The Mother Jones Podcast

On this week's Mother Jones Podcast, we take you along for the ride as Democrats barnstorm Georgia in the last few weeks before the pivotal runoff elections. Our reporter Becca Andrews is pulling up to drive-in church services and political rallies at the heart of the Reverend Raphael Warnock’s race against incumbent Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler. It’s something of an old narrative meeting a new age: Republicans are unleashing dated stereotypes and prejudices about the Black church to smear Warnock, but his faith and his deep ties to the civil rights movement are rallying points for his supporters—and they’ll be crucial in Democrats’ pursuit of Senate control. The party will need to rely, at least in part, on the deep legacy of the Black church in political activism and in expanding voting rights, while a younger generation of organizers brings new-school methods to an old-school race.

You might be breathing a deep sigh of relief that the 2020 elections are finally over. But spare a thought for our friends in Georgia. Voters there are still being bombarded with political ads, national attention, and oodles of fresh campaign cash because they are about to decide, in two contests on January 5, who controls the US Senate. Runoff elections like these in Georgia are typically disasters for Democrats, explains our voting rights reporter Ari Berman. But organizing against voter suppression and high turnout in November are giving Democrats hope that these Senate races could be different this time around. Democrats have believed for some time that a rapidly diversifying electorate would allow them to be competitive in Georgia, but repeated voter suppression efforts had kept that electorate from fully forming. Now, two years of activism have created the conditions for Joe Biden to carry the state by just under 12,000 votes, making him the first Democratic presidential candidate in 28 years to win Georgia, amid record turnout. That electorate is now giving Democrats hope that Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff can win runoff elections that would have seemed almost unwinnable in past years. While Republicans are melting down over Trump’s false allegations of voter fraud, Democrats and Black organizers are now focused on electing a majority in the US Senate that can pass Biden’s legislative agenda. They might just make history.

Young people turned out in record numbers for the 2020 presidential election, and they overwhelmingly backed Joe Biden. Now, the hashtag #CancelStudentDebt has been trending on Twitter, as intense pressure mounts on the President-elect to finally tackle the $1.7 trillion student debt crisis holding millions of Americans, especially young Americans, hostage to often crippling monthly payments for years to come. “This feels like the closest we’ve ever been,” one education advocate recently told Time, referring to the chance for real policy changes. According to Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) who has established herself as the loudest voice on the matter, large-scale debt forgiveness would provide “the single most effective economic stimulus that is available through executive action.” But how likely is that? Can this finally be fixed? On this week’s episode of the Mother Jones Podcast, we’re revisiting our big investigation by journalist Ryann Liebenthal into America’s broken student debt machine. We first brought you this story in August 2018, detailing the flailing government program known as Public Service Loan Forgiveness, a system that, when Biden was a candidate, he pledged to streamline and reform. “It should be done immediately,” he said, referring to the passage of new legislation. But that depends on who controls the Senate come January, and Biden’s professed urgency must inevitably be tempered with a tough political reality. To bring us up to speed on what’s changed since the campaign and what Biden’s picks for his economic team can tell us about his ambitions, we also chatted to our very own transition tracker, Washington, DC, political reporter Kara Vogt. “The demands for canceling student debt have not ceased since president-elect Joe Biden won in November,” Voght says. “It’s not just the grassroots, not just progressive who are calling for this.” Revisit our original written investigation here.

How are your Thanksgiving plans different this year? You may have heeded the urgent advice to put travel plans on ice, but you’re still trying your best to feel the holiday spirit, somehow? As the latest coronavirus surge continues unabated, and as various kinds of restrictions swing into effect across the country, the Mother Jones Podcast team is bringing you two chats with top infectious-disease experts on how to stop the spread and keep you and your family safe during a holiday season unlike any other. Science communication expert Jessica Malaty Rivera, a microbiologist, has a few tips for you, and a couple for the incoming president, too. Rivera spoke to our senior editor Kiera Butler about Thanksgiving strategies—"a negative COVID-19 test is not an immunity passport," she warns—as well as her work to document up-to-the-minute coronavirus data and trends at the COVID Tracking Project. "Nobody here is saying we should cancel Thanksgiving," Rivera says. "What we’re saying is it needs to look very different from years past." Some top-line tips: Stay at home, and if you are hosting a gatherings, keep it small, outdoors, and masked. Read more from Mother Jones' interview with Rivera, and how the Biden administration must beat viral misinformation influencers at their own game to combat the coronavirus, here. Also on the show, host Jamilah King spoke to Dr. Peter Hotez, a vaccine scientist, pediatrician, and dean for the National School of Tropical Medicine at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, about the state of vaccine development right now, including which segments of the population are expected to get it first, and when. He gives his Thanksgiving tips, too: "We are in a public health crisis," he says. "Don’t do reckless, irresponsible things. Let’s just hang on a few more months and everyone can get vaccinated and live."

