The Mother Jones Podcast

On Wednesday, a mob of Trump supporters surged towards the US Capitol as the Senate was debating certification of Joe Biden’s election win. “No one gets out alive, not today!” a man brandishing a Trump flag shouted, according to MoJo reporter Matt Cohen, who was there when the barricades fell and the insurgency began. The rioters then scaled the walls, smashed windows, and ran through the Capitol building, ransacking and looting as they went, forcing unprepared police officers to issue tear gas and lockdown orders. Five people were killed. The Capitol rotunda was littered with broken glass and damaged furniture. Having covered many protests over the years, Cohen says this one was different: “This really felt like the first time that if I had been wearing my press badge, especially when things go hairy, I would have been a target.” Cohen joins Jamilah King on the Mother Jones Podcast to share his firsthand account with our listeners. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

NOTE: This episode was recorded just before violence erupted on Capitol Hill when pro-Trump extremists, inflamed by the president, rampaged inside Congress. Goodbye, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Hello, razor-thin Democratic control of the US Senate, and the chance for President-Elect Joe Biden to actually get stuff done. After a pair of neck-and-neck runoff contests in Georgia on Tuesday, Rev. Raphael Warnock will be the first Black senator in that state's history and the first Black Democrat to be elected to the Senate in the South—beating the incumbent appointee, Republican Senator Kelly Leoffler. And 33-year-old Jon Ossoff clinched his race against incumbent Republican Senator David Purdue. It has been decades since the state sent any Democrat to the Senate, and the clean sweep will mean that, come January 20, Democrats will control the Senate with a tie-breaker vote from newly elected Vice President Kamala Harris. That's obviously huge news for President Biden's agenda: It will be the first time Democrats have controlled both houses of Congress and the presidency since President Obama's first term. Joining host Jamilah King to discuss the political legacy of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and what Democrats can do first with this new found power, is MoJo senior reporter, Ari Berman, who says Congress's first act should be obvious: expand voting rights across the country. But first, he gives something of an obituary for soon-to-be-former Senate leader, Mitch McConnell. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Wow. What a start to the year. For those of you hoping high-stakes political drama might be confined to the 2020 presidential election, think again. In the year's opening week alone, we've heard a raging president, caught on tape, bullying state officials to fake the election result; witnessed a band of would-be coup-plotters launch an unheard-of attack on democracy; and watched a runoff election in Georgia that will decide the fate of the US Senate—and Biden's agenda. To explain the meaning of these dizzying, concurrent developments, host Jamilah King is joined by Washington DC Bureau Chief, David Corn, who provides much-needed historical background to the civil war brewing inside the Republican Party, and more. "The guy who goes on about election fraud has been caught red-handed, trying to induce election fraud!" Corn explains during the show. "What Trump is doing is he’s trying to create a loyalty test.” What does this Trump loyalty test mean for the future of the Republican party? Are there parallels between the Whig party’s implosion in the 1800s and the rift within today’s GOP? Could Trump face criminal charges for trying to coerce the Georgia Secretary of State to find him more votes? "What we see here is the coddling of a coup," Corn concludes. "I mean: that’s what they’re trying to do." Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

A disease, global in reach but intimate in its cruelty. A nation plunged into economic ruin. A president raging and incompetent. Society's unforgiving disparities revealed like never before. What a year to be putting out a weekly news podcast. On this week's episode of the Mother Jones Podcast, our last for 2020, the entire production team joins host Jamilah King to reflect on the year and replay what we thought were the most meaningful moments from our coverage. It seemed the best way—both personal and journalistic—to chart these extraordinary events. We start as the coronavirus catches fire. In March, producer Molly Schwartz followed reporter Noah Lanard to document how restaurants in Flushing, Queens, faced imminent collapse. As our producer James West recovered from his own bout of COVID, he turned to Peter Staley, a prominent AIDS activist who worked (and sparred) with Dr. Anthony Fauci in the early days of that epidemic. Staley's scathing indictment of Trump's inaction is haunting still. "The deaths are all on his head," he said. "The blood is all on his hands. The people dying now are Trump deaths." Soon, the unequal impact of coping with quarantine became painfully apparent. Learning from home was hard enough, but Molly found that remote education in a place known as the "valley of the telescopes"—in Pocahontas County, West Virginia, where WiFi is outlawed to preserve the integrity of a massive radio telescope—was a complete disaster. But other historic fissures were soon to crack open anew. The death of George Floyd in May at the hands of the Minneapolis police was broadcast to the world and "pushed nearly anyone with a political conscience into physical action," Jamilah wrote soon after, in a painful but galvanizing personal essay we turned into radio. Anger indeed was a 2020 touchstone. Trump's chief enabler Senate Leader Mitch McConnell, upon the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in September, began ramming through a new conservative justice. "His entire vision for the Trump presidency has been to pack the courts," reporter Ari Berman explained during a podcast about this unfolding democratic emergency. Jamilah recalls this breathtaking hypocrisy: "It was a moment that kind of signaled that 'we're done'," she says. "We're done, being run over and being dictated to." And that was the sentiment that turned out, finally, to hold. Election Day 2020 was a picture of democracy in action. In the swing state of Arizona, long a laboratory for anti-immigrant laws, reporter Fernanda Echavarri documented a new group of activists determined to turf Trump from office, a coalition that became emblematic of Joe Biden's ultimate victory in November. "It really was this full circle," Fernanda says of the effort to flip Arizona. "Young, old, rich, poor, people came together and said, 'We're not going to have this here in Ar… Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Joe Biden’s biographer joins the Mother Jones Podcast to tell us about the man behind the public figure. Over his decades in public life, we’ve heard about the tragedies our president elect has experienced: the trauma of the car accident that killed his first wife and small daughter, his own health challenges, his unsuccessful runs for president, and the death of his golden son Beau while his other son Hunter struggled with drug addiction. But what are the deeper stories beneath this well-known narrative? What makes him tick? What is he like off-camera? And perhaps most important of all, what kind of president is he likely to be? That's what Evan Osnos set out to explore in his new biography Joe Biden: The Life, The Run, and What Matters Now. We know that Biden faced enormous personal tragedies and devoted himself to public service for most of his adult life. Yet for many, the private person remains something of an enigma. In his biography, Osnos portrays a canny political operator known for his bipartisanship who has always maintained a certain political looseness, partly because his stutter made him averse to teleprompters. Jamilah King talks with Osnos about Biden’s relationship with Mitch McConnell, his political evolution, and how his diverse cabinet picks square with his legislative record on racial justice. In just a few more weeks, Joe Biden will achieve the position he has been striving for since he was a kid. Here’s a chance to understand what that means for him–and for the country. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

