The Briefing with Michael Waldman

What role do members of the cultural and media elite play in the ascent of nationalist rule? In her new book, Twilight of Democracy , Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and historian Anne Applebaum examines the surrogates who enable autocracy. She discusses the patterns of weakening democracies around the world with Washington Post  columnist Max Boot.

In his most recent book, North of Havana , legendary trial lawyer Martin Garbus recounts one of his most high-profile cases: the Cuban Five. In this episode of Brennan Center Live, Garbus talks to Victoria Bassetti about what this case can teach us about the U.S. justice system, American politics, and U.S.-Cuba relations.

In recent years, the Supreme Court has empowered moneyed interests to wield disproportionate influence in elections, gutted the Voting Rights Act, and upheld President Trump’s travel ban. These decisions fit a troubling, decades-long pattern, argues journalist Adam Cohen. He talks with NYU Law professor Melissa Murray about his new book, S upreme Inequality: The Supreme Court’s Fifty-Year Battle f...

How did George Washington view the presidency? What might he think of politics today? Historian Alexis Coe examines America's first president in a freshly humanizing light in her new book You Never Forget Your First . She talks with Julian Zelizer in this new episode of Brennan Center Live.

In her memoir Tough Love: My Story of the Things Worth Fighting For , former National Security Advisor and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice reveals pivotal moments from her career on the front lines of U.S. diplomacy and foreign policy. In this episode of Brennan Center Live, Rice talks with NBC News’ Andrea Mitchell about the current state of foreign affairs and the challenges fac...

The coronavirus pandemic has exposed several problems with the American elections system, but even outside of global pandemic, Americans are increasingly questioning the fairness and accuracy of our elections. In his new book Election Meltdown: Dirty Tricks, Distrust, and the Threat to American Democracy , law professor Richard L. Hasen examines sources of voters’ distrust. In this new episode of...

Today, with a criminal justice system designed to punish, the U.S. has the highest rate of incarceration in the world. What if the American legal system was set up to weigh grounds for forgiveness? In her new book, When Should Law Forgive? , former Harvard Law School dean Martha Minow argues that we should build forgiveness into the administration of American law. She speaks with NYU Law Professor...

Nearly half a century after Roe v. Wade , the U.S. Supreme Court seems poised to undermine or overturn the landmark ruling. It’s an unnerving time for reproductive rights across the U.S., but it’s not new: social movements, politics, and courts have lead us here. Legal experts Melissa Murray, Reva Siegel, and Kate Shaw trace the evolution of reproductive rights in their new book, Reproductive Righ...

District attorneys wield tremendous power and have for decades been a driving force in mass incarceration. In her new book Charged: The New Movement to Transform American Prosecution and End Mass Incarceration , journalist Emily Bazelon follows a new crop of district attorneys who are using their offices to pursue criminal justice reform. She discusses these efforts with district attorneys Kimberl...

Policies supported by a majority of Americans are stymied in Washington and state capitals time and again. Enacting this agenda requires progressives to redouble their efforts at gaining power by expanding the franchise, ending voter suppression, and winning judicial elections, argues Caroline Fredrickson, former president of the American Constitution Society, in conversation with Eric Lesh. Fredr...

African Americans fleeing racial terror in the South sought refuge in the North but instead encountered discrimination in housing, employment, and policing. Marcia Chatelain, Kenisha Grant, Ted Johnson, and Mark Whitaker discuss the history of the Great Migration and how it reverberates in mass incarceration and voter suppression today. Brennan Center Live is a podcast created from Brennan Center...

The upheavals of the 1970s — the Watergate cover-up, defeat in Vietnam, racial conflict, and economic convulsions — formed the contours of today’s polarization, argue Princeton historians Kevin M. Kruse and Julian E. Zelizer. They joined Soledad O’Brien to discuss their new book, Fault Lines: A History of the United States Since 1974. Brennan Center Live is a podcast created from Brennan Center ev...

