Anthony Fauci was once presented as the unimpeachable voice of science. Now, confronted with questions about gain-of-function research, the Wuhan laboratory and what government officials knew about COVID-19’s origins, he has invoked the Fifth Amendment 111 times. Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern joins Robert Scheer to examine the newly released documents, the intelligence agencies accused of burying the truth and a corporate press more interested in protecting official narratives than exposing them. Millions died, the world was upended—and Washington still believes the public is not entitled to honest answers.

As Donald Trump openly defies constitutional norms and concentrates power in the White House, many Americans see him as a dangerous break from the nation's democratic traditions. Sociologist Charles Derber argues the opposite. In this wide-ranging conversation with Robert Scheer, the Boston College professor contends that authoritarianism has been embedded in the American political system since its founding. Drawing on the history of the Constitution, the Magna Carta, corporate power, and popular resistance, Derber argues that Trump did not invent oligarchy—he simply stripped away the illusion that the United States was ever governed primarily by the people. The discussion explores the country's long struggle between concentrated wealth and democratic movements, asking whether today's crisis marks the collapse of an old political order—or the beginning of a genuine fight to build one that serves ordinary Americans.

The former congressman tells Robert Scheer that a provision buried in the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act could integrate the United States and Israel at the highest levels of military technology—without meaningful public debate or congressional scrutiny.

Former Congressman Dennis Kucinich has spent decades warning about the machinery of permanent war. But in a new conversation with Robert Scheer, he argues that Congress is now on the verge of crossing a line without precedent in American military history.

At the center of Kucinich's warning is Section 219 of the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act, a provision he says would formally integrate key areas of U.S. and Israeli military development, including artificial intelligence, autonomous weapons, quantum sensing, cyber and electronic warfare, biotechnology, missile defense, drones and directed-energy systems.

“They call it integration, but I call it a merger,” Kucinich tells Scheer.

The implications, he argues, go far beyond traditional military aid or weapons sales. Kucinich warns that the provision could create new counterintelligence risks, deepen U.S. dependence on Israel's military infrastructure and technology, blur questions of war powers and further entangle Washington in Israel's expanding regional conflicts.

Even more alarming, Kucinich says, is how little debate the proposal has received. Rather than being considered through a separate treaty or subjected to extensive congressional hearings, the provision has been folded into a massive defense authorization bill that lawmakers will face enormous political pressure to support.

“This provision has been smuggled into the bill,” Kucinich argues. “There's never been any debate.”

For Scheer, the contradiction is impossible to ignore. At the moment the United States marks 250 years since declaring its independence, Washington may be moving toward an unprecedented military dependence on another state—one whose conduct in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon has placed it at the center of international accusations of genocide and grave violations of international law.

In this urgent edition of Scheer Intelligence, Scheer and Kucinich examine what Section 219 could mean for American sovereignty, constitutional government and the future of war—and why a provision of such consequence has received so little attention from Congress, the Democratic opposition and the mainstream press.