The Breach

Medical anthropologist Dr. Adia Benton joins Lindsay Beyerstein to discuss why the government and private donors are treating Puerto Ricans like second-class citizens in the wake of Hurricane Maria.

Tina Vasquez, Rewire’s immigration reporter, joins Lindsay to talk about the fate of the 800,000 young people who could face mass deportation now that President Donald Trump has called off the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, also known as DACA. Trump has given Congress six months to fix a legislative problem it has been unable to crack for the last 16 years, and the futures of these young people hang in the balance.

Author and professor Jared Yates Sexton joins Lindsay to dissect the way President Donald Trump’s brand of cognitive dissonance and unreality is empowering right-wing extremism across the United States, and how he harnessed those dark cultural and political forces to take the White House.

In the latest episode of The Breach, host Lindsay Beyerstein is joined by award-winning journalist Brooke Binkowski, the managing editor of Snopes, to discuss the ever-evolving "fake news" landscape. As verifiably false stories loosely based on urban legends continue to gain traction on social media and elsewhere, real journalism is increasingly lost in the noise. Binkowski explains how we arrived at our current crisis, what defenders of legitimate news can do to combat it, and the chilling toll her work at Snopes has taken on her personal life.

Natasha Merle, a lawyer with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, joins host Lindsay Beyerstein to discuss how false allegations of voter fraud are being used to suppress the votes of communities of color. Merle and her organization are suing Donald Trump’s handpicked electoral commission for intentional discrimination against Black and Latino voters. Merle explains how voter ID laws have become the modern-day equivalent of poll taxes, imposing undue burdens on vulnerable people seeking to exercise their franchise, and how citizens can take action to combat these efforts.

Subscribe to The Breach in Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, or Soundcloud. From his hesitation in denouncing Nazis in Charlottesville to his attacks on the free press, Donald Trump is governing like an authoritarian. This approach threatens to bring the President into conflict with Congress, the courts, and even the military. Yascha Mounk, a lecturer on government at Harvard University and a columnist at Slate, joins host Lindsay Beyerstein to explore Mounk’s hypothesis that Trump is "an authoritarian by instinct” and the myriad ways his governing style may bring about a genuine constitutional crisis. Recommended Reading:  "How Federal Grand Juries Work," by Ken White for Popehat, August 2017 "We Interrupt This Grand Jury Lawsplainer For A Search Warrant Lawsplainer," by Ken White for Popehat, August 2017

Are the Democrats going soft on choice? Reproductive justice advocate and NARAL Missouri board member Pamela Merritt joins host Lindsay Beyerstein to discuss the rhetoric of Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chair Ben Ray Luján who decided to remind everyone that the DCCC has no “litmus test” on abortion. Merritt explains why it's impossible to achieve economic justice without addressing reproductive justice and that Democrats who try to tackle the former while ignoring the latter risk alienating their most loyal supporters, notably women of color.  If they want to win a majority in the House of Representatives in 2018, the Democratic Party can't afford to throw the base under the bus one more time. As Merritt argues, they can go even further by actually listening to that base and elevating its concerns as part of a "fifty plus one" strategy for victory.  Recommended Reading:  "Why the Scariest Nuclear Threat May Be Coming From Inside the White House," by Michael Lewis for Vanity Fair, 2017 

The earth is warming rapidly and humans are to blame, but the Trump administration is determined to deny the science and delay policy changes that might cap rising temperatures. Professor Mike Mann is one of the world’s foremost experts on climate science and climate policy. Vanity Fair has dubbed him the "Jon Snow of Climate Change” for his tireless efforts to warn the public about the encroaching ice zombies climate threat. Dr. Mann joins host Lindsay Beyerstein to talk about climate policy in the era of Trump, the challenges of communicating complex scientific ideas, and more.  Recommended Reading: "A Tweet Is a Direct Order," by Phillip Carter for Slate, July 2017

As a United States Attorney in 2002, James Comey mocked prosecutors who never lost a case as members of "The Chickenshit Club." In Comey’s opinion, if a prosecuting attorney never lost, it meant they were too risk averse and failed to bring the most important cases to trial. In his book by the same name, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Jesse Eisinger of ProPublica argues that the entire Department of Justice has become a "Chickenshit Club" for prosecutors who are unwilling and unable to take on white collar criminals at the biggest banks and financial firms. In the latest episode of The Breach, Eisinger and host Lindsay Beyerstein discuss how and why this occurs – despite these crimes threatening the stability of the economy and the basic principle of equality before the law. Recommended Reading: Possible Presidential Pardon Scenarios, by Andy Wright for Just Security, July 2017

