The PoliticsGirl Podcast

I’m in Chicago this week for the Democratic convention, and I hope you’ll follow along to get the information, but as we watch, what we hope will be the first female president take the convention stage, I thought we should discuss what the other side is offering when it comes to women, women’s rights, and womanhood. With that in mind, our guest today is acclaimed writer Julie Kohler, host of award...

According to our guest, YouTube sensation and wildly successful political commentator, Brian Tyler Cohen, the modern Republican Party has laid out a long con. That, while the increasingly radical right gaslights the American public with its lies, artificial slogans and hollow catchphrases, there’s an ever widening gap between the essential Republican “brand” and their actual behavior. It’s such a...

As guest, historian and writer, Rutger Bregman, reminds us, MLK didn’t inspire the world with his “I have a nightmare…” speech. It was about a dream. Rutger believes there’s an antidote to this sense of emptiness so many of us feel and it’s what he calls moral ambition, or the will to make the world a better place. That humanity, no matter what we’ve been taught, is actually cooperative and benevo...

As today’s guest, CEO of the States United Democracy Center and States United Action, Joanna Lydgate says, “The battle for democracy begins before a single ballot is cast and continues long after the polls close on election day.” We keep repeating it, but the truth is, the American election system itself is under attack. There are anti-democratic forces working hard across the country not to win e...

“There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.”  Joe Biden is no longer running for President and everything has changed. Join me and Michael Steele as we discuss what just happened, and what comes next.  As always, if you find worth in what we do, please consider SUBSCRIBING to PoliticsGirl Premium. You’ll get this podcast ad free, along with a bunch of other...

Authoritarian propaganda is full of empty promises of unity. Of uniting the nation under a leader who alone can fix it. Authoritarian expert Ruth Ben-Ghiat and I had this conversation BEFORE the events at the Trump rally in Pennsylvania, but the facts remain the same if not more poignant now. The shock and awe we’re seeing is a tactic to distract us from what this party plans to do to our country,...

We just finished probably the most life altering Supreme Court’s session in the history of our country. The six conservative justices, and I use the term conservative loosely, because they’re actually right wing extremists, just took a sledge hammer to decades of legal precedent, human rights, civil rights and the constitution itself, but this idea that there’s nothing we can do about it is wrong....

America’s rising domestic terrorism movement is not getting better it’s getting worse. We have to look at ourselves, particularly if we’re in the American Christian community, and realize something must be done to start seeding the ground for a different way of thinking. Which is why we’re talking to former US security official and counterterrorism expert Elizabeth Neumann. Elizabeth served as the...

To keep democracy’s head above water in 2024 the Democrats need what’s called a trifecta - meaning the Presidency, the House and the Senate - and keeping the senate is going to be a tough slog because Democrats have what’s called a “bad map”. So today, instead of talking about the must win swing races we hear about all the time, we’re going to discuss two Senate races that almost no-one is paying...

We just had the G7. There was just a Ukrainian Peace Conference in Switzerland. Here at home we have a wanna be dictator running against a President who fights dictators. Today we talk to international expert Andrea Chalupa about two broad stroke topics, what’s going on in Ukraine, because I think most of us have kind of checked out and don’t have a clue anymore, and what Trump will offer in a sec...

Happy Pride!! It’s easy to criticize government, and candidly, there’s plenty that deserves criticism. But government is not something we can live without, so maybe if we spent less time complaining about it, and more time understanding it, we’d know how to use it properly and how to best fix it. So, today we’re joined by Four Star Admiral and one of the highest ranking members of our Department o...

Christian Nationalism is a giant threat to our country. A danger to women, to minorities, to the marginalized and to democracy itself. While these white, Christian nationalists believe they’re saving the country from heathenism, what they’re really offering is a theocracy of top down control with themselves at the top. We must see this threat for what it is, and that starts with understanding. Tim...

