Democracy Now! Audio - Democracy Now! 2025-08-06 Wednesday

Episode Date: August 6, 2025

Headlines for August 06, 2025; Trump’s War on the Truth: Robert Reich on Firing of BLS Head & Push to Replace Fed Chair; “Coming Up Short”: Robert Reich on His Memoir, Rising U.S. Inequality & Fighting Against Bullies; 80 Years After Hiroshima & Nagasaki, U.S. Keeps Covering Up Horrors of Atomic Bombing: Greg Mitchell

From New York, this is democracy now. Japan held a memorial 80 years ago today in Hiroshima. 80 years ago today, the United States dropped the first atomic bomb in history on the city. Three days later, the U.S. dropped another atomic bomb on Nagasaki. Hundreds of thousands. of civilians were killed, many instantly, many more slowly from severe burns and what would

come to be understood as radiation sickness. We'll speak to journalist Greg Mitchell, who's reported extensively on the U.S. Atomic Bomins. His new PBS film and book are titled The Atomic Bowl, Football at Ground Zero, and Nuclear Peril today. But it was the site of the game that would prove disturbing on a makeshift gridiron near ground zero in Nagasaki, where tens of thousands had been killed by the atomic bomb less than five months earlier. But first, we look at President Trump's firing of the head of the Bureau of Labor statistics hours after the agency released a weaker than expected jobs report. Trump claimed without any evidence that the numbers were rigged in order to make him look back.

We'll speak to former Labor Secretary Robert Reich. Trump's firing the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics is not just shooting the messenger with regard to data he doesn't like. It's actually undermining the credibility of the most important source of information about the American economy for the government, for the United States, for the world. This is beyond irresponsible. We'll speak with Robert Reich about the firing and also about his new book. Coming up short, a memoir of My America.

All that and more coming up. Welcome to Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org, the War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman. Israel's expanded military offensive in the Gaza Strip has claimed at least 135 lives over the past 24 hours. Among the dead are 87 starving Palestinians killed while seeking aid. Survivors of one of the attacks were taken to NASA Hospital in Chaniunis. The guys who were there were waiting for the aid. They told people to go there.

They hit young men and women there. They threw bombs on them, live bullets, and most. of the injuries here are due to bombs. I came with my friend who was injured and this man was also injured. We moved him with us here. They should deliver the aid in a proper way to reach us. For example, this torment we saw, we saw the death in all forms. In central Gaza, 25 people were crushed to death. When a humanitarian aid truck overturned onto a crowd hoping to receive a meal, Gaza officials say Israeli forces have forced drivers to take unsafe routes on delivery runs. Meanwhile, only 85 aid trucks reportedly crossed into Gaza Tuesday,

once again falling far short of the 600 trucks daily aid organizations say are needed to supply Gaza's basic needs. Gaza's health ministry reports, and other five people died due to famine and malnutrition over the past day, bringing the starvation-related death toll to 193. Texas Republican Governor Greg Abbott Tuesday asked the Texas Supreme Court to remove Democratic caucus chair Gene Wu from office. After Wu and more than 50 Democratic legislators fled Texas to block Republicans from redrawing its congressional district map. This is Democratic caucus chair, Wu. This is in my seat. This seat belongs to the people of state of Texas.

Until the people of the state of Texas tell me to go away, I will stay here and fight with everything that I have. This is not about me. This is not about Democrats. This is not about political power. This is about protecting what we believe and love about America. This comes as Texas Republican Senator John Cornyn sent a letter to FBI Director Cash Patel to track down and arrest the Democratic state legislators who have fled the state to prevent a quorum for a vote on the new redistricting map. President Trump was asked about the FBI

intervening and said they, quote, may have to, unquote. Meanwhile, California legislators are pushing through their own redistricting efforts. They're expected to vote on a new congressional map in the coming days after which California Governor Gavin Newsom plans to put the proposal to a vote November 4th. Rwanda has reached an agreement with the Trump administration to take in immigrants deported from the United States. Rwanda is the third African nation to agree to a similar deal, saying it'll receive up to 250 deportees from the U.S., according to Reuters. The U.S. has already deported over a dozen immigrants to South Sudan and Eswetini, formerly known as Swaziland. Advocates have repeatedly warned of human rights and due process violations as Trump

intensifies his mass deportation campaign. The immigrants are not from these countries they are being sent to. In Florida, Cuban immigrant has been on hunger strike for over 14 days to protest his detention inhumane conditions at ICE jails. Pedro Lorenzo Concepcion was first jailed at the new detention camp dubbed Alligator Alcatraz and later transferred to another ice jail in retaliation for his peaceful action. The 44-year-old man was first attained in early July after appearing at a routine ice appointment. He spoke to the newspaper, the Spanish newspaper, El Pais. Since I felt like my life no longer belonged to me, it's now up to them to decide whether I live or die because I'm not doing anything by going out onto the streets and continuing