On this week's Mother Jones Podcast, we take you along for the ride as Democrats barnstorm Georgia in the last few weeks before the pivotal runoff elections. Our reporter Becca Andrews is pulling up to drive-in church services and political rallies at the heart of the Reverend Raphael Warnock’s race against incumbent Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler. It’s something of an old narrative meeting a new age: Republicans are unleashing dated stereotypes and prejudices about the Black church to smear Warnock, but his faith and his deep ties to the civil rights movement are rallying points for his supporters—and they’ll be crucial in Democrats’ pursuit of Senate control. The party will need to rely, at least in part, on the deep legacy of the Black church in political activism and in expanding voting rights, while a younger generation of organizers brings new-school methods to an old-school race. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

You might be breathing a deep sigh of relief that the 2020 elections are finally over. But spare a thought for our friends in Georgia. Voters there are still being bombarded with political ads, national attention, and oodles of fresh campaign cash because they are about to decide, in two contests on January 5, who controls the US Senate. Runoff elections like these in Georgia are typically disasters for Democrats, explains our voting rights reporter Ari Berman. But organizing against voter suppression and high turnout in November are giving Democrats hope that these Senate races could be different this time around. Democrats have believed for some time that a rapidly diversifying electorate would allow them to be competitive in Georgia, but repeated voter suppression efforts had kept that electorate from fully forming. Now, two years of activism have created the conditions for Joe Biden to carry the state by just under 12,000 votes, making him the first Democratic presidential candidate in 28 years to win Georgia, amid record turnout. That electorate is now giving Democrats hope that Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff can win runoff elections that would have seemed almost unwinnable in past years. While Republicans are melting down over Trump’s false allegations of voter fraud, Democrats and Black organizers are now focused on electing a majority in the US Senate that can pass Biden’s legislative agenda. They might just make history. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Young people turned out in record numbers for the 2020 presidential election, and they overwhelmingly backed Joe Biden. Now, the hashtag #CancelStudentDebt has been trending on Twitter, as intense pressure mounts on the President-elect to finally tackle the $1.7 trillion student debt crisis holding millions of Americans, especially young Americans, hostage to often crippling monthly payments for years to come. “This feels like the closest we’ve ever been,” one education advocate recently told Time, referring to the chance for real policy changes. According to Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) who has established herself as the loudest voice on the matter, large-scale debt forgiveness would provide “the single most effective economic stimulus that is available through executive action.” But how likely is that? Can this finally be fixed? On this week’s episode of the Mother Jones Podcast, we’re revisiting our big investigation by journalist Ryann Liebenthal into America’s broken student debt machine. We first brought you this story in August 2018, detailing the flailing government program known as Public Service Loan Forgiveness, a system that, when Biden was a candidate, he pledged to streamline and reform. “It should be done immediately,” he said, referring to the passage of new legislation. But that depends on who controls the Senate come January, and Biden’s professed urgency must inevitably be tempered with a tough political reality. To bring us up to speed on what’s changed since the campaign and what Biden’s picks for his economic team can tell us about his ambitions, we also chatted to our very own transition tracker, Washington, DC, political reporter Kara Vogt. “The demands for canceling student debt have not ceased since president-elect Joe Biden won in November,” Voght says. “It’s not just the grassroots, not just progressive who are calling for this.” Revisit our original written investigation here. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

How are your Thanksgiving plans different this year? You may have heeded the urgent advice to put travel plans on ice, but you’re still trying your best to feel the holiday spirit, somehow? As the latest coronavirus surge continues unabated, and as various kinds of restrictions swing into effect across the country, the Mother Jones Podcast team is bringing you two chats with top infectious-disease experts on how to stop the spread and keep you and your family safe during a holiday season unlike any other. Science communication expert Jessica Malaty Rivera, a microbiologist, has a few tips for you, and a couple for the incoming president, too. Rivera spoke to our senior editor Kiera Butler about Thanksgiving strategies—"a negative COVID-19 test is not an immunity passport," she warns—as well as her work to document up-to-the-minute coronavirus data and trends at the COVID Tracking Project. "Nobody here is saying we should cancel Thanksgiving," Rivera says. "What we’re saying is it needs to look very different from years past." Some top-line tips: Stay at home, and if you are hosting a gatherings, keep it small, outdoors, and masked. Read more from Mother Jones' interview with Rivera, and how the Biden administration must beat viral misinformation influencers at their own game to combat the coronavirus, here. Also on the show, host Jamilah King spoke to Dr. Peter Hotez, a vaccine scientist, pediatrician, and dean for the National School of Tropical Medicine at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, about the state of vaccine development right now, including which segments of the population are expected to get it first, and when. He gives his Thanksgiving tips, too: "We are in a public health crisis," he says. "Don’t do reckless, irresponsible things. Let’s just hang on a few more months and everyone can get vaccinated and live." Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

The United States is confronting its worst surge in coronavirus cases since the start of the pandemic. Governors are rushing new lockdowns into place as hospitals nationwide burst at the seams. The death toll is, yet again, setting daily records. Maybe by the time you listen to this episode of the Mother Jones Podcast, the US will have passed another dire milestone (of so many): a quarter of a million coronavirus deaths. Inside our newsroom, reporters and editors are determined to put science—and the voices of scientists—at the heart of our ongoing coronavirus coverage. That's why, earlier in the outbreak, we launched a series called "Pandemic Proofing America", an evolving oral history collection featuring incisive interviews with the nation's top scientists and public health experts. The central question we posed was this: With a scandalously enfeebled government hampering the country's response, what are the most important steps we can take to make sure we’re better prepared next time around? Their responses were wide-ranging, often damning in their criticism of the current administration's failures, and sometimes hopeful that we might find common purpose in listening to science. For this episode of the podcast, the brains behind this series, Mother Jones's Atlanta-based Senior Editor Kiera Butler, has assembled a selection of these big thinkers to weigh in on how to survive America's coming dark winter, and how the country can begin to imagine a pandemic-free future by combating disinformation and collaborating across disciplines, and beyond our borders. You'll hear from top experts like Timothy Caulfield, from the University of Alberta’s School of Public Health; Laurel Bristow, from Emory University’s Vaccine Center; Ashish Jha, at Harvard’s Global Health Institute; and Andy Slavitt, President Obama’s top healthcare advisor. For the entire showcase of nearly 20 interviews to date, click here. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

After a drawn-out vote count, Joe Biden has clinched the presidency. Now he needs to save the planet. As Biden’s supporters celebrate, many are hoping beyond hope for a quick reversal of President Trump’s most harmful policies come January 20, 2021. And perhaps no part of Trump’s agenda posed a bigger existential threat than his denial of climate change. From crippling the EPA and rolling back environmental regulations, to pulling out of the landmark Paris Agreement, Trump did everything he could to roll back the progress of President Obama’s ambitious second-term climate agenda. This year, carbon dioxide levels reached the highest recorded levels in human history. On today’s show, Jamilah King is joined by Mother Jones’ climate and environment reporter Rebecca Leber to discuss what we can expect from an incoming Biden administration that has claimed climate action as central to its governing mandate. How much of Trump’s damage can Biden reverse? What could a Republican-controlled Senate mean for the Green New Deal? How will Kamala Harris’ barrier-breaking role in the White House influence Biden’s commitment to environmental justice? Biden made big promises for climate action on the campaign trail. His first 100 Days as president are expected to unleash a flurry of executive orders on climate change. Now the questions are when, and how, he’ll deliver. If the number of times Biden said “science” in his victory speech is any indication, this administration will reverse Trump’s denialism. But will it be enough to stop runaway global warming? On today's show: Biden's last-chance climate fixes. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