Wanna win back democracy? Start with the states. The federal government is clearly essential, and to save our nation the Democrats must win the Presidency, House and Senate in ’24, but we can’t stop there. So many of the terrible laws we’re seeing around the country come directly from Republican state legislatures. People like to blame the president when things don’t go their way, but so much of w...

Fixing the crisis America is in is hard, but it’s also simple. We can’t stop talking about reproductive rights because it’s not just about stripping women of the right to manage their own lives and bodies, it’s about the slippery slope we find ourselves on if we accept that government can just take our essential human rights. At the end of the day, it’s not just about abortion, it’s about preceden...

The Republicans are telling us their plans for America’s future and it is terrifying. The Democrats, in contrast, are vocally offering the opposite. Where the last Democratic House was the most effective in modern American history, passing more legislation passed than any Congress since FDR’s New Deal, the current Republican House has been the least effective, least cohesive since the Civil War. T...

I’ve been watching what’s been happening on college campuses with real uncertainty. I don’t believe we’re getting the full story from the media. Much like the horserace neck and neck BS they’re peddling for the election, I feel as if traditional media is pushing narratives with the protests that don’t tell the full picture and it leaves people feeling outraged or confused. As today’s guest David R...

Today we’re joined by Mini Timmaraju, President of Reproductive Freedom for All, to discuss how reproductive freedom isn’t just about access to the health care of abortion, but about how we think society should function. Do we believe our most fundamental and personal decisions belong to the government, or do we believe they belong to us? At the end of the day, it all comes back to democracy, and...

It’s not that everything that’s happened in capitalism is bad, but when it comes to economics, perhaps we should be asking what this endless growth means and for whom? Who is all this growth for, and what is it worth, if it really only benefits a tiny silver of our population. What if there was a Goldilocks version of the economy? Where it wasn’t communism, and it wasn’t winner take all capitalism...

Membership in violent extremist organizations is up, especially with our veterans. Today we talk to former mission commander and veteran’s advocate Ken Harbaugh about his incredible film Against All Enemies, and why a disproportionate amount of our military veterans would end up taking violent action against the very country they swore to protect, and why they would think they were patriots for do...

How do you lock in a minority worldview in America? You control the states. As our guest, democracy activist, author and professor, David Pepper tells us, “You win them. You gerrymander them. You suppress as many votes as you can, and then ram through your extremist agenda, and nobody can stop you.” We see it happening all over the country. This is how Republicans with unpopular opinions, who don’...

Former RNC Chairman Michael Steele reaches out to his party to remind them to vote R for Rights not Republican. He tells us that Republican values are still here, they just can’t breathe under this current top down, one person centric, wanna-be dictator. We talk about how the once great party has been co-oped, so it’s not just ok to be a Republican who votes for a Democrat this cycle, if you truly...

At the end of the day, Sage Lenier, climate activist and one of Time Magazine’s 10 Next Generation Leaders, reminds us that we need to accept what we’re doing on this planet is unsustainable. That we will ultimately need to slow down the systems of production and consider a real economic transformation if we want to survive, but instead of waiting for the federal government to make the change, we...

There is a clear and planned takeover of the American government by people who no longer want to work under a functioning democracy but some form of authoritarian, kleptocratic, theocracy and the Republican Party are on board for all of it. If you don’t know about Project 2025 go back and listen to the top of the year show, but this episode is all about the other half of the plan - something calle...

Sometimes we need to take a break from all the criticism of government to acknowledge the importance of government, especially when they’re doing good things. One of those good things was the recent creation of the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention because as we lose people to gun violence in our country every day, as America is put on “no travel” lists because of our gun epidemic, as...

America is dealing with an existential threat in the 2024 election. It’s not Republican or Democrat, it’s democracy or autocracy, and we can’t screw it up. Which is why I’m pleased to be joined by political scientist and strategist Rachel Bitecofer to talk about her new book “Hit Em Where it hurts: How to Save Democracy by Beating Republicans at Their Own Game”. This is a powerful conversation abo...