>> NINA MOORE: Coming up next on "Ivory Tower", the media ban is lifted.

Now what?

Also tonight, how to address record high diesel costs.

And let's unpack the president's speech at the UN Assembly.

The professors will be right back at a moment.

This brought to you by the members of WCNY.

Thank you.

♪ ♪ >> NINA: Good evening, and welcome to "Ivory Tower".

Thanks for being here.

I'm Nina Moore of Colgate University.

The professors around the table tonight are Anirban Acharya of Le Moyne College, Sarah Pralle of Syracuse University, and Rick Fenner of Utica University.

This week was a whirlwind for the news media.

Three news outlets were banned from the White House, and in solidarity, several others suspended their video coverage of the president.

Then yesterday, a federal judge temporarily suspended the ban, but the White House is not backing down arguing the ban is a matter of national security.

So, Anirban, will this argument fly when both sides return to court on October 5?

>> ANIRBAN: I find it very highly unlikely that President would prevail on this, because the First Amendment is very clear, and it's one of the cornerstones of United States Constitutional Democracy.

So punishing journalism, because you dislike the certain news, even if it was fake news, in which this case it was not, was not is not allowed.

I mean, there were plenty of court cases and court verdicts about this kind of banning news organizations or not allowing things to be published that would be detrimental to the administration.

Courts have ruled again that again and again that should not be the case.

But, however, I want to put a little bit of color to this.

So it is also the case that precedents have previously attacked news, news outlets.

So, for example, after the Cam Ne, reporting by Morley Safer in Vietnam, where they were showing Marines torching Vietnamese huts, Lyndon Johnson called up Frank Stanton, the president of CBS, and gave him a dreadful tongue lashing, accusing CBS of desecrating the flag, and ordering a security check on Safer, right?

So it's not that it is unheard of.

But I think Trump is taking these to a new level where you're saying, I'm completely going to ban all these news outlets from you.

But to see that, you know, they banded together in solidarity and the very next day we saw, I think, Trump was speaking about in a particular area, but we couldn't hear what the president was saying precisely because all the news outlets were not there.

So I think he will find himself in a trap here, which he, at the end of the day, he has to allow people in.

But then they might, you know, intermittently cancel their thing, kind of harass them and things like that.

But on the whole, it is impossible.

>> RICK: I agree, but I don't even think they'll end up having the October 5th meeting.

They're going to need this because this happened once before.

Trump in his first term, kicked Jim Acosta out, from CNN, who then went and got a temporary injunction by Judge Kelly, who was the same one who's acting in this case, and basically Trump then just gave in.

What's interesting to note, though, is the judge didn't mention the First Amendment as a reason at all for granting the temporary injunction.

They used the Fifth Amendment with due process.

And so having said that, that there are almost property rights of having these press passes, and without giving them both an ability to appeal and justification, that's the reason that the judge said they thought ultimately they may prevail.

>> But he will deal with the First Amendment issues at the next hearing.

So that's not off the table.

I just think that we should call this un-American, call it for what it is, right?

It's not just unconstitutional, but this is un-American, and we should be calling out the Republicans, too, who were not saying anything about it, right?

There's a really good Jamelle Bouie, who is one of my favorite columnists for New York Times, has this distinction between, like, unconstitutional and anti-constitutional, you know?

This idea of anti-constitutional is, you're standing in opposition to the Constitution.

The very idea that the people are sovereign, right?

And I think that that's something that really describes President Trump, who does not see the people or the press as having any kind of sovereign rights beyond his own, right?

And I think the contrast last night at the White House was stark, right?

Which is, you have the president of China there with the Chinese press, in the White House, while he's barring the American journalists from coming in.

And that's astounding.

I just -- what kind of message does that send?

He's also funding ads that are using government money of anti communist ads, but then he's inviting the head of a country who represses speech.

They're, like, one of the worst in terms of their ranking on free speech, 178 out of 180 countries, in terms of free press.

So, it's just surreal, and I -- so, yes, I think the judge is going to issue in the correct way, but we still should not be, we should still be shocked and upset by this.

