America Trends Podcast

In 2024, Latinos, a diverse population in America, gave Donald Trump more support than Republicans generally receive for their presidential candidate.  He was speaking quite openly of his plans to shut down the border and pursue illegal immigrants, first those involved in gangs and illegal activity, and then others who crossed into the United States without documentation.  Having seen this play out in the first 100 days of the second Trump Administration, we decided to go back to an authority on the subject, Sam Quinones, to gain his perspective on how those policies are playing out.  Mr. Quinones is a ve...

Employment attorneys like to get together at conferences and routinely discuss ‘best practices’ so that they can help employers comply with legal requirements, reduce the risk of lawsuits and promote positive work environments.  Well now, thanks to Donald Trump, Elon Musk and DOGE they have something new to discuss–‘worst practices.’  According to our guest, Attorney Gary Phelan, a partner at Hurwitz, Sagarin Slossberg & Nuff in Connecticut, co-author of “Disability Discrimination in the Workplace”, their amateurish, capricious and downright illegal approach to layoffs in the federal government meets the new gold standard in that category of employment practices.  So many lawsuits hav...

 As a window into the refugee crisis which has landed with particular impact on the European shores, journalist and author Jeanne Carstensen focuses her new book on a tragedy dating back to October 28, 2015.  At the height of the biggest refugee crisis since WWII, a dangerously overloaded old wooden boat set sail from Turkey.  The smugglers had promised the passengers ‘a very safe’ journey to the nearby Greek island of Lesvos, but soon the boat swayed from side to side, broke apart, tossing hundreds of men, women, and children into roiling seas, resulting in the largest loss of life in the cri...

While many of us do not believe Donald Trump when he says the quiet part out loud, on the matter of deporting people (mostly undocumented, but not all) out of the United States during his second term, he was serious. However, his zeal to do it has ensnared more than folks who came here without papers or overstayed visas AND committed violent crimes. There are others who’ve simply spoken their minds or been lured under false pretenses to an immigration interview and had to have a judge intercede to keep them here.  What’s going on with the use o...

 DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency in the Trump Administration, is getting a lot of headlines, but the news coming from it may not benefit long-term reforms that virtually all Americans agree are necessary in order to expedite more effective governing.  That will require streamlining and enhancing individual responsibility and accountability by civil servants, instead of strict adherence to outdated rules.  DOGE seems hellbent on taking an indiscriminate chainsaw to the government itself instead of pruning and cutting back in strategic ways and bringing more fluidity to the process.  Philip K. Howard is the Chair of commongood.org and has...

 Nuclear power was once thought to provide unlimited energy at no cost.  Then the costs became apparent–building and maintaining costly facilities, environmental degradation, abundant use of water resources, storage of radioactive waste and overall security and safety.  After the Three Mile Island accident, it was thought that nuclear energy’s promise had come and gone.  But, once again, there is buzz about the promise of nuclear energy.  And that’s because the power generated is carbon free in the age of climate disruption. And we have growing needs for electricity, particularly due to the dramatic needs for it to power ou...

 Even though America and the first Trump Administration rushed into production the most effective vaccine to fight the COVID pandemic as part of Project Warp Speed, our life saving efforts failed to deliver the desired results. There is no way to look at America’s response to the COVID pandemic without wondering what went wrong. America suffered 3,200 COVID deaths per million and a peak loss of 21.9 million jobs.  No major industrialized nation had a worse record.  It brought to the surface our many divisions including our partisan politics, distrust of our healthcare system, and our new addiction to disinformation.  It’s n...

 Uncertainty is the watchword when it comes to the American economy as the Trump Administration looks to shake up the political economy around the globe with allies and competitors alike.  He’s also been weighing in on the actions of the Federal Reserve, who’s chair, Jerome Powell is asserting his independence in terms of determining the monetary policy of the nation.  Have they made mistakes in the past?  For sure.  But is this the right time to lower interest rates and get back to the easy money policies which has gotten us into trouble in previous crises?  That’s how our co...

 When we see the white smoke billowing from the Sistine Chapel, will it signify the more open and humanistic Papacy established by Pope Francis, the first South American Pope, or will it be a return to the more doctrinaire church led by his predecessor, Benedict XVI.  Time will tell.  To share his insights about it with us is Francis Rooney, the U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See from 2005-2008.  He gives us his impressions about the changes in the Church under Pope Francis and assesses some of the leading figures who are mentioned as possible successors.  We ref...

Perhaps you were following the social media phenomenon in 2023 of Flaco, dubbed ‘the world’s most famous bird’ from the night when vandals at the Central Park Zoo cut a hole in his cage until his death a year later in a courtyard on the Upper West Side. The year-long odyssey captured the imagination of New Yorkers and people around the globe as he learned to survive in this urban landscape by eating rats, squirrels and birds.  This occurred despite the fact that this gorgeous Eurasian eagle-owl had spent his entire life previous to this in a cage.  In the deft...