We’ve Got Issues

We’ve Got Issues

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257Episodes
Politics

Focusing on issues, not tweets, Raw Story and AlterNet’s Joshua Holland and Liz Preza talk politics with academics, newsmakers and progressive journalists.

Episodes

February 26, 2021

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"
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February 19, 2021

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"
 
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February 12, 2021

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"
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February 6, 2021

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)"
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January 29, 2021

Rep. John Sarbanes: Our fight to restore American democracy begins now

This week, we're joined by David Neiwert, the author of Red Pill, Blue Pill: How to Counteract the Conspiracy Theories That Are Killing Us, to talk about the heartbreak of losing a loved one to the QAnon cult--or down similar rabbit holes--and why it's so difficult to bring them back to the real world. This is something that social psychologists really need to figure out, because these conspiracy theories are ripping our society apart. 
 
And then we welcome Rep. John Sarbanes (D-MD) to tell us about the comprehensive package of democratic reforms that he introduced in Congress, H.R. 1, the For The People Act. We talk about what this much-needed bill would do, and how he hopes his colleagues in the Senate might get it passed in the narrowly divided upper chamber.
 
Playlist
Maggie Lindemann: "Knife Under My Pillow"
Jack Sheldon: "I'm Just a Bill"
Sam Roberts Band: "All of Us"
 
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January 22, 2021

What can Biden do with a 50-50 Senate? | Why failed coups are often followed by success

This week, Joshua Holland kicks off our first show after the curtain fell on Donald Trump's failed presidency with a rant about the right's maddening weaponization of Joe Biden's promise to promote healing and unity. 
 
Then we're joined by Slate's Jordan Weissmann to talk about what the new administration can and probably can't achieve with an evenly divided Senate if they don't eliminate the filibuster.
 
And finally, we speak Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a historian at NYU and the author of Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present, about why it's so important to hold Donald Trump and other seditionists accountable for attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 election in order to stave off a more disciplined coup attempt in the future.  
 
Playlist
Queen Latifah: "U.N.I.T.Y."
Amanda Gorman: "The Hill We Climb"
John Legend: "Feeling Good"
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January 15, 2021

Will America face an ‘ongoing insurgency’ by MAGA cultists?

There's one one story that matters this week. 
 
First, we're joined by Crooks and Liars Managing Editor Karoli Kuns to talk about the second impeachment of Donald Trump, and where the MAGA insurgency might go from here. 
 
Then we speak with Nicholas Grossman, a professor of international relations at the University of Illinois and senior editor at Ars Technica, about how the far right got the attention of the real deep state--America's sprawling national security bureaucracy--with last week's insurrection, and why they will soon come to regret the heat. 
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January 8, 2021

An insurgency of dunces: Adele Stan on the deadly Capitol Hill MAGA riot

Joshua Holland kicks off this week's show marveling at the emotional rollercoaster of winning two Senate runoffs in Georgia just before Trump incited a violent insurgency that shook the country. 
 
Then we are joined by Adele Stan, director of Rightwing Watch, to talk about what went down in DC, and some of the likely ramifications of what Senator Chuck Schumer called another "day of infamy" in America's history. 
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December 24, 2020

Mike Rothschild: Where does QAnon go after Joe Biden is sworn in?

Liz Preza and Joshua Holland kick off our final show of 2020 with a look at what may be the single most outrageous thing Donald Trump has done as president. 
 
Then we're joined by Mike Rothschild, a writer and researcher tracking the increasingly mainstream far-right conspiracy complex, to talk about how the QAnon movement became so widely distributed and where it will go once Donald Trump's ludicrous coup attempt is foiled. 
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December 18, 2020

How Joe Biden could box out Mitch McConnell and advance a progressive agenda

This week, we're joined by David Dayen, executive editor at The American Prospect, to talk about how the Biden administration could interpret existing laws to get around GOP obstruction in the Senate and deliver real progress on healthcare, wages, the environment and a host of other problems facing the American people.

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