The United States is confronting its worst surge in coronavirus cases since the start of the pandemic. Governors are rushing new lockdowns into place as hospitals nationwide burst at the seams. The death toll is, yet again, setting daily records. Maybe by the time you listen to this episode of the Mother Jones Podcast, the US will have passed another dire milestone (of so many): a quarter of a million coronavirus deaths. Inside our newsroom, reporters and editors are determined to put science—and the voices of scientists—at the heart of our ongoing coronavirus coverage. That's why, earlier in the outbreak, we launched a series called "Pandemic Proofing America", an evolving oral history collection featuring incisive interviews with the nation's top scientists and public health experts. The central question we posed was this: With a scandalously enfeebled government hampering the country's response, what are the most important steps we can take to make sure we’re better prepared next time around? Their responses were wide-ranging, often damning in their criticism of the current administration's failures, and sometimes hopeful that we might find common purpose in listening to science. For this episode of the podcast, the brains behind this series, Mother Jones's Atlanta-based Senior Editor Kiera Butler, has assembled a selection of these big thinkers to weigh in on how to survive America's coming dark winter, and how the country can begin to imagine a pandemic-free future by combating disinformation and collaborating across disciplines, and beyond our borders. You'll hear from top experts like Timothy Caulfield, from the University of Alberta’s School of Public Health; Laurel Bristow, from Emory University’s Vaccine Center; Ashish Jha, at Harvard’s Global Health Institute; and Andy Slavitt, President Obama’s top healthcare advisor. For the entire showcase of nearly 20 interviews to date, click here.

After a drawn-out vote count, Joe Biden has clinched the presidency. Now he needs to save the planet. As Biden’s supporters celebrate, many are hoping beyond hope for a quick reversal of President Trump’s most harmful policies come January 20, 2021. And perhaps no part of Trump’s agenda posed a bigger existential threat than his denial of climate change. From crippling the EPA and rolling back environmental regulations, to pulling out of the landmark Paris Agreement, Trump did everything he could to roll back the progress of President Obama’s ambitious second-term climate agenda. This year, carbon dioxide levels reached the highest recorded levels in human history. On today’s show, Jamilah King is joined by Mother Jones’ climate and environment reporter Rebecca Leber to discuss what we can expect from an incoming Biden administration that has claimed climate action as central to its governing mandate. How much of Trump’s damage can Biden reverse? What could a Republican-controlled Senate mean for the Green New Deal? How will Kamala Harris’ barrier-breaking role in the White House influence Biden’s commitment to environmental justice? Biden made big promises for climate action on the campaign trail. His first 100 Days as president are expected to unleash a flurry of executive orders on climate change. Now the questions are when, and how, he’ll deliver. If the number of times Biden said “science” in his victory speech is any indication, this administration will reverse Trump’s denialism. But will it be enough to stop runaway global warming? On today's show: Biden's last-chance climate fixes.

It’s over! After a nail-biting count that dragged for days in key swing states, Joe Biden will become the 46th president of the United States, with a record-breaking vote count of at least 75 million votes, so far. The Mother Jones Podcast team has a bonus live podcast to tell you our instant analysis about how Biden clinched the deal. We discuss the historic moment of having Vice President–elect Kamala Harris become the first Black woman, the first woman of South Asian descent, and the first daughter of immigrants to hold that position, and the threat that Trump will not allow a peaceful transition of power at the White House. Our host Jamilah King (and in-house expert on all-things Kamala) speaks with Mother Jones DC Bureau Chief David Corn—who called in from the Biden Welcome Center on the Delaware Turnpike—about what’s next for a deeply divided country in the middle of multiple national crises, and what happens next.

Exhausted from staying up much too late, we are all trying to figure out what happened now that the final day of voting is over in one of the most important elections of our lives. The presidential results are still too close to call. There was no landslide victory. There was no clear repudiation of Trump and the GOP, either. Now we may have to wait for days, possibly weeks—depending on how vote counting and court battles play out—to find out if Trump or Biden won.  Election results from Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada, North Carolina, and Georgia are still trickling in.The Mother Jones Podcast is here to help you make sense of a crazy election night with a live “day after” election special. What exactly happened not just last night but with this whole election? Where do Trump and Biden stand in the drag-out fight to 270 electoral votes? In this episode, some of your favorite Mother Jones Podcast regulars join Jamilah King to analyze the initial results and talk about the big picture. You'll hear from Washington DC Bureau Chief David Corn, who joined us to discuss the big trends from the night, and where to look for results next. You'll get to the bottom of the Miami-Dade count that cost Biden Florida, with reporter Noah Lanard; and you'll hear about the likely flipping of Arizona—yes, another confusing story—with our reporter Fernanda Echavarri. As the president fumes and threatens to steal the vote, all there really is to do is wait. And remember, the team here at Mother Jones is staying focused on the facts, the context, and the story behind the headlines. This race is not over yet.