>> I think it's important to note that even the conservative media has come out in support of this.

Newsmax, all right, very right wing came out and said that they asked tough questions of the Obama and Biden administration, and they were never kicked out.

So they've been critical of Trump's actions as well.

>> NINA: Okay, so coming up this from the other side, because that's what we want to do, what about the national security argument?

>> I don't really see the national security argument here.

It's just basically a viewpoint discrimination.

The reason the ban came to being is because a lot of service members have sent pictures, I think, of devastated bases and so on.

And the press published it, and that's what free press does, right?

In what way, I don't really get it can be a national security issue.

And even if that's the case, there were Pentagon papers were published, and there were other things that -- secret documents that get leaked to the press.

That gets published.

I think that press freedom is so sacrosanct in the United States.

I agree with Sarah.

It's completely un-American to just discriminate against a particular viewpoint.

I mean, I don't... >> But how it dismissed that point about national security.

He said that many of the articles that Trump was -- had a problem with were months old and didn't provide any evidence of how they would have really weakened our national security.

Just throwing things at the wall.

>> Well, he always does that with national security as well.

And I guess one of the stories that they highlighted in there, you know, after the fact, brief about national security was one of those sources when anonymous source from the White House, it was actually J.D.

Vance, right?

>> Yeah.

>> NINA: Well, he planted the story is what the reporting says, but there is, is there Not and I'll ask this question: Is there not a legitimate frustration with the constant leaks about national security issues?

We are a country that believes in free speech, but it's not unfettered free speech.

We do have limitations.

And when you're signaling to the enemy that we're running out of munitions, isn't that a problem?

>> Oh, that was, that's not a secret.

I mean, that... but he's denying this, and Trump looks very foolish.

>> we could get this data from Center for Strategic Studies.

CISS had this data, from where they all get these data.

So that's a British organization, I think.

>> NINA: Okay, October 5th is when we will see the next part of this crisis unfold.

The cost of diesel fuel is at an all time record high.

$6.53 a gallon.

That's an 80% increase over last year.

Higher diesel prices means higher shipping costs, which means higher consumer prices.

Lawmakers are weighing several options to turn things around.

Abandon diesel exports, attacks, deduction, for commuters, suspending the federal gas tax, and, of course, opening up the street of Hormuz.

Rick, what's the best fix here?

>> RICK: Well, clearly, this is the cause of the war, and so opening the straits, which may happen now, appears that perhaps Iran has offered a deal.

That may happen.

But some of the other things have some promise, but if you dig below the surface, there are some problems.

Take the ban on exports.

The problem right now is that the supply of oil and diesel worldwide is less than the demand.

So the price is going up.

Well, in the United States, we actually produce more diesel than we use.

So if you just look at the United States, it's its own entity, you know, we have a surplus of diesel.

So if you don't allow companies to ship the diesel out, the price of diesel should fall in the United States.

That's the idea behind the ban on exports.

The problem is that's going to anger producers of diesel, because they would rather get the 6 plus dollars than whatever they would be able to sell in the United States.

Plus, they would then have every incentive, diesel doesn't go bad the way strawberries do.

So they would have every incentive to keep some of the diesel off of the market, not to refine it.

And so that would, you know, certainly undermine the ability of the price to go down because of the banning of exports.

>> NINA: Yeah, so, Sarah, this seems to be splitting Republicans so that you have big oil that is opposed to the ban, and then you have MAGA populists and the president who support the ban.

>> SARAH: Well, but there's other proposals out there that are actually bringing together the parties.

And one of which I disagree with, we have a Democrat and some Republicans co-sponsoring a Bill to give a tax write off to commuters for their expenses for commuting.

And first of all, that only works if you make enough money to do tax write offs, so it doesn't help low income and poor people.

Secondly, I'd rather my money go to subsidize electric vehicles, and electric semi trucks, rather than paying people to drive their big, you know, big cars, the SUVs that don't get good gas money.

It just doesn't even make sense.

And actually, the subsidies and support for moving to a more electric based transportation system have decreased since Trump came to office, no big surprise, but that puts us behind most countries, China, 60 to 70% of their new car sales are electric.

