Political Theater

Politics works in patterns. But we might be in one of those outlier election cycles, when politics don’t always match up with typical narratives. Roll Call Elections Analyst Nathan L. Gonzales joins the Political Theater podcast to discuss. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

August can be a strange month, especially in a place like Washington. On one hand, things are slow. Congress goes on recess. People take vacations. On the other hand, kids head back to school. It’s peak political primary season. How different is it from other places? Brandon Wetherbee of Recommend If You Like magazine drops by to riff on the dog days, the Cubs’ microphone system, Michael Keaton, D...

Amanda Becker is a veteran political journalist. The Washington correspondent for The 19th News has covered a variety of beats here in The Swamp over the last decade-plus for her current newsroom, as well as Reuters, and, once upon a time, for Roll Call. She is about to move to the Boston area to start one of journalism’s most prestigious fellowships, the Nieman, was kind enough to discuss some of...

President Joe Biden will soon sign legislation that will give easier access to health and disability benefits to more than 3.5 million veterans who were exposed to toxic substances on overseas deployments in Iraq, Afghanistan and more. It wasn’t easy to get through Congress. The Senate passed that bill after weeks of delay, and not before high-profile advocacy from comedian Jon Stewart and others....

We are at a pause in the congressional primary season, with several major states having selected their nominees for November’s general election, including Texas, Ohio, Pennsylvania and North Carolina. In August, things ramp back up, with more than a dozen states holding primaries and in battlegrounds like Arizona, Michigan and Florida. So what have we learned so far from the elections that have ta...

The new documentary from filmmakers Betsy West and Julie Cohen “Gabby Giffords Won’t Back Down” comes out amid a nationwide debate about gun safety, the animating crusade of the former congresswoman, and as her husband, Sen. Mark Kelly, runs for re-election in a race that will be key in this year's midterms. It also tells a good story and has a rockin' soundtrack. West and Cohen talk about their f...

Supreme Court justices have it made: Not only do they get to remake American society with a few opinions, they get to take three months off afterward! Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. has joked that ”only Supreme Court justices and schoolchildren are expected to and do take the entire summer off.” So what do they do during that quarter-year break, and is it changing now that the high court has stepp...

The walls sure are thin in the West Wing. That is just one takeaway from the testimony of former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson to the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol. CQ Roll Call Editor at Large John T. Bennett covered the presidency of Donald Trump in sometimes very close quarters at the executive mansion. He joins Political Theater to discuss th...

Washington's professional football team has a long history of controversy, and Congress and local governments spend a lot of time picking apart its foibles. Would this happen in Jacksonville, though? With us to discuss in Brandon Wetherbee, managing editor of District Fray. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week marks the 50th Anniversary of the Watergate break-in, a scandal that eventually led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon. This is one of history's great dramas, and we're still telling and hearing great stories about it. Case in point: "The Martha Mitchell Effect," a new Netflix documentary about one Watergate's most colorful, and tragic, characters. Directors Anne Alvergue and...

"Top Gun: Maverick," the legacy sequel to the 1986 movie "Top Gun," has soared at the box office since its Memorial Day weekend opening, making more than 550 million dollars and counting. People might just be going to see Tom Cruise in action, but there might be something more going on here. The first "Top Gun" is an iconic piece of pop culture, a product of its times: a hot movie that came out at...

In "The G Word with Adam Conover,” his new series on Netflix, the titular host explores government, how it works, what it does, and also how it fails. Among the topics he explores: food safety, weather prediction and disaster response, GPS, public health, the money supply, and more. On the latest Political Theater, Conover discusses the show, from its fun and enlightening moments to disheartening...

Tuesday’s primary races in states — be they Idaho, North Carolina, Pennsylvania or Oregon — were good news for the establishment of both political parties. Or bad news. It kind of depends on how you define the establishment. Jacob Rubashkin of Inside Election joins the podcast to walk us through all the mixed messaging. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As the November midterm elections continue to come into focus, several Senate and House incumbents are vulnerable in their bids for re-election. Some are Democrats in danger of getting caught up in a GOP wave. Some are Republicans facing tough primary challenges. And some are just plain unique. The CQ Roll Call political team breaks it down for the episode of Political Theater.  Learn more about y...

Reps. Derek Kilmer and Williams Timmons are under no illusion about the challenges to make Congress a more modern and efficient institution. But as the leaders of the House Selection Committee on the Modernization of Congress, the two are walking the walk: pursuing a bipartisan approach and setting an example for how to work together for the public interest. “Congress has been described as an 18th...

For the first time since 2019, the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner is back, stepping gingerly into the COVID-19 era, awkward jokes and all. CQ Roll Call Chief Correspondent Niels Lesniewski stops by to talk about what to expect.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's the year of our Midterm Election, 2022, and Q1 fundraising numbers are in. What's a million dollars get you these days? How are incumbent members running against other incumbents doing? How much are members targeted by former President Donald Trump doing in the money game? We run through all this and more on the latest Political Theater podcast.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaph...

We're going to hear a lot about the congressional generic ballot as we get deeper into the 2022 midterm campaign. But, as Edwin Starr might ask, "What is it good for?" How much can we use it to make sense of the political path we are on? Nathan L. Gonzales, publisher of Inside Elections and Roll Call's elections analyst, joins the podcast to discuss.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaph...

Major League Baseball is back — and it's got some cryptocurrency-sportsbook-anti-competitive-business-practice baggage. District Fray's Brandon Wetherbee joins Political Theater to discuss our new baseball order, weird public art, tobacco and booze advertising and whether the National Baseball Hall of Fame should just start over.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When it comes to really geeking out about politics and campaigns, nothing beats redistricting. Jason Dick and Michael Macagnone break down how the pandemic-altered Census crashed into the decennial reapportionment of congressional seats, which sent the already typically crazy redistricting of House seats into a fine tizzy of gamesmanship, hard feelings, lawsuits and an out-and-out weird race again...

Christina Bellantoni, a former Roll Call editor who is now professor of professional practice at the University of Southern California, is training the next generation of journalists. Part of that is showing them how to report stories from out in the field, including congressional races in Texas and Virginia. Bellantoni discusses that and more, including the value of diverse backgrounds and sourci...

The stakes for Supreme Court nominations have always been high. But starting in 2016, when Senate Republicans refused to consider the nomination of Merrick B. Garland, the high court confirmation process has been defined by deep partisan rifts, accusations of unfairness and hypocrisy and hard feelings. With that kind of background, what might Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson expect in her upcoming conf...

For the remaining prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba detention facility, “time becomes elastic,” in the words of filmmaker Alex Gibney. One long-time detainee, for instance, Abu Zubaydah, just had his petition to get information from the CIA about his torture and treatment denied by the Supreme Court. But Gibney, in his most recent documentary, “The Forever Prisoner,” does interview key figures...

In the last 50 years, only six first-term presidents have been graced with their party in the majority in the House and Senate, and those majorities come under a lot of pressure in midterm elections. That brings us to Joe Biden, one of the six. Nathan Gonzales, publisher of Inside Elections and Roll Call’s political analyst, joins Jason Dick to talk about whether State of the Union speeches, or an...

Rep. Jamie Raskin was already embroiled in a political struggle of titanic proportions when tragedy struck in late 2020: the death of his son, Tommy. Madeleine Carter’s documentary “Love and the Constitution” tells that story, one of personal tragedy against the backdrop of the future of the republic. Raskin and Carter discuss the film on the latest Political Theater podcast. Learn more about your...