We are days out from what could be the most high-stakes election of our lifetimes. If Trump loses, will he go quietly? Which parts of the constitution will he trample on the way out? If Trump wins, how much more can American institutions take—and what recourse will Congress have to hold him to account? Our Deputy Washington D.C. Bureau Chief Dan Schulman got the chance this week to pose all these questions and more to a real expert on this stuff, Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, during a special Mother Jones livestreamed event this week. Early in his career, he was an assistant attorney general in Massachusetts and he served as general counsel of Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition. (One piece of trivia: Congressman Raskin once represented Ross Perot when he was frozen out of the 1996 presidential debates.) He’s a member of the judiciary and oversight committees, where he has investigated the Trump administration’s politicization of the census, white supremacist infiltration of law enforcement, the mistreatment of immigrants in for-profit detention centers, and other issues. Raskin didn't hold back during Dan’s conversation about his fixes to democracy, describing the Republican Party as "a mass religious cult surrounding an organized crime family." He noted: “A failed state, that’s where we are right now. A failed state is one that doesn’t protect the population against disease, against random gun violence, against people getting into office and using it as an instrument of money-making and private corruption. We’ve become a banana republic under this guy.” We're bringing you this conversation, lightly edited, for today's bonus episode of the Mother Jones Podcast.

On today’s show: Everything you need to know about this infuriating, scary, hopeful, dumb, and exciting final sprint to the polls. Simply surviving this next week is going to be a feat of endurance—and then there’s election night itself. But don’t worry. We’re here. October surprises are a staple of every election cycle, and this time the Mother Jones Podcast is bringing you one of our own: our first-ever live show! Eight Mother Jones reporters from across the country joined host Jamilah King this week for a free-wheeling and informative Zoom discussion of the most important issues facing voters as the country staggers into the final week before Election Day on November 3. This all-star cast dissects Trump’s familiar smear tactics (he still thinks this is 2016) and what those latest polling and early voting numbers really tell us about the results. We tackle the question, “Could Trump still win?” and get into voter suppression, immigration, disinformation, and the weaponization of white supremacy—and how to stay calm as a patchwork of results roll in next week. Join Nathalie Baptiste, Ari Berman, Ali Breland, David Corn, Fernanda Echavarri, Pema Levy, Tim Murphy, and Kara Voght for an election episode unlike anything we’ve ever done before. We’re almost there. Now, it’s all come down to this. Rewatch the full livestream on YouTube or Facebook, or at motherjones.com.

With less than two weeks to go before the election, the Mother Jones Podcast takes you to the major 2020 battleground state of Arizona. Turning it blue would be a real game changer for former Vice President Joe Biden's attempt to clinch the presidency and Democratic dreams for retaking the Senate. Once the cradle of Goldwater-style Republicanism, Arizona politics are shifting, due in no small part to its growing Latinx electorate, which increasingly tilts Democratic. The party cannot flip the state in November without strong turnout from Latinos, who make up nearly a quarter of the state’s eligible voters. Hanging in the balance are 11 Electoral College votes and a key race between Republican Sen. Martha McSally and Mark Kelly, the retired astronaut who’s married to former Democratic Rep. Gabby Giffords. As Mother Jones immigration reporter Fernanda Echavarri explains in this episode, if Joe Biden carries the state, he will owe his win to the Latinx organizers and activists who have spent the past decade building networks, not to support the Democratic Party but to protect their own community. Many of the young Latinx organizers trying to get out the vote were galvanized in April 2010, when Republican Gov. Jan Brewer signed one of the nation’s most extreme anti-immigrant bills. SB 1070 required police officers to ask about the citizenship status of anyone they stopped and suspected might be in the country illegally. Thousands of people took to the streets to protest, including young people who walked out of school in huge numbers for weeks. It wasn’t just young adults who were energized and enraged. The children who saw their parents live in fear or lost family members to deportation are now old enough to vote: An estimated 100,000 Latinx potential voters have turned 18 since the 2018 midterms. Now, the forecast models have Biden slightly favored to win, and the former Vice President is ahead four points in the RealClearPolitics average of state polls. Latinx activists might be closer than ever to doing the unthinkable and flipping Arizona—if Democrats don’t take them for granted.