Europe, it's lower than that, but still much higher than ours.

Ours is actually going down, and that's a result of Trump policies.

>> NINA: So, Anirban, we're actually seeing outages already, in states like California, Florida, also Texas.

What are the potential repercussions of this for the midterm elections?

>> ANIRBAN: But, I mean, look, even if we ban the diesel exports, I doubt that the prices would come down very much.

If we are at 6.5 now, per gallon, and weeks before the war, War it was 2.5.

I doubt that we do $4 a gallon decrease.

And as a result, I mean, you know, in the midterm, the writing is kind of on the wall, that Republicans are facing very adverse headwinds, and they cannot really explain as to, like, you know, without referring to the war, that this administration started.

They cannot really explain or to their voters why everybody's paying such high prices.

And, you know, what's important here, it actually affects mostly the farming communities.

Farmers use huge amounts of diesel.

And they're already working on very small margins.

Farming is not tremendously a profitable thing.

They don't have massive windfall profits.

So as a result, I believe that because even if this export ban goes in, the diminishing in prices would be so little, it would not really matter in terms of translating it for votes for Republicans.

Republicans are facing definitely... >> Another thing that is being discussed is a holiday on the federal gas tax.

And so cutting that.

The problem with that is only 25 cents a gallon on diesel, which, again, doesn't go nearly to the increase that we've seen in the price of diesel since the war.

Plus, there's no guarantee that everyone's going to pass all of that 25 cents onto the consumer.

So I think all of these proposals are, you know, grasping at straws, trying to do something because of the fact that Americans, just like they were in 2024, are saying that the economy is the major issue, and inflation we're upset with, and we're going to vote on that.

And we saw what happened to Harris.

She lost the presidency because this, I think, this is probably is going to lead to the loss of the Senate in the House for the Republicans.

>> NINA: Well, but in this case, we're talking about more than just inflation, right, because what Democrats are pushing for, Sarah, is an end to the war, and opening up the strait of Hormuz.

So it's sort of a double whammy for Republicans.

>> SARAH: Yeah, and so five weeks before the election, suddenly, these Republicans, and really you know, competitive districts or states, are suddenly having a religious conversion, are becoming, you know, anti war, even though they voted against the War Powers Act multiple times.

So, you know, where were they, seven months ago, and for the last seven months, right?

So they're suddenly, Ashley Hinson is a good one a good example of suddenly she's anti war.

>> That's right.

>> Because it's incredible.

It's in Iowa, where the Democrats are competitive in Iowa.

>> Yeah.

>> Of all places, farm country.

>> Farm country.

which really needs these prices to go down.

We all do because it gets passed on to the consumer.

>> ANIRBAN: No, I had one quick question here, like, so, for example, if we have a windfall profit tax for gas companies or kind of price control, would that work?

I know economies don't like price controls, but this is also a wartime situation.

>> RICK: Well, first of all, any of those things similar to the commuter tax rebate, those won't kick in until taxes are filed, which would be April.

So they're going to have no impact on the short run.

I think the thing that's going to have the biggest impact is when Trump agrees to Iran seven day, you know, peace proposal, which I think he's going to do.

>> NINA: Okay, well, does our, sort of, our vested involvement in Venezuelan oil and the fact that we're partners now?

>> ANIRBAN: Yeah, I mean, so look, but that would come online for after a very long time.

It's not a very advanced infrastructure.

There needs to be 1000000000s of dollars of investment several years out, and then we can see some oil.

>> NINA: Okay.

So now going international, President Trump's address to the U.N.

General Assembly this week drew a mixed response.

Some considered it principled, on message, and action oriented.

For others, the main takeaway was the president's threat to annihilate Iran.

Sarah, what is your assessment of how the president used the world stage this week?

>> SARAH: Well, it wasn't must see TV list, but it that way.

A lot of the same old, same old, pretty low energy, if you ask me.

I suffered through the first 20 minutes or so.

But to set joking aside, to be more serious here, I think, like, a lot of focus is on the annihilate Iran thing, which he has done before, and the people walked out, which I understand why they would.

