The PoliticsGirl Podcast

Author, professor and sociologist Michael Sierra-Arévalo talks to us about his detailed look into American policing with his new book The Danger Imperative: Violence, Death and the Soul of Policing. According to Arévalo, the story of policing isn’t the story of a few bad apples, but of an institutional structure and system that is essentially not working. The violence we see from our officers is t...

Something magical is happening. As MAGA doubles down on extremism and chaos, they appeal to fewer and fewer Americans. At this point all they have is their mad king, while Democrats, liberals and anyone who believes in the American experiment has the opportunity to really make America into the country we tell people we are. We have to plan to win, organize to fight, and aim, not just for success,...

Clearly there’s a need for a new type of media, one that exists explicitly to give people facts, but also to protect and strengthen our democracy. Today we talk to the amazing Tara McGowan, founder and publisher of Courier, one of the fastest growing news networks in the country. Courier is a new take on an old format that honors local news with real reporters on the ground, state news where these...

“Anti-racist” isn’t an identity, it’s actions. It’s doing the work of deconstructing the systems of racism we were all raised in. Systems that harm us all. It’s not about being a “good person” or not being called “racist”, it’s about genuinely interacting with the world to make it better. And yeah, we’re going to make mistakes while we do it. We’re going to blow it and get embarrassed, but that do...

Here we are at the top of 2024 with MAGA extremism on a rocket ship to the moon and the GOP hell-bent on stripping away as many of our fundamental rights & freedoms as possible. We don’t have a second or dollar to waste. We want to win 2024. We NEED to win 2024. But it doesn’t have to be endlessly miserable or expensive to do it. Which is why I want you to hear from the Executive Director of Swing...

We can’t take our eyes off this court for a minute. Which is why I’m joined by Melissa Murray and Kate Shaw, two constitutional professors and hosts of Crooked Media’s legal podcast Strict Scrutiny, to go over the cases you really have to know. From Donald Trump’s Presidential immunity and ballot presence, to abortion drug access, to the attempt of big money to gut our federal agencies’ ability to...

If you look at statistics it was actually non-voters who won the last Presidential election. Too many people think their vote doesn’t count, or as our guest, Wayne Liebman says, they think their vote counts too much and are afraid to make a mistake. The Blue Voter Guide takes the burden out of voting. They do the research into the candidates, ballot initiatives, and endorsements so you can see who...

The crisis in the Middle East, like so many issues that truly matter, is complicated and nuanced and simply won’t fit on a bumper sticker. It’s essential that we look at the whole picture and move beyond who needs to be punished (and many do) to set a goal of creating a place of peace and stability. This is also not an isolated issue. Governments around the world are shifting to the far right and...

Happy New Year! Welcome to 2024, the year we either destroy or save America. This is it. Make it or break it. To give us a sense of the stakes, I’m joined by journalist Ahmed Baba who recently did an amazing article for the Independent about the the “conservative promise” of Project 2025. Project 2025 is a roadmap to fundamentally reshape the federal government into the image of the far right once...

Join me and John Pavlovitz post-Christmas to talk about how America seems off track with the Christian faith. As John says, “It’s not politics or religion that divides us, it’s vision.” What we see as the future and purpose of our country and our collective faiths. We’re in a vision divide America, and we have to ask ourselves if it’s better to live in a conditional community where you silence you...

We’re about to enter probably one of the toughest years in our country’s history. A year that could quite honestly end the American experiment. But America has been through crises before and people pulled us through. So the question is, what are YOU going to do to fight for what’s right in a time when so much is wrong? I’ve asked my friend, and lifelong political activist, David Bender to join us...

The Republican party has made it very clear they’re ready to abandon democracy and the rule of law. So, no matter how hungry we are for justice, we can’t help them by abandoning the rule of law ourselves. No matter how irritating it feels to watch justice move slowly, sticking with the strictest rules is the only way if we want to keep living in a country with rules. Today I’m joined by brilliant...