This week’s presidential debate may be canceled, but debates are still roiling around kitchen tables, on social media, and in family iMessage groups. It’s 2020 and opportunities for a fight are everywhere: Maybe you’re having a hard time convincing your parents to take masks seriously; or you and that cousin who is deep into conspiracy theories spread on YouTube are battling on Facebook about the election; or your partner or spouse is being a bit nutty about quarantine restrictions—too rigid or too relaxed. On today’s show, Mother Jones Podcast host Jamilah King talks to a father and two of his adult sons about one of America’s most fraught cultural battles: gun control. John Neal, 66, and his two sons Fisher, 36, and Tyler, 33, are all gun owners and avid hunters. But over the years, their views about gun control have evolved and, in some cases, diverged. The complexities of their views around guns are captured in One Shot One Kill​, a new documentary film directed by Nancy Schwartzman that follows the three men as they embark on a deer hunting trip in rural Tennessee, a deeply held family tradition that connects the Neal family to the beauty of the land and the tradition of hunting. The Neals joined the Mother Jones Podcast team to talk about the film, and how some of the biggest issues of 2020 are playing out in just one conservative-leaning family. They get into the 2020 presidential election, the personal costs of partisanship if you break away from the tribe, the fight for the Supreme Court, the future of the National Rifle Association, and how to fight the scourge of vigilantism—all packed into a lively, civil, and quite personal discussion about gun control. We didn’t want you to miss this chance to eavesdrop on a conversation that’s taking place inside a gun-loving family. By capturing this intimate, cross-generational conversation, One Shot One Kill, produced by Chicken & Egg Pictures and co-presented by Mother Jones, portrays some of the nuance that can get lost in the national debate, as the men discuss which restrictions they support, and which bring them into conflict with their identities as sportsmen, environmental stewards, and, ultimately, with each other. Catch it at motherjones.com.

Could one Cuban American Youtuber swing the presidential election? Four years ago, social media and the stars who populate its platforms already exerted an outsized influence on the election. In 2020, influencers are wielding even greater power. With a handful of swing states set to make all the difference in this election, today's show takes you to Florida, where intense scrutiny is swirling about the direction of the Cuban American vote, again: A recent poll found that 56 percent of recent Cuban immigrants were planning to vote for Trump this summer, up from 22 percent four years before. If Trump squeezes out a win in Florida, 41-year-old YouTube star Alex Otaola and his generation of Cubans will likely be among the people he has to thank. Older Cubans, who fled after Fidel Castro took power in 1959, are generally considered the reliable Republican voting bloc. But the younger generation, including Otaola, has moved sharply to the right in the Trump years. A cohort of Cuban immigrants that was supposed to be the friendliest to Democrats now appears to be the most Republican one—a dramatic recent shift that has stunned Florida-watchers. Noah Lanard, an immigration reporter at Mother Jones, went to Miami to explore Otaola's massive online appeal, an act that smashes together elements of Jerry Springer, Judge Judy, Entertainment Tonight, and Breitbart. If Florida comes down to the wire again, this YouTube influencer with a pet monkey might have a big influence on the outcome of the 2020 election.

The first presidential debate of the 2020 election was a night of sound and fury, signifying Trumpian nihilism. Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden was visibly trying to stay calm and focus on the camera and speak as directly as possible to the American people—while President Donald Trump attacked, interrupted, and talked over everyone, moderator Chris Wallace included, whose 11th hour recommitment to the rules of the debate came far too late to somehow contain the wreckage. The experience of watching the debate was unlike any other in American history, debasing democracy thanks to Trump's careening performance. Typically we ask: who won and who lost? But today, that question seems less relevant: This was about a stark choice, laid bare. On today’s show, we’re bringing you some next-day analysis from Mother Jones’ DC Bureau Chief David Corn and DC-based reporter Nathalie Baptiste. They get into the mind-boggling contrast between Donald Trump and Joe Biden on the debate stage, the racism embedded in the debate topics, and whether you might have any reason at all to feel hopeful as November 3 approaches.

Trailblazing Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died last week at 87. President Trump now has the opportunity to remake the court for a generation by replacing R.B.G. with a staunch conservative. On today's show: What happens next? Mother Jones's voting rights reporter Ari Berman discusses what the scorched-earth Republican strategy reveals about the fairness of American democracy, and the battle for free, fair elections come November 3. Ginsburg’s death comes as President Donald Trump is already trashing the Constitution to stay in power: His attacks on the postal service and the census are laying the groundwork to steal the election. Ari tells host Jamilah King that by eroding Americans’ confidence in the census, the administration may already be accomplishing its goal of rigging the count in its favor. And if voters are afraid to vote in-person believe that postal delays will cause their mail-in ballots not to be counted, they may decide not to vote at all. The extraordinary efforts to undermine the mail and census should prepare us for the possibility of an even more egregious abuse of power to keep Trump in office. Now, with another Supreme Court pick during his presidency, a contested election could be decided by a court with yet another conservative Justice ready to side with Trump. How much damage can he do now, and can it be reversed?