Our volunteers have confirmed that the American Tower Company’s tower on Monument Peak at 6,200 ft. elevation collapsed in the February winter storm due to severe ice accumulation and wind. The tower where KNSJ rented space since beginning broadcasting on July 4th, 2013, is now a crumpled pile of steel and cabling. The tower also hosted two cell phone transfer stations, for AT&T and T-Mobile, as well as several other smaller clients. KNSJ was the only broadcast station on the tower. KNSJ is still streaming online, but restoring our broadcast signal will require urgent funding for engineering, equipment, and a possible new site.
A conversation about law, advocacy, and redemption with attorney Courtney JordanCourtney Jordan (Cherokee) is an attorney who built her expertise of federal Indian Law and tribal law serving in some of the highest levels of her profession. She is a former Assistant United States Attorney. She was also an Assistant Attorney General for the Cherokee Nation, and a Tribal Liaison for the State of Oklahoma. Her career was turned upside down after she was convicted of criminal charges and had her law license suspended following a hit-and-run and police chase in 2022. Her dogged advocacy for her own case exposed an undiagnosed medical condition even she was not aware of. After pleading guilty and serving her sentence, she was successful in having her license to practice reinstated. She founded her own law firm and has built a significant social media community breaking down complex legal cases into common-sense concepts. In this encore show, Jordan joins us for a conversation about her rise and fall and rise again in a demanding profession.
Robt O’Sullivan Schleith has hosted the monthly open reading for the Escondido Arts Partnership Art Gallery (Escondidoarts.org) since 2007 and publishes the annual Summation ekphrastic anthology, now in its eighteenth year; he serves as a regional editor of the San Diego Poetry Annual (sandiegopoetryannual.com, and has served as a poetry judge for the annual Eric Hoffer Prize since 2021. He previously published the ‘Drift Wood Highway’ series of poetry anthologies from 1999 through 2002, and is the (retired in 2003) founder of the San Diego Poetry Slam.
In addition to the SDPA, his work has appeared in Sun Runner Magazine, Dan River Press, Northwoods Press, Northern Virginia Review, Encinitas Quarterly and the City Works anthology (San Diego City College), as well as on a number of online sites like Poetry Super Highway.
He publishes under his mother’s maiden name O’Sullivan.
With Mike Aguirre and Co-host Arthur Aguirre LIVE Saturday at 11am
STEPHEN SKOWRONEK
Author of The Adaptability Paradox: Political Inclusion and Constitutional Resilience. The book asks: “how adaptable is the American Constitution?” and “why, after a long history of adaptations, have we had such a hard time accommodating a fully inclusive polity in a stable and responsive set of governing arrangements?”
Stephen Skowronek is the Pelatiah Perit Professor of Political and Social Science at Yale University. In 2019, he served as the Wynant Visiting Professor at the Rothermere American Institute, Balliol College Oxford. He has also been a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and he held the Chair in American Civilization at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris. His most recent book, The Adaptability Paradox: Political Inclusion and Constitutional Resilience (2025), examines the democratization of the Constitution and the political and institutitonal difficulties encountered in adjusting a fully inclusive polity.
Skowronek’s reseach has focused on American national institutions and American political development. He has written extensively on the American presidency and the executive branch. His publications include Phantoms of a Beleaguered Republic: The Deep State and the Unitary Executive (with John Dearborn and Desmond King), The Policy State: An American Predicament (With Karen Orren), Building a New American State: The Expansion of National Administrative Capacities, 1877-1920 , The Politics Presidents Make: Leadership from John Adams to Bill Clinton, The Search for American Political Development (with Karen Orren), and Presidential Leadership in Political Time: Reprise and Reappraisal (third edition 2020). Among other activities, he was co-founder of the journal Studies in American Political Development, which he co-edited between 1986 and 2007, and he provided the episode structure and thematic content for the PBS miniseries: The American President (Kunhardt Productions).
KNSJ’S COMMUNITY FIRST THURSDAY MEETING IS RESCHEDULED FOR THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 17 AT THE PEACE RESOURCE CENTER IN SAN DIEGO, 7PM. PLENTY OF PARKING. MORE INFORMATION TO FOLLOW.
PLEASE MARK YOUR CALENDAR. LEARN ABOUT KNSJ AND OUR VOLUNTEER OPPORTUNITIES RUNNING A RADIO STATION AND MUTIMEDIA PLATFORM IN SAN DIEGO, AND KEYNOTE SPEAKER.
California State Legislature Overriding the Rights and Votes of Local Voters
Guest Andrew Hollingworth
Patricia and Andrew are in conversation about how legislation can be passed at the state level in Sacramento overriding wishes of local residents. Their conversation includes discussion of California bills SB958 and SB344. Information is also provided on contacting your state representatives.
Bill on CA Governor’s desk would end jail for minor infractions Both houses of the California state legislature recently approved a bill to ban the practice of issuing bench warrants for minor infractions that are not jailable offenses. Comments from Assemblymember Josh Lowenthal (D – Long Beach), a co-author on the bill; and from Jhumpa Bhattacharya, (JOOM-puh BUH-tah-CHAR-ee-uh) co-founder and co-president of the Maven Collaborative, a nonprofit that works for economic justice.