It’s over! After a nail-biting count that dragged for days in key swing states, Joe Biden will become the 46th president of the United States, with a record-breaking vote count of at least 75 million votes, so far. The Mother Jones Podcast team has a bonus live podcast to tell you our instant analysis about how Biden clinched the deal. We discuss the historic moment of having Vice President–elect Kamala Harris become the first Black woman, the first woman of South Asian descent, and the first daughter of immigrants to hold that position, and the threat that Trump will not allow a peaceful transition of power at the White House. Our host Jamilah King (and in-house expert on all-things Kamala) speaks with Mother Jones DC Bureau Chief David Corn—who called in from the Biden Welcome Center on the Delaware Turnpike—about what’s next for a deeply divided country in the middle of multiple national crises, and what happens next. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Exhausted from staying up much too late, we are all trying to figure out what happened now that the final day of voting is over in one of the most important elections of our lives. The presidential results are still too close to call. There was no landslide victory. There was no clear repudiation of Trump and the GOP, either. Now we may have to wait for days, possibly weeks—depending on how vote counting and court battles play out—to find out if Trump or Biden won. Election results from Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada, North Carolina, and Georgia are still trickling in.The Mother Jones Podcast is here to help you make sense of a crazy election night with a live “day after” election special. What exactly happened not just last night but with this whole election? Where do Trump and Biden stand in the drag-out fight to 270 electoral votes? In this episode, some of your favorite Mother Jones Podcast regulars join Jamilah King to analyze the initial results and talk about the big picture. You'll hear from Washington DC Bureau Chief David Corn, who joined us to discuss the big trends from the night, and where to look for results next. You'll get to the bottom of the Miami-Dade count that cost Biden Florida, with reporter Noah Lanard; and you'll hear about the likely flipping of Arizona—yes, another confusing story—with our reporter Fernanda Echavarri. As the president fumes and threatens to steal the vote, all there really is to do is wait. And remember, the team here at Mother Jones is staying focused on the facts, the context, and the story behind the headlines. This race is not over yet. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

We are days out from what could be the most high-stakes election of our lifetimes. If Trump loses, will he go quietly? Which parts of the constitution will he trample on the way out? If Trump wins, how much more can American institutions take—and what recourse will Congress have to hold him to account? Our Deputy Washington D.C. Bureau Chief Dan Schulman got the chance this week to pose all these questions and more to a real expert on this stuff, Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, during a special Mother Jones livestreamed event this week. Early in his career, he was an assistant attorney general in Massachusetts and he served as general counsel of Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition. (One piece of trivia: Congressman Raskin once represented Ross Perot when he was frozen out of the 1996 presidential debates.) He’s a member of the judiciary and oversight committees, where he has investigated the Trump administration’s politicization of the census, white supremacist infiltration of law enforcement, the mistreatment of immigrants in for-profit detention centers, and other issues. Raskin didn't hold back during Dan’s conversation about his fixes to democracy, describing the Republican Party as "a mass religious cult surrounding an organized crime family." He noted: “A failed state, that’s where we are right now. A failed state is one that doesn’t protect the population against disease, against random gun violence, against people getting into office and using it as an instrument of money-making and private corruption. We’ve become a banana republic under this guy.” We're bringing you this conversation, lightly edited, for today's bonus episode of the Mother Jones Podcast. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

On today’s show: Everything you need to know about this infuriating, scary, hopeful, dumb, and exciting final sprint to the polls. Simply surviving this next week is going to be a feat of endurance—and then there’s election night itself. But don’t worry. We’re here. October surprises are a staple of every election cycle, and this time the Mother Jones Podcast is bringing you one of our own: our first-ever live show! Eight Mother Jones reporters from across the country joined host Jamilah King this week for a free-wheeling and informative Zoom discussion of the most important issues facing voters as the country staggers into the final week before Election Day on November 3. This all-star cast dissects Trump’s familiar smear tactics (he still thinks this is 2016) and what those latest polling and early voting numbers really tell us about the results. We tackle the question, “Could Trump still win?” and get into voter suppression, immigration, disinformation, and the weaponization of white supremacy—and how to stay calm as a patchwork of results roll in next week. Join Nathalie Baptiste, Ari Berman, Ali Breland, David Corn, Fernanda Echavarri, Pema Levy, Tim Murphy, and Kara Voght for an election episode unlike anything we’ve ever done before. We’re almost there. Now, it’s all come down to this. Rewatch the full livestream on YouTube or Facebook, or at motherjones.com. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

With less than two weeks to go before the election, the Mother Jones Podcast takes you to the major 2020 battleground state of Arizona. Turning it blue would be a real game changer for former Vice President Joe Biden's attempt to clinch the presidency and Democratic dreams for retaking the Senate. Once the cradle of Goldwater-style Republicanism, Arizona politics are shifting, due in no small part to its growing Latinx electorate, which increasingly tilts Democratic. The party cannot flip the state in November without strong turnout from Latinos, who make up nearly a quarter of the state’s eligible voters. Hanging in the balance are 11 Electoral College votes and a key race between Republican Sen. Martha McSally and Mark Kelly, the retired astronaut who’s married to former Democratic Rep. Gabby Giffords. As Mother Jones immigration reporter Fernanda Echavarri explains in this episode, if Joe Biden carries the state, he will owe his win to the Latinx organizers and activists who have spent the past decade building networks, not to support the Democratic Party but to protect their own community. Many of the young Latinx organizers trying to get out the vote were galvanized in April 2010, when Republican Gov. Jan Brewer signed one of the nation’s most extreme anti-immigrant bills. SB 1070 required police officers to ask about the citizenship status of anyone they stopped and suspected might be in the country illegally. Thousands of people took to the streets to protest, including young people who walked out of school in huge numbers for weeks. It wasn’t just young adults who were energized and enraged. The children who saw their parents live in fear or lost family members to deportation are now old enough to vote: An estimated 100,000 Latinx potential voters have turned 18 since the 2018 midterms. Now, the forecast models have Biden slightly favored to win, and the former Vice President is ahead four points in the RealClearPolitics average of state polls. Latinx activists might be closer than ever to doing the unthinkable and flipping Arizona—if Democrats don’t take them for granted. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

