Right Now With Perry Bacon

Trump’s opponents keep talking about restoring what he’s broken—but Adam Gurry, publisher of Liberal Currents, joins the show to argue that going back to normal isn’t enough. We discuss the Reconstruction Papers, a collection of essays laying out a post-Trump policy vision across immigration, higher education, foreign policy, and more. We talk about why the pre-Trump status quo had its own serious...

Right Now with Perry Bacon : a twice-weekly show diving into U.S. politics, democracy, and the authoritarian threats facing America. Each episode, Perry strives to go beyond daily headlines and actually connect the dots to what’s happening in America. ➡️ View the Right Now vault on TNR’s website: https://newrepublic.com/video/right-now-with-perry-bacon ➡️ Follow The New Republic on Substack to wat...

Yale just released a report on declining trust in higher education—and Education Secretary Linda McMahon loved it. Charlie Eaton, professor of economic sociology at UC Merced, and John Warner, writer at Inside Higher Ed, join the show to explain what’s really going on. We discuss why elite university presidents are echoing Republican talking points instead of fighting back, how billionaires like M...

Democrats are favored to win back the House—but don’t expect a 2006-style wave. Carrie Dan, managing editor of Cook Political Report, joins the show to break down the 2026 midterm map. We discuss why redistricting has already netted Republicans six to eight seats, why there are only 36 truly competitive races compared to 58 in 2018, what Democrats would need to see to gain 25 seats or more, how th...

As tech billionaires build out massive, energy-hungry infrastructure to power artificial intelligence, a surprising bottom-up resistance is uniting communities across the country. Astra Taylor—documentary filmmaker, Debt Collective co-founder, and co-author of an upcoming book on fascism with Naomi Klein—joins the show to explain why the fight against hyperscale data centers is fundamentally about...

Frustration with the political establishment isn’t only about economic issues and won’t be solved simply by focusing on gross domestic product growth, inflation, or affordability . That’s the argument of Justin Gest , a policy and government professor at George Mason University. Gest has studied the rise of far-right and far-left parties both in the United States and Europe. The people drawn to th...

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Fascist leaders nearly always try to invade other countries, says University of Toronto philosophy professor Jason Stanley , author of the 2018 book How Fascism Works. So President Trump’s decisions to overthrow the governments in Venezuela and Iran were not unexpected, even though some analysts had in the past cast Trump as antiwar and isolationist. In the latest edition of Right Now, Stanley arg...

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In his first month as New York City’s mayor, Zohran Mamdani has endorsed candidates aligned with the Democratic Socialists of America—and also centrist incumbent New York Governor Kathy Hochul. He reached a deal with Hochul to expand childcare but remains at loggerheads with her over his proposals to increase taxes on the wealthy. He’s fixated on very local issues like snow removal but is also joi...

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The “religious right” has long been a key part of Republican politics. But the role of the faithful in the GOP is shifting, says David Buckley, a political science professor at the University of Louisville and expert on the role of religion in politics. With Roe v. Wade overturned, conservative Catholics and Protestants aren’t as focused on the issue of abortion. And in some ways, they aren’t push...

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The Trump administration has laid siege to colleges, cutting their funding and launching ridiculous investigations. But the administration took advantage of preexisting frustrations with higher education, says Marshall Steinbaum , an economics professor at the University of Utah and fellow at the Jain Family Institute. Policy decisions by Republican and Democratic politicians and universities them...

President Trump’s approval is dropping across the country, even in states that backed him strongly in 2016 and 2020 . That’s partly why Democrats did so well in elections in 2025. Aftyn Behn was one of those Democrats. In a December special election in a U.S. House district in the Nashville area that Trump won by 22 percentage points in 2024, Behn lost by just nine. And Behn didn’t succeed by bash...

President Trump has sometimes been described as antiwar or isolationist. That’s totally wrong , says Matt Duss , executive vice president for the Center for International Policy. He was also a top foreign policy aide to Senator Bernie Sanders during his 2020 presidential campaign. What Trump really opposes is long wars, Duss argues. Trump is fine with overthrowing the Venezuelan government and mak...

Senator Elizabeth Warren says Democrats need to be a “big tent” party that includes more working-class voters. But that tent should not be expanded to billionaires, she argues, unless the super-wealthy support higher taxes on the rich and corporations and expanded social programs. She also says the party must be careful, in embracing the concept of “abundance ,” to remember the biggest barriers to...

By the end of last year, President Trump was declining politically , with his poll numbers plunging and members of the Republican Party increasingly distancing themselves from him. But Trump isn’t chastened. His moves early in 2026 are as authoritarian as ever, overthrowing the Venezuelan government, launching a virtual siege of Minneapolis, and trying to force Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell...