The Vermont Conversation with David Goodman

In 2016, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., was an insurgent candidate taking on Hillary Clinton, the heavily favored pick of the Democratic establishment for the presidential primary. As Sanders barnstormed the country and brought out millions of people to hear his message, the Clinton machine’s operatives and super-PACs swung into action to stop him by any means necessary. Tad Devine was deep in t...

The Supreme Court ended its term with a series of blockbuster decisions on birthright citizenship, immigration, transgender rights and campaign finance. I spoke with U.S. Rep. Becca Balint , D-Vt., who is the vice ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee. “It's shocking to me that we ever got to this place that we were having the Supreme Court weigh in on birthright citizenship,” Balint tol...

In the early 1800s, Charity Bryant and Sylvia Drake spent 44 years as life partners living together in the small Vermont town of Weybridge. They are one of the earliest lesbian couples in America whose story is documented, thanks in part to a new graphic novel by Tillie Walden. Walden is a rising star in cartooning. She served as Vermont’s fifth cartoonist laureate from 2023 to 2026 , following c...

For 30 years, journalist Amy Goodman has been “going to where the silence is” to report stories that the powerful would rather you not know about and the corporate media have often ignored. She has stared down armed soldiers in Nigeria , survived a massacre in East Timor , documented dogs attacking indigenous pipeline protesters in North Dakota , and been manhandled and arrested while covering the...

The birth rate in the U.S. has dropped by an astonishing 22% since 2007. Are smartphones to blame? Yes, according to a groundbreaking new study by Middlebury economist Caitlin Myers . Her smartphone study is garnering national attention this week, confirming an idea that people have long speculated about but until now have lacked data. Myers and co-author Ezekiel Hooper showed that from 2007 to 20...

As the nation approaches its 250th anniversary, two veteran activists are celebrating one of the country’s foundational principles: the right to protest, as embodied in the Declaration of Independence. But they warn that this right is under attack. “Our ability to protest is key to moving forward on a whole range of environmental and social issues … which is why I'm so terrified at the thought of...

When Ben & Jerry’s ice cream held its annual Free Cone Day in April, it had to contend with an unlikely protester: Ben Cohen, the company’s co-founder, was standing on the site of the original scoop shop in Burlington, urging customers to Free Ben & Jerry’s . “Ben & Jerry's itself has not given up on” its values, Cohen told me, but its current owner “has prevented Ben & Jerry's fro...

Vermont journalist Jasper Craven has spent a decade investigating and exposing the culture of toxic masculinity that pervades the American military. In 2018, he wrote a multipart exposé for VTDigger about sexual misconduct and abuse in the Vermont Air National Guard that resulted in hearings at the Vermont Statehouse, reforms in the Guard, and the departure of the adjutant general. His writing on...

The documentary "Best Day Ever" features the world's first adaptive mountain bike trail network and the athletes who are changing lives. In 2022, Allie Bianchi, a 23-year-old outdoor enthusiast and special educator from Richmond, broke her neck while mountain biking. She is now paralyzed below her chest. In 2025, Bianchi was rolling again, this time on a specially adapted mountain bike. Now, she i...

When Helen Whybrow isn’t herding her flock of Icelandic sheep or in the paddock with a ewe that’s giving birth to lambs, she can be found writing. This week, this shepherd was awarded Vermont’s highest literary prize. Whybrow received the 2025 Vermont Book Award for creative nonfiction for her memoir, “ The Salt Stones: Seasons of a Shepherd’s Life .” The book has also been long-listed for the Nat...

When U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents launched an immigration raid in South Burlington on March 11 , they ran into a wall of resistance. Neighbors linked arms in an attempt to stop the masked agents from entering a house in their effort to arrest and deport a Mexican-born man. Protesters blocked an ICE vehicle and hurled insults and objects. ICE agents deployed flashbang grenades. V...

Millions of Americans have attended “ No Kings” protests , voicing outrage that President Donald Trump has turned the presidency into an imperial platform from which to launch wars of choice, levy illegal tariffs, and unleash armed agents against his political adversaries.   Isn’t the American system of checks and balances supposed to prevent this? “ The Kingmakers ” is a new podcast hosted by jou...

