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Ari Berman on the new Jim Crow | GOP desperate to move on from Jan 6

Ari Berman, a reporter at Mother Jones and author of Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America, joins us to talk about how Republicans are capitalizing on Donald Trump's lies about the 2020 election being stolen to redouble their efforts to make it more difficult to vote-- and why those efforts might just fail. 

 

Then we welcome Salon columnist (and OG blogger) Heather "Digby" Parton to the show to talk about, among other things, Republican efforts to deflect from the Insurgency of Dunces and stymie a 9/11-style commission to investigate the roots of the attack. 

 

Playlist
Black Pumas: "Fire"
Baby Huey: "Hard Times"
OMC: "How Bizarre"
Maya Hawke: "So Long"

Will a handful of Democratic Senators keep Mitch McConnell in the driver's seat?

We kick off this week's show with a look at the immigration reform bill Democrats unveiled this week, which will likely be a key test of Joe Biden's belief that he can get legislation passed through the Senate with bipartisan support.

 

Then we're joined by Leah Greenberg, co-founder of Indivisible, to talk about the vitally important fight for democratic reforms. Greenberg was one of a handful of former Congressional staffers whose analysis of the Tea Party movement's success under Obama provided a template for resisting Trump. Now they are part of a coalition pushing Democrats to use their power to create a more even electoral playing field. Right now, that hinges largely on persuading Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) to support filibuster reform.

 

And then we get the latest on Covid-19 from epidemiologist Eric Feigl-Ding, a senior fellow at the Federation of American Scientists. We talk about vaccines and reopening schools and some of the new variants emerging in various parts of the world.

 

Playlist
The Mavericks: "Come Unto Me"
Jacob Miller: "Tenement Yard"
Nina Simone: "Baltimore"

 

Senate expert explains why the Democrats must kill the filibuster this year

We kick off this week's show with a look at what should be another blockbuster story of corruption during the Trump regime, when senior political appointees at William Barr's Department of Justice allegedly obstructed justice to protect Rudy Giuliani even as he sought to overturn Trump's loss.  

 

Then we're joined by Adam Jentleson, a former staffer for then-Democratic Senate Leader Harry Reid and the author of Kill Switch: The Rise of the Modern Senate and the Crippling of American Democracy. Jentleson argues that Senate Republicans will leave Democrats no choice but to reform the filibuster if they want to compete in a functional democracy. 

 

Then we speak with Keshav Poddar, a recent Yale Law School grad who has a simple but ingenious idea for how Democrats can keep a progressive agenda from being killed by a Supreme Court that Trump packed with conservative ideologues. 

 

Playlist

Harry Nilsson: "Spaceman"
Bahamas: "Trick To Happy"
John Lurie Nacional Orchestra: "Let's get ready to rhumba"

Imani Gandy on impeachment | Study finds that insecure men are drawn to right-wing politics

This week, we kick things off with Republicans in disarray, as the vestigial traditionalists struggle to prevent Marjorie Taylor Greene from becoming the leader of their party. 

Then we're joined by Rewire News Group's Imani Gandy to talk about the second impeachment of Donald Trump and the unusual feeling that Democrats have learned from recent years that they can't let Republicans bog down their agenda. 

And finally, we welcome Eric Knowles, a social psychologist at NYU, to talk about a recent study he co-authored which found that men who are insecure about their masculinity tend to be drawn to performatively tough politicians like Donald Trump and to favor "aggressive" public policies. This is one of those studies that confirms what we all know intuitively!

Playlist

• MC Solaar: "Un Ange En Danger"
• Banda MS ft. Snoop Dogg: "Que Maldición"
• Lake Street Dive: "Lola (The Kinks Cover)"