The Progressive Happy Hour

With the lack of affordable housing already at a crisis point in cities and towns across the country, last week HUD Secretary Ben Carson floated a plan that would sharply increase what the lowest-income households have to pay in rent. In the May 4 episode of "The Progressive Happy Hour," co-hosts Christin "Cici" Battle and Drew Courtney sat down with Afua Atta-Mensah, executive director of Community Voices Heard, to talk about the fight for affordable housing under a presidential administration working to gut services for the poorest Americans.

As Congress advances a bipartisan bill to protect Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation, President Trump is not backing down from his efforts to undermine and interfere with this critical work. In the April 27 episode of "The Progressive Happy Hour," co-hosts Christin "Cici" Battle and Drew Courtney sat down with Lisa Gilbert, vice president of legislative affairs at Public Citizen, to talk about the Russia investigation and what activists can do to help protect it.

April 10 marked Equal Pay Day, the day when—on average—women's wages symbolically "catch up" to men's wages from the previous year. In the April 20 episode of "The Progressive Happy Hour," co-hosts Christin "Cici" Battle and Drew Courtney sat down with Joi Chaney, executive director of Equal Pay Today!, to talk about the gender pay gap and the ongoing fight for gender and racial pay equity.

From the beginning, the Trump administration has been marked by self-enrichment and lavish spending, from EPA head Scott Pruitt's wasteful first-class travel to HUD Secretary Ben Carson's $31,000 dining room set. In the April 13 episode of "The Progressive Happy Hour," Drew Courtney and Diallo Brooks sat down with Adam Smith, communications director of Every Voice, to talk about the Trump team's spending scandals, its money-in-politics corruption, and what voters can do to hold them accountable.

For the hundreds of thousands of people released from prisons each year, what does community reintegration look like? In the April 6 episode of "The Progressive Happy Hour," co-hosts Christin "Cici" Battle and Drew Courtney sat down with Shae Harris, policy advisor for the D.C. Office of the Deputy Mayor for Public Safety and Justice, to talk about the criminal justice system and what happens when people come home after incarceration.

Extreme segments of the Right are exploiting a void left by the absence of progressive investment in many rural communities, according to a new report out from Down Home North Carolina and People's Action. In the March 30 episode of "The Progressive Happy Hour," co-hosts Christin "Cici" Battle and Drew Courtney sat down with Jessica Juarez-Scruggs, deputy policy director of People's Action, to talk about organizing in rural areas.

In the Trump era, when political organizing is on the rise and fake news is spreading like never before, is social media the problem or the solution—or both? In a March 23 mini-episode of "The Progressive Happy Hour," recorded on the eve of a snowstorm in D.C., hosts Christin "Cici" Battle and Drew Courtney talk about the benefits and dangers of using social media and take on a question many have asked themselves: should I delete my Facebook account?

In the wake of the 2016 election, there has been a surge of activity among the white supremacist alt-right—and one of the primary places they are pushing their hateful and dangerous ideology is on YouTube. In the March 16 episode of "The Progressive Happy Hour," co-hosts Christin "Cici" Battle and Drew Courtney sat down with Jared Holt, research associate at PFAW's Right Wing Watch, to talk about these extremists and the technology that enables them.

Data has shown for decades that there are deep inequities in our nation's schools when it comes to race and income—but just how much are some children being shortchanged? In the March 9 episode of "The Progressive Happy Hour," co-hosts Christin "Cici" Battle and Drew Courtney sat down with Ary Amerikaner, director of P-12 resource equity at The Education Trust, to talk about the state of school funding today and what can be done to push for change.

Last weekend was the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), the country's largest gathering of conservative activists each year. In the March 2 episode of "The Progressive Happy Hour," Drew Courtney and guest host Diallo Brooks sat down with PFAW Senior Fellow Peter Montgomery--who helped cover the conference for Right Wing Watch--to talk about CPAC's shift toward embracing all things Trump.