But honestly, the part that's, I think, scariest is this kind of idea to the victor belong the spoils.

were just talking about Venezuela, right?

This idea that we can just go into countries and take their resources.

It's one of the things that the UN Charter was supposed to prevent, right?

To honor people, country's sovereignty, unless under very legal, narrow exceptions.

And that is not Trump's opinion and belief, and it seems so far, he's sort of getting away with it.

That scares me.

>> NINA: Is Venezuela sort of an exception to the overall explanation that Sarah just gave us, and that it was American oil companies that had invested heavily in Venezuelan oil.

>> ANIRBAN: American companies have, like, Chevron, I think, operates there.

Other companies have not, and it will take, again, as I said, it will take quite a long time to convince these companies.

>> NINA: No, I just mean on the concept of to the victor go the spoils.

In this case, American oil.

>> ANIRBAN: Oh, right.

Is it American oil?

Here's the thing.

I agree with Sarah, right?

The idea is that if you're an occupying power, the whole resource goes into a trusteeship, according to UN Charter.

And then the, there is a board, then, you know, the deliberation as to how things happen.

You know, while watching this speech, it brought me back to 416 BC.

There is a famous dialogue by, it is a famous dialogue called The Melian Dialogue.

When Thucydides writes about the Peloponnesian war, and there's a famous line there.

It says that the strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must.

And I think that's his approach to world politics.

You know, in the sense that we are a powerful country, we are kind of this old school classical realists.

We believe in, like, you know, taking things as within our power, and we will do so because we are just powerful.

That's it.

At the end of the day, that's how the world works in a certain kind of way.

So I think he's very, very Thucydides, Peloponnesian war, kind of a rhetoric.

>> Yet, that Iran is showing our limitations.

>> Yeah, the answering our >> ANIRBAN: Again, and then the issue is that ideas of talking about annihilating an entire country, that's also kind of not legal in international law.

>> The first time he said it.

>> But he also said he really wants to make a deal.

He really wants to make a deal, but he doesn't know what to, without, without... >> RICK: Can I address a couple of other things that Trump said?

He said, we're working closely with the leaders of Russia and Ukraine, and we will get that done.

It is going to happen, I think, more quickly than people understand.

Well, do we remember that he said before he was elected that he would end the war on day one?

We're still waiting, okay?

So it's not going to happen quicker than I wanted or that he said it was going to happen.

The other thing is, instead of AI, we're now calling super intelligence, and he is not in favor of any restrictions on this.

I think this is very worrisome.

One thing that he did say, that it was true, but there's an irony here.

He announced that the poverty rate had reached its lowest point in the United States, down to about 10.5%.

What he didn't mention, so those were 1925 numbers, and here in '26, he has gone through and put in proposals that are going to turn those numbers around.

The Medicaid cuts, getting rid of the subsidies for the healthcare, and the marketplace cuts on food stamps.

So he's taking credit for a lower poverty rate, which is great, but not telling us that he is undertaking policies that are going to turn those numbers around, make them worse.

>> SARAH: I would just add that the Prime Minister from Britain did talk about multilateral leadership around AI regulation, right?

So here we have an opportunity for the U.S.

to step up and take a leadership role in that.

And of course, we're not, because he's worried that it'll affect the stock market.

He understands that that's what's propping up our economy right now, and he's worried about China.

Meanwhile, European countries are stepping up and trying to do the job that used to be one of the United States.

>> NINA: Yeah, and that's sort of the limits of hegemonic expectations is that you have to depend on other countries, and the French president, Macron, said that one of the problems with the Iran War is that the European allies were not consulted.

So does that sort of limit, not only what President Trump can threaten, but also America's stance in the world generally?

>> ANIRBAN: Yeah, definitely did.

America can feel, it might feel that America is isolated in the sense that many, many countries around the world are not very happy with this war, and also the other kinds of threats, that if you refuel an Iranian plane, we will cut you off that your dollar system, that's Scott Bessent said.

And China said, no.

I mean, we are allowing Iranian planes and we'll do what we can.