As Supreme Court Justice, Louis Brandeis said, “America has a choice. We can either have great wealth in the hands of a few, or we can have democracy, but we can’t have both.” There’s a shift happening in the American consciousness right now. Where the idea we all bought into, that idea that if we just work hard enough we’ll make it, is starting to feel like a bit of a scam. This concept of “pulli...

As computers get smarter, who do we want regulating them? Who do we want programming them and, ultimately, who do we want leading our country and military response when AI is in the mix? If we get this wrong, how we feel about things like taxes, religion and racism will be the least of our problems. To have this essential conversation, I’m joined today by Ross Andersen. Ross is a staff writer at T...

As we come up on Thanksgiving and the holiday season, I started to think of all the things in my life I was thankful for and I kept returning to having a roof over my head. America’s homelessness crisis has become extraordinary and housing has becomes out of reach for so many Americans. Not just in the big cities, but all over the country. Yes, it’s partially a mental health issue, but it’s also a...

Our culture is literally littered with the fallout of unhappy men looking to assert their dominance. From the tantrums of our last president, to our daily mass shootings, to the broad resurgence of patriarchal male dominance, men are not doing ok and they’re making it everyone else’s problem. Join me and the founder of ReMaking Manhood Mark Greene as we talk about what’s gone wrong and how strateg...

It’s election day in America and all over the country people are choosing the direction they want their country to go. While citizens exercise their right to vote, we know there are people actively looking to undermine and disrupt the process to their own ends. Which is why we can no longer afford to be reactive about our democracy. We must be strategic. There are people out here trying to destroy...

"Welcome to the world of reality denial, where truth is subordinate to ideology, feelings have more weight than evidence, and democracy hangs in the balance”. We are in a disinformation war in America where the goal of those creating the lies is not just to get us to question some particular fact - vaccines don’t work, covid isn’t real, the election was stolen - but to question your trust in peopl...

If you have to work for a living, then you’re working class, and the sooner we realize most of us are in the same boat, the sooner we can ban together and ask for what we need. John Russell and I talk about how we have more to gain from solidarity than division, and as John says, “It comes down to power. If we want to find common ground, and close the hate gap, it’s essential we realize our future...

Democracy’s white knight Marc Elias joins us to explain that we aren’t just fighting election suppression & subversion, we’re now fighting election vigilanteism and the new Republican strategy of standing in defiance of the law itself. The GOP seems to have decided it’s simply good politics to say you’re fighting a corrupt system when you, yourself, are the ones corrupting it. As Marc points out,...

The 2024 senate map is rough. The Republicans only need to win 2 seats to change the balance of power and the Democrats have 8 that are considered vulnerable. It’s not only essential we win every seat we already have, but we have to buckle down and defend the ones we can’t lose. With that in mind, today’s guest is Michigan Congresswoman Elissa Slotkin, running to replace retiring Democratic senato...

We are seeing increasing calls for violence around the country, an incitement to violence by Trump and his compatriots, and an overall threat to our democracy and our public safety with the stockpiling of weapons and ammunition to use against a government, or fellow citizens, with whom people disagree. Join me, and well known public safety advocate Fred Guttenberg, as we talk about these threats a...

Presidential third parties are deceiving the public. They claim to offer a choice, but what they’re offering is an illusion. A dream that somehow their candidate could defy history and do something no 3rd party candidate has been able to do, and win the presidency. There is no grey area here. If you buy what they’re selling and give them your vote, you are fundamentally helping elect Donald Trump...

You want to make a difference to our democracy? Get more people registered to vote. Today we talk to Jason Berlin, the Executive Director of Field Team 6, which since its founding in 2019 has helped register almost 2.9 million Democratic voters, the vast majority in swing states. Jason and his team are a proudly “partisan voter registration” group looking to “track down every good hearted eligible...

The majority of youth in America are not on board for the new extremist Republican agenda. They believe in reproductive rights, and that the climate is in crisis. They’re against book banning and propaganda education. They’re majority pro-LGBTQ, pro-union, pro-health care, pro-living wage and pro-common sense gun legislation, and the Republican party offer them none of that. GenZ might technically...