Mohsen Mahdawi has come a long way since being released from a Vermont jail in April 2025. Mahdawi is a Palestinian student at Columbia University and a green card holder who lives in Vermont. He co-founded Columbia’s Palestinian Student Union and was president of the Columbia University Buddhist Association. The Trump administration has relentlessly pursued Mahdawi. Secretary of State Marco Rubio...

When the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in the Dobbs decision in 2022, it was the culmination of a successful half-century movement to ban abortion.  Despite the fact that 60 percent of Americans support abortion in all or most cases , it is now difficult to nearly impossible to get an abortion in most of the country. Forty-one states now have abortion bans, including 13 states with tot...

Thousands of Vermonters from nearly every county took to the streets to voice their outrage at the Trump administration on Saturday, March 28, in the third No Kings protest . About 50 rallies were held around the state. Nationally, 8 million to 9 million people turned out to over 3,000 demonstrations in what organizers say was the largest day of protest in American history . The Vermont Conversati...

In February, I was surprised to receive a phone call from jail. It was Steven Tendo calling from the Strafford County jail in Dover, New Hampshire, where he was being held after being violently arrested by ICE agents on Feb. 4 at the Vermont assisted living facility where he works. Tendo was determined that his voice be free even if his body was not. That determination is a throughline in his life...

When President Trump threatened to annex Greenland earlier this year, the vast Arctic island with a population slightly larger than Burlington was dragged from the periphery of world affairs to the center. The threat that the U.S. might forcibly take Greenland, which is an autonomous territory of Denmark, threatened to unravel the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO. How did Greenland beco...

As the world contends with increasingly destructive and costly climate-fueled disasters, the Trump administration has announced that it is eliminating the government’s ability to fight climate change. Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency is erasing the scientific finding, known as the “endangerment clause,” that permits it to take action to protect public health and the environment. “Led by a p...

When cross country skier Ben Ogden won a silver medal in the classic sprint at the 2026 Winter Olympics in Italy, he broke a 50-year medal drought for American men. The last American man to medal in cross country skiing was Bill Koch, Ogden’s Vermont neighbor and skiing mentor. Ogden, who began skiing in Koch’s backyard as a kid, followed those ski trails right into the Olympics. He celebrated by...

When Rep. Becca Balint, D-Vt., traveled to Minneapolis on a Congressional oversight mission several weeks ago, she saw a city under siege. Some 3,000 masked federal agents dispatched by President Donald Trump were roaming the city, snatching people from their homes and streets, often without warrants or explanation.  Balint fears Vermont could be next.  “This is not a law enforcement effort, this...

Young Bernie Sanders arrived in Vermont in 1964 as part of a counter-cultural wave. The tall Jewish kid with the thick Brooklyn accent who spoke of socialism and revolution fit right in with the communards and hippies, though he was neither. Sanders was then, as now, his own man, raging against the establishment while simultaneously seeking to lead it, albeit in a very different direction. As auth...

The Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in Minnesota has sparked furious backlash. Protests have been held around the country following the killing by federal agents of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. Vermont Gov. Phil Scott characterized the immigration raids as “a deliberate federal intimidation and incitement of American citizens that’s resulting in the murder of Americans.” Last week, a g...

Jill Krowinski, D-Burlington, was elected Speaker of the House in 2021. It was the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, and state coffers were unexpectedly flush with federal relief money. But just as that federal pot of dollars has since dried up, property taxes have risen and voters took out their frustration at the ballot box. In 2024, Vermont Democrats lost the most Democratic seats in the country...

“Who can draw when the world is burning?” asks celebrated Vermont cartoonist Alison Bechdel in her new graphic novel, Spent. This tension between the political and personal has been a deep well for Bechdel in her art. Bechdel has been cartoonist laureate of Vermont, as well as a recipient of a MacArthur "genius award" and a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship. She garnered a cult following with her...

President Donald Trump marked the new year by launching a military assault on Venezuela and abducting President Nicolas Maduro. Some 75 people in Venezuela were killed in the Saturday attack and 7 U.S service members were injured, according to the Washington Post. Many Democrats and some Republicans have denounced the act as unconstitutional, while Trump has followed up by threatening more militar...