Reflecting on a distinguished prosecutorial career, former U.S. attorney Preet Bharara discusses the need for lawyers to take into account flaws in the legal system and in human nature in his new book, Doing Justice: A Prosecutor’s Thoughts on Crime, Punishment, and the Rule of Law . He is joined by political commentator Margaret Hoover. Brennan Center Live is a podcast created from Brennan Center...

Journalism and cultural production are crucial to making law and policy, Ta-Nehisi Coates argues, because they expand peoples’ empathy and imagination. In a wide-ranging conversation, the celebrated journalist discusses criminal justice reform, the 2020 election, the #MeToo movement, and more with NYU law professor Melissa Murray. 

Watergate revealed a trail of crimes and coverups that brought down a president and changed the course of American history. With Robert Mueller's findings likely to be unveiled soon, what can we learn from Watergate about Trump-era abuses of power? John Dean, who was President Nixon's White House counsel, and Elizabeth Holtzman, who as a member of the House Judiciary Committee voted to impeach Nix...

America has five percent of the world’s population, but nearly a quarter of its prisoners. Now, a dynamic movement for change is sweeping the country. CNN host Van Jones and Ford Foundation president Darren Walker on how to keep the momentum going.  Brennan Center Live is a weekly series of podcasts created from Brennan Center events, featuring fascinating conversations with well-known thinke...

New York Times best-selling author Carol Anderson speaks with Cornell Brooks about her new book on racist voter suppression and the fight against it. Anderson focuses in particular on the drive to weaken the landmark Voting Rights Act, and argues that voter suppression ultimately aims to make its targets lose faith in democracy itself. Ensuring that doesn’t happen could hardly be a more urgent tas...

As crucial elections approach, voters from Georgia to North Dakota to Texas are at risk of disenfranchisement, and the result could be further skewed by extreme gerrymandering. Meanwhile, automatic voter registration could expand access to the polls in several states. How will the battle over voting shape the midterms, and what can we do to make sure every eligible American has a chance to cast a...

How did we lose an entire generation to the American prison system following the War on Drugs? In  Cuz, The Life and Times of Michael A ., the Harvard professor and political theorist Danielle Allen explores the issue through the experience of her cousin, who served 11 years in prison for an attempted carjacking committed when he was 15, then lost his life to violence three years after being...

Donald Trump poses a grave, long-term threat to our democratic institutions, Atlantic senior editor and former White House speechwriter David Frum has been warning. But, in this wide-ranging conversation with NYU Law School president Trevor Morrison, Frum argues we need to focus not just on Trump’s own behavior, but on “the system of power that enables him.” And Frum explores the ways in which Ame...

Every ten years, the federal government conducts the census of all people in the United States. The stakes are extraordinarily high, particularly in light of the push to include questions about citizenship. The tally determines everything from the allocation of congressional seats and the shape of legislative districts, to the flow of vast amounts of government funds. Political pressure is especia...

America’s democracy is floundering, Congress is hopelessly gridlocked, and millions remain without gainful employment. Despite all this, longtime political strategist and polling expert Douglas E. Schoen remains optimistic.  Democracy’s Problems And Prospects  represents the best of Dr. Schoen’s distinguished career, which he has dedicated to ensuring that democrat...

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance (FISA) Court is no longer serving its constitutional function of providing a check on the executive branch’s ability to obtain Americans’ private communications. Dramatic shifts in technology and law have changed the role of the FISA Court since its creation in 1978 — from reviewing government applications to collect communications in specifi...

Darryl Pinckney’s new book,  Blackballed: The Black Vote and US Democracy , is a meditation on the intersection between civil rights and the history of black participation in U.S. electoral politics. Fifty years after the first passage of the Voting Rights Act, Pinckney investigates the struggle for black voting rights from Reconstruction through the civil rights movement to Barack...

What Caused the Crime Decline?  This podcast examines the Brennan Center's new report that explores one of the nation’s least understood recent phenomena – the dramatic decline in crime nationwide over the past two decades – and analyzes various theories for why it occurred, by reviewing more than 40 years of data from all 50 states and the 50 largest cities. It conclud...