This week’s presidential debate may be canceled, but debates are still roiling around kitchen tables, on social media, and in family iMessage groups. It’s 2020 and opportunities for a fight are everywhere: Maybe you’re having a hard time convincing your parents to take masks seriously; or you and that cousin who is deep into conspiracy theories spread on YouTube are battling on Facebook about the election; or your partner or spouse is being a bit nutty about quarantine restrictions—too rigid or too relaxed. On today’s show, Mother Jones Podcast host Jamilah King talks to a father and two of his adult sons about one of America’s most fraught cultural battles: gun control. John Neal, 66, and his two sons Fisher, 36, and Tyler, 33, are all gun owners and avid hunters. But over the years, their views about gun control have evolved and, in some cases, diverged. The complexities of their views around guns are captured in One Shot One Kill​, a new documentary film directed by Nancy Schwartzman that follows the three men as they embark on a deer hunting trip in rural Tennessee, a deeply held family tradition that connects the Neal family to the beauty of the land and the tradition of hunting. The Neals joined the Mother Jones Podcast team to talk about the film, and how some of the biggest issues of 2020 are playing out in just one conservative-leaning family. They get into the 2020 presidential election, the personal costs of partisanship if you break away from the tribe, the fight for the Supreme Court, the future of the National Rifle Association, and how to fight the scourge of vigilantism—all packed into a lively, civil, and quite personal discussion about gun control. We didn’t want you to miss this chance to eavesdrop on a conversation that’s taking place inside a gun-loving family. By capturing this intimate, cross-generational conversation, One Shot One Kill, produced by Chicken & Egg Pictures and co-presented by Mother Jones, portrays some of the nuance that can get lost in the national debate, as the men discuss which restrictions they support, and which bring them into conflict with their identities as sportsmen, environmental stewards, and, ultimately, with each other. Catch it at motherjones.com. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Could one Cuban American Youtuber swing the presidential election? Four years ago, social media and the stars who populate its platforms already exerted an outsized influence on the election. In 2020, influencers are wielding even greater power. With a handful of swing states set to make all the difference in this election, today's show takes you to Florida, where intense scrutiny is swirling about the direction of the Cuban American vote, again: A recent poll found that 56 percent of recent Cuban immigrants were planning to vote for Trump this summer, up from 22 percent four years before. If Trump squeezes out a win in Florida, 41-year-old YouTube star Alex Otaola and his generation of Cubans will likely be among the people he has to thank. Older Cubans, who fled after Fidel Castro took power in 1959, are generally considered the reliable Republican voting bloc. But the younger generation, including Otaola, has moved sharply to the right in the Trump years. A cohort of Cuban immigrants that was supposed to be the friendliest to Democrats now appears to be the most Republican one—a dramatic recent shift that has stunned Florida-watchers. Noah Lanard, an immigration reporter at Mother Jones, went to Miami to explore Otaola's massive online appeal, an act that smashes together elements of Jerry Springer, Judge Judy, Entertainment Tonight, and Breitbart. If Florida comes down to the wire again, this YouTube influencer with a pet monkey might have a big influence on the outcome of the 2020 election. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

The first presidential debate of the 2020 election was a night of sound and fury, signifying Trumpian nihilism. Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden was visibly trying to stay calm and focus on the camera and speak as directly as possible to the American people—while President Donald Trump attacked, interrupted, and talked over everyone, moderator Chris Wallace included, whose 11th hour recommitment to the rules of the debate came far too late to somehow contain the wreckage. The experience of watching the debate was unlike any other in American history, debasing democracy thanks to Trump's careening performance. Typically we ask: who won and who lost? But today, that question seems less relevant: This was about a stark choice, laid bare. On today’s show, we’re bringing you some next-day analysis from Mother Jones’ DC Bureau Chief David Corn and DC-based reporter Nathalie Baptiste. They get into the mind-boggling contrast between Donald Trump and Joe Biden on the debate stage, the racism embedded in the debate topics, and whether you might have any reason at all to feel hopeful as November 3 approaches. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Trailblazing Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died last week at 87. President Trump now has the opportunity to remake the court for a generation by replacing R.B.G. with a staunch conservative. On today's show: What happens next? Mother Jones's voting rights reporter Ari Berman discusses what the scorched-earth Republican strategy reveals about the fairness of American democracy, and the battle for free, fair elections come November 3. Ginsburg’s death comes as President Donald Trump is already trashing the Constitution to stay in power: His attacks on the postal service and the census are laying the groundwork to steal the election. Ari tells host Jamilah King that by eroding Americans’ confidence in the census, the administration may already be accomplishing its goal of rigging the count in its favor. And if voters are afraid to vote in-person believe that postal delays will cause their mail-in ballots not to be counted, they may decide not to vote at all. The extraordinary efforts to undermine the mail and census should prepare us for the possibility of an even more egregious abuse of power to keep Trump in office. Now, with another Supreme Court pick during his presidency, a contested election could be decided by a court with yet another conservative Justice ready to side with Trump. How much damage can he do now, and can it be reversed? Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

It is impossible to tell the story of President Trump's rise to power without understanding his relationship with Fox News. Together they form one of modern America's most defining duos, argues CNN's chief media correspondent Brian Stelter, who documents their symbiotic dance his new book, Hoax: Donald Trump, Fox News and the Dangerous Distortion of Truth. Through countless interviews with sources at various of levels of power inside Fox, Stelter reveals how the wildly popular cable channel has subordinated its journalistic integrity to Trump's political interests, while setting the daily agenda for his administration. "Every day's a new episode," Stelter told Mother Jones Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery, during a recent livestream event hosted by the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco. "Certainly Fox programs his presidency that way." The title of Stelter's book was inspired back-to-back use of the word "hoax" by Trump and Hannity, to describe the emerging coronavirus crisis in the U.S. Both Trump and Fox downplayed the threat at the outset, a deadly error for which they face dual culpability (but zero accountability from Fox brass)—a travesty made all the more apparent following the recent release of Bob Woodward's tapes. This conversation between Brian Stelter and Clara Jeffery is the centerpiece of an episode that explores the toxic feedback loop deepening the crisis in American journalism and democracy. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Mondaire Jones is on the brink of making history. He is in line to become one of the first Black gay men to serve in the US Congress after winning the Democratic primary for New York’s 17th congressional district in June—part of a new class of diverse candidates upending expectations and tapping into a fervour for outspoken progressivism championed by the likes of Alexandria Ocasio Cortez. His policy positions mark him out as part of an influential insurgent Left—making the New York Congressional candidate a darling among grassroots activists—but along with the Working Families Party, he also scored endorsements from liberal mainstays like former President Barack Obama to the New York Times. He’s pro-Green New Deal. He opposes all new fossil fuel infrastructure. He supports Medicare for All and a $15 minimum wage. On today’s episode of the Mother Jones Podcast, Jones tells host Jamilah King what it was like to campaign during the coronavirus crisis, how growing up poor and Black influenced his progressive policy positions, and why running a historic race can feel surprisingly lonely. Alongside Ritchie Torres, an Afro-Latino gay man who won his primary race in New York’s 15th congressional district, Jones stands ready to join the increasingly diverse members of Congress that represent an insurgent left-wing of the Democratic party on Capitol Hill. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