to live in this uncertainty, wondering if they'll come and lock me up for days. They're not considering the consequences of taking away a person's freedom. As detained people speak out against abusive conditions in federal immigration custody, a month-long investigation has compiled reports of hundreds of human rights violations at immigration jails nationwide, including including physical and sexual abuse as well as violence against detained children and pregnant people. The probe was led by the Office of Georgia Democratic Senator John Ossoff. Here in New York, new data show ICE has arrested over 2,300 people at federal immigration courthouses and offices since January, a nearly 200% increase from the months before Trump returned to office. That's

according to the New York Times, which detailed how immigrants are summoned to court hearings or appointments with federal agents only to be ambushed and taken into custody. Advocates have denounced the secrecy surrounding the arrest, and today they've launched a protest camp in a public park in downtown Manhattan next to ICE's office and immigration courthouses at 26 federal plaza to demand an end to the crackdown. Democracy now was there early this morning. My name is Ella Weber. We're here at Liberty City, setting up for a space for collective mutual aid and community resistance against ICE's abduction program inside the courts and as they continue to wreak havoc across New York City. We are here located in Foley Square. We'll be here

sunrise to sunset, offering mutual aid, art, and various resources for immigrant communities that are going inside the courts and looking for resources and support, and also for community members across New York who are interested in getting involved and plugging in and being part of anti-ice resistance in New York City. The Trump administrations launched a pilot program to require some visa applicants to pay bonds of up to $15,000. First to be affected are tourists and business travelers from Zambia and Malawi, who will forfeit the payments if they're They overstay their visas after a maximum of six months. The Trump administration says it may amend the program to include other countries.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Tuesday he's canceling contracts and funding for 22 vaccines developed using MRI technology, including the COVID-19 shots that save millions of lives after their rapid development in 2020. The funding cuts could also impact research into using MRNA to treat other diseases, including cancer. This comes just a week after Senate Democrats launched an investigation into RFK Jr.'s firing of a CDC vaccine advisory panel, replacing them with unqualified appointees, many with anti-vaccine views. A federal judge has barred the Trump administration from diverting four and a half, billion dollars in disaster relief funds from a landmark program designed to help states protect communities against natural disasters. On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Richard Stearns ordered a preliminary injunction preventing the Trump administration from spending

the congressionally appropriated funds meant for the building resilient infrastructure and communities program, which Trump appointed FEMA officials dismissed as wasteful, ineffective and politicized. Meanwhile, the Environmental Protection Agency is set to terminate $7 billion in federal grants for low and moderate income families seeking to install solar panels on their homes. In response, Vermont, Senator Bernie Sanders wrote, quote, I introduced the solar for all program to slash electric bills for working families by up to 80 percent, putting money back in the pockets of ordinary Americans, not fossil fuel billionaires. Now Donald Trump wants to illegally kill this program to protect the obscene profits of his friends in the oil and gas industry.

That is outrageous, Senator Sanders wrote. Top Trump officials will gather today at Vice President J.D. Vance's House to discuss whether to publish a recording and transcript of Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche's recent conversation with Jeffrey Epstein's co-conspirator and convicted sex trafficker and abuser, Elaine Maxwell. A lawyer for Annie Farmer, an Epstein survivor, sent a letter to judges here in New York saying Farmer supports the release of grand jury transcripts and that, quote, transparency is critical to justice and the public has a legitimate interest in understanding the full scope of Epstein's and Maxwell's crimes, particularly where those actions cause lasting harm to others, unquote. Meanwhile, Ghislaine Maxwell is asking a federal judge of Manhattan to deny the government's request unseal grand jury transcripts, and she's also appealed to the Supreme Court to overturn her sex trafficking conviction.

This comes as the House Oversight Committee has subpoenaed the Justice Department for the Epstein files and has requested depositions from 10 former top officials, including Bill and Hillary Clinton and former FBI Director James Comey. And The Daily Beast is reporting, Jeffrey Epstein was a member of Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago Club more than a year after he was indicted for sex crimes. According to documents, Epstein was still a member of Trump's luxury club seven years after he poached Virginia Jewfrey from Trump's spa, which cast doubt on Trump's version of events, claiming he cut ties with Epstein after he, quote, stole female workers from Mar-a-Lago. Jewfrey was under age working at Trump's spa.

