Here's where to find podcasts from The Nation. Political talk without the boring parts, featuring the writers, activists and artists who shape the news, from a progressive perspective.
Running for president last year, Donald Trump disowned Project 2025, the laundry list of radical demands gathered together by right-wing think tanks. Trump claimed Project 2025 had no influence on him and was only being raised by Democrats as a political attack. But now Trump is in power, he’s enacting an agenda of dismantling the welfare state that is following Project 2025 in close detail, as my Nation colleague Chris Lehmann documented in a recent column.
Chris and Jeet Heer talk about Trump’s mobilization of Christian nationalist ideologues in the service of a making the state subservient to big business. We also take up the remarkable supine Democratic Party response, and also possible sources of resistance in the courts, the federal government and, most crucially, from outraged public opinion mobilized into protest.
Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands
Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
Although only formed in 2021, Moms for Liberty, a group agitating for reactionary policies in schools, is already a major player in national politics. Republican presidential hopefuls like Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump are eager to speak at the group’s convention. Moms for Liberty is also receiving generous profiles in major media outlets like The New York Times.
As my Nation colleague Chris Lehmann notes in a recent column, such profiles tend to whitewash Moms for Liberty, falsely portraying it as a grassroots organization and ignoring its bigoted agenda and ties to the institutional right. On this episode of The Time of Monsters, we talk about the true nature of Moms for Liberty, as well as the way anti-trans agitation is remaking politics. In the discussion, we reference this earlier conversation I had with the historian Rick Perlstein about the deep roots of right-wing agitation over education.