#1791 Jim Crow 2.0 — SCOTUS Kills the Voting Rights Act and Unleashes the Gerrymandering War
Air Date: 5–12-2026
Today we examine the redistricting scramble unleashed by the Supreme Court's gutting of the Voting Rights Act. We'll hear how Southern states moved within days to crack majority-Black districts, how Tennessee banned public input to rush through new maps, and why every governor's race, state legislative seat, and secretary of state contest in 2026 is now a redistricting fight.
Read more#1784 Who Gets to Be American, Who Gets to Vote, and Who Decides
Air Date: 4–14-2026
Today we examine the legal battles shaking the foundations of American citizenship and voting rights as Trump's legal team uses the courts as a weapon against democratic participation — and how advocates are fighting back. We'll hear about the three-D playbook of deceive, disrupt, and deny used by authoritarians and being deployed by Trump ahead of the midterms, and what ordinary people can do right now to protect their votes before November.
Read more#1742 Captured Court, Captured Nation: SCOTUS Serves Trump's Authoritarianism
Air Date: 10-7-2025
The Trump administration has been doing what we knew it would: breaking laws and losing about 95% of their court battles. And the conservatively stacked Supreme Court has been doing what we knew it would: overwhelmingly ruling for Trump to cover his tracks because that's what they were put there to do.
Read more#1731 Raw Power, the Presidency, the Courts, and Democracy in the Balance
Air Date: 8-20-2025
There's been a faction of conservatives who have been trying to instill king-like powers into the presidency for a long time, so it shouldn't be surprising that Trump is getting so much help from the packed court and the apparatchiks in the states who are more than happy to turn their precious federalism on its head as long as their king is in charge.
Read more#1722 Imbalance of Powers: The Supreme Court and Executive Branch Collude for Unchecked Power Grab
Air Date: 7-12-2025
The idea of the founders was to separate and balance the powers of the federal government and that, as Madison wrote, ambition would counteract ambition. The problem we face now is that the ambition of the Supreme Court is to give as much power as possible to the executive branch because, ironically, they seem to be nostalgic for a king.
Read more#1647 How to Eliminate Homelessness While Maintaining Our Humanity
Air Date: 8-6-2024
After the recent Supreme Court ruling that allowed governments to constitutionally purge unhoused people from public spaces, we are getting an immediate lesson in the difference between addressing systemic problems with solutions and using the police to clean up after governments that failed to act.
Read more#1643 Extremism Comes in Many Forms: SCOTUS goes hard-right, Project 2025 in the spotlight, and Christian Nationalism unmasked in Assassination Nation
Air Date: 7-20-2024
Extremism comes in many forms and we live in an era in which way too many of them are on display simultaneously, but it's not coincidence. The far right has been working toward an extremist Supreme Court for decades. Christian Nationalists have similarly been trying to impose their rigid view of far-right Christianity on the rest of us for a very long time. The far-right Heritage Foundation now deems this to be the time to attempt to radicalize the federal bureaucracy, and far-right calls for political violence and lax gun laws resulted in an environment where no one was really all that surprised about the assassination attempt against Donald Trump.
Read more#1460 The Growing Threat of Minority Rule (Throwback)
Original Air Date: 12–11-2021
Today we take a look at the many structures of American government that tilt to favor minority rule and conservatism which, in our case, is one and the same. Some structures like the Senate and the filibuster were intentionally designed to give extra weight to the minority while others like gerrymandering and the influence of large-dollar political donors were, well, I suppose they were designed for about the same reason but just in a different way.
Read more#1636 The Supreme Court Is In Bad Shape. Like, Really Bad. And SCOTUS Is Going To Take Us All Down With Them
Air Date: 6-14-2024
We're in the middle of Supreme Court opinion season, which is not going well for non-extreme conservatives in the country, at the same time as scandal, corruption, and justices Thomas and Alito's refusal to recuse in the face of clear bias are reaching a modern peak.
Read more#1634 Abortion as the Tip of the Iceberg: the fight for privacy, bodily autonomy, and functional democracy are the path forward after the Dobbs decision overturning Roe v Wade
Air Date: 6-7-2024
Banning abortion is wildly unpopular and also one of the primary motivators for the group most strongly supporting the Republican Party and Donald Trump, the Christian Right, which has transformed both the party and politicians into extremists made in their own image, threatening the lives and health of millions and sacrificing democracy in the process.
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