Tennessee has put to death a 68-year-old prisoner who suffered from dementia, brain damage, and kidney and heart failure. Witnesses to Tuesday's execution say Byron Black complained he was, quote, hurting so bad after prison officials strapped him to a gurney and began injecting him with a lethal dose of pentobarbital. The execution proceeded despite Black's protests that an implanted device that regulated his heartbeat, could deliver painful shocks to revive him during the execution. The Trump administration says it'll restore a statue of a Confederate general near the U.S. Capitol that was toppled by Black Lives Matter protesters in 2020. The bronze statue of Albert Pike was first directed in 2001 in a statement, Washington, D.C.'s non-voting congressional delegate, Eleanor Holmes Norton, wrote, quote,

The decision to honor Albert Pike by reinstalling the Pike statue is as odd and indefensible as it is morally objectionable. Pike served dishonorably. He took up arms against the United States, misappropriated funds, and was ultimately captured and imprisoned by his own troops, she wrote. Separately, Defense Secretary Pete Hed Seth announced Monday he'll restore another Confederate memorial at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. U.S. Special Envoy Steve Whitkoff has arrived in Moscow for talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin. His visit comes ahead of President Trump's August 8th deadline for Russia to agree to a ceasefire with Ukraine or face additional sanctions. The White House says it's considering imposing new tariffs on countries that purchase Russian oil, including China, Brazil, and India. On Tuesday, Lithuania's foreign minister warned of a, quote, alarming spillover of Russia's aggression into NATO territory after, Russian drone, packed with explosives, violated Lithuanian airspace.

Meanwhile, Russian officials warned Monday of the growing risk of nuclear war, after Trump said he'd ordered two nuclear submarines to be redeployed to, quote, the appropriate regions, unquote. A Kremlin spokesperson said, quote, we believe everyone should be very, very careful with nuclear rhetoric, unquote. NASA is planning to put a nuclear reactor on the moon by 2030. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, the former reality TV star, who's currently also the acting director of NASA, issued the directive to designate a leader for the program and get input from private industry in 60 days. A senior NASA official told Politico, quote, this is about winning the space race. And Japan is marking 80 years since the United States dropped the first nuclear weapon ever used in war on the city of Hiroshima.

Bill's rang out at a sunrise ceremony at Hiroshima's Peace Park, honoring the 140,000 people killed by the U.S. atomic bombing August 6, 1945. Three days later, at least 70,000 people died when the U.S. dropped a second atomic bomb on Nagasaki. We'll have more on this 80th anniversary of the U.S. nuclear attacks later in the broadcast. And those are some of the headlines. This is Democracy Now. Democracy Now.org, the Warren Peace Report. When we come back, former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, on President Trump's firing of the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, hours after the agency released a weaker than expected jobs report. We'll also speak to him.

about his new memoir, coming up short, a memoir of My America. Stay with us. Eyes is just another skin simply slips away. You can rise above it. It will shed easily. And all will come out fine I've learned it line by line One coming wire

One silver thread All that you desire Rolls on ahead Like a ship in a bottle Held up to the sun Sales ain't going nowhere You can count Everyone

Grateful by Patty Smith in our Democracy Now studio This is Democracy Now, Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org, the war and peace report. I'm Amy Goodman in New York. joined by Democracy Now is Juan Gonzalez and Chicago. Hi, Juan. Hi, Amy, and welcome to all of our listeners and viewers across the country and around the world. In my opinion, today's jobs numbers were rigged in order to make the Republicans and me look bad. Those were the words of President

Trump Friday as he fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics hours after the agency released a weaker than expected jobs report. The BLS report showed just 73,000 jobs were added in July and that far fewer jobs had been created in May and June than previously estimated. Trump's move has been widely criticized, including by William Beach, who was picked by Trump to head the BLS during Trump's first term. Beach co-signed a statement saying,

Trump's move, quote, undermines the credibility of federal economic statistics that are a cornerstone of intelligent economic decision-making by businesses, families, and policymakers, unquote. Many historians have compared Trump's actions to those of President Richard Nixon in 1971, who pushed to remove Jewish staffers from leadership roles at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, claiming they were part of what he called. a, quote, Jewish cabal working against him. To talk about this and more, we're joined by Robert Reich. He was U.S. Labor Secretary from 1993 to 1997 under President Clinton. He's author of the new book out this week titled Coming Up Short, A Memoir of My America. Robert Reich is also the subject of the last class, a new documentary about his time teaching at the University of California, Berkeley. He just retired.

His new piece for The Guardian is titled, I was the U.S. Labor Secretary. Trump's latest firing undermines a key agency. Welcome back to Democracy Now. It's great to have you on the East Coast, Robert. Good to be here. Thank you, Amy. So this is massive what took place on Friday.

If you can start off by talking about exactly what happened, why the Bureau of Labor Statistics matters and what this means for the future. Well, it's interesting. like so much that has happened under Donald Trump, even in the first six months of his second administration. You know, he's doing things that nobody had ever believed or thought possible, and he's also revealing the most important aspects of government in doing so.

