Politix

2022 has been an absolutely terrible year for climate disasters. Hurricane Ian, record shattering heatwaves, and catastrophic flooding all served as the backdrop as Congress finally got it together well enough to pass a huge climate mitigation bill. The United States will now implement this new clean energy spending plan as the accumulated effects of all the greenhouse gas pollution we’ve already emitted continue to pile up. It all raises critical questions: How can we get the most out of the bold climate action we just took? And can we minimize or somehow reverse the harms we’ve already inflicted? David Roberts joins Brian Beutler to talk about how we can use the tools we already have to mitigate the harms climate change will inflict, or better still just stop them before they happen.

Over the next several months, the Supreme Court is poised to hear a ludicrous number of ominous cases that could destroy everything from free and fair presidential elections to what’s left of the Voting Rights Act, to Medicaid to the private right to censor Nazis and porn online. And we’re all spectators. Justice Alito and his allies in robes laugh their asses off knowing there are unlikely to be any consequences for commandeering the country on behalf of right-wing interests and shaping it to their personal and political whims. Who are the leaders we can turn to while the judiciary literally and figuratively scorches the earth? Dahlia Lithwick joins to talk about her new book Lady Justice, reversing the legal damage of the Trump administration, and how we can restore legitimacy to the Supreme Court before it does irreversible damage.

This week the Federal Reserve announced another big interest-rate hike with full anticipation that it will cause the unemployment rate to climb. It’s the first good-for-workers economy in decades, and the Fed stands prepared to kill it, amid a national clamor over inflation. Is politics really as simple as “it’s the economy, stupid?” Or have we built a generation of conventional wisdom around a Goldilocks situation where the economy has to be juuuust so in order for consumers, voters, politicians, and the media to be happy with it? Are we responding to economic conditions as we experience them? Or are we just following the leads laid out for us by media figures and political leaders who can always point to passing problems like high gas prices, or even good problems like lots of job vacancies, and convince millions of people that things are actually bad? Economic sociologist and leader of the Groundwork Collaborative Lindsay Owens joins to discuss how helpful “it’s the economy, stupid” is when the economy is always a mess, and whether we can sustain an economy that works.

More than two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, there are still many questions that we sort of think we know the answers to, and many others we don’t. We do know vaccine effectiveness wanes, and that vaccines need to be updated to keep pace with an evolving virus. We don’t know if next-generation vaccines will be as effective against current variants as the original shots were against COVID Classic. We do know that the virus is substantially less deadly now that we’ve built up a big wall of immunity, but it still manages to infect most people, sometimes even multiple times a year. Is this a level of disruption we’re just going to have to tolerate indefinitely? Would anyone really be satisfied with the existing level of COVID risk continuing in perpetuity? And is our healthcare equipped to deal with the ongoing and compounding effects of long COVID? Dr. Peter Hotez, professor of pediatrics and molecular biology at Baylor College of Medicine and co-director of Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development, joins Brian to discuss the known knowns, known unknowns, and the unknown unknowns of COVID—and whether ongoing research can provide the answers we need.

President Joe Biden finally defined the MAGA movement for what it is, a form of “semi fascism”, and in turn ignited a debate about whether he was unwise, technically incorrect, or plain old offensive. The “F word” is complicated - it’s bandied about and stretched beyond meaning in some circles while others refrain from it to avoid seeming hysterical. Yet these elaborate rules and rubrics to distinguish what is fascist get in the way of clearly identifying the threats to our democracy. Historian and writer of the Lucid newsletter Ruth Ben-Ghiat joins to talk about this crescendo in the fascism debate and what history has taught us about Trump’s brand of semi fascism.

President Biden’s long awaited student-loan forgiveness plan has stirred up a fair amount of controversy. Many of the arguments were advanced in bad faith, some were above-board policy judgements, but none of them tackled the bigger question of whether America’s social contract with rising generations is fundamentally broken. The deal used to be that if you work hard and go to college, you’ll be rewarded with a lifetime of economic security. Biden did a good thing by making people who bought into that promise whole, but he also illuminated how a cornerstone of the American dream is failing us. Author and host of the Have You Heard podcast Jennifer Berkshire joins Brian to dive into the dreadful parts of the American education system, and discuss how we fix it.

What do Monkeypox, COVID-19, and James Comey have in common? Each of them revealed weak spots in our institutions, including a tendency among people in positions of influence, power, and public information to filter what they know and what they should convey through the lenses of mass psychology and political analysis. Monkeypox isn’t deadly or new, and yet the response too slow to contain the epidemic, and the communication around it from experts and professionals has been roundabout and convoluted. President Biden’s former senior COVID adviser, and host of the podcast In The Bubble, Andy Slavitt joins to shed light on the Monkeypox outbreak, and on how political pressures brought to bear on leaders can warp decision making.

Inflation is down, Trump is on the run, Democrats are on the march. And out of the primordial stew of all this good news, Dark Brandon has risen—a new, viral depiction of Joe Biden as a relentless, remorseless political warrior who crushes his enemies and easily overcomes obstacles in his way. On the one hand, Dark Brandon is a fun, satisfying retort to years of unanswered right-wing attacks on the president as a confused, failing old oaf. But on the other, it’s a real-time demonstration of the irrational ways conventional wisdom forms, changes, and spreads—and of how both good and bad actors can use social knowledge (that is: memes) to shape the political world we all inhabit together. Social networks and political psychology expert Jaime Settle joins Brian to dissect whether public opinion shapes memes, or memes shape public opinion.

Democrats are having a good month. The Inflation Reduction Act passed the Senate, Republicans are paying for the Dobbs decision, and the January 6th committee is reminding Americans that Trump and the GOP are a bunch of lying insurrections. And this recent sharp turn of events makes Democrats all the more hopeful that there won’t be a wipe out in November. But what is the lesson here? Is it that consensus-building is always the wisest course? Or that Democrats would be better off heightening the contrasts between them and Republicans more often? Faiz Shakir joins to talk about the party’s theory of politics, and how Democrats can be less imprisoned by polls and more responsive to the things the public cares about.

Former FBI investigator Peter Strzok joins to talk about how the Trump accountability story isn’t fully written. The January 6 hearings, and earlier investigations, have revealed more Trump crimes than we could have imagined six years ago, yet he hasn’t faced criminal charges and our institutions haven’t been bolstered to protect future threats he poses to the Constitution. Is the justice system failing? Or are we making a mistake by putting so much stock into legal accountability in the first place?