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Biden’s weak responses to the end of abortion rights and the Supreme Court majority’s obstacles to gun control have been disastrous for Democrats. Harold Meyerson comments, and on the Georgia races with Rev. Raphael Warnock and Stacey Abrams.
Also: The end of abortion in 26 states will be deadly for many poor women, especially poor women of color. Law professor Michele Goodwin explains, reviewing the history of forced pregnancy under the slave regime in antebellum America, and how it was banned by the 13th Amendment’s prohibition of “involuntary servitude.”
Plus: How will the war in Ukraine end? The Russians have failed to install a puppet government there but the Ukrainians are not going to recover the territory Russia seized in 2014. So some kind of negotiated settlement is necessary, and better sooner than later. Anatol Lieven, author of “Ukraine and Russia.” comments.  7-7-2022

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Harold Meyerson comments on Tuesday’s historic testimony by Cassidy Hutchinson – and on the Supreme Court and abortion.
Also: In understanding the January 6 insurrection, much of the focus has been on white nationalist militias like the Proud Boys. But white evangelicals also played a big part on January 6. Sarah Posner, author of Unholy: How White Christian Nationalists Powered the Trump Presidency, and the Devastating Legacy They Left Behind, joins the podcast to discuss religion’s role in the riots.  6-30-2022

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This week’s hearings of the Jan. 6 committee have been powerful and devastating in laying out the evidence of Trump’s crimes, first in pressuring state officials to alter election results, and then in pressuring the Justice Department to declare the elections corrupted. John Nichols comments.
Plus: Republicans have opened another front in the culture war with the slogan “parental rights”–not just banning the teaching of Critical Race Theory, whatever that is; now they are campaigning to ban comprehensive sex education. Joan Walsh explains.  6-23-2022

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Harold Meyerson comments on the most striking revelation of the Jan. 6 hearings thus far, especially the Proud Boys going straight to the capitol instead of to Trump’s speech at the ‘Stop the Steal’ rally.
Also: The recall of Chesa Boudin, the progressive prosecutor in San Francisco, has been taken by pundits everywhere to require the Democrats to abandon their efforts to reform the police and the criminal justice system. Peter Dreier explains what’s wrong with that conclusion.  6-16-2022

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The results of Tuesday’s primaries in L.A. and San Francisco, according to the New York Times, were “a stark warning to the Democratic Party about the potency of law and order as a political message in 2022.” Harold Meyerson disagrees. Also: our preview of the live TV hearings of the House committee on the January 6 insurrection.
Plus: Also: Abortion and its opponents. Do opponents of abortion really believe abortion providers are “baby-killers”? There’s some new research about that that found opponents help family members and friends get abortions. Katha Pollitt explains.
Also:“Bad Mexicans” – that’s what the revolutionaries of 1910 were called as they fought on both sides of the US-Mexico border against the robber barons and their political allies. UCLA historian Kelly Lytle Hernandez tells that story, which is the subject of her new book.  6-9-2022