I mean, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, for example, nobody really knows about or most people don't think about. But it is the heart, it is the crown jewel of the government's effort. to explain what's happened to the United States economy. Every month it does surveys about jobs and wages and other very, very important economic issues. And it's not only the government that depends on the Bureau of Labor Statistics, it's also the entire economy. Every business person, every small business person, every investor, everybody in the economy watches that report for signal as to the direction the economy is going in, including, not incidentally, the Federal Reserve Board.

So you have Donald Trump saying he doesn't like the numbers that just came up. And so he shoots the messenger, says, I don't trust that person. Well, what's going to happen now? He puts a new person in there. Does that new person have the trust and confidence of, everyone in the economy, it's not just the United States economy, let's face it, it's also the global economy. Is that new person going to have the trust and confidence we need in that bureau to actually undertake all the economic decisions that have to be done based upon

the Bureau of Labor Statistics, you know, the data. You can't possibly, this is another example of Trump, basically riding roughshod over our democratic institutions and truth, Amy. This is also about truth. He doesn't like truth. He doesn't like facts. He doesn't like science. He doesn't like broadcasters that broadcast the truth. You know, he cracks down on CBS and NBC and public broadcasting. And wherever there is anything that he doesn't like, he slams it and tries to end it. Robert Reich, however, I have questions about not so much the, the projection for the past month, but this, this enormous reduction of the estimates in the previous months. So in May, I think it went from 144,000.

It was revised downward to 19,000. And in June, from 147,000 to 14,000, this is a 10, by a magnitude of 10, the budget. Bureau was off in the previous months. So if it's a gold standard of data on labor, why, without any explanation of how there was such enormous errors in the past month, is this more political or is it just a question if they don't have enough staff to actually do the job they're supposed to do? One, it's not political. Again, when I was Labor Secretary, the Bureau of Labor Statistics did revise downward and occasionally revised upward its monthly decisions. about how many jobs, and those revisions are based upon additional information coming into the

Bureau. Now, the Bureau's initial estimates on how many jobs are created in a given month is always a compromise. That is, the Bureau is always trying to get information out as fast as possible, but like any statistical agency, like any competent government agency, like anybody who is gathering data. If you get late data that contradicts or changes your initial estimate, you've got to get that late

data out. This is nothing new. The Bureau of Labor Statistics has been revising former months for years and years and years. These particular estimates that were revised downward

are large, to be sure, but the size of them doesn't make them less credible. And that's very, very important. Because we'll probably see next month. I don't know, but my expectation would be that job growth is slowing quite dramatically. Donald Trump doesn't want that to be known.

He doesn't, he wants people to think that his tariffs and his economic policies are creating a lot of jobs. Well, the fact is, they don't seem to be. He doesn't like that. but the American public deserves to know. I wanted to ask you about another agency that Trump has been at war with the Federal Reserve. He's called Jerome Powell, who he initially named to the Federal Reserve, as a total and complete moron, a numskull, a disaster,

and his efforts to force Powell and the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates. What's your take on how that has developed? Well, that's also dangerous. in a similar way. That is, if Donald Trump succeeds in cowing the Federal Reserve Board in putting a new Fed share in or getting Chairman Powell to change his mind or to reduce interest rates much quicker than he otherwise would, that affects the market's confidence in what the Fed does. I mean, the next time the Fed reduces interest rates, people, are going to say to themselves, if they are business people, if they're investors, if

they're anybody in the economy, they will say, well, is that because of Donald Trump? Or is that because the Fed really genuinely believes that there's not so much of a question or challenge or danger of inflation? And as Donald Trump continues to undermine the public's confidence in these numbers and these decisions, whether we're talking about the Bureau of labor statistics or the Fed, then the economy is kind of flying blind. More people are just in the complete ignorance about what is actually happening. Trump may like that. If everybody's in ignorance, you know, ignorance is the handmaiden of totalitarianism. Ignorance is the handmaiden of dictatorship. But if everybody's in ignorance, the economy really does suffer.

New York Times columnist Thomas. Friedman wrote in his new column of all the terrible things Donald Trump has said and done as president. The most dangerous one just happened on Friday. Then former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers said this is the stuff of democracies giving way to authoritarianism. Your whole life as you are a labor historian is also about democracy. And I'm wondering if you can talk now as we talk about firings, not only the threatened one, at the Federal Reserve and the BLS, CDC, EPA, the gutting of regulations, et cetera, about the baby boomers. And this goes to your book, coming up short, a memoir of My America. You were born in 1946, and we'll look at the trajectory of what's changed in this country. 1946.

