Pardons for Sale

In September 2025, President Trump signed National Security Presidential Memorandum 7, directing federal agencies to investigate a broad range of political dissent as domestic terrorism. The administration says it is going after left-wing terrorism. Critics say it is going after dissent. In Texas, defendants tied to a Fourth of July protest at the Prairieland immigration detention center have been sentenced to decades in prison with terrorism enhancements, including one man who wasn't even at the protest. This week, historians Paul Le Blanc and Shaun Richman trace NSPM-7 back through America's Red Scares: the Palmer Raids after World War I, McCarthyism after World War II, and the laws from both eras that never came off the books. Who is most exposed this time, and how have people fought back? We hear Paul Robeson face down the House Un-American Activities Committee, and Pacifica broadcaster William Mandel's 1960 answer to the same committee, from the Pacifica Radio Archives. Chapters: 00:00 Introduction 06:59 America's Red Scares 16:20 Who's most exposed 21:21 How people fought back Featuring:  Paul Le Blanc, historian, retired professor at La Roche University Shaun Richman, labor historian, SUNY Empire State University Archival audio: J. Edgar Hoover, FBI Director; Stephen Miller, White House adviser; Lydia Koza, courtesy of Democracy Now!; Jacob Spolansky, from "The Rise of Labor Unions" (1963); Sen. Joseph McCarthy; Paul Robeson before HUAC, 1956; William Mandel before HUAC, 1960, courtesy of the Pacifica Radio Archives Credits:  * Host and Producer: Mel Buer * Senior Producer: Dan Pavlish * Producer: Vanessa Kolb * Executive Producer and Engineer: Ace Estwick Music: * Pixabay * Envato Learn More: * https://www.aclu.org/news/national-security/how-nspm-7-seeks-to-use-domestic-terrorism-to-target-nonprofits-and-activists  * https://charityandsecurity.org/news/fbi-and-irs-concretize-implementation-of-nspm-7/ * https://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights/protesters-rights * https://www.nlg.org/know-your-rights/

Critics say President Trump's second-term pardons have a price tag. The pardon is the one presidential power that needs nobody's permission. No court reviews it, and Congress can't limit it. This week, Brendan Fischer of the Campaign Legal Center sorts Trump's pardons into three categories: reward pardons for donors and supporters who broke the law on his behalf, corrupt pardons for officials who abused their office and stayed loyal, and brokered pardons bought through lobbyists and political fixers. From the January 6th clemency to crypto billionaire Changpeng Zhao and banker Julio Herrera Velutini, he walks through who got pardoned and what they gave. Constitutional law professor Brian Kalt explains why the framers gave the president this power, what they expected to check its abuse, and why that check hasn't held. Featuring:  Brendan Fischer, Director of Strategic Investigations, Campaign Legal Center; Brian Kalt, Professor of Law, Michigan State University Archival audio: Donald Trump, President of the United States; Becca Balint, U.S. Representative (D-Vt.); Don Beyer, U.S. Representative (D-Va.); Jamie Raskin, U.S. Representative (D-Md.); Merrick Garland, former U.S. Attorney General; Michele Fiore, former Las Vegas City Council member and Nevada justice of the peace Credits:* Host: Casey J. Adler * Executive Producer and Editor: Ace Estwick * Staff Producer: Dan Pavlish  Music: * Pixabay Learn More: * https://makingcontactradio.org/2025/03/the-supreme-court-under-trump/ * https://campaignlegal.org/cases-actions/abuse-presidential-pardon-power * https://campaignlegal.org/document/campaign-legal-centers-proposed-solutions-corruption-presidential-pardon-power * https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/BILLS-119s5212is Making Contact is an award-winning, nationally syndicated radio show and podcast featuring narrative storytelling and thought-provoking interviews. We cover the most urgent issues of our time and the people on the ground building a more just world.

A criminal conviction doesn't end when the sentence does. Across much of the United States, a felony record can cost you your vote, your seat on a jury, and your shot at housing, jobs and professional licenses, sometimes for life. This week on Making Contact, we trace felony disenfranchisement and the "collateral consequences" of a record back to the Black Codes and the post-Civil War state constitutions, and ask why these laws still fall hardest on Black Americans. We hear from Nicole Porter of The Sentencing Project, UC Davis law professor Gabriel "Jack" Chin, and Tamora and Lance Wissinger of the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition, who describe life after conviction in their own words. Content advisory: one segment describes sexual assault by a police officer. Featuring: Nicole Porter, Senior Director of Advocacy, The Sentencing Project; Gabriel "Jack" Chin, Professor and Director of Clinical Legal Education, UC Davis School of Law; Tamora, returning citizen, Florida Rights Restoration Coalition; Lance Wissinger, Electoral Campaign Manager, Florida Rights Restoration Coalition Archival audio: Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow, speaking at Abyssinian Baptist Church, New York City, January 12, 2012 (Pacifica Radio Archives) Credits: Host and Producer: Stephanie Sharp Producer: Vanessa Kolb Senior Producer: Dan Pavlish Executive Producer and Engineer: Ace Estwick Music: Pixabay Envato Learn More: https://www.sentencingproject.org/reports/locked-out-2024/ https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/juryexclusion.html https://reentry.ojp.gov/national-inventory-collateral-consequences-conviction https://floridarrc.com/ https://www.vpm.org/elections/2026-09-15/king-v-youngkin-felony-voting-rights-elect-koski-gibney/ https://newjimcrow.com/ Making Contact is an award-winning, nationally syndicated radio show and podcast featuring narrative storytelling and thought-provoking interviews. We cover the most urgent issues of our time and the people on the ground building a more just world. Making Contact is produced by Pacifica Radio at KPFK, Los Angeles.

When a supermarket closes, you'd expect another grocer to move in. But across the country, chains write restrictive covenants into deeds and leases that bar any competing grocery store from opening on that site, sometimes for decades after the original store is gone. Advocates call them zombie covenants: the store is dead, but the restriction lives on. They help explain why so many low-income neighborhoods and communities of color are still waiting on a place to buy fresh food. This week we trace the story from white flight and redlining to today's consolidated grocery industry, hear from a former Whole Foods purchasing chief about why chains treat stores like ATMs, and follow the fight over California's AB 1857, the Grocery Store Access Act. Plus what cities from Chicago to Woonsocket, Rhode Island have tried, and what a public grocery store could look like. Featuring: Beth Smoker, Policy Director, California Food and Farming Network Kyle Winterboer, Investigative Policy Analyst, Winterboer Policy Dig Deja Thomas, Manager of Strategic Partnerships and Community Initiatives, Los Angeles Food Policy Council Errol Schweizer, former head of purchasing, Whole Foods Market, and host of The Checkout Austin Frerick, author of Barons: Money, Power, and the Corruption of America's Food Industry Archival audio: California Assembly Majority Leader Cecilia Aguiar-Curry and Cameron Mims Jones of Nourish California, testimony on AB 1857, California State Legislature Brandon Housekeeper, Northwest Grocery and Retail Association, testimony on HB 2294 before the Washington House Consumer Protection & Business Committee, January 14, 2026 (courtesy TVW)  Credits: - Host: Casey J. Adler  - Producers: John Johns, Vanessa Kolb, Dan Pavlish - Senior Producer: Dan Pavlish - Executive Producer and Audio Editor: Ace Estwick - Engineer: Ace Estwick Music: - "Remembrance" by Dale Nichols - Additional music from Pixabay Learn More:   https://app.leg.wa.gov/billsummary?BillNumber=2294&Year=2025 https://www.winterboerpolicydig.com/lasgrocerymerger/grocery-covenants https://www.goodfoodla.org/ https://www.thecheckoutradio.com/ https://www.austinfrerick.com/ Making Contact is an award-winning, nationally syndicated radio show and podcast featuring narrative storytelling and thought-provoking interviews. We cover the most urgent issues of our time and the people on the ground building a more just world. Making Contact is an award-winning, nationally syndicated radio show and podcast featuring narrative storytelling and thought-provoking interviews. We cover the most urgent issues of our time and the people on the ground building a more just world.