A California bill aiming to stop the practice of jailing people for minor infractions is now on Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk.
Assembly Bill 2122 would prevent courts from issuing bench warrants for a failure to appear in court or pay a fine for a low-level traffic or civil offense.
Asm. Josh Lowenthal, D-Long Beach, a co-author of the bill, said courts should rely on bank levies, wage garnishments or tax intercepts instead.
“It doesn’t make financial sense because arrests often cost taxpayers more to arrest somebody than what they actually owe. Taking someone into custody takes limited law enforcement personnel and resources away from the more serious cases,” Lowenthal explained.
The California Sheriff’s Department Association opposes the bill, arguing it would remove an important tool which encourages people to appear in court or pay their fines. The measure would apply to driving offenses such as a broken taillight or an illegal U-turn, or to civil infractions like sleeping on a public bench or fishing without a license.
Jhumpa Bhattacharya, cofounder and copresident of the economic justice nonprofit Maven Collaborative, which cosponsored the bill, said jailing people over minor offenses can unfairly cause them to lose their job and be unable to pay rent, destabilizing communities. Bhattacharya added poverty and over-policing in neighborhoods of color mean it is an issue of racial and economic justice.
“In San Francisco County, even though Black people make up just about 6% of the population, about 50% of those who are arrested for failure to appear were Black. In Los Angeles County, 90% of the thousands of folks that were arrested were Black or Latinx,” Bhattacharya pointed out.
The bill’s supporters said many people who fail to show up for a court date have trouble getting time off of work, have transportation issues or are afraid to encounter ICE agents. A dozen counties in California already forgo the use of bench warrants for minor infractions.
A Florida grand jury finds the DeSantis administration ‘misappropriated’ funds from Medicaid settlement, Texas lawmakers urged to address the rising cost of childcare, and anti-war groups decry a record $1.5 trillion Pentagon budget request.
2026 Talks – August 31, 2026 Martin Luther King III commemorates the March on Washington, close polls are helping heat up New Hampshire’s Senate race and U.S. colleges brace for the loss of international students.
Tune in to Friendly Fire a Voice For Veterans and listen in as four veterans, each from a different branch of the service, discuss the exciting and informative events that took place at the 2026 Veterans for Peace four day convention. Susan Schnall, president of Veterans for Peace talks about the numerous challenges the current administration is presenting to those trying to stop endless wars, global climate change, mass deportations and a diminished VA healthcare system.
DOCUMENTING THE U.S. MEDIA’S COMPLICITY IN THE GENOCIDE OF
GAZA WITH ROBIN ANDERSEN
In Robin Andersen’s new book, she chronicles how the U.S. media utilized their massive reach to help shield Israel from scrutiny as it perpetrated a genocide in Gaza.
Chris Hedges, a former New York Times Middle East Bureau Chief, is certain about at least one thing regarding Israeli propaganda tactics: “If there is one indisputable fact, it is that Israel lies like it breathes.” The task of professional journalists and media outlets is to review evidence and verify the information they are reporting, but when it comes to Israel, Western establishment media function as stenographers, echoing their lies globally.
In this episode of The Chris Hedges Report, Hedges explores the mechanisms by which Western media function as propaganda outlets for Israel with media scholar Robin Andersen, who documented these practices in her new book, “The Complicit Lens.” They begin with a discussion of the ways media corporations control the narrative through omissions of historical context, dehumanization of Palestinians and censorship of specific words, such as “massacres.” Journalists who work for these commercial outlets are aware of their complicity — a fact corroborated by leaks detailing the propagandistic guidelines editorial departments force their journalists to follow — but sacrifice their integrity and honesty for access to those in power and to protect themselves from retaliation.
Hedges and Andersen explain the ways that media outlets manipulate language to cover up war crimes being committed by the Israelis and shift the blame for Israeli attacks on civilians and infrastructure, such as hospitals and schools, onto the victims, Palestinians themselves. Outlets engage in ‘atrocity propaganda,’ amplifying horrific lies about sexual assault and “beheaded babies” told by the Israeli State without factchecking them to generate public support for the genocide of Palestinians, who are characterized as ‘terrorists’ and members of the demonized national resistance organization, Hamas. Andersen reports, “The Israelis were presented in their whole humanity… and the Palestinians are dead bodies, and that’s it.”
Another method of information control is by limiting access. Foreign journalists are restricted from entering Gaza, and those who are allowed in are vetted by Israel in advance. In violation of international law, the Palestinian press is censored through murder. Over 270 Palestinians, including those who work for major media outlets, and their families have been targeted and killed by the Israeli military. The price that we all pay for this complicity by the media is the legitimization of genocide, the absence of accountability and the lack of reliable news sources. As Andersen concludes, our loss is that there are “fewer and fewer voices, fewer and fewer documentation [that] can make sense of this and bring it to global publics.”