As recently as March, "QAnon" was still a mostly fringe phenomenon. The conspiracy theory, which posits that a vast Democrat-led pedophile racket operates at the heart of the U.S. government, was well known among President Donald Trump's hardcore MAGA base, but too hot for anyone in the mainstream to touch. But this summer, the world's darkest and most outlandish political conspiracy is gaining new adherents and influence among conservatives. That's what Mother Jones's Ali Breland reported this month, after a recent press briefing in which President Donald Trump gave an approving answer that the QAnon community has been eagerly awaiting: "I don’t know much about the movement other than I understand they like me very much," he said. "I’ve heard these are people who love our country." Trump's not alone. The movement has demonstrated real and growing power. Michael Flynn, the former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency and Trump’s first national security adviser, boldly aligned himself with the conspiracy theory on July 4th, when he posted a video reciting a common QAnon motto; QAnon enthusiast Marjorie Taylor Greene just won the primary election for Georgia’s 14th Congressional District; several other Republicans running for Congress have shared QAnon hashtags and used its catchphrases. Followers have been able to launch harassment campaigns so big and vitriolic that several high-profile targets—Wayfair, Oprah Winfrey, and Chrissy Teigen—felt the need to publicly respond. Q’s followers have also mobilized to antagonize and harass a state senator in California in a vicious attempt to get him to drop legislation aimed at addressing LGBTQ inequality. QAnon’s damage is too big to ignore, and so we’re replaying a refreshed and updated version of our February 2020 episode featuring reporter Ali Breland, who takes you inside the conspiracy, traces its roots, and assesses its future. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

One reason that the nomination of Kamala Harris is so fascinating is that it comes at a time when we’re completely rethinking criminal justice in the United States. And Kamala Harris was a prosecutor. From her time as San Francisco district attorney and as California’s attorney general, critics argue that she locked up parents of truant children, left a potentially innocent man on death row, and didn’t support a measure mandating statewide standards for police body cameras. She caught a lot of flack over her criminal justice record during the Democratic primary, especially from the progressive wing of the party. Even so, Kamala Harris labels herself a “progressive prosecutor.” She’s far from alone. But what does that label even really mean? On today’s show, you’ll meet two women who call themselves progressive prosecutors, and hear what it means to reform the system from the inside, while becoming the face of a different kind of culture war. First: St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner, who was reelected in a landslide victory during this month’s primary, championing police accountability and diversion programs to incarceration. But her progressive approach has made her a target for the Republican establishment. Missouri’s Republican governor Mike Parson is trying to decrease her power. And now she has been rendered a TV villain by pro-Trump pundits for prosecuting RNC stars Mark and Patricia McCloskey, who went viral after brandishing weapons at Black Lives Matter protesters in June. Next up, you’ll meet Satana Deberry. When she took the oath of office as district attorney of Durham County, North Carolina, in January 2019, it was a momentous occasion—for the city of Durham and for her, as a Black woman elected to an office historically held by white men, whose “tough on crime” policies have devastated communities of color for decades. She ran her campaign being vocal about the over-policing of Black and Brown folks, promising sweeping reform. Now, more than a year into office, she faces the complicated realities of seeking to reform a deeply flawed criminal justice system and support a community ravaged by gun violence. She’s learning that implementing change will be harder than she could have anticipated. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Wednesday night will mark the biggest accomplishment in the already-dazzling career of Senator Kamala Harris, when she takes to the (virtual) stage at the 2020 Democratic National Convention to accept her party’s nomination for vice president. The culmination of many “firsts” accumulated across decades by the 55-year-old Californian, this week, Harris will become the first Black woman and the first woman of Indian decent to run on a major party ticket. But she has always been a barrier-breaker. On this episode of the Mother Jones Podcast, our in-house Harris expert, Jamilah King, traces the senator’s political awakening back to her progressive-minded Indian mother, and charts her formative years as San Francisco District Attorney, her elections first as Attorney General of California and then as Senator, to this historic moment—on the precipice of a historic run for the White House. This time Jamilah will occupy the interviewee hot seat, while Mother Jones reporter Fernanda Echavarri takes over hosting duties, guiding listeners through a detailed assessment of Harris’s time as a prosecutor (and its potential political baggage), her forceful Senate appearances as inquisitor (and antagonist) of Trump appointees, and what her presence on the ticket means for presidential hopeful Joe Biden—and the country. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Representative Barbara Lee is a big fan of fellow Californian Senator Kamala Harris. Last year, she was the first high-profile politician to endorse Kamala Harris' bid for the Democratic presidential nomination. After Joe Biden clinched the top spot in the Democratic primaries, the former vice president's eventual choice of running mate was obvious, at least for Lee. "Kamala should be president," she said last week in a livestream conversation with Mother Jones Podcast host Jamilah King, just days before Harris got the nod. But Veep is the next best thing. “We know how to lead," Lee said of the power of Black women in the Democratic party, and beyond. "We know how to help regain the soul of America. And we have our unique history in this country to be able to lead out of the White House as president and vice president.” This wide-ranging interview also touches on Rep. Lee's deep history of fighting for justice. She has insisted on a seat at the table at the highest echelons of political power for years. She's served as one of the few Black women in Congress for nearly three decades. She worked on Shirley Chisholm's campaign during Chisholm's historic bid for the White House in 1972—a campaign after which Kamala Harris modeled her own. Now Lee is at work on Capitol Hill trying to get Republicans to deliver much-needed economic relief in a wrecked economy. Listen to this special Friday bonus edition of the Mother Jones Podcast to hear the full conversation, recorded as part of a livestream event on August 6, 2020. The full video is available on Mother Jones’ Youtube, Facebook, or Twitter accounts. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

With schools and parents around the country facing tough decisions about safety and education, one author and academic has become something of a hero to parents everywhere for her sane, data-driven approach to surviving parenting during a pandemic. Emily Oster, a Brown University economist, is the pregnancy and early childhood guru for millennial parents. Expecting Better and her 2019 followup, Cribsheet, rethink the pregnancy-and-baby-literature cannon by adding something that’s been lacking: empiricism. Oster separates the good studies from the bad and lays out the best evidence to answer such critical questions as whether it’s safe to eat sushi while pregnant. Now, as the country finds itself in a fraught and deeply partisan fog of confusion about child care and education, Oster decided to apply the same type of analysis to COVID-19 research as she did to pregnancy and parenthood, through her newsletter and a website she co-authors with Harvard medicine professor Galit Alter and a team of researchers, called COVID-Explained. Aaron Wiener, a senior editor in MoJo’s DC bureau, spoke to Oster to see if she could bring together her research on young children and on COVID-19 to answer key questions about returning to school and day care facilities. And as a new dad himself (Cole is now 10-months-old), Aaron asks her for her guidance on what his young family—and all the other parents out there—should be considering as they decide whether it’s advisable to send their kids back to school. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

