Right Now With Perry Bacon

In the latest episode, Perry is joined by Lucan Way, a political scientist at the University of Toronto, to discuss authoritarianism in the U.S. 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. ➡️...

In the latest episode, Perry is joined by Sarah Stein Lebrano, author of Don’t Talk About Politics , to discuss how people change their minds. 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. ➡️ Vi...

In the latest episode, Perry is joined by Hamilton Nolan of How Things Work to discuss labor, billionaires, and American democracy. 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 Righ...

In the latest episode, Perry is joined by Chaz Nuttycombe of State Navigate to discuss the midterm outlook for state legislatures. 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...

In the latest episode, Perry is joined by Michael Paarlberg of Virginia Commonwealth University to discuss Brazil’s upcoming runoff. 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 Rig...

In the latest episode, Perry is joined by Elizabeth Saunders to discuss the Iran war, Rubio’s Greece speech, and what a cornered Trump might do after the midterms. 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 happen...

In the latest episode, Perry is joined by political scientist Paul Frymer to discuss whether Democrats treat transgender Americans as a “captured minority”—much like Black voters. 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...

In the latest episode, Perry is joined by Monica Potts, staff writer at The New Republic covering class politics, to discuss why “working class” has become a meaningless catch-all in political journalism—and why reporters should be far more specific instead. Right Now with Perry Bacon : a twice-weekly show diving into U.S. politics, democracy, and the authoritarian threats facing America. Each epi...

In the latest episode, Perry is joined by historian Lily Geismar to discuss how professional-class dominance reshaped the Democratic Party — and whether a populist left can break through. 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 t...

The Democratic Party frequently campaigns on a promise of technical competence and professional management, but Chaotic Neutral author Ed Burmila argues that running simply as "better stewards of the system" is a fatal long-term strategy. 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...

As a wave of Democratic candidates in swing and red districts distance themselves from LGBTQ+ advocacy, Evan Urquhart argues that attempting to win over moderate voters by sacrificing trans rights is a costly mistake. 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 he...

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 watch...

Perry and Natasha discuss how conservative strategists capitalized on campus divisions following the 2023 Gaza protests, why faculty across the country are facing growing surveillance concerns in their classrooms, why state-level bans targeting disciplines like sociology show the right recognizes the power of systemic data, and how defenders of higher education must articulate a proactive, organiz...

Despite years of procedural reforms, police in America continue to kill more than 1,000 people annually, and the political momentum from 2020 has faced massive pushback from both the right and the center. Alex Vitale, professor of sociology at Brooklyn College and author of The End of Policing , joins the show to explain why post-Ferguson reforms like body cameras and implicit bias training fail t...

Minneapolis became ground zero for resistance to ICE in 2026—and Michelle Phelps, sociologist at the University of Minnesota and author of The Minneapolis Reckoning , argues that’s not a coincidence. She joins the show to trace how networks, muscle memory, and skepticism of official narratives built during the 2020 protests carried directly into this year’s mobilization. We discuss why the city wa...

The American Association of University Professors made a rare move: endorsing Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan’s primary. Todd Wolfson, president of AAUP and a professor of journalism and media studies at Rutgers, joins the show to explain why. We discuss El-Sayed’s own family ties to the union, why AAUP’s Michigan locals overwhelmingly backed him in internal polling, why AAUP says it would endorse any...

AOC called it “woke 1.0” and cited a local official calling it “crazy”—and Deva Woodly, professor of political science at Brown University and a fellow at the Kettering Foundation, joins the show to push back. We discuss what AOC actually said about Francesca Hong and the political moment around 2020, why dismissing Black Lives Matter, #MeToo, and the Parkland gun-control movement as “crazy” cedes...

Michigan has voted, and now Minnesota and Wisconsin are up next in the Democratic primary wars. Ryan Cooper, senior editor at The American Prospect, joins the show to look back at what the Michigan results revealed and look ahead at what’s coming this week. We discuss why electability arguments are so hard to trust, why an outside spending gap didn’t stop Abdul El-Sayed’s win, why Francesca Hong i...

Abdul El-Sayed won Michigan’s primary by a narrow margin—and Julia Azari and Seth Masket, political scientists and former FiveThirtyEight colleagues, return to the show to dig into what happened. We go county by county, discussing what the map suggests about the racial and geographic coalition behind El-Sayed’s win, why they’re cautious about reading too much ideology into the results, and how thi...

Michigan votes tomorrow, Wisconsin votes next week, and both primaries have become this cycle’s version of the New York primary—everyone left of center is watching. Anat Shenker-Osorio, who has run hundreds of Democratic focus groups since 2021, and Nathan Kalmoe, a professor who studies public opinion, join the show to break down what these races reveal before any votes are even counted. We discu...

Everyone says they don’t know what AOC’s foreign policy is—but Jonathan Guyer, program director at the Institute for Global Affairs, argues that’s not quite right. He joins the show to break down his piece “AOC Meets World,” tracing how she went from a shaky, underprepared answer on Israel-Palestine early in her career to a confident speech at the Munich Security Conference tying global oligarchy...

Debbie Wasserman Schultz decided to run in Florida’s newly redrawn 20th District instead of her old seat—and Elijah Manley, one of the primary challengers taking her on, joins the show to make his case. We discuss why he thinks seniority isn’t the same as results, his own background growing up homeless after the 2008 financial crisis, why he’d have picked Abdul El-Sayed over Haley Stevens in the M...

Progressive candidates just had a strong primary season—but is this a real realignment or a moment that fades? Julia Azari, professor at Marquette University, and Seth Masket, professor at the University of Denver, join the show to break down what’s actually driving the left’s wins. We go factor by factor: whether Democratic voters are genuinely moving left, why the socialist label has lost its Co...

We talk about masculinity and politics constantly right now, but gender politics runs both ways—and it’s usually invisible when it comes to men. Danielle Kurtzleben, White House correspondent at NPR, and Meredith Conroy, political science professor and author of the Gender Gap Substack, join the show to unpack how loaded terms like “authenticity” are actually coded by gender. We discuss why workin...

Trump has spent two years working through the authoritarian playbook—and Donald Moynihan, professor of political science and public policy at the University of Michigan, joins the show to score how far he’s gotten. We go category by category: controlling the bureaucracy (a nine out of ten), capturing the legal system, co-opting the military, cracking down through internal security agencies like IC...