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Republicans & Christian Nationalists Embrace January 6th Insurrection and Political Violence; Colombians Elect Gustavo Petro the Nation's First Leftist President; Meteorologist Turned Congressional Candidate Addresses Climate Change; Bob Nixon: This Week’s Under-reported News Summary. Featured speakers: Wajahat Ali, a Daily Beast columnist, public speaker and author; Alexander Main, Director of International Policy at the Center for Economic and Policy Research; Eric Sorensen, retired TV meteorologist, now Congressional Candidate.

Elite news media are saying that Biden has to go to Saudi Arabia in July despite his pledges to make the country a “pariah” for abuses including the grisly murder of a Washington Post contributor, because…stability? Shaking hands with Mohammed bin Salman makes sense, even in the context of denying Cuba and Venezuela participation in the Americas Summit out of purported concerns about their human rights records, because…gas prices? It’s hard to parse corporate media coverage of Biden’s Saudi visit, because that coverage obscures rather than illuminates what’s going on behind the euphemism “US interests.” ...

Almost all of the policy crises we face today — abortion, guns, climate change, the integrity of our elections — have been blocked from consideration by the US Senate. How did that happen? How did what some have called the “world’s greatest deliberative body” come to a standstill? The answer, according to Ira Shapiro, our guest on this week’s WhoWhatWhy podcast – is Mitch McConnell. Senate Minority Leader McConnell (R-KY) has put these highly critical issues on ice. Shapiro is a 45-year veteran of Washington, a former Senate staffer, a former official in the Clinton administration, and the author of three books about the US Senate, including his latest, The Betrayal: How Mitch McConnell and the Senate Republicans Abandoned America. Shapiro details what happened after McConnell became minority leader, and how it led, in his view, to a “dark place in history.” ...

After this week’s runoff elections in Colombia, former Bogotá Mayor Gustavo Petro is set to become the South American country’s first leftist president. Gimena Sánchez-Garzoli, director for the Andes at the Washington Office on Latin America, joins Ryan Grim to discuss what Petro’s election means and how it happened.

Hass insists that covering Palestine from Palestine is as necessary as covering Britain from London, and France from Paris. Her reports for the Israeli daily Ha’aretz, which she says "cannot be objective, just as any reporting about wrong-doing cannot be objective," have won her enemies in all camps. Forced by Hamas to leave Gaza earlier than planned, in 2008, she was detained in Israel twice for entering Gaza without a permit and staying in an "enemy entity." (Replay from 3/27/22)

This week on Talk World Radio, we’re talking about ending violent crime. Our guest Irvin Waller is emeritus professor of criminology at the University of Ottawa, and author of, among other works, the incredibly useful book, Science and the Secrets of Ending Violent Crime. His website is IrvinWaller.org .