Deadly Texas Floods: Blame the Billionaires

On The Freedom Side LIVE, Thursday, 7/17 at 3pm ET/12pm PT, hosts Rania Khalek and Eugene Puryear are joined by special guests:

Aru Shiney-Ajay, Executive Director of the Sunrise Movement, joins the show to discuss the devastating flash floods in Central Texas that have killed at least 121 people and left over 160 still missing. The barrage of extreme weather disasters totaling 5 this month alone comes as federal climate agencies tasked with responding to crises are as gutted as ever by Trump and DOGE. Shiney-Ajay breaks down the widespread fossil fuel industry corruption behind the climate crisis and how the Texas floods are a sign of more catastrophe to come.

Elijah Magnier, veteran war correspondent and analyst, joins the show to discuss Israel’s latest wave of airstrikes on Syria, including the bombing of the Defense Ministry and Presidential Palace in Damascus, just days after the US lifted sanctions on the HTS-led interim government. Magnier explains Israel’s use of sectarian violence in its expansion into Syrian territory, HTS’s efforts to normalize with Israel, and the US’s role.

Jon Elmer, contributing editor at The Electronic Intifada, joins the show to discuss Israel’s new plan to forcibly confine all 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza to a militarized concentration camp in Gaza. Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestinians is advancing at a rapid pace nearly two years into the genocidal war. Elmer will discuss the US and Israel’s weaponization of aid, the plan for illegal mass expulsion they’re calling “voluntary migration,” and the perseverance of the Palestinian resistance.

Claude Gatebuke, Rwandan genocide survivor and Executive Director of the African Great Lakes Action Network, joins the show to discuss the US-brokered Rwanda-DRC peace deal. Trump officials have cast the deal, which hands $3 trillion of mineral wealth to US corporations, as a great diplomatic success. Gatebuke will discuss the Western-backed, 30-year war of occupation and looting in the DR Congo, and why the “peace deal” greenlights more colonial violence.

Emma Janssen, a writing fellow at The American Prospect, joins the show to discuss Trump’s enactment of the largest cuts to federal nutrition assistance in US history– at a time when hunger is already at crisis levels. With $186 billion slashed from SNAP and costs shifted onto states, Janssen will discuss the incoming hunger crisis in the richest country on earth, which would roll back decades of anti-hunger progress in the US to fund tax breaks for the ultra-wealthy.

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