An embattled president. A mass movement. A military used against citizens. We’ve been here before. In Mayday 1971, thousands of anti-Vietnam War protesters descended on Washington DC to try to shut down the federal government. By 10:30am, more than 5000 protesters had been arrested, stuffed into overflowing jail cells—eventually police had to commandeer RFK Stadium to accommodate all the arrests. It was America’s largest act of mass civil disobedience and ended in America’s biggest mass arrest: over 12,000 people. The Pulitzer-prize winning editor Larry Roberts joins the podcast this week as we bring to life this incredible moment in history. From President Nixon’s unconstitutional tactics, to dragnet mass arrests, to streets filled with teargas, to some unexpected support for these illegal actions from the future Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court, Roberts gets into the untold story of Mayday 1971. It is impossible to ignore one more important fact: This historical event carries eerie echoes of the moment we’re living through today. Roberts’ full investigation is detailed in his book, Mayday 1971: A White House at War, a Revolt in the Streets, and the Untold History of America’s Biggest Mass Arrest, which is out now. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Samantha Bee doesn’t think comedy will take Trump down. She calls her craft “impotent beyond belief” in the face of the daily presidential wrecking ball. But then, the creator and star of Full Frontal with Samantha Bee thinks preaching to the choir is absolutely fine—moral, even.“Talking to the people that you agree with is very good,” she tells Washington D.C. bureau chief David Corn, in this wide-ranging conversation recorded onstage at the Comedy Cellar in New York City. “I think it’s important to have as many voices as possible just go, ‘This is wrong. I disagree with this. This is how it should be. We’re not all crazy!” When she started, Bee felt sure that airing just six episodes would result in the whole show being canceled for being too sharply opinionated. Now she thinks of her weekly, Emmy Award-winning (and just re-nominated) program—in its fifth season despite the pandemic—as “my own little historical record of this age.” It’s become a platform from which to educate, commiserate, and shock, with a panoply of facts, jokes, and mini-seminars about how the hell we got here and how to fix it. And she couldn’t care less if her critics call her an activist.“Look, when you have a show, you’ve got to do something with it,” she tells Corn. “To not use it to do something with it in a time of great distress feels like a huge waste to me. Why wouldn’t you?” This interview, taped in February, is part of a limited series co-produced by Mother Jones and the Comedy Cellar, the venerable stand-up venue. Don’t miss Corn’s recent interviews with Debbie Harry and John Leguizamo by subscribing to the podcast. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Debbie Harry is an icon, punk rock star, and self-proclaimed spokesperson for bees. As the frontwoman of Blondie, she came up through the avant-garde art scene in 1970s New York, trading artistic inspiration with Andy Warhol, Basquiat, and Patti Smith. After breaking into the mainstream with its 1979 album Parallel Lines, Harry and the rest of the band have been bending musical genres ever since. In this raw and in-depth interview with Mother Jones DC Bureau Chief David Corn, Debbie Harry opens up about her past and her compulsive creative drive. She shares stories about what it was like breaking into the male-dominated music industry, why she loves David Bowie, and how she came up with her alter-ego Blondie. Plus, she shares how she is using her fame to protect the honeybees. Corn’s interview with Harry is one in a series of several notable guests featured over three episodes of the Mother Jones Podcast. It’s a special summer interview series with a very “2020” origin story: Earlier this year, the coronavirus pandemic stalled work on a new podcast, co-produced by Mother Jones and the Comedy Cellar, but not before three fascinating guests joined Corn for in-depth interviews about art, politics, comedy, and the philosophies that infuse their work. These chats were too good to simply shelve; last week we heard from actor and comedian John Leguizamo, and next week we’ll hear from talk show host Samantha Bee. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Actor, activist, author and educator John Leguizamo loves that his comedy makes people feel angry. In his 2018 one-man Broadway show, Latin History for Morons, the 55-year-old star splices jokes with history about the genocide of Native American people, his experience being racially profiled in the United States, and a welter of statistics about the underrepresentation of Latinx people in American media. Born in Colombia and raised in Queens, New York, Leguizamo grew up seeing negative portrayals of Latinx people in Hollywood and in the pages of the New York Times. This feeling of being an outsider, of not belonging, was a power that he eventually came to value—and harness as fuel for his comedy and acting career. In January, Leguizamo sat down with Mother Jones’s DC Bureau Chief David Corn onstage at the Comedy Cellar, the historic New York City stand-up venue, to talk about his work, ego, process, and his favorite subject⁠: Latinx history. Corn’s interview with Leguizamo is one in a series of several notable guests featured over the next three episodes. It’s a special summer interview series with a very “2020” origin story: Earlier this year, the coronavirus pandemic stalled work on a new podcast, co-produced by Mother Jones and the Comedy Cellar, but not before three fascinating guests joined Corn for in-depth interviews about art, politics, comedy, and the philosophies that infuse their work. These chats were too good to simply shelve; in the coming week’s you’ll also hear from music icon Debbie Harry, and talkshow host Samantha Bee. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Over nearly five decades, Delancey Street Foundation in San Francisco has built a reputation as one of the nation's highest-profile rehab centers and prison diversion programs. It's earned a cult-like following among judges, politicians, and celebrities, including Nancy Pelosi, Dianne Feinstein, Gavin Newsom, Jane Fonda, and Clint Eastwood. But Delancey it has been subject to little oversight or scrutiny. On this episode of the Mother Jones Podcast, senior reporter Julia Lurie investigates an eccentric program with a number of long-standing practices that are rarely discussed in public. Participants work long hours with no pay, get not mental health services, are forbid from using psychiatric medications, and undergo rituals that some describe as psychological torture. Many Delancey alums credit the program's tough-love approach with saving their lives. But for others, it led to their unraveling. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

You might recognize Diane Guerrero for her roles in big TV shows like Orange is the New Black, Jane the Virgin, and Doom Patrol. Off-screen, Guerrero has used her very public platforms to engage in activism and political causes. On Instagram, on Twitter, and in two books, Guerrero brings her deep knowledge and adept campaigning skills to the fight for immigration, voting rights, and racial justice reform. Mother Jones immigration reporter Fernanda Echavarri recently interviewed Guerrero for a live conversation that was streamed across Mother Jones’ social media platforms. Today’s podcast is an edited version of that conversation. Echavarri and Guerrero dig into their personal experience with racism in the Latinx community, the horrors of ICE detention, the current Black Lives Matter movement, and why the whiteness of the entertainment industry, on-screen and off, is such an urgent problem. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Donald Trump loves to lie. We know that. But as the editor and chief writer of the Washington Post’s “Fact Checker,” it’s Glenn Kessler’s job to keep count. Donald Trump has earned over 18,000 Pinocchios from the “Fact Checker” team for his many, many falsehoods, exaggerations, and outright lies. On this week’s episode of the Mother Jones Podcast, Washington DC Bureau Chief David Corn interviews Kessler about his new book, Donald Trump and His Assault on Truth, which he co-wrote with his “Fact Checker” colleagues Salvador Rizzo and Meg Kelly. Kessler gets into all of it—lies about the coronavirus, about rallies, about climate change—and assesses what might happen if Trump's lies are allowed to thrive for another four years. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

