DSR's Words Matter

Elie Honig joins Joe this week to talk about the latest in the House Impeachment Inquiry against President Trump -- he explains what crimes may have been committed in the most recent Trump scandal. Elie is a former state and federal prosecutor with extensive experience leading and managing criminal trials and appeals. As a state prosecutor in New Jersey and a federal prosecutor in the Southern Dis...

A whistleblower complaint filed by an intelligence officer about President Trump’s interactions with the leader of Ukraine could change the course of presidential history. This week we put the audio version of this important document into the Words Matter Library. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/words-matter. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about...

The House takes the first steps toward impeachment -- Carrie Cordero joins Katie and Joe to explain how we got here and what may happen next. Carrie is the Robert M. Gates Senior Fellow and General Counsel at the Center for a New American Security. Carrie is also an adjunct professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center, a CNN legal analyst, and a contributing editor of Lawfare. Carrie has s...

History is unfolding in real time. The President of the United States is accused of using the power of his office to extort a foreign government into finding dirt or manufacturing dirt on his leading political rival in the 2020 presidential election. This week, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi took a step she had been reluctant to take for months and announced that the House will begin formal impeachmen...

On July 25th 1974 Congresswoman Barbara Jordan delivered a televised opening statement as the House Judiciary Committee began consideration of articles of impeachment against President Richard Nixon. It is regarded by historians as one of the greatest speeches in all of American history. Congresswoman Jordan offered a passionate and powerful defense of the United States Constitution. A document, s...

Our guests this week are senior Washington correspondents for POLITICO and co-authors of POLITICO’s Playbook, the most important indispensable morning newsletter covering Washington and politics. Anna Palmer and Jake Sherman are also the co-authors of New York Times and national best seller, The Hill to Die On: The Battle for Congress and the Future of Trump's America. In addition to Playbook, Ann...

This week, the 74th session of the General Assembly of the United Nations began in New York. To mark the occasion, we wanted to pay tribute to one of the most important and meaningful accomplishments of that body – the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Adopted at the 3rd UN General Assembly held in Paris –this document -- As Ken Burns notes in The Roosevelts --was history’s first attempt at l...

This week Katie and Joe take a look at what's happening on Capitol Hill with Julie Hirschfeld Davis the new congressional editor for the The New York Times. Julie has covered politics from Washington for two decades, writing on Congress, three presidential campaigns and three presidents.  She is a CNN political analyst and next month Julie and Mike Shear have a new book out, Border Wars: Inside Tr...

She's is a medical doctor on a mission to create a better medical Internet. Dr. Jen Gunter has been called "Twitter's Resident Gynecologist" and "The Internet's OB/GYN". She's a fierce advocate for women's health, a writer for The New York Times, USA Today, and Self, and the host Jensplaining, Dr. Jen joins us to talk about her Best Selling new book, The Vagina Bible, and for straight talk on wome...

This week Joe sits down with former Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson about the Anniversary of 9/11, immigration, 2020 election security and more. Jeh Johnson was the 4th Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security from December 2013 until January of 2017. Before that he was an Assistant US Attorney in the Southern District of New York. From 1998 until 2001, he was General Counsel of...

For those of you who took the summer off from 24/7 news, Katie and Joe will recap the highlights and the lowlights. From Donald Trump to the race for the Democratic nomination, to the battle for the US Senate, we'll catch you up on the latest. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/words-matter. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visi...

The Contenders is a special podcast series by Joe Lockhart. Given the importance of the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, we thought it important and informative to hear from those people who've actually run for president. What goes into the decision? How do you possibly get to the place of thinking you can take on the toughest job in the world? What were your biggest mistakes as a...

It was one of the defining moments of the civil rights movement and one of the most iconic speeches in American history. 56 years ago this week The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, or the March on Washington, was held in the Nation’s Capital on Wednesday, August 28, 1963.  More than 250,000 people turned out to advocate for the civil and economic rights of black Americans. At was here, st...