Who is your birth cohort? Who else was born in 1946? sex? Well, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Donald Trump, Dolly Parton, Cher. I mean, there are a lot of people born in 1946. But I think the point, and certainly in the book, is that 1946 is the baby boom. That's when the war was over. My father came home, and who was there, but my mother. And that was replicated all over. America. That's where the baby boom came from. And the boomers inherited from what has been known as, had come to be known as the greatest generation, my parents' generation, because they went through the Depression and they wore and they sacrificed to make America really a better

place. They fought the Axis powers. They fought the Nazis. They created an America that had the largest middle class that the world had ever seen. Now, what did we, the baby boomers, do with that? I think, quite honestly, we did a lot of good things. I don't want to tar with too broad a brush. But the fact of the matter is that by the late 1970s, the median wage in the United States stagnated. Adjusted for inflation, most Americans really didn't see any improvement, even though they were working hard, even though they were playing by the rules, even though they were doing everything they were told to do. The social contract had been, if you do that, you will do better, and your children will do better. If companies do better,

the employees of those companies will do better. Amy, that's all, that all started to come apart. And I think that what we are living with now, Donald Trump, is in the in many respects, the consequence and the final sort of result of those years in which we took democracy for granted. We allowed big money to take over. We allowed all of that wealth and income to go to the top and to big corporations and who monopolized the economy. We allowed labor unions to basically be busted by big corporations to the point where, well, only 6% of American workers are now unionized. In other words, we, the baby boomers, although we did a lot of good things, we took for granted what we were given, the democracy, the institutions

of our democracy. And Donald Trump is kind of the essence of what you do when you take your eyes off the prize. You're also describing a lot of bullying by more powerful entities and people. And that goes to your title, coming up short, as you reference or joke about yourself. And you talk about growing up and what it meant to be bullied and who protected you. Well, I was, yes, there's a double entendre there, obviously. And I am very short. And like many kids, I was bullied in school.

school, but because I was very short, you know, a full head shorter than most of my peers. I was bullied in a way that made me really not want to go to school. And I was in the bus and the playground and, you know, in the boys' room. And I didn't know the word humiliated, but I certainly was humiliated. I felt powerless and vulnerable. And then years later, I learned that one of the older boys, who had protected me named Mickey Schwerner, Michael Schwerner, had in 1964 gone to Mississippi to register voters and the real bullies of America. The Ku Klux Klan murdered Mickey and two

other civil rights workers. And I think, Amy, that was the beginning of a fundamental change in my views of the world. I began to see bullying all over. It wasn't just the schoolyard Tufts bullying me. It was employers, bullying employees, men bullying women. The stronger, bullying the weaker, white supremacists, bullying black people. I was beginning to see that inside America there was so much bullying. And then as inequality of income and wealth and political power began widening, that bullying intensified. Until we got, Donald Trump is the bully of bullies.

He is the bully in chief. He doesn't know how to act other than bullying. That's what we have now. I just want to point out at my surprise people, but it was 60 years ago this week that the bodies of Schwerner, Cheney and Goodman, two white voting rights. activist and a black voting rights activist were found in a dam in Mississippi. Juan? Yeah. Secretary Rush, I'd like to go back to this issue that you raised about the failure of the baby boomers and the golden era of the 1950s and 60s. Wasn't that due in large part as well

to the fact that capitalism after World War II was faced now with the competition and the growth of national liberation movements and socialist countries around the world so that Europe and the United States had to essentially engage in a social contract with their own working classes to prevent the further spread of socialism and communist ideas in the West. And that in effect, it was the competition with a different type of economic system that paved the way for some of that improved lives of the European and

American workers. Undoubtedly, Juan, that is absolutely right. But the interesting thing is that in the United States, we did not go nearly as far as the other rich countries, as Europe eventually did, as as most, as Japan, as

Australia, in terms of providing universal health care, access to higher education, access to free education, the kind of social safety nets that you find in other rich countries. We don't even have paid sick leave, paid family of medical leave. We don't have labor unions. I mean, again, six percent of our working people in the private sector are unionized. So we, the American worker has been treated to the most harshest form of capitalism.

in the world. And I think that, you know, that bullying I'm referring to, when Donald Trump comes along and says in 2016, I'm your savior or I'm going to be, you know, I'm going to be your spokesperson. What he's really saying is, I'm going to be your bully. I'm going to bully others because you have been bullied. And it was obviously a false promise because he gives big tax guts to the wealthy. He deregulates and it gets rid of protections that working people need. But

his rhetoric, his attitude is one as, you know, this swagger as if he is you know, he's the bullies bully. He's going to help working people really put down the coastal elites, the deep state.

All of these, even immigrants. These are all boogeymen that he is creating to cover up from the fact that he's not dealing with the real sources of what has happened. The big money coming from big corporations and wealthy people that is infected and really forced our entire economy to be rigged in exactly the way that a lot of people suspect it's been. And in terms of bullying, I wanted to ask you about how Trump has been using his tariff wars, to really not so much in economic terms, but in political terms, the way he has

attempted to use tariffs to force countries to change their policies. For instance, his recent announcement of 40 percent tariff increase on Brazilian imports, even though Brazil does not have a trade surplus with the United States, it's the other way around. And yet he is linking these tariffs to that the that country's legal systems treatment of the former president Jaire Bolsonaro. And wondering your thoughts on this, using tariffs as a club, as a political club against other nations. Well, it's an entire abuse of power once again. Remember, the power to tariff, to impose customs to change the rules of trade, is Congress's under the Constitution, Article 1, Section 8, Trump has usurped that power, creating this kind of

false emergency about balance of payments of trade debts. And then not only does he usurp that congressional power, but then he uses this fake power to do things that really he has no right to do. You mentioned imposing a huge tariff punishing Brazil for its treatment of Bolsonaro, punishing Lula in Brazil for treating Bolsonaro as exactly Trump was treated and as Bolsonaro should have been treated. I mean, he, just like Trump, he rejected the outcome of an election and he

led people to attack the government. But even in Canada, what Trump is saying, you You Canadians, you should not and you, I am going to raise my tariffs on you because you are potentially supporting, you've said publicly, a Palestinian state. Well, what in the world right does the President of the United States have to intrude on the politics of Brazil or the politics of Canada? And even if the President of the United States thought he had that right, he doesn't have a right to do it through tariffs. And even if he thought he had a right to do it with their tariffs, he doesn't have a right to do it through tariffs that basically violate Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution, take that authority away from Congress. You see, this is abuse piled on abuse, piled on abuse. Robert Reich, I want to thank you so much for being with us.

Congratulations on the publication of your memoir coming up short, a memoir of My America. Robert Reich, the former U.S. Secretary of Labor and longtime professor of labor history at the University of California, Berkeley. Thank you so much. Thank you, Amy. This is DemocracyNow, DemocracyNow.org. Next up, 80 years ago today, the U.S. dropped the first atomic bomb in the world on Hiroshima. We'll speak to reporter Greg Mitchell. Stay with us.

You might have heard different, but I know it's a fact that Jesus, Mary Joseph and the Apostle Paul were black. Ten letters I'm writing, each one reads the same, nine circles I'm drawn, one around your name, land and freedom steel and faith tooth and bone and wire and skin scar dirt and fire my jack

it doesn't matter who you are it does not matter what you say flesh shapes the day flesh shapes the day Brothers and sisters, rejoice and repent. The landlord's dead.

You can keep the rents. Thought hard about this next line. Flesh shapes the day by Tom Arello. Performing during the Democracy Now 20th anniversary in 2016 will be celebrating our 30th anniversary next February. This is Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org, the War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman with Juan Gonzalez. 80 years ago today, the United States dropped the first atomic bomb in the world on the city of Hiroshima, Japan.

Today, a memorial service was held at the Hiroshima Peace Park to remember. Three days after Hiroshima, the U.S. dropped another atomic bomb on Nagasaki. Hundreds of thousands of civilians were killed in the bombings, many instantly, many more slowly, from severe burns in what would come to be understood. as radiation sickness or bomb sickness, some estimates combine total was at least a quarter of a million people dead. Today, Japanese Prime Minister, Shigeru Ishiba, urged all countries to make efforts towards nuclear disarmament. We must not repeat the tragedy that was brought upon Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It is our country's responsibility as the only nation that has suffered. atomic bombings to uphold the three non-nuclear principles and lead the global initiative

for a world without nuclear weapons. For more, we spend the rest of the hour with Greg Mitchell, former editor of Nuclear Times Magazine, who's written extensively about the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. His past books include The Beginning or the End, how Hollywood in America learned to stop worrying and love the bomb. also the book Hiroshima in America and Atomic Coverup. Greg Mitchell is also a filmmaker.

He has a new documentary now streaming on PBS.org, airing on local stations called The Atomic Bowl, Football at Ground Zero and Nuclear Peril today. It's a companion to his new book of the same name. This is the trailer for the film, which is narrated by Peter Coyote. Admiral Hosey heads up Pasadena's colorful tournament of Rose's parade. It's the 57th annual observance of the event. New Year's Day. Americans get ready to enjoy the traditional college football bowl games.

In the biggest contest, Southern Cal plays Alabama in the Rose Bowl. A dozen other games draw wide attention. But the most unique bowl game was played that day across the Pacific in Japan. It featured U.S. Marines who were part of the hundreds of thousands of American forces occupying the country since Japan's surrender in September. Among the stars in the game was a quarterback who had recently won the Heisman Trophy and the legendary pro football running back. But it was the sight of the game that would prove disturbing. On a makeshift gridiron near Ground Zero in Nagasaki, where tens of the game, of thousands had been killed by the atomic bomb less than five months earlier.

Many of the players and other U.S. servicemen in Nagasaki had been exposed to lingering levels of radiation for months. Some would later complain of cancer or other diseases that can be caused by radiation. Why was this game played at this site and then disappeared from history for decades. And why does the story of the atomic attack on Nagasaki provide so many warnings and lessons for today? The trailer for The Atomic Bowl. For more, we're joined by Greg Mitchell, director of this new PBS film and a book of the same title. Greg, today is August 6, 80 years ago, the first atomic bomb in the world was dropped on Hiroshima. Three days later on Nagasaki. This book calls

attention to what you call the second forgotten or overshadowed bombing. President Obama famously went to Hiroshima, though not to Nagasaki. Oppenheimer filmed maybe two short mentions of Nagasaki. Talk about this, what many would see as a sacred period, because because so many hundreds of thousands of people were killed between these two days, 80 years ago. Yes. Well, you know, as you mentioned, Nagasaki's author that when I was in Nagasaki, they refer to themselves as the inferior atomic bomb city because so little as it paid attention to them to this date. So I've always in my many years of writing about this and making films, tried to pay special attention to Nagasaki.

So I was very happy to make this film, which focuses on the use of the bomb. and Nagasaki in the aftermath, the U.S. occupation of the atomic cities, which has been covered very, very little over the years compared to the European occupation. And then leading up to the, you might say, bizarre, surreal, horrifying decision to hold an all-star U.S. military football game not only in Nagasaki, but on a field in front of a school where 175 students and teachers had been killed by the bomb. So, and then, of course, the aftermath of that and the lessons for today from that. But it is revealing in many ways that the U.S. would feel, even after the killing of all the civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki,

that they could still hold a sporting event not only in Nagasaki, but on a field where so many had died. And in terms of the soldiers that were exposed, could you talk about the battles of some of them to have the military recognized the American soldiers who participated in that game? Yes. Well, you know, there were hundreds of thousands of Americans who went into Hiroshima Nagasaki and they were giving very little warning on what they might find there. They worked in the ruins. They cleared the ruins. They were given radiation devices that many said didn't work. And so many of them complained right away. And in years after, after about serious health defects, later developing cancer and leukemia and so forth,

that the military did not recognize for decades. And it was only in as late as the 1990s that they began to get compensation and some attention for what had happened there, and you know, a real struggle to do that. And of course, we see it today, even with the downwinders, the victims of the U.S. testing in Nevada and Utah and so forth, who had to fight so hard to get any kind of recognition and compensation for the effects on them from the fallout that they suffered from.

I wanted to go back to this new film that you have out at PBS.org, the Atomic Bowl football at Ground Zero and Nuclear Peril today. Hours before the Nagasaki bombing, the Soviet Union, as promised, declared war on Japan, which President Truman back in July had said meant certain defeat for the enemy, even without use of an atomic bomb. Truman was reportedly surprised to learn of the second bombing. After Nagasaki, he ordered that no further atomic

bombs be used without his expressed approval. Truman warned that if he ordered a third atomic attack, another 100,000 would die. And he said, he didn't want to kill, quote, all those kids. When they learned of the Hiroshima attack, scientists at Los Alamos generally expressed approval. But many of them, including Robert Oppenheimer, took the Nagasaki bombing quite badly. observers said that Oppenheimer appeared anxious, depressed, and even one reported a nervous wreck. That's a clip from the Atomic Bowl, Football at Ground Zero, Nuclear Peril today. How is it possible that, well, first the decision to drop the atomic bomb, but then the second one, three days later, when, as you point out in the film, Truman, they understand. understood that Japan was just about to surrender. Was it to test the two different kinds of

nuclear bombs? Well, there's been a lot of theories about this. Some people believe in the testing notion or the notion we were sending a signal to the Soviets who were about to enter the war. But, you know, maybe the lesson for today is that the Nagasaki attack, which a few people understand, was almost automated. You know, there was no separate decision to drop the bomb on Nagasaki, Truman was coming back from Potsdam, and the order was simply for them to roll off the assembly line and used when ready. And General Groves stepped in, and it was his goal to use it as soon as possible. And so the bomb was used almost automatically without a sense of pausing. And, you know, as that clip shows, Truman was surprised that it had been used. And when he heard

it had been used, he put a stop for a third weapon. But the use of the second bomb shows how careless, heartless, the U.S. was about the use of the bomb. And again, showing up with the football game that's in the film where they just even four months later felt they could have this game. A few months after that, they held a Miss Atomic Bomb Beauty Contest in Nagasaki with the Japanese women. So there was no apparent sense of shame or maybe we should not draw attention to what we did there.

