The Back Room with Andy Ostroy

Co-founder and Board Member of The Lincoln Project, Rick Wilson is a renowned political strategist, infamous award-winning ad-maker and podcast host, writer, speaker, and political commentator on MSNBC, CNN, ABC News, NPR, Real Time with Bill Maher, and various American and international news national outlets. A 30-year veteran of national Republican politics, Rick got his start in the 1988 Presid...

Paul Begala is a CNN political commentator, consultant and NY Times best-selling author... his most recent book was the election-year hit You’re Fired: The Perfect Guide to Beating Donald Trump. He’s also been a columnist for Newsweek and The Daily Beast, and was one of the founding contributing editors of his late friend JFK Jr’s magazine George. But perhaps most notably…he helped engineer Bill C...

Amy McGrath is a political and national security analyst, a former fighter pilot and U.S. Marine Corps combat veteran, founder of Democratic Majority Action PAC, Democratic nominee for the U.S. House and Senate from Kentucky and the author of "Honor Bound: An American Story of Dreams and Service." She, along with co-host Denver Riggleman, recently launched the brand new podcast, “Truth in the Barr...

Kate Shaw is a Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School, where she teaches and writes about the presidency, the law of democracy, the Supreme Court, and reproductive rights and justice. Her scholarly writing has appeared, among other places, in the Harvard Law Review, the Columbia Law Review, the Michigan Law Review, and the Northwestern University Law Review, and her po...

A graduate of the USC School of Cinema and Television, Andrew Durham has worked under such directors as David Lynch, Christopher Guest, Wes Craven, and Oliver Stone. He began his collaborative relationship with Sofia Coppola when he produced her first short film, LICK THE STAR, and Coppola’s television series, HI-OCTANE, for the Comedy Central Network. He went on to work for MTV Networks as Produc...

Aidan Walker is a writer, creator, and internet culture researcher. He has covered memes and tech for the BBC, The Daily Beast, and other outlets. He posts on TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram as @aidanetcetera and writes the Substack newsletter How To Do Things With Memes. What are memes, where do they come from, what's their impact today as a communications tool, and what lies ahead for this powerf...

Janet Napolitano is currently the Founder and faculty director of the Institute for Security and Governance at UC Berkeley. In her distinguished career she’s served as former Secretary of Homeland Security, president of the University of California, Governor of Arizona, Attorney General of Arizona, and as U.S. Attorney for the District of Arizona. In 2022, President Biden appointed her to the Pres...

Richard Reeves is the founder and president of the American Institute for Boys and Men. Before founding AIBM in 2023, he was a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. While at Brookings, he focused on policies related to economic inequality, racial justice, social mobility, and boys and men. He is the author of several books, including “Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male is Struggling, Why i...

Nancy Schwartzman is an Emmy winning and Peabody nominated documentary filmmaker, showrunner and a member of the Directors Guild of America and the Academy of Motion Pictures and Sciences. Her latest project is the limited series Death in Apartment 603: What Happened to Ellen Greenberg? now streaming on Hulu. Her other films and series include Sasha Reid and the Midnight Order, the Emmy winning Vi...

In academia, private sector, government and media, Professor Juliette Kayyem is an international leader in crisis management and homeland security. She serves as the faculty chair of the Homeland Security and Security and Global Health Projects at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. Previously, she served as President Obama's Assistant Secretary at the Department of Homeland Security and as MA...

Andrew Weissmann is the co-host of the popular podcast Main Justice and is a frequent legal analyst for NBC/MSNBC. He serves on the board of Just Security and writes frequently for it, as well as The New York Times, The Atlantic, & The Washington Post. From 2017-2019 Andrew served as a lead prosecutor in Robert S. Mueller’s Special Counsel’s Office. His memoir about the Special Counsel investi...

Jill Schlesinger is the Emmy and Gracie Award winning Business Analyst for CBS News. She appears on CBS radio and television stations nationwide covering the economy, markets, investing and anything else with a dollar sign. She is a weekly guest on NPR’s “Here and Now” and writes the nationally syndicated column “Jill on Money”. She is the author of two books, The Great Money Reset and The Dumb Th...

Cait Conley is a fourth-generation Hudson Valley native, daughter of a postal worker and a construction worker, a decorated combat veteran and national security expert. And she’s running for the House in NY’s 17th Congressional district. Cait discusses the shutdown, affordability, national security, Trump, Hegseth, her campaign and the fight to defeat Mike Lawler Got somethin' to say?! Email us at...

Cass Sunstein is currently the Robert Walmsley University Professor at Harvard. He is the founder and director of the Program on Behavioral Economics and Public Policy at Harvard Law School. In 2018, he received the Holberg Prize from the government of Norway, sometimes described as the equivalent of the Nobel Prize for law and the humanities. In 2020, the World Health Organization appointed him a...

Jake Tapper wrote the NY Times bestselling nonfiction books The Outpost: An Untold Story of American Valor, which was turned into a critically acclaimed film in 2020, and this year’s ORIGINAL SIN: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again. He’s also written two New York Times bestselling novels, The Hellfire Club and The Devil May Dance, He is an Emmy Award-wi...

Peter Baker is the Chief White House Correspondent for The New York Times and a political analyst for MSNBC. He has covered the last five presidents for The Times and The Washington Post. At The Post, he also served as Moscow Co-Bureau Chief and covered the opening months of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. He is author of seven books, including the best-selling The Divider: Trump in the White Ho...

Osita Nwanevu is a contributing editor at The New Republic, a columnist at The Guardian, and the Democratic Institutions fellow at the Roosevelt Institute. He is a former staff writer at The New Republic, The New Yorker, and Slate, and his work has also appeared in The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, The Nation, Harper’s Magazine, the Columbia Journalism Review, In These Times, Flami...

Marc Levin is an award-winning, independent filmmaker. He has made over 50 films, including documentaries, TV series, dramatic feature films and episodic television. He’s won four Emmys and four duPont-Columbia Awards, among other prominent accolades. Highlights include his dramatic hit SLAM; the groundbreaking docuseries Brick City; and several films for HBO including Gang War: Bangin’ in Little...

Katie Phang is an independent journalist and trial lawyer. Formerly the host of “The Katie Phang Show” on MSNBC, Katie also has served as a legal contributor/legal correspondent for several media outlets, such as NBC, MSNBC, and Fox News. She’s had a front-row seat to some of the most consequential moments in recent history, including the unsealing of multiple criminal indictments against Donald T...

Mark S. Zaid is a Washington, D.C. based attorney specializing in crisis management and handling administrative and litigation matters relating to national security, international law, foreign sovereign and diplomatic immunity, and the Freedom of Information/Privacy Acts. His clients typically include former/current federal employees, particularly intelligence and military officers, defense contra...

Vicky Ward is a #1 New York Times bestselling author, podcaster, documentary host and producer, former CNN Senior Reporter, magazine editor at large, entrepreneur, and Visiting Fellow at the University of Oxford. Her investigative reporting focuses on power, money, and corruption in the United States and abroad. She is the author of the bestselling Substack newsletter, “Vicky Ward Investigates.” A...

George Conway is an attorney, political activist, and legal and political commentator. He is board president of the Society for the Rule of Law, and a founder of the Lincoln Project. He is also a host of The Bulwark’s podcast George Conway Explains It All (to Sarah Longwell), and he is a contributing writer to The Atlantic. He previously worked as a litigator for three decades at the law firm of W...

Russell Moore is Editor in Chief of Christianity Today and is the author of several books, including Losing Our Religion: An Alter Call for Evangelical America. An ordained Baptist minister, Moore served previously as President of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission and, before that, as the chief academic officer and dean of the Southern Baptist Theological Se...

Tom Nichols is a staff writer at The Atlantic and a contributor to the Atlantic Daily newsletter. He's back in THE BACK ROOM for a discussion about the concerns involving Russian drones over Poland, the reaction from NATO, and Trump's response (or lack thereof). We also discuss the recent Supreme Court ruling on ICE raids in LA involving racial profiling, and America in the wake of the Charlie Kir...

Elie Honig is CNN’s Senior Legal Analyst. He previously worked for 14 years as a federal and state prosecutor. He is also the national bestselling author of two books, “Hatchet Man: How Bill Barr Broke the Prosecutor’s Code and Corrupted the Justice Department” and “Untouchable: How Powerful People Get Away With It”. He writes a weekly column for New York magazine and for Cafe.com, and he hosts tw...