After spending the last decade covering America’s criminal justice system, one thing is clear to activist, journalist and scholar Josie Duffy Rice: a grab-bag approach to policy reform isn’t going to fix all the problems with policing in America. Josie is the president of The Appeal, a non-profit news publication focused on criminal justice, and the co-host of the podcast, "Justice in America". She has been working in the weeds on issues that many Americans are now paying attention to in the wake of George Floyd’s killing—issues like police brutality, bloated police budgets, surveillance, pre-trial detention, cash bail, and the disproportionate police presence in communities of color. On this week’s show, Josie joins Jamilah King for a discussion about the recent police killing of Rayshard Brookes in Atlanta, the deep racist and classist structural issues with policing in America, and why defunding the police is only step one. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

As national protests extend into a second week, associate producer Molly Swartz surveys the intersection of America’s twin crises, by profiling a group of out-of-work chefs hit by coronavirus closures who have banded together to provide protest-sustaining food in New York City. Also on the show, you’ll hear a repeat of our 2019 interview with Dr. Ibram X. Kendi, whose book, “How To Be An Antiracist”, has climbed to third place on the New York Times bestseller list in the wake of the renewed protest movement, as Americans everywhere engage with his ideas about how to combat racism and the systems that abet it. Kendi combines searing autobiography with pointed analysis to show just how deeply racism is woven into our national—and global—fabric. He argues that the opposite of a racist isn’t someone who’s not racist, but instead an antiracist—someone who acknowledges how race has been constructed, and works actively against it. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

George Floyd was confronted by police in Minneapolis and effectively choked to death as an officer knelt down on his neck before a crowd of onlookers. In a swelling of outrage, protesters have taken to the streets in dozens of American cities, calling for justice and reform. Floyd’s death follows on the heels of Ahmaud Arbery’s, Breonna Taylor’s, Tony McDade’s—all black American killed at the hands of police and white vigilantes over the past few months. Militarized police forces have responded to the protests with a level of violence not seen in the United States since 1968. On today’s show, Mother Jones reporters take you to the scene across the United States—from Minneapolis, where the protests began, to New York City and Los Angeles. We hear from two activists on the ground in Minneapolis, fighting fires and evacuating residents from white supremacists. We visit a rum bar turned food supply center in a Minneapolis food desert. We also go to the scene of protests across New York City. And we hear from activist Lex Steppling, who has a plan to defund the police. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

By the time you listen to this episode, COVID-19 will have likely killed more than 100,000 people in the United States—more Americans than the Revolutionary, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan Wars combined. Experts say the real tally is much higher. It's a devastating moment in a crisis that has already destroyed families, pushed nearly 40 million Americans out of work, revealed a government crippled by feeble leadership, and thrown daily life into chaos. How do we recognize that behind each death was a unique human life? How do we honor individual victims amid the tsunami of grief? It's hard. We don't have easy answers for you. But we do have some ideas. Rebecca Makkai, best-selling author of “The Great Believers", an epic about the AIDS crisis, discusses how she depicts the long tail of grief, and outlines lessons from one pandemic for another. Also on the show, scholar Elizabeth Outka, whose book "Viral Modernism: The Influenza Pandemic and Interwar Literature" traces the impact of the 1918 flu on 20th century literature, describes how American culture was utterly altered by that tragedy, and provides cues for how art can help memorialize the dead during this one. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Every night, Americans across the country clap and make noise for the essential workers keeping our country afloat. But when the clapping ends, the deadly work continues, sometimes under deadly conditions. The pandemic has exacerbated the absence of essential workplace protections for these workers—in meat processing plants, supermarkets, and packing warehouses. On this episode of the podcast, two Mother Jones reporters talk to two top economists who are trying to change the way labor works in the United States: former Labor Secretary Robert Reich and President Obama’s former top economic adviser, Gene Sperling. From the inaction of the labor department, to the role of unions, to economic dignity for low-wage workers, these two insiders have a lot to say about the state of labor in the United States. The pandemic has exposed the lack of worker protections in times of prosperity, much less in times of crisis. The question is: how quickly can change really come? Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

On today’s show, an exclusive, wide-ranging interview with former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, the Democratic powerhouse who launched voting rights initiative Fair Fight after her 2018 loss to now-Gov. Brian Kemp. Mother Jones’s voting rights reporter Ari Berman asks Abrams if the coronavirus crisis will add even more obstacles to voting in America. Abrams holds fast to her belief that there’s no reason for elections in November to be disrupted by the pandemic. “We were able to vote during the Civil War, we were able to vote during the Spanish flu of 1918, there is no excuse for not holding our elections in 2020,” Abrams says. Berman also asks about the challenges to the 2020 census, Kemp’s response to COVID-19, and the dangerous attempt to suppress voters during the Wisconsin primary in April. Abrams is also crystal clear about how she sees the shooting of Ahmaud Arbery, an unarmed 25-year-old Black man in her state in February: It’s “murder,” she says. Watch the full interview on our Mother Jones Youtube channel, Facebook or Twitter pages, or at motherjones.com. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

From flattening the curve to pharmaceutical trials, the story of the coronavirus pandemic is a story told using science and statistics. Every day brings a torrent new information about the number of deaths, the number of hospital beds, the number of unemployed workers, or the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine or ibuprofen. But as President Trump tries to spin the numbers in his favor, using whatever spin and disinformation he can, sorting through the garbage science takes knowledge and fortitude—and a few handy journalistic tools everyone can use. On today’s episode of the podcast, you'll hear from two Mother Jones journalists who can help. Sinduja Rangarajan and Jackie Flynn Mogensen have been sifting through scientific studies and data sets since the start of the pandemic. They’re sharing tips and tricks for separating the useful information from the disinformation. With a global pandemic at stake, getting accurate information has never been more important. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

It’s been 100 days since the first case of the coronavirus was diagnosed in the United States. And it's been 100 days of the Trump administration denying, deflecting, and shifting blame. What can the first 100 days tell us about the upcoming presidential election? How will Trump’s leadership (or lack thereof) during the pandemic affect him politically? How is Joe Biden adjusting to a remote campaign? On this week’s episode, Jamilah King talks to Mother Jones’ DC bureau chief David Corn and senior reporter Tim Murphy. They get into Trump’s “blame China” strategy, Joe Biden’s podcast, and how a Tiger King cast member helped spice up a congressional candidate’s live stream event. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