But there was an attempt to hide from the world the real catastrophe, the human lives that had been lost. I think it was Wilfred Bershett, the Australian foreign correspondent, who got to Hiroshima about a month after the bombing. But could you talk about the efforts to suppress information about what had happened to other parts of the world. Yes, I did my previous book, Atomic Cover-Up,

and my previous PBS film, also called Atomic Cover-up, looked at the decades-long suppression of the most important footage of shot in Hiroshima Nagasaki, first by a Japanese newsreel team, and then by an elite U.S. military crew that shot the only color footage there. And, you know, as I detail then, that footage was buried and suppressed for decades and not shown to Americans or the world until many, many years later. So this suppression of what we actually did there covered all sorts of things from, you know, newspapers and the press to film footage and even what Hollywood was allowed to or chose to show.

And could you talk about that in the context of the current times where all the nuclear test treaties are being disassembled by the participants and where we're seeing efforts to modernize the nuclear program in the United States? Yes, well, you know, the famous doomsday clock of a bulletin of atomic scientists, they moved at the closest to midnight it's ever been this year because of things like that. You mentioned modernize, you know, one thing that we have famously modernized is we now have bunker-busting nuclear weapons. And I, myself, was extremely worried when Trump decided to use the conventional bunker buster for the first time ever on the Iranian nuclear sites six weeks ago. And it did, you know, lead to, or it was one of the things that led to the ceasefire. But my fear was that Trump trigger-happy and the people he's surrounded by, if that hadn't worked, that he might have been tempted or might have actually used one of these new, modern, smaller, nuclear bunker busters. So you're right. The modernization has the potential and the problem is that they may be more likely to be used because they are seen as smaller and not as perhaps not as.

earth-shattering. Greg, you can't help but think when you watch the trailer to the film, when you just show the moonscape, both in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the comparison to what we're seeing in Gaza right now. Yeah, I've called Gaza, Nagasaki in slow motion. And you do, the photos do look remarkably similar in some places. And in fact, you know, again, few people know that, unlike Hiroshima, which did have a major military base, even though most of the people killed in Hiroshima were civilians.

Nagasaki had no major military base, and almost all of the casualties in Nagasaki were civilians. You know, I want to follow up on Juan's point about the cover-up, about Wilfred Burchett, this great Australian journalist who, although the U.S. said Japan's off limits after Hiroshima, he makes his way in a train for something like 20 hours, gets there, sees this moonscape, the horror and people's skin melting off their faces, and he sits down in the rubble and taps out the words and as Hermes typewriter, I write this as a warning to the world. He didn't have words. He said, I'm seeing a kind of bomb sickness to which the United States and the New York Times, interestingly.

You pointed out, we just saw a picture of Groves, Oppenheimer, and William Lawrence, who wrote for the Times and the Pentagon, that we didn't know this, saying that, and the U.S. government saying that the bum sickness was simply Japanese propaganda. Yeah, Groves, Leslie Groves, played by Matt Damon in the Oppenheimer film, said that he even heard it was a rather pleasant way to die. And, you know, I mean, you mentioned Burchett, but in Nagasaki, George Weller was a reporter, was the first U.S. reporter into Nagasaki, and he sent the same sort of dispatches for the Chicago newspapers, and it would have been syndicated. But he sent it in, he sent it to MacArthur's office

in Tokyo, and they never appeared for a decade. They were killed. And that was in Nagasaki. So the same thing that happened in Hiroshima happened in Nagasaki, another famous reporter, and, you know, his material was killed. And what are you hoping that folks will take away from this film of yours? Well, I've been writing and doing films for 40 years now, and of course the hope is always that it alerts people to the current dangers, the current threats, not just a piece of history, it's very interesting history, it's horrifying history, but it's also the lessons for today and the warnings for today, which includes possible use of nuclear weapons again today. We have AI, which is now entering our system, our nuclear systems, which is

very scary. And we have that, in my view, the reason for even returning to Hiroshima and Nagasaki is, in my view, there is not a real taboo on using nuclear weapons because so many historians, so many in the media continue to support the use of the atomic bomb against Hiroshima and even Nagasaki. And now Trump wants to put a nuclear plant on the moon in the next few years. they're on the moon. So to me, there's certainly no nuclear taboo as far as I can see. And that makes it scary for possible use again. And that's the reason to keep returning to may seem like history, but it's very, very, very timely today. Greg Mitchell, and thank you so much for being with us. Director of the new film now streaming on PBS.org, the Atomic Bowl,

football at Ground Zero and Nuclear Peril today. I'm Amy Goodman with Juan Gonzalez.