Aftyn Behn joins KK&F to discuss her juggernaut campaign to unseat Republican Van Epps as a progressive in Tennessee. Aftyn thinks of herself as a unifier, closing the gap between Democrat and Republican voter turnout and building a broad coalition that brought in former Trump supporters and rallied them behind a program supporting affordability of housing and healthcare.

She was also able to highlight everything that the Republican Party has failed to do in Tennessee, despite how powerful Trump’s rhetoric has been there — people are clearly beginning to reject that rhetoric as hypocritical and harmful to their communities. Aftyn and her coalition aren’t going to let Republicans privatize the Tennessee Valley Authority. And they’re not going to let people like Van Epps coast into office on anti-worker platforms.

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This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit krystalkyleandfriends.substack.com/subscribe

Gianmarco shares some of the major influences that have shaped his approach to comedy, with many immediately recognizable names: Maria Bamford, Jeff Asmus, Chris Fleming, John Mulaney. He’s taken cues from the greats in modern stand-up comedy and has become, in his own right, an extremely successful comedian beloved for his unique style. So it’s a treat to get to talk to him about the state of American political comedy during a moment in our country’s history that feels like it couldn’t get any worse — and yet, every day, somehow does.

What does it mean to turn to political satire when the state of our nation feels beyond parody, and what kind of revelatory and radical potential does comedy really have? Now seems like the time to find out. How do we keep clowning on Trump as successfully as possible, and how does comedy fit into the landscape of political action against this evil, oafish, endlessly mockable man? We offer some answers in Episode 254, and we hope you’ll find them both insightful and, of course, funny! You can listen to this episode when it’s released tomorrow on major streaming platforms like Spotify, Substack, Pandora, Apple Podcasts, and more.

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Welcome to Episode 253 of KK&F, where we’re talking with Usamah Andradi and Geoff Simpson of Justice Democrats about how to remake the Democratic Party to serve the interests of the American people! Justice Democrats have provided essential support to grassroots progressives as they run up against the status quo in national and local elections. Andradi and Simpson help us think about how Democrats can answer a moment of profound weakness in the Democratic Party, as Trump totally fumbles his support among the MAGA base but Democrats fail to act as an opposition party. With the kind of failure of leadership that people like Schumer showed by capitulating during the shutdown, it’s only natural that American voters are looking for something else.

We talk to Andradi and Simpson about how Trump’s failures in office call for Democratic leadership, why the old guard isn’t meeting the moment, and what we can do about it. You can listen to this conversation as a podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and other streaming platforms.

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In Episode 252 of KK&F, we talk about the insane bombshell of the released Epstein files, and Trump’s increasingly desperate attempts to direct attention away from them. Plus, we talk to New York Governor-hopeful Antonio Delgado about his campaign.

Kathy Hochul has long been a fixture of New York politics. As Governor of New York, she’s a major player in the Democratic establishment. But Democratic leadership in the state of New York are now looking to Zohran Mamdani as part of a democratic socialist vanguard looking to transform City Hall into an institution that works for the working class. Zohran’s election was particularly telling. People like Hochul either refrained from supporting Mamdani or waited until the last minute to do so. They see his mayoralty as a sign of even more widespread rejection of the status quo among New York voters.

Antonio’s campaign for Governor of New York is another force in this sweeping movement toward left populist governance. We talk to him about what a Delgado-led New York would look like. You can listen to this episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and other major streaming platforms!

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Our faves (just kidding), like Ben Shapiro, have been engaging in some truly historic fearmongering about the election of someone who wants to make housing affordable and buses free. God forbid! They’re calling Zohran a far-left extremist, a totalitarian who will attack basic American freedoms. Like the voters of New York, clearly, we reject these ideas as rooted in hatred for working people, Islamophobia, and a refusal to recognize the outcome of a fair election. Clearly, in the eyes of the right, destroying democracy is okay, but these major conservative voices draw the line at recognizing a popular mandate among New Yorkers for improving the material conditions of the working class. This conversation lets us consider how these prominent commentators use their power and platforms to actually undermine the very principles and political programs that they profess, hypocritically, to support.

Again, we’re so grateful to the insightful Ryan Grim for joining us again on KK&F — one of our favorite friends of the show! Remember, you can listen to the audio of this episode when it’s released tomorrow night on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and other major streaming platforms.

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Max Flugrath of Fair Fight is on the show this week (for our 250th episode!) to talk all things Trump election rigging. Fair Fight is based in Georgia, so Max has seen some of the worst of Trump’s attacks on democracy. It’s a microcosm of Trump’s bigger project of maintaining power without popular consent. There, hundreds of thousands of people have been purged from voter rolls through racial profiling. Trump’s fight to overturn the Georgia election results in 2020 — which took several days to come out — garnered massive media attention and is one of the bedrocks on which the case for his criminal behavior has been built. All of this is to say that upholding democracy in the age of Trump can literally be an issue of life or death, both immediately for those fighting for it and in the longer term as Trump’s fascist government uses election rigging to terrorize the public with ICE, police forces, and other wings of a repressive government.

Max points to the difference in scale, speed, and coordination as Trump ramps up the voter suppression tactics that have just become politics as usual in American “democracy.” He takes us through the new restrictions, district formations, and policies that will deny Americans — again, overwhelmingly, people of color and people from low-income areas — the right to decide the country’s leadership. As he puts it, it’s a “five-alarm fire for American democracy.” Who among our elected leadership will step up and put up a fight?

We hope that our conversation in Episode 250 of KK&F will provide answers! You can listen to this episode on major streaming platforms.

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Congressman Ro Khanna is back on the show this week! For Episode 249, we’ve brought him to KK&F for a conversation about his fight with Thomas Massie to get the Epstein files released. Ro explains to us how and why he’s taken on the massive task of bringing the Epstein files to light, something Republicans up to the highest levels of power — including Donald Trump, whose involvement in those files is clear — have worked both secretly and explicitly to prevent. For a month, Mike Johnson has been able to prevent a vote on releasing the files. With Democrat Adelita Grijalva waiting to be sworn in (and suing for delay), Khanna and Massie will get the 218 signatures they need for a vote, and the vote will happen a week later.

The Republican Party establishment, in other words, is in crisis as party members scramble, in increasingly obvious ways, to cover up the involvement of the world’s most powerful people in child trafficking and sexual abuse. It comes down to whether or not Republicans can run out the clock and continue to delay the seating of Democratic legislators, as they have tried to do and are trying to do now. Our conversation with Ro illustrates exactly what’s happening right now as he, Massie, and their supporters fight to make sure Trump and his lackeys can’t put the files out of sight and out of mind. We hope you’ll appreciate Ro’s insight into the inner workings of our legislative body as some of its members try to get justice for the survivors of Epstein’s crimes, and as they’re forced to go up against the president and his supporters in order to do so.

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Kat Abughazaleh, Illinois Congressional candidate, joins us to talk about how Chicago is peacefully fighting back, her unorthodox campaign organized around mutual aid and livestreams, and how her time studying online right wing extremists prepared her for this moment. Recently, a video circulated of her being thrown to the ground by jackbooted government thugs outside the Broadview ICE Detention Facility in a horrifying display of tyrannical violence. I really hope you’ll take the time to hear her testimony and imagine how transformational it would be to have political leaders with her courage and principle in charge. If you are moved to support her campaign her website is here.

We hope you’ll enjoy this conversation with a fearless fighter going up against government fascism. You can listen to the episode above or on all streaming services, including Spotify, Pandora, and Apple Podcasts. See you next week!

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Welcome back to KK&F. This week we’re joined by Abdul El-Sayed, a Democrat running for US Senate in Michigan. As a doctor, public health official and the son of immigrants, Abdul is truly a unique politician. He has foregrounded ending the scourge of money in politics, securing Medicare for All, and a foreign policy grounded in justice including justice for Palestinians. Abdul isn’t afraid to speak truth to power and to remind his base that when AIPAC wins, Americans — and tens of thousands of people in countries suffering and dying from U.S.-made weapons — lose everything. In our conversation with Abdul, we cover the past two years of American coverage and political responses to a genocide in which our government and tax dollars are directly involved.

How will politicians continue to keep the pressure on the government to cease our support of the genocide, even as a ceasefire may give us a false sense that the struggle has ended? We talk to Abdul about this important question. You can listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pandora, and more.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit krystalkyleandfriends.substack.com/subscribe