The new coronavirus has brought tensions in detention centers to new extremes, but what happened on March 25 at Immigration and Custom Enforcement’s LaSalle privately run detention center was months of neglect in the making, and ghoulish in its ironies. This is the story—in the women’s own words—of how a presentation about a virus that attacks people’s lungs culminated in guards in gas masks pepper-spraying inmates and slamming the door shut. To reconstruct the horror for this podcast, Mother Jones immigration reporter Noah Lanard talked to detainee Jennifer Avalos Barrios, five dormmates, a woman who watched things unfold from a neighboring dorm, and many of their loved ones. Most are using their real names, a courageous decision at a time when GEO Group, which runs the facility, is retaliating against people who speak to the media. Even in a pandemic, getting out of the LaSalle “ICE Processing Center” isn’t easy. Nearly 1,100 of the 1,335 beds there were full earlier this month. While ICE has released some people with medical conditions that make them vulnerable to COVID-19, it continues to hold many more in tight quarters that make social distancing impossible. (ICE and GEO Group did not respond to requests for comment for this show.) Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

On today’s show, Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Rep. Adam Schiff provide an urgent roadmap for how to check presidential power in a pandemic. Mother Jones Washington DC bureau chief David Corn interviews the top Democrats about investigating what Trump knew about the potential pandemic, when he knew it, and how to track the taxpayer dollars being dished out from Trump’s $500 billion coronavirus "slush fund". Few people know more about financial oversight during a crisis than Warren. She led the congressional panel that monitored how billions in federal bailout funds were spent—and misspent—following the 2008 crash. And Rep. Adam Schiff has been a relentless chaser of Trump corruption. He ran the House impeachment hearings, and led the House impeachment managers during the Senate trial. Schiff says he is now on the coronavirus case. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Schools across the country have closed to slow the spread of COVID-19, and classes have moved online. For most students, disruptions to regular learning have been challenging enough. But for those without high-speed internet, even filing homework has become next-to impossible, resulting in plunging grades and widespread uncertainty. In today’s episode, the Mother Jones Podcast team takes you to a place where wifi is illegal: Green Bank, West Virginia. This small town is home to a super-sensitive radio telescope built in 1958 that scientists use to explore black holes and deep space. But closer to Earth, wifi interferes with the giant instrument, so it’s banned within a 10-square-mile radius. Meanwhile, hard-wired internet is mind-numbingly slow. Fifteen percent of students here don’t have internet access at home, while 30 percent don’t have access to a device that even connects to the internet, no matter where they are. Producer Molly Schwartz talks to students, teachers, and librarians in Pocahontas County about what it’s like to do distance learning in a place where the internet infrastructure just can't deal, revealing the nation's entrenched digital divides as the pandemic shakes the education system to its core. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

What happens inside your body after you recover from COVID-19? What are the chances that survivors will develop immunity? And how should the legions of soon-to-be recovered think about their usefulness—to scientists and society—in this altered world? These questions got very personal for the Mother Jones Podcast team after our executive producer, James West, tested positive for COVID-19. James is recovering and feeling better. Now, as a survivor, he wants answers to questions that are of great importance—to himself, to doctors, to researchers, and to a planet fighting a pandemic. Is he immune to the disease? If so, for how long? Can he donate his plasma to exciting new trials? How close are doctors to finding a vaccine? In this episode, you’ll hear James’s conversation with Kamal Khanna, an immunity specialist at NYU School of Medicine. You’ll also learn about the FDA’s antiquated restriction on plasma donations, and how the stigma from a past pandemic are hurting our chances of fighting this one. You’ll also here from Peter Staley, the veteran AIDS activist whose groundbreaking work helped erode medical and regulatory barriers to fight HIV. He talks about how to channel the rage you might be feeling about political inaction into lasting change, while dishing on private dinners with Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

On the frontlines of the coronavirus pandemic, there’s a dire shortage of supplies and a deadly surplus of bad information. Dr. Michael Brumage, the medical director of Cabin Creek Health Systems in West Virginia joins host Jamilah King to sound the alarm about the critical shortfalls of resources needed to fight the outbreak across the nation. Later in the show, Dr. Rob Gore, an emergency room physician, shares his experiences working and living in New York City, which has become the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

The coronavirus pandemic is devastating the hospitality industry. Millions of Americans are in lockdown. Events are being cancelled. The day before the release of this podcast episode, New York City's restaurants and bars have been forced to stop sit-down service. In the midst of a crisis, the worst thing that could happen to the restaurant industry has happened. This week, we talked to restaurant owners in the Chinatown in Flushing, Queens. This is a thriving immigrant community, and food-lover’s paradise, that has been turned upside down by COVID-19. For restauranteurs already operating on slim profit margins, staying open during the shutdown was already near-impossible. The question is whether they’ll be able to reopen at all. Also on the show: you share with us your stories about stepping up to help others through the crisis, and they are seriously inspirational. Tune in for all sorts of strategies, big and small, for giving your community a helping hand. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

The Trump administration has slammed the door on asylum seekers in the last year, forcing more than 60,000 migrants to wait upwards of a year in Mexican border cities as their cases moved through US immigration court. But on this latest episode, we take you to New Mexico to meet some of the select few asylum seekers who have defied odds to be admitted to the United States—and who now must face a new set of challenges as they settle into life here. Mother Jones' Fernanda Echavarri and Julia Lurie spend the day with a so-called family navigator from a local direct-services organization called Las Cumbres whose main job is to do "whatever the families need": from driving them around to a clinic to helping them enroll in school. Las Cumbres is a nonprofit that helps families with resources—including mental health services—in a city without the type of support systems that immigrants can find in bigger cities such as Los Angeles, New York City, or Chicago. Many newly arrived immigrants are often preoccupied with trying to find employment and a safe place to live first, before addressing any mental health issues. They've fled dangerous situations and traumatic experiences in their home countries before experiencing the infamous harsh conditions inside US immigration detention facilities. Mental health experts have said it can be difficult to recognize signs of trauma in these communities, not only because trauma shows up differently when they're still in the middle of processing it, but also because they are still in the middle of it with so much stress to handle. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Schools are closing. Workplaces are sending people home. The stock market is going berserk. Conferences and festivals are being cancelled. The coronavirus is already a major disruptive force as the disease spreads. But it didn't stop the Conservative Political Action Convention (CPAC) from hosting more than 19,000 attendees in late February. On March 7th day, organizers announced that one of those attendees had tested positive for the coronavirus. Many CPAC attendees have gone into self-quarantine, including five members of congress. Also under self-imposed distancing is Stephanie Mencimer, a Mother Jones reporter who was covering CPAC. Mencimer joined Jamilah King on the Mother Jones Podcast to talk about her experience, not only of the conference's aftermath, but of the swirl of coronavirus disinformation coming out of the White House. Also on the show: Mother Jones readers and listeners called into the Mother Jones Podcast to tell their coronavirus stories: total lockdown in Milan; cancelled college classes; struggling small businesses; and worries about the most vulnerable people in their communities. Touching stories from you, our listeners: thank you for sharing them. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices