It's the Democracy, Stupid Featured Interviews

Edwin is joined by Jill Wine-Banks, legal analyst, former general counsel of the U.S. Army, and author of The Watergate Girl.

She discussed the legal recognition of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), which she argued was legally ratified in January 2020 and should be implemented. "This amendment was passed and it was ratified by the final 38th state in January of 2020, so that's now almost five years ago," Wine-Banks told WCPT. "The terms of the amendment said that it would become effective upon ratification two years thereafter. So that was three years ago, and it is time for the implementation. All that it takes is recognition that it's met all the requirements. The impediments to that recognition have been that, originally, Congress set a timeline. That timeline was in a preamble. It was not in what the states voted on, so it should have no legal effect or consequences." 

She criticized the Office of Legal Counsel's memo on the ERA and called for its replacement. "I think what President Biden did [on January 17th, announcing that the ERA was ratified] was, in effect, eliminate the OLC memo and that the archivist [of the United States] has no ability not to publish it." 

Wine-Banks also expressed concerns about the potential impact of Pam Bondi heading the Department of Justice and Pete Hegseth leading the Defense Department, highlighting Bondi's unsuitable temperament and lack of bipartisan cooperation and Hegseth's inexperience and problematic comments on women serving in the military.

 Catch “The Big Picture with Edwin Eisendrath” Saturdays from 1:00 to 4:00 p.m. Central on WCPT (heartlandsignal.com/programs/the-big-picture).  

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Edwin talks to Michele Goodwin, professor at Georgetown Law.

"It's true that we see this trajectory of more women in law schools, more women in medical schools, more women throughout education," Goodwin said. "And yet, we see glass ceilings. Only 17 percent of partners in law firms happen to be women. In our Congress, we don't have a parity of representation, only about 30 percent women represented. In fact, the Dobbs [v. Jackson Women's Health Organization] decision came about through the Mississippi legislature petitioning the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade. It's a legislature, at that time, that was about 86 percent male, overwhelmingly white male. That does not look like representation in a state where over 50 percent of the population happens to be women."

Catch “The Big Picture with Edwin Eisendrath” Saturdays from 1:00 to 4:00 p.m. Central on WCPT (heartlandsignal.com/programs/the-big-picture).  

 

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Edwin talks to Nancy MacLean, professor of history and public policy at Duke University.  She talked about the right's effort to lay siege to American institutions "over the last decade. I mean, we have seen attacks on election administration. We have seen attacks on public health. We have seen attacks on K through 12 schooling, on higher education, on and on and on." MacLean said she's "thrilled" to be one of 14 fellows for the Center for the Defense of Academic Freedom. "It is a big challenge," she said, "and we're going to need many, many more hands on deck for this." Learn more.

Catch “The Big Picture with Edwin Eisendrath” Saturdays from 1:00 to 4:00 p.m. Central on WCPT (heartlandsignal.com/programs/the-big-picture).  

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Edwin is joined by Larry Diamond, senior fellow in Global Democracy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University.

"Think about how electoral districts are drawn," Diamond said. "It's not only deliberate gerrymandering; the more progressive voters are packed very tightly in urban constituencies, so Democrats may may win these seats with 70 or 80 percent of the vote and their vote isn't spread efficiently across geographic districts of wider expanse. And this is one reason why cities tend to lose out, even if you have relatively objective drawing of electoral district boundaries. And then the voters that are maybe more conservative, traditional and rural are more spread out and they tend to gain even from a natural process of districting. And then, of course, we have the more rural states because of the nature of the U.S. Senate and the electoral college being vastly over represented in the U.S. system."

Catch “The Big Picture with Edwin Eisendrath” Saturdays from 1:00 to 4:00 p.m. Central on WCPT (heartlandsignal.com/programs/the-big-picture).  