So making these extra threats and then seeing that other people kind of not really taking that seriously, that reduces your leverage, because then your threats are kind of empty.

I will just end by saying that, look, there's a fantastic liberal international order that United States brokered after the Second World War, but I think the Trump administration, with a sort of this kind of American exceptionalism, is trying to say that, okay, yes, that order is there, I guess.

We are not bound by it.

We cannot be bound by it.

>> NINA: Quickly, Rick.

>> RICK: I just wanted to say, you know, there were a number of things that Trump said, where he hasn't feel the need to collaborate.

His view is, the United States says something, and everybody else acts.

So we don't need to talk to Europe before we go to war.

We just expect that we're going to do this, and they're going to follow.

He doesn't get the world order, doesn't think that we should be part of it.

We should be leading it.

>> NINA: And something we didn't get a chance to get to is the Cuba question, which is another really big deal, because now it's time for our grade books.

Where does the time go?

And we're going to start with our F's, and Anirban, are you going to kick us off?

>> ANIRBAN: Yes, my F goes through the Bishop Rehabilitation and Nursing Center in Syracuse, which has officially again returned to the federal list of the nation's worst nursing homes.

For a facility that has managed to find itself among the lower performing nursing homes in the country for 5 out of last 6 years, these latest development follows a series of gruesome state and federal monitoring funding findings.

>> NINA: Sarah, >> SARAH: Trump administration COntinues to deport migrants to third third-party countries, where they have no ties, and in many cases, no rights.

Many are imprisoned under authoritarian regimes under really terrible conditions.

In the New York Times this week, reported on two men deported to Equatorial Guinea, who suffered beatings at the hands of police officers at this remote hotel where violence is rampant in conditions within the hotel are deteriorating.

This is all being done in our name, and we should be outraged.

>> NINA: Rick.

>> RICK: My F goes to a $10 million ad campaign supporting the Protect College Sports Act Bill before Congress.

The bill was drawn up without any input from college athletes, and rebuilt the NCAA and antitrust exemption, allowing it to restore much of its control over athletes.

While there's certainly money for them, it is capped, whereas there are no cap on coaches' salaries or athletic department budgets.

Yes, college athletics is currently a mess that needs to be saved, but one thing that needs to be saved from is the Protect College Sports Act.. >> NINA: And, of course, we're going to leave you with some good news, and we'll start again with Anirban.

>> ANIRBAN: My A goes to the U.N.

adoption of the new map of Africa, the U.N.

General Assembly has voted to replace the traditional world map with one that more accurately reflects the size of Africa.

The correct map resolution, sponsored by Togo and backed by African Union members, passed with 164 nations voted for it.

Of course, US was the only nation to vote against it.

>> NINA: Sarah.

>> SARAH: My A goes to the return of the native Chinook salmon to the Klamath River in Oregon and northern California.

>> SARAH: For decades, four dams along the river block the migration of native salmon to their historic spawning grounds, leading to severe population declines.

But those four dams have been since removed, and the salmon are back.

In fact, they're back in much greater numbers and have returned more quickly than the biologist's most optimistic projections.

So we really owe a big thanks to everyone involved in that advocacy, including the Native American tribes living in those areas.

>> NINA: And Rick?

>> RICK: We've talked about the housing shortage in Syracuse on the show many times, so my A goes to the news that two large apartment complexes, the Summit and Metropolitan, are reopening after they were sold, and tenants removed in 2023 in order to completely renovate them.

This will add over 600 apartments to the housing stock in Syracuse.

Something that is sorely needed.

>> NINA: Syracuse is making a lot of moves when it comes to taking care of dilapidated housing.

Did I pronounce that correctly?

And also opening up new units, and the mayor seems to really be pushing that.

Well, that's all we have for you tonight here in the studio.

We'd love to hear what you think about tonight's discussion.

Please write to the address on your screen.

If you want to watch the show again, or share it with someone else, or post it on your social media.

go to wcny.org.

I'm Nina Moore.

For all of us here at "Ivory Tower," have a great night.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ This program is brought to you by the members of WCNY.

Thank you.

♪ ♪