to get some votes against, you know, I think a march towards World War III needs to happen. Katie, what about this idea of a green transition that Biden ran on? Do you think he has fulfilled any part of that vision? Well, I mean, I think he's promising things, but he's not, he often, he uses very good rhetoric, but doesn't deliver. So we'll have to see, but there's been again, like limited funding towards this transition. We'll see how good it is. We'll see what it actually accomplishes. I think it's better than what we'd get from a Republican, but it's also not enough. A lot of the things that he does are very superficial band-aid solutions also. And he's terrible in the environment. Like he just refused to ban, like to protect whales. He just, his administration just did something with whales. There's like a very low number of right whales are called. He's been, you know, as worse than Trump when it comes to leasing gas drilling. So even when we do acknowledge his, like his steps in the right direction, we have to remember all the things he doesn't do. And that's what, and we have to do that because without people pressuring him, you know, he won't do the right thing. So before you leave, sorry, go ahead. I was gonna say, before you leave us, Katie, we have over 200 people on and there are people who are very active and activist. And while this Code Pink Congress focuses a lot on the foreign policy issues, is there anything on the domestic front that you would advise activists to really pay attention to in the coming, you know, a couple of months, anything you think will, has any possibility of positive movement? I think his immigration stuff, which is domestic, it's not far, I mean, it's international policy in some ways, but it's domestic. There's a lot coming up with that with Title 42. I think that his, some of his positions on marijuana is also really good and we should make sure that he fulfills on those. Again, he makes a lot of promises that he hasn't kept and probably the most honest thing that he's ever said, it sadly is, you know, nothing would fundamentally change. And he said that behind closed doors at a donor event. But I think that, you know, to the extent that there's been anything good, it's been in the domestic sphere, but it's not good enough. And yeah, and I think that he's, the country should be alarmed by his foreign policy. Thank you so much, Katie Halper. Katie, do you want to mention your live stream one more time? Oh yeah, so come at 9 p.m. we'll be watching the State of the Union with like, we'll be kind of riffing on in real time. And then if you, so you can watch with us and then at 10 p.m. Medea and Norm will be joining my other guests, including Daniel Bestner, the historian Daniel Bestner and the comedian, Gareth Reynolds and Jack Allison. And we'll be... Sounds like a great show. It'll be great. People can find you on YouTube. Yeah, youtube.com slash the Katie Halper show. And you can find me on Twitter also at kthelpsletter, K letter T, HALPS. And you can find the useful idiots podcast on wherever you find your podcasts, the Katie Halper show on Apple podcasts. And yeah, YouTube. Wonderful. Well, we love you Katie. Thank you so much. Thanks a lot. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for having me. This is the People's State of the Union before Biden delivers his State of the Union. And our next guest, I am so pleased to announce is Norman Solomon. No Norman for a long time. Wait a minute, did you want to do the updates? The updates. The updates, you're right. Yes, Wei, are you with us? Wei Yu is the coordinator of our China is Not Our Enemy Campaign. And she put together a fantastic press release on the heels of the balloon incident. And we want to hear all about that and your response to all this hysteria about a weather balloon. Yes. Thank you so much, Marcy, for having me here. Just really quickly to go over this balloon situation. Last week, a balloon was discovered in US airspace. And it was from China. And China did respond to the discovery that the balloon was for weather research. It was not intended to enter US airspace. And it was a civilian airship. Even the Pentagon said, quote, the balloon posed no serious physical or intelligence threat, unquote. So this is just a really confusing situation. And we would expect our leaders to remain levelheaded and be communicated with their counterparts in China to address the situation. But instead, in response, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken postponed his visit to China, which was scheduled for February 5th and 6th, so the last couple of days. Like Marcy mentioned, we put out a statement on the issue on Friday. This one balloon is not a reason to cancel or postpone indefinitely a state visit. If we're just counting on these very small acts, but then on the other hand, US aggression towards China has been nonstop in the past few months. Just a few very quick examples. Last week, the US military acquired access to four new bases in the Philippines. They just opened a new base in Guam. They last November, the USS Chancellorville actually sailed into South China Sea directly with the intention to challenge China's sovereignty. So with all of these things that China has shouldered to make sure diplomacy can go on, Blinken postponed his trip over this very small reason of this balloon that no one really has control over. So in addition to Secretary Blinken, we also see our lawmakers and mainstream media inflaming the situation, adding to the tension instead of the escalating it. We know that balloons like this, this kind of situation has happened before under Trump administration and even last year during Biden's term, but it was never made into a big deal like this, like now, as they are ramping up more aggression towards China. So the balloon was shot down over the weekend and now that the balloon is down, there's a lot of humor around the situation. And like we mentioned before, there is a imbalance between this one tiny one balloon and US reaction towards it. There is some sort of irony to that. But then there is also a lot of humor talking about the hysteria coming out of the balloon. We have to be cautious that this matter is not a joke. The warmongers are hell bent on driving hate towards China. This morning, the House Financial Service Committee had a meeting to talk about the, quote unquote, economic threat from China. And we have one of our co-think organizers, Olivia, was actually there in the room and she said that the meeting was just outrageous and she was actually really scared because inside the walls of Congress, there's so much hate that's taking us closer to war. But we need our leaders to dedicate, to put dedication to peace and respect for humanity instead of their personal political game at the center of our leadership. Thank you so much, Wei Yu. The coordinator of our China is not our enemy campaign. And I think the point you make is that, you know, our aggression is calculated. What we're doing is calculated. So we shouldn't minimize US provocations. Okay, we're gonna move on now for our People's State of the Union address with our next guest, Norman Solomon, who I've known for years in the anti-war movement. Norman Solomon is the founder of Roots Action. He has launched a Don't Run Joe petition campaign calling on Joe Biden to announce that he is not running for president in 2024. Of course, Code Pink is a nonpartisan, but Norman Solomon can tell us about his campaign. He's also the founding director of the Institute for Public Accuracy and author of a new book, War Made Invisible, that will be published next June. Norman has written a lot of books. Some of his other books include War Made Easy, How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death and Made Love Got War, Close Encounters with America's Warfare State. So with the People's State of the Union, Norman Solomon, tell us what you think or how you would evaluate President Biden's two years in office coming up on a third year. How does he fare on foreign policy? Thanks, Marcy. Before I forget, I wanna say that Code Pink Congress is one of the bright spots of developments for progressive movements in this country in the last couple of years. And I really urge people stay in touch with Code Pink Congress and also keep in mind that during the week of February 21st, 25th, the Peace and Ukraine Coalition will be having and organizing actions around the country, also defuse nuclear war on the anniversary day, February 24th of the invasion of Ukraine. And so I'd urge you to go to Code Pink website, go to the defuse nuclear war website and get involved because we can't just consume history like white bread off the shelf. We're trying to create it. I was just thinking, getting sort of an echo of a song from long ago. You don't need a weather balloon to know which way the wind is blowing. And it's blowing right now fiercely with militarism in this country. There are so many barometers to measure it. Certainly the huge increase. Biden asked for way over $800 billion in the next fiscal year for most of the military spending. Didn't even account for all of it. And then the smartest guys in the room in the House and Senate upped that by dozens more billions of dollars. And then Biden rejoiced when he signed it. That's a tangible indicator, but also a reflection of just the momentum of confrontation. We have the US spending more money on the military than the next 10 countries in the world combined. And most of those are allies, 750 bases around the world. And we have particular, the so-called war on terror has worn out some of its fiduciary welcome. So now it's a matter of Russia and China. And it's in search of enemies. And what better for the military industrial intelligence complex than the two big countries of Russia and China? And so it would be just laughable if it wasn't so tragic when you have someone like Secretary of State Anthony Blinken saying with a straight face something that actually is very true. That it should be unacceptable in an international order for one country to invade another. Well, Anthony Blinken was chief of staff of the Senate committee in 2002 in the middle of that year, chaired by Joe Biden that green lighted and assisted the invasion of Iraq with a phony hearings. So the hypocrisy of the US does not in any way justify the horrific invasion and war on Ukraine that Russia continues. And that works both ways I think that the war crimes of Russia don't justify US hypocrisy and also vice versa. Nor does any of it justify what the US has done in Iraq, in Afghanistan and elsewhere. When we think about the rhetoric of human rights and then as Katie Halper mentioned and I thought everything she presented was just really powerful and rang true when we think about the fist bump. What was it last summer between Biden and the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, a country that's responsible for perhaps a quarter of a million deaths in Ukraine, a historic cholera epidemic. These are crimes mostly against children. And yet one of the many broken promises from Biden was he was supposed to rein that in. He said that he was gonna stop the US aiding that war on Yemen led by Saudi Arabia. Another huge failure if we can call it that tragic in human terms, humongous human terms at this point is that the United States has really never under the Biden administration engaged in diplomacy in terms of Ukraine. This is a point that almost a year ago Jeffrey Sachs made in an op-ed in the Financial Times. It's a point that the dear Benjamin and Nicholas Davies make in detail in their book about the Ukraine war. And yet it's uphill battle as usual for progressives and others to get the so-called mainstream media to deal with basic facts. It's almost exactly a year ago in his first state of the union address when Biden, as I counted something like presented more than 6,000 words. This was right after the invasion of Ukraine had begun. Right after before that invasion the US had refused to engage in diplomacy. For instance, to say something logical which would be take Ukraine off the table to join NATO. And a Biden in a news conference refused to accept that very reasonable pathway towards preventing a horrific war. And then when he spoke in his state of the union address a year ago, all those words included not one word about nuclear war, nuclear weapons or the danger of a nuclear holocaust, thermonuclear war that would essentially a minor detail destroy according to the best scientific estimates about 99% of humanity on the planet. And yet this is set aside by the corporate media set aside by the media and political establishment. Nuclear war in general is something that is just treated as though it's a minor detail that we're better off not thinking about not talking about not demanding that there'd be recognition of the imperative of reducing the chances of nuclear war. And by the way, I do wanna thank Marcy Winograd for doing a lot of analysis of the nuclear posture review that was issued by the Biden administration. I think if you go to the CodePink website you can find some of her work there. This is a major document that the Biden administration after a lot of deliberation and delay issued one of the things that Biden promised and there's been a lot of blaming of mansion and cinema over this and that on domestic policy. Some of it's justified blaming them. Some of it Biden could have bypassed with executive orders and so forth but mansion and cinema nobody in Congress will force Biden to increase the chances of nuclear war by putting in and accepting and issuing the nuclear posture review that failed despite his promise to say that the United States would not be the first to use nuclear weapons. It's sort of basic. It doesn't solve a whole lot but it's the basic step to say we're not gonna be a first to use nuclear weapons. So the agenda in terms of China and Russia meanwhile very dangerous Nancy Pelosi who by the way has just endorsed the militarist Adam Schiff for the apparently open US Senate seat in California Nancy Pelosi going to Taiwan and very few members of Congress doing anything but applaud that very little criticism of a very dangerous step jeopardizing the policies that have been in place for decades in terms of recognition of mainland China as China and really throwing fuel on a very dangerous fire in terms of Taiwan, China, South China Sea and so forth. I want to pause and not go on and on but hopefully there's time for some questions. The perennial is still with us, a number of perennials in terms of villainizing certain peoples in certain countries worse than the Obama administration which made strides has been Biden's policies towards Cuba. Sanctions being imposed on Cuba against evidence keeping Cuba on the so-called terrorist list now for so many decades the support of the Israeli government from the United States and we're midway through what is it a $38 billion 10-year pledge of unequivocal paid financial aid including military to Israel primarily military and yet no matter how far right and how fascistic the Israeli government gets we have the Biden administration saying we're with you and Blinken was just there and was the usual mealy mouth stuff and I know we hope there'll be a two-stage solution and so forth and standing next to Nakanyao and this should just be completely unacceptable. So I think I'll pause there and let to respond to any questions. Jared, thank you so much. Norman Solomon, executive director of Roots Action the founder of Roots Action, author, journalist. So Norman, listening to this I can imagine that people are thinking, all right so we have two major political parties. You and I both worked really hard to try to elect Bernie Sanders. Now we see him on board for NATO and this war in Ukraine and all of that is very disappointing. Of course, he's much better on the domestic front than most. That being said, we're at a point in our history where we're facing a real fascist threat I think from the Republican party, purging education of any kind of critical theory or even an understanding of our history, our race's history. And then we have the Democrats who are a gung-ho with the neo-conservatives to take us into the next war seemingly. Okay, so where does that leave us? That leaves us with your next article or with your previous article. Don't run Joe, so tell us about that campaign. Yeah, I think, you know, Wave sketched out as very accurate and Katie was talking about this earlier that there's a sharp distinction between foreign and domestic policy. At the same time, we all know, I think in this discourse that there's a through line, corporate power, hostility to the riffraff, which is viewed as the riffraff real people, the working class, being able to run the country instead of if you will, the ruling class continuing to be in control. And so that is a major threat. I agree that we're facing a reality of a neo-fascist party, Republican party. It's a white supremacist party. It's hostile to democracy. It would like to get rid of what does exist, elements of democracy in this country. I think Cornel West said it well during the 2016 or 2020 election and said, we're facing two parties. One is neoliberal and the other is neo-fascist. And I don't think we can conflate the two and say it doesn't matter that we need to keep Republicans or remove Republicans from power. So I think that that is a reality. And it's about organizing when people say, oh, the democratic party is terrible. Who could argue with that overall? Capitalism is terrible. That's the nature of the beast that we're dealing with, the corporate power and the trillions of dollars held in anti-democratic ways and wielded in anti-democratic ways. So I certainly don't have any perfect solution to recommend or anything approximating it, but I do think that it's clear it matters who's president. We're still reeling from the Reagan era in many respects. And so unless we can get Biden out of the way, clear the path for somebody better or not as bad, depending on how you look at it, then we're really screwed because you look at Biden's foreign policy and you know that the Republicans are gonna nominate somebody who is just atrocious. We don't wanna have those two possibilities being the only ones. Thank you. Nadia Bryan, would you like to ask a question? Well, I'd like to ask who you would like to see running this time. Of course, it's something already on people's minds and you know, Bernie has ran twice and is elderly. What do you see as the possibilities? Yeah, it's a question that's come up a lot from reporters towards the Don't Run Joe team and wearing that hat, the answer is, hey, well, we're first trying to clear the path. Ritz Action, of course, independently supported Bernie in 2016 and 2020. I think he's done great stuff as chair of the budget committee in two years. You know, the good stuff from Biden largely, I think for combination of reasons, he was accommodating the Bernie Sanders movement, if you will. Bernie's foreign policy has really deteriorated in the last year. He really rebuked the minimal letter that was signed by a lot of members of the Progressive Caucus last fall, calling for diplomacy. He's been part of unfortunately demonizing the word diplomacy towards Ukraine. So, but that aside, we're not really promoting anybody. I mean, as you know, Medea, it's really often a dilemma, a conundrum because while speaking for myself, people I would like to see as president like Rashida Tlaib were told that's not possible in this universe. So I think we need to push for the best we could in terms of those names that are bandied about in the mass media for what that's worth. The best I can think of is Rokana. I don't think that he's planning to run. And I would footnote it by, this is a metaphor and a reality of the, should I say cowardice, let me say conformity of Democrats in Congress. The latest polling says that only 37% of registered Democrats in this country want Biden to run for reelection. So most registered Democrats don't want Biden to be the nominee again. You can hardly find one Democrat in Congress to say what most registered Democrats are saying about that. Brian, are you there? Yeah, and I'm wondering Norman and great talk, by the way. But I'm wondering how long do you think President Biden has to make this decision and declare publicly whether he's gonna run or not? At what point does he need to come forward and let everyone know his intention? Politically, as I understand it, it's usually the incumbent president who goes for second term will announce in the spring before. So if he was on the usual timeline, it would be this spring, you know the truism is that no president voluntarily wants to seem like a lame duck. I think he could kick the can down the road for a number of months. And I'm very apprehensive that if he does run, and you know, it's like the three letter word ego can be so powerful. If he does run, it just seems problematic for a lot of reasons. He's gonna be defending the status quo. And a lot of the pundits say, oh, he beat Trump once, he could beat him again. Well, Trump was representing the status quo and lost if Biden's representing the status quo, which he would, I think all bets are off. Norman, we have Jim Carpenter with us. And you know, I'm gonna switch hats for a minute. When I'm not a coordinator of Code Pink Congress or co-chair of the peace and Ukraine coalition, which I urge everybody to join peace and Ukraine coalition. I also co-chair the Progressive Democrats of America's foreign policy team. We are the insurgent Democrats in the Democratic Party. Again, this is not Code Pink, I have a different hat. But Jim Carpenter, my co-chair, has been adamant that we push, excuse me, that we clear the path for a primary challenge. Jim, are you there? Perhaps if you're there, you can say hello, tell us about your thoughts. Well, he may be on mute. I don't know, we'll keep trying to bring Jim on. Alan Minsky is the chair of Progressive Democrats of America. And, you know, as an organization, PDA has been reticent to challenge a sitting president because of course, that makes it more difficult to get other things done. But certainly the foreign policy team is ready for a primary challenge. And to the question of who would run, I think at some point, insurgent Democrats need to start interviewing. Or you're reminding me of something, which is that, well, it's really great that the squad has been generally very positive progressive, often courageous force. I think that there has been an unhealthy aspect of relationships between grassroots progresses and leadership of the progressive caucus. I think in general, we've been too deferential. And it reminds me of something that Martin Luther King wrote. He said, too often civil rights leaders who were supposed to represent the movement to the establishment ended up representing the establishment to the movement. And I think that's been happening a lot. Where even the leadership of the progressive caucus that we don't need to question their sincerity or their ideals, but they have said that they represent progressive forces in this country. And yet so often they are in a bubble and end up telling us why they can't speak out. And we shouldn't accept that. It's not about screaming at them. It's not about being abusive or slanderous in any way. I'm not saying we should be even rude, but I think we should be willing to speak clearly and challenge anybody in Congress, no matter how progressive they say they are when they're not speaking out and they're not doing what we need, which includes challenging the blank check arm shipments to Ukraine. Marcy, you're on mute, but if I can ask Norman a question, I see, I think it's Michael Beer from Non-Violence International said, he thinks it's a mistake to focus on presidential elections so early. We should really be focusing on issues. And so on the domestic front, what are the issues that you find most important that you think that people on this call should be focusing on? Yeah, I can understand that perspective and we should always be talking about issues and so forth. I do fear that if we're stuck with a president who is a brick wall that we cannot move at all, then all of our focus on issues as we found under four years of Trump will be for naught or at least we can't change policy. Oh, well, drilling on federal lands, I think Katie mentioned that. Biden promised he would reduce it instead, he's increased it. Removing the cap on social security taxes. Again, he promised he would fight, if you're over, Bill Gates is paying the same social security taxes as somebody making 150,000 a year, that caps should be removed. Community college free for two years. Biden said he would fight for that. The public option at least for healthcare, of course we need, we know we are aware we need Medicare for all, paid sick leave. We saw how willing Biden was willing to fight for paid sick leave for the railroad workers. So we should be insistent in joining the civilized world that family leave, paid sick leave for parents and so forth should be real. I think that the nuclear power subsidies that Biden is continuing, we should strive to end. This all the above nonsense is crazy for energy policy. At the Albo Canyon, they're getting subsidies not only from Gavin Newsom's the legislature that's so afraid of Gavin Newsom in California, but also from the federal government. One good thing, and I think it could be done more effectively, but it's a great start. The Biden administration has really made strides for antitrust work and the Federal Trade Commission and so forth. So I think that's really important. And also fighting for what was in Build Back Better. We need a great new deal. We've got to fight for it. And just to follow up without Norman, there are just a couple of things that he can do by executive order that you can follow us. Yes, many things that could be done. A lot of that has to do, for instance, an example was student debt. We had to wait for the bulk of the two years to get an executive order on student debt and Trump had successfully in a very minor way adjusted student debt. And so, of course, we know it's tied up in the courts, but instead of saying, oh, we're gonna give 10,000 of a debt relief or maybe 20,000 if you have a Pell Grant, it should have been complete, the 1.7 trillion. And I think that's a key example. What I suggest is if people want to see a full list of executive orders that could have been done, and still in many cases can be done by Biden, I just Google executive order and the American prospect and they've been keeping a continuous log of what Biden has done with executive orders and what he hasn't. And unfortunately, he hasn't utilized that tool nearly as much as he could have. This is true. So Norman, I'm reading the chat and somebody said, we shouldn't be focusing on presidential politics, we should focus on issues. Are they mutually exclusive? Well, we need to do all of it. And I used to agree with the idea, it didn't matter who sits in the Oval Office, it matters who's sitting in. And I think it's a false choice. We need to be willing and able to sit in and we need to be willing and able to affect who is president, why give that power over when you look at the history of our lifetimes, how important it has been who's and in response to social movements. It's not like we're in one different universe than the electoral sphere. We need social movements to propel change. That's what it ultimately depends on. But if you look historically, as I mentioned, the Reagan era, the attacks on women of color, poor women, so-called welfare reform was just stated in the Reagan administration and then you had this corporate tool named Bill Clinton launching an attack on poor women that has had tremendous effects with so-called welfare reform in 1996. So I just don't think it's viable to say, we just care about issues. We don't care who the president of the United States is. We need to be able to address all of it and think at the same time. I see that Jim Carpenter has his hand up. Jim, are you there? Yes, I'm here. And so thanks for being on this call, Mormon. You're really brilliant. My wife, L.D. Just wanted to say, I guess I as a progressive Democrat of America are pushing Biden not to run. The reason is because I think in being Iraq wasn't just bad policy, it was criminal. And starting afghan by freezing their assets is not just bad policy, it's criminal. And