Much Western coverage treats October 7th as the beginning of the war in Gaza, but the conflict reaches back more than a century. In this encore edition, historian Rashid Khalidi, author of The Hundred Years' War on Palestine, walks through the early history of the Zionist movement: how founders like Theodor Herzl and Ze'ev Jabotinsky described their project in colonial terms, why British imperial strategy made Palestine a priority, and how the movement found new patrons in the United States and the Soviet Union as Britain pulled back. The episode opens with a report from Gaza by longtime Pacifica and Making Contact reporter Rami Almeghari. Originally aired April 2024; casualty figures cited reflect that time. Featuring: Rashid Khalidi, historian and Edward Said Professor Emeritus of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University Credits: * Host: Salima Hamirani * Reporter: Rami Almeghari * Executive Director: Jina Chung * Producers: Anita Johnson, Salima Hamirani, Amy Gastelum, Lucy Kang * Engineer: Jeff Emtman * Editor: Adwoa Gyimah-Brempong Music: * Komiku "Blue" * Doctor Turtle "Leap Second" * Chris Zabriskie "Take Off and Shoot a Zero" * DAM "Resale in Zenzana (A Letter From a Prison Cell)" * Montplaisir "Ridiculous" Learn More: Learn More: * https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781627798556/thehundredyearswaronpalestine * https://makingcontactradio.org/2023/05/the-nakba-75-years-on/ * https://makingcontactradio.org/2023/11/gaza-solidarity-and-the-movement-for-palestinian-liberation/ * https://makingcontactradio.org/2016/06/nakba-naksa-future-palestine/ Making Contact is an award-winning, nationally syndicated radio show and podcast featuring narrative storytelling and thought-provoking interviews. We cover the most urgent issues of our time and the people on the ground building a more just world.

To serve in the U.S. military as a non-citizen, you have to be a lawful permanent resident, and many are told that service is a path to citizenship. For thousands, it became a path out of the country instead. Since a 1996 immigration law took away judges' ability to weigh a person's service against a conviction, veterans have been deported under every administration, Democratic and Republican alike. This week, three veterans tell their stories, and two immigration lawyers explain the machinery behind them: what "aggravated felony" actually covers, how a path home opened under the Biden administration, and why it has now closed. Featuring: James Lynwood Smith II, Marine Corps veteran and documentarian, cofounder and director of Black Deported Veterans of America; David Bariu, Army veteran, deported to Kenya, now a naturalized U.S. citizen; Hector Barajas, Army veteran and founder of the Deported Veterans Support House in Tijuana; Michael J. Wishnie, William O. Douglas Clinical Professor of Law at Yale Law School and director of the Veterans Legal Services Clinic; Amanda Shuft, Director of Legal Services at the Immigrant Defenders Law Center Archival audio: Excerpts from the film American Exile, including Rep. Seth Moulton; excerpts from the documentary Bring Them Home (Excuse My Accent); U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services recruitment spot Credits: * Host: Stephanie Sharp * Producers: Stephanie Sharp, Dan Pavlish * Executive Producer and Engineer: Ace Estwick * With excerpts from the film American Exile Music: * Pixabay Learn More: * https://lsa.umich.edu/ftvm/people/faculty/valadez/american-exile-.html * https://www.excusemyaccent.com/aboutbringthemhome * https://www.bdva.us/ * https://www.facebook.com/DeportedVeteransSupportHousePage/ * https://law.yale.edu/clinics/vlsc * https://www.immdef.org/deported-veterans Making Contact is an award-winning, nationally syndicated radio show and podcast featuring narrative storytelling and thought-provoking interviews. We cover the most urgent issues of our time and the people on the ground building a more just world.

A study published in May in the journal Nature Sustainability reports that the shoreline could eventually sit some 30 miles north of New Orleans. The finding does not come from a model. The authors dated a buried ridge north of the city and identified it as a shoreline from the last interglacial period, the last time global temperatures were about where they are now. Three quarters of Louisiana's remaining coastal wetlands are projected to be gone or going by around 2070. Two river diversion projects meant to rebuild that land broke ground and were canceled. This week we ask what preparing actually looks like, and who gets to do it. Our guests describe a slow, generational shift inland rather than a sudden evacuation, and they push back on the idea that the people who stay are refusing to face facts. Insurance pricing, not scientific consensus, is how most people first learn what their home is worth in a warming Gulf. And in one researcher's surveys, most residents who say they would relocate if flooding worsened also say they want to stay in the same parish. Featuring: Torbjörn Törnqvist, professor of geology, Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Tulane University; Brianna Castro, assistant professor of urban sustainability, Yale University; Abbey Hotard, assistant professor, School of Marine and Environmental Sciences, University of South Alabama; Robert Eugene Turner, professor emeritus, Department of Oceanography and Coastal Sciences, Louisiana State University Archival audio: Jesse Keenan, associate professor, Tulane University, via Here and Now, WBUR; Torbjörn Törnqvist via WVUE Fox 8, New Orleans; John Bel Edwards, former governor of Louisiana Credits: * Host and producer: Angela Johnson * Produced by: Vanessa Kolb, Dan Pavlish * Executive producer and audio editor: Ace Estwick Music: * Mamie Smith and Her Jazz Hounds, "New Orleans" (OKeh, 1922) * jaap.sijben, "Music Second line parade - brass band" (CC BY 4.0) https://freesound.org/s/177930/ * Additional sound from Pixabay Learn More: * https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-026-01820-z * https://environment.yale.edu/news/article/louisianas-shrinking-coast-offers-narrowing-window-managed-retreat Making Contact is an award-winning, nationally syndicated radio show and podcast featuring narrative storytelling and thought-provoking interviews. We cover the most urgent issues of our time and the people on the ground building a more just world.

How do you decide what kind of parent you want to be? Liz Rebecca Alarcón and Maribel Quezada Smith of the Pulso Podcast, now In Confianza with Pulso, talk about raising their kids as Latinas in the US: the language, the food, the village, the both-last-names. They also talk about what they are not passing on, from machismo to la chancla. In the second half, Liz sits down with Latinx parenting coach Leslie Priscilla, whose practice is rooted in children's rights and decolonization. Priscilla traces punishment and fear in Latino families back five hundred years, and argues that refusing to parent that way is a political act. This episode originally aired in October 2023. Featuring: Liz Rebecca Alarcón, founder and executive director, Pulso; Maribel Quezada Smith, founder of Diferente Creative and host of Diferente; Leslie Priscilla, founder, Latinx Parenting Credits: * Host: Amy Gastelum * Producers: Anita Johnson, Salima Hamirani, Amy Gastelum, Lucy Kang * Editor: Adwoa Gyimah-Brempong * Engineer: Jeff Emtman * Announcer: Mark Maxwell Music: * Julian Blackmore, original score Learn More: * https://projectpulso.org * https://latinxparenting.org * https://diferentecreative.com Making Contact is an award-winning, nationally syndicated radio show and podcast featuring narrative storytelling and thought-provoking interviews. We cover the most urgent issues of our time and the people on the ground building a more just world.

This week we're discussing private ownership of immigration detention facilities. The same companies that run private, for-profit prisons are holding detainees for ICE. Our guests consider how a profit motive influences the treatment of people being held, share what they know about the conditions inside, and discuss the ways their communities are coming together to fight for detainees' rights. Recorded in part at an ICE vigil in downtown Los Angeles, August 2026. This episode includes discussion of detention conditions, self-harm and suicide. Featuring: Kevin Foster, independent journalist who has reported on immigration for Mother Jones Stacy Tolchin, immigration attorney, Pasadena, California Michelle Arkin, founding member, No Camps California Nicole Edry, Democracy Action Network Archival audio: Thomas Beasley, then Chairman, Corrections Corporation of America — C-SPAN, 1987 Perla Trevizo, ProPublica — C-SPAN "Washington Journal," June 9, 2026 Rob Bonta, California Attorney General — press conference, May 15, 2026 Eduardo Delgado, Migrant Equity Southeast — from Sonali Kolhatkar's "Breaking ICE" Credits: * Host and Producer: Mel Buer * Senior Producer: Dan Pavlish * Producer: Vanessa Kolb * Editor: Andrew Stelzer * Executive Producer and Audio Editor: Ace Estwick * Engineer: Mark Maxwell Music: * [MUSIC SOURCE] Thanks: Archival audio of Thomas Beasley and Perla Trevizo courtesy C-SPAN. Special thanks to Sonali Kolhatkar for permission to air an excerpt from her book "Breaking ICE: Community Defense Against State Terror and MAGA Fascism." Learn More: * https://nocampsca.com/ * https://unitedwedream.org/ * https://immigrantjustice.org/ * https://www.sevenstories.com/books/4889-breaking-ice Making Contact is an award-winning, nationally syndicated radio show and podcast featuring narrative storytelling and thought-provoking interviews. We cover the most urgent issues of our time and the people on the ground building a more just world.