In case you missed this important episode -- Katie and Joe sat down with Professor Kathleen Hall Jamison author of Cyberwar: How Russian Hackers and Trolls Helped Elect a President Professor Jamieson is the Elizabeth Ware Packard Professor of Communication at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication, the Director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center, and Program Directo...

Battle for the Marble Palace – Abe Fortas, Earl Warren, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon and the Forging of the Modern Supreme Court Author Michael Bobelian is a contributor to Forbes where he writes on the Supreme Court, white collar crime and politics. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/words-matter. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choic...

Our guest this week is a celebrated historian and the award-winning author, co-author or editor of more than 30 books. Most of these works are focused on American presidents or people we know because of presidents. Douglas Brinkley is the Katherine Tsanoff Brown Chair in Humanities and Professor of History at Rice University, a CNN Presidential Historian, and a contributing editor at Vanity Fair. ...

Last week we lost one of the most influential and celebrated novelists in American literary history Toni Morrison. A novelist, essayist and Princeton Professor, Morrison wrote nine major novels -- all of which earned extensive critical acclaim.  Among dozens of other awards and achievements, she won both a Pulitzer Prize and American Book Award in 1988 for her novel Beloved. And in 1993, Toni Morr...

Is the federal government doing enough to fight domestic terrorism? This week we talk to one former senior law enforcement official who says no. For nearly two decades, Daryl Johnson was senior domestic terrorism analyst at the Department of Homeland Security and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. Back in 2009 he wrote a DHS Report on “Rightwing Extremism” that was widely circulated in t...

Shannon Watts is the author of Fight like a Mother – How a Grassroots Movement took on the Gun Lobby and Why Women will Change the World. Until December of 2012 Shannon Watts was a stay-at-home mother of five and former communications executive. The day after the Sandy Hook tragedy, Shannon Watts started a Facebook group with the message that all Americans can and should do more to reduce gun viol...

Over the last few weeks, Donald Trump has left no doubt that he is a racist. He has also made it clear -- race will be perhaps THE biggest issue in 2020.  The question is: Can racism win? This week Katie and Joe talk to Keith Boykin. Keith is a CNN political commentator, New York Times best-selling author, and a former White House aide to President Bill Clinton. Keith teaches at the Institute for...

This week we sit down with Lauren Moxley, the host of The Ginsburg Tapes Podcast -- which chronicles Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s oral arguments before the then all-male United States Supreme Court from 1972 to 1978 —before she became #Notorious RBG. The Ginsburg Tapes allows the listener to be a fly on the wall for some of the most important cases in American jurisprudence as future Justice Ginsburg cha...

Few know more about the origins of the FBI's Russia investigation than our guest this week, former Justice Department and FBI senior official James A. Baker.  From 2014 to 2017 Mr. Baker was general counsel of the FBI and was involved in the initial and some of the most important aspects of the investigation into Russia's attack on the 2016 presidential election.  We talk to Jim Baker about that,...

As Special Counsel Robert Mueller prepares to testify in front of Congress the week, Katie and Joe previewed his testimony with National Security expert Jeremy Bash in last week's episode. Some things are worth repeating. So in case you missed this important preview, here it is again. From 2009 to 2011, Jeremy served as Chief of Staff at the CIA under Director Leon Panetta and from 2011-2013 as Ch...

Katie and Joe talk to two journalists to go beyond the tweets and find out what's really going on race and immigration in Donald Trump's America. Eugene Scott covers identity politics for the Washington Post. He joined the Post from CNN Politics, where he covered the 2016 presidential election and was the senior reporter on the website’s breaking news team. He’s a regular on-air contributor, provi...

Barbara Jordan was a lawyer educator politician and a leader of the civil rights movement a Democrat and Houston native. Jordan was the first African-American elected to the Texas Senate after Reconstruction and the first southern African-American woman elected to the United States House of Representatives. On July 25th 1974 Congresswoman Jordan delivered a televised opening statement as the House...