The Palestine Exception: Why Academic Freedom Stops Here

In this week’s Scheer Intelligence, Robert Scheer sits down with historian James Loeffler to dismantle the increasingly convenient narrative that antisemitism is whatever politicians say it is. Loeffler’s new book, Exceptional Hatred, traces how America has repeatedly reinvented the meaning of “the Jew”—from religious outsider to racial threat to political scapegoat—and how today’s panic over campus speech and Israel has turned that long history into a blunt instrument for silencing dissent. What emerges in this conversation is not a culture‑war caricature but a sober warning: when the government starts defining what Jews must believe, and which criticisms are forbidden, it isn’t protecting anyone—it’s reviving the very logic the First Amendment was written to prevent.

Anthony Fauci was once presented as the unimpeachable voice of science. Now, confronted with questions about gain-of-function research, the Wuhan laboratory and what government officials knew about COVID-19’s origins, he has invoked the Fifth Amendment 111 times. Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern joins Robert Scheer to examine the newly released documents, the intelligence agencies accused of burying the truth and a corporate press more interested in protecting official narratives than exposing them. Millions died, the world was upended—and Washington still believes the public is not entitled to honest answers.

As Donald Trump openly defies constitutional norms and concentrates power in the White House, many Americans see him as a dangerous break from the nation's democratic traditions. Sociologist Charles Derber argues the opposite. In this wide-ranging conversation with Robert Scheer, the Boston College professor contends that authoritarianism has been embedded in the American political system since its founding. Drawing on the history of the Constitution, the Magna Carta, corporate power, and popular resistance, Derber argues that Trump did not invent oligarchy—he simply stripped away the illusion that the United States was ever governed primarily by the people. The discussion explores the country's long struggle between concentrated wealth and democratic movements, asking whether today's crisis marks the collapse of an old political order—or the beginning of a genuine fight to build one that serves ordinary Americans.

The former congressman tells Robert Scheer that a provision buried in the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act could integrate the United States and Israel at the highest levels of military technology—without meaningful public debate or congressional scrutiny.Former Congressman Dennis Kucinich has spent decades warning about the machinery of permanent war. But in a new conversation with Robert Scheer, he argues that Congress is now on the verge of crossing a line without precedent in American military history.At the center of Kucinich's warning is Section 219 of the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act, a provision he says would formally integrate key areas of U.S. and Israeli military development, including artificial intelligence, autonomous weapons, quantum sensing, cyber and electronic warfare, biotechnology, missile defense, drones and directed-energy systems.“They call it integration, but I call it a merger,” Kucinich tells Scheer.The implications, he argues, go far beyond traditional military aid or weapons sales. Kucinich warns that the provision could create new counterintelligence risks, deepen U.S. dependence on Israel's military infrastructure and technology, blur questions of war powers and further entangle Washington in Israel's expanding regional conflicts.Even more alarming, Kucinich says, is how little debate the proposal has received. Rather than being considered through a separate treaty or subjected to extensive congressional hearings, the provision has been folded into a massive defense authorization bill that lawmakers will face enormous political pressure to support.“This provision has been smuggled into the bill,” Kucinich argues. “There's never been any debate.”For Scheer, the contradiction is impossible to ignore. At the moment the United States marks 250 years since declaring its independence, Washington may be moving toward an unprecedented military dependence on another state—one whose conduct in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon has placed it at the center of international accusations of genocide and grave violations of international law.In this urgent edition of Scheer Intelligence, Scheer and Kucinich examine what Section 219 could mean for American sovereignty, constitutional government and the future of war—and why a provision of such consequence has received so little attention from Congress, the Democratic opposition and the mainstream press.

Women are more visible in public life than ever before. They lead corporations, run for president, dominate popular culture and shape public debate. Yet according to media scholar Allison Butler, visibility is not the same as power—and it is certainly not the same as being heard.In this wide-ranging conversation with Joshua Scheer, Butler discusses the themes of her book Judgment of Gender: Analyzing the Silencing of Women, examining how patriarchy, capitalism, media narratives and political power continue to shape whose voices matter and whose stories are ignored. From Roe v. Wade and reproductive rights to Hillary Clinton, Kamala Harris, transgender inclusion, critical media literacy and the enduring legacy of misogyny, Butler argues that many of the structures limiting women's autonomy have not disappeared—they have simply adapted to new cultural realities.At the center of the discussion is a challenging question: How can women be increasingly visible in politics, media and popular culture while simultaneously remaining marginalized, controlled and silenced? Butler contends that answering that question requires looking beyond individual personalities and toward the systems that determine which stories are told, who gets to tell them and who benefits from the status quo.The conversation is ultimately a call for critical inquiry—not only into media narratives, but into the economic, political and cultural structures that shape modern life. As Butler argues, meaningful change begins when people become willing to question what has been normalized and confront the power behind it.

As millions of Americans struggle with soaring rents, crushing childcare costs, stagnant wages and a political system increasingly captured by wealth, a new political force has emerged from New York City. In this episode of Scheer Intelligence, Robert Scheer speaks with journalist and author Ted Hamm about the remarkable rise of Mayor Zohran Mamdani — a self-described democratic socialist whose message of affordability, economic justice and political independence has transformed him from insurgent candidate to one of the most closely watched political figures in America.Drawing on his new book Meet Mayor Mamdani, Hamm traces how Mamdani built a coalition around issues that cut across traditional political divides: housing, transit, childcare, inequality and the growing sense that the American economic model no longer works for ordinary people. The conversation explores whether Mamdani represents a revival of New Deal-style politics, why his success has rattled Democratic Party leaders, and how his outspoken support for Palestinian rights has reshaped political debate far beyond New York.At a moment when both major parties face deep public distrust, Scheer and Hamm examine whether Mamdani's rise is an isolated phenomenon—or the leading edge of a broader political realignment. Can a movement built around affordability and economic democracy challenge the power of billionaires, corporate interests and party insiders? Or will the forces that have long dominated American politics ultimately absorb or defeat it? The answers may help determine not only the future of New York City, but the future direction of American politics itself.

On this episode of Scheer Intelligence, host Robert Scheer speaks with media scholar Robin Andersen about her explosive new book The Complicit Lens: U.S. Media Coverage of Israel’s Genocide in Gaza. Andersen argues that corporate and legacy media did not merely fail to report the destruction of Gaza honestly — they actively distorted it through censorship, euphemism, and the suppression of historical context. From banned words like “occupation” and “genocide” to newsroom pressure campaigns and attacks on academic freedom, the conversation exposes how media institutions helped manufacture public consent while silencing dissent. What emerges is not simply a critique of journalism, but a warning about the collapse of democratic discourse itself.

A tenured professor can spend decades building a career, win awards, earn lifetime recognition, and still be discarded the moment political speech crosses an invisible line. That is what happened to Dr. Sang-hae Kil after she supported Palestinian protest on campus. Her teaching record was untouched, her scholarship praised, and a faculty panel ruled unanimously against punishment — yet San José State University fired her anyway. The message is unmistakable: on many campuses, academic freedom survives only until it collides with Palestine.

The newly released Epstein files don’t just implicate a handful of powerful men—they expose an entire architecture of American power built on impunity, secrecy, and the quiet expectation that the rules apply only to everyone else. As Robert Scheer and Nolan Higdon dig into this week’s revelations, the picture that emerges is not simply one of individual crimes but of a political and financial aristocracy that treats the law as a suggestion, democracy as theater, and vulnerable people as expendable. From Harvard boardrooms to Clinton‑era fundraisers to Trump’s Justice Department slow‑walking disclosures, the documents reveal a culture where fixing, hiding, and protecting the powerful is the real bipartisan consensus. What’s breaking open now is not just a scandal—it’s a portrait of a system that was never meant to be fair in the first place.

Former congressman and longtime peace advocate Dennis Kucinich joins Robert Scheer for a stark assessment of what he calls the most perilous moment in modern U.S. foreign policy. With Washington openly coordinating military action with Israel and escalating toward direct confrontation with Iran, Kucinich argues the United States has reached the terminus of its imperial project — a point where decades of overreach, militarism, and economic decline collide. Drawing on his years in Congress fighting unauthorized wars, he warns that the killing of Iran’s leadership, the collapse of diplomatic credibility, and the fantasy of American omnipotence have created a crisis with no clear exit. Scheer and Kucinich trace the roots of the disaster from the 1953 coup against Mossadegh to Trump’s current campaign of regime change, asking whether Iran may become the graveyard of American empire — and what it means for a world no longer willing to accept U.S. dominance.