Rewire VP of Law and the Courts Jessica Mason Pieklo joins Lindsay Beyerstein for a special episode on abortion access to mark the launch of Rewire’s first original documentary, “Care in Chaos.” Anti-choice activists are already testing the federal government’s commitment to enforcing the FACE Act, which makes it a federal crime to blockade an abortion clinic. If the federal government won’t defend the rule of law, we could be looking at a return to the tactics of the “Summer of Mercy,” when thousands of anti-choice protesters physically blocked access to clinics in Wichita, KS. “Care in Chaos,” directed by Lindsay Beyerstein and Martyna Starosta, follows a 27-year-old abortion clinic administrator as she battles anti-choice aggression and law enforcement indifference that threatens safe access for patients and staff. Recommended Reading: Ivanka Inc. by Matea Gold, Drew Harwell, Maher Sattar and Simon Denyer for The Washington Post, July 2017

Rick Perlstein, bestselling author of Nixonland and historian of the conservative movement, joins host Lindsay Beyerstein for a discussion of Donald Trump’s attacks on the press. Perlstein argues that Trump is the ultimate Richard Nixon Republican, from his love-hate relationship with mass media to his preoccupation with vendettas. While Nixon usually kept his gripes against the media private, Trump has made his battle with the media the signature fight of his administration. His tirades against the press have accused the "fake news media" of being the central impediment to Making America Great Again. Trump’s tirades are also mobilizing bands of right-wing trolls to harass journalists online. As Trump’s popularity falls and the frustrations of his supporters rise, the situation is becoming increasingly explosive.

In our season finale of The Breach, Adam Serwer of the Atlantic joins host Lindsay Beyerstein to discuss Attorney General Jeff Sessions and his radical plans for the Department of Justice, which threaten civil rights enforcement at federal agencies; sentencing reform; bathroom access for transgender students in public schools; and so much more. How will Sessions, who has expressed skepticism about prosecuting hate crimes, contend with rising levels of bias-based attacks? And what does Sessions' tenure at DOJ mean for the nation's $6.7 billion legal marijuana industry? The Breach will return on July 11. In the meantime, subscribe to our new podcast miniseries CHOICE/LESS The Backstory, which explores the dark history behind some of our most important advancements in reproductive health.

President Trump's budget would cut Medicaid spending nearly in half and slash nearly $13 billion from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Medicaid covers more than 70 million Americans, including 40 percent of all children and nearly half of all births. Trump’s budget also calls for an end to all federal funding for Planned Parenthood. Dr. Diane Horvath-Cosper, a fellow at Physicians for Reproductive Health and an abortion provider in Maryland, joins host Lindsay Beyerstein to discuss the real-life consequences of these cuts.

North Korea’s nuclear program is racing forward. The regime tested a Pukguksong-2 missile on Sunday and leader Kim Jong-Un made a big show of ordering the missiles into mass production. Ankit Panda, host of the podcast The Diplomat, joins Lindsay Beyerstein to talk about North Korea’s nuclear strategy. Mainstream media pundits often portray Korean leadership as erratic and irrational, but Kim’s nuclear strategy is anything but haphazard, Panda says. What kind of nuclear conflict is North Korea envisioning? What can their arsenal already do? The Trump administration has promised a new approach to North Korea, but officials have struggled to articulate what that means. Is the era of “Strategic Patience” really over?

Donald Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey shocked the nation. Initially, the White House claimed that the president had fired the director because of Comey’s handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation, based on the recommendation of new Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. Trump backed off that story almost immediately and admitted that he’d decided to fire Comey all by himself. The president admitted that he fired Comey in part because Comey was overseeing the “Russia thing.” Leon Neyfakh of Slate has been reporting on Comey’s firing and the swirling justifications coming out of the White House. He joins host Lindsay Beyerstein to discuss the current state of affairs and what might come next. This episode also features a special comment from Lindsay on Trump, Comey, and democratic norms.