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Edwin is joined by Tom Nichols, staff writer at The Atlantic and author of the Atlantic Daily newsletter. Nichols is a professor emeritus of national-security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College, where he taught for 25 years, and an instructor at the Harvard Extension School. He has served as a legislative aide in the Massachusetts House and the U.S. Senate. He writes about international security, nuclear weapons, Russia, and the challenges to democracy in the United States and around the world—along with occasional contrarian views on popular culture.

Catch “The Big Picture with Edwin Eisendrath” Saturdays from 1:00 to 4:00 p.m. Central on WCPT (heartlandsignal.com/programs/the-big-picture).  

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Edwin talks to Tamar Jacoby, director of the New Ukraine Project at the Progressive Policy Institute. 

Jacoby, who is based in Kyiv, talked about the mood there, after almost three years of war in the country. "People are tired," she said, "and that word doesn't quite even capture it. Kyiv is far from the front, and life goes on in Kyiv. People go to restaurants and bars, and do live their lives, but just about everybody knows or is related to somebody who's fighting, and indeed, most have casualties in their circle of a family or acquaintances. And the war is coming increasingly to Kyiv and to the west of the country because of the intensified missile and drone strikes."

Catch “The Big Picture with Edwin Eisendrath” Saturdays from 1:00 to 4:00 p.m. Central on WCPT (heartlandsignal.com/programs/the-big-picture).   

 

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Michael Tomasky, editor of The New Republic, joins Edwin for a conversation about the election, the incoming Trump administration, and more. 

Catch “The Big Picture with Edwin Eisendrath” Saturdays from 1:00 to 4:00 p.m. Central on WCPT (heartlandsignal.com/programs/the-big-picture).  

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Edwin is joined by Ezra Levin, co-founder and co-executive director of Indivisible. Last week the organization released Indivisible: A Practical Guide to Democracy on the Brink. “We've got to recognize the world has changed," Levin said. "Trump 2.0 is different and scarier. And our source of power is not only our elected official at the federal level; it's not only our senator or representative. There are sources of power all over the country. There are 500,000 elected officials in this country at the local level, at the state level, at the federal level."

Catch “The Big Picture with Edwin Eisendrath” Saturdays from 1:00 to 4:00 p.m. Central on WCPT (heartlandsignal.com/programs/the-big-picture).  

 

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The Atlantic's Tom Nichols joins Edwin for a post-election conversation. 

Tom Nichols is a staff writer at The Atlantic and an author of the Atlantic Daily newsletter. He is a professor emeritus of national-security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College, where he taught for 25 years, and an instructor at the Harvard Extension School. He has served as a legislative aide in the Massachusetts House and the U.S. Senate. He writes about international security, nuclear weapons, Russia, and the challenges to democracy in the United States and around the world—along with occasional contrarian views on popular culture.

Catch “The Big Picture with Edwin Eisendrath” Saturdays from 1:00 to 4:00 p.m. Central on WCPT (heartlandsignal.com/programs/the-big-picture).  

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Anderson Clayton, chair of the North Carolina Democratic Party, joins Edwin for a conversation on the last weekend before the November 5th election.

"North Carolina is set to break some historic records this year in terms of the numbers that we've knocked as a campaign, as a state party," Clayton told Edwin. "Over a million doors in the state have been surpassed by our coordinated campaign, the Harris-Walz team, and the state party here in the state.  And we are contesting 168 out of 170 state legislative seats here in North Carolina. We unfortunately left 44 seats uncontested in 2022 and so we made recruitment a very big priority for us this year, because even under gerrymandered state legislative maps, everybody deserves somebody to vote for, not just against. And so a competitive effort was made in that case. And then we are also excited about being on the doors and seeing the fact that over 3 million people have also voted in North Carolina so far. So we are on [track]  to break 2020 numbers in 2024, and things are looking great for Democrats in that sense too."

Catch “The Big Picture with Edwin Eisendrath” Saturdays from 1:00 to 4:00 p.m. Central on WCPT (heartlandsignal.com/programs/the-big-picture).   

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.