we should call our criminals out and by calling our own war criminals out, I think we incentivized Russians to call their war criminal out. So that's my reasoning for why Biden shouldn't run. How do you react to that? I think there's so many reasons Biden shouldn't run. There are these huge moral tactical reasons combined. So you've outlined some. I think at a basis of policy, we need a much, much more progressive president. As a matter of tactics, we need a much, much better candidate because I don't think that a phony populist like Biden is well suited to defeat the demagogic pseudo populists of the right wing. And that's, Hillary Clinton was a sitting duck because she didn't resonate as a genuine populist. And I would just use the metaphor. I mean, there's a mistake in the media. Well, it's a spin. That somehow the way to defeat the right wing is to move towards the right. And I would cite, for instance, when Bernie Sanders ran in 2016, in the primary in West Virginia, he won every county in West Virginia, a red state, a deep red state because he was a genuine populist. And I think that's what we need to fight the right wing. Thank you so much, Norman. So people are asking the chat, where's the petition? I wanna sign it. Oh, well, you can go to don'trunjo.org. We're organizing intensively in New Hampshire and in Nevada, but also nationally. So don'trunjo.org and we're gonna try to keep the pressure on if we can and build it up. Let's talk about Elizabeth Warren for a minute. You mentioned that one of the highlights of Biden's term in office so far has been challenging the monopolies, anti-trust work. Doesn't that emanate from Elizabeth Warren or from who? Why? Why is that better on that? I think it emanated from the Occupy Movement, which you could say emanated from the 1990s work against GATT and the WTO and all that organizing, as the wonderful and much Miss Tim Carpenter said, the spreadsheets never make it into the history books and all this methodical organizing that's gone on year after year, it provided a floor that someone like Elizabeth Warren could stand on. Can she run? Would she run? Do you think she's a viable candidate? Well, back when she ran last time, I think to a lot of people's surprise, she didn't get a lot of votes. I think she didn't even win the primary in Massachusetts. We could try to analyze why. I think that we should be forgiving about our resentments of the past as much as possible. They're developed real friction between Bernie and Elizabeth Warren and I'm biased. I think it was all Elizabeth Warren's fault, but we need to deal with corporate power and try to overthrow it. And I think she's a really valuable voice that way. Norman, is there anything on the State of the Union tonight that you would advise people to look out for? Oh, I just saw a memo that came out from the White House a couple of hours ago and apparently a big thing is gonna be unity. And he really was talking, going to talk apparently about reaching across the aisle and I always think that's a bad idea if you know your arms gonna get cut off. I mean, the idea of unity with these neo-fascists, it's just really scary and hopefully he won't go overboard with it, but it appears he probably will. All right, well, we're gonna take some action tonight. So we want everybody to stay with us. We're gonna take some action on Ukraine, but first let's unmute and thank Norman for joining us. Can we all do that? Hey, thanks everybody. Thank you, Norman. Thank you, Norman. Thank you, Norman. Thank you, Norman. Thank you, Norman. Thank you, Norman. Norman for president. Yes. Thank you. Ah, you're the one. Thank you from the best of peace. Medea's president, Norman the vice-president. I'll go first. We've got a lot of presidential opals here, potentials. All right, so at this point, Jay, if you can insert into the chat the tanks, no thanks link, everybody could click on that. If you haven't already done so, that will send a message to your member of Congress that you oppose endless weapons shipments for a protracted proxy war in Ukraine, for any kind of war in Ukraine. And they need to hear from us, right? So Shay's gonna work on that. We're also gonna make some calls to Capitol Hill. And there we go. Tanks, no thanks. So if you could click on that and send your message. We had one earlier, Patriot Missiles Hell No. We don't want those either. We need to continue these conversations, these messages, despite the fact that we don't have one courageous Democrat in Congress right now who'll get up and say no more proxy war in Ukraine. We do have some members of the Republican Party for various reasons, some want to just go straight to war with China. But we need to let our representatives know what we think. We also know that Norman and the Peace and Ukraine Coalition, Code Pink, we've been calling for pickets in front of our Congress members' offices, certainly as we approach the one-year mark of the anniversary of the Russian invasion. All right, we're also gonna get on the phone and we'll put in the chat the phone number for Congress 202-224-3121. And I will ask that you talk to your senators, your Congress members, and say, speak up for diplomacy, right? There's the number, speak up, make a public statement in support of diplomacy, how about that? Make a public statement in support of diplomacy, stop in Ukraine, stop voting for endless war with all of these weapons. So you can call them now, even though it's after hours, most of them have a place where you can leave a message, not all, but most. Yes, and so I'm gonna ask Medea, Brian, all of us to get on the phone. Oh, me and myself. I have to just say, I love the intensity with which Marcy was typing, I could tell.