The Takeaway

The highly competitive race for Ohio’s 13th Congressional district, a seat left vacant by congressman Tim Ryan who is running for Senate, is between Ohio State representative Emilia Sykes and Trump-backed attorney Madison Gesiotto Gilbert. We hear from Wendy Smooth, Senior Vice Provost for Inclusive Excellence and a Professor of Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies at the Ohio State University and Anna Staver, a political reporter for USA Today Network’s Ohio Bureau. Read the full article here.

According to data from AdImpact, Republican candidates nationwide have recently increased their spending on ads attacking Democrats' approaches to crime and public safety. We look at how these narratives might impact voters' perception of their own safety and dig deeper into the data available on crimes rates — and what it can tell us about both causes and solutions to crime.

We're joined by Rena Karefa-Johnson, Director of National programming at FWD.us, and Ames Grawert, Senior Counsel at the Justice Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU.

On 20 October 2022, amid a continuing economic and political crisis, Truss announced her intention to resign as Prime Minister.

Installed by the UK's Conservative Party just last month, after her predecessor Boris Johnson was dramatically ousted, Truss had been in office less than six weeks before beginning the dizzying economic roller coaster she has been largely blamed for. But since her first days, some have said her days on the job are numbered. Turns out that the number of days Truss had was 45, making her the shortest-serving prime minister in British history.

Joining us to talk about the ever-changing political landscape of the UK is Adlea Suliman, Breaking News Reporter at the Washington Post, based in London. 

Counties in 26 states elect county clerks. One of the primary responsibilities of the position is to administer elections.  After the 2020 election, and false claims of election fraud by former President Trump and his supporters, county clerks and many of the election workers who work with them found themselves targeted by threats and harassment. 

Those are the states that local elections administrators are really dealing with some brand new problems that I don't think any of us really expected after the 2020 election. They're getting physical assaults in their offices now. They're having to hire additional security. They have threats that they've had to report to the FBI. And, you know, for a job that was relatively unknown and also is so administrative and really when it's done right, is not a very controversial thing. It's been really jarring, I think, for a lot of election administrators that are now coming under attack for doing their job. And I think we're all still trying to figure out what that means for the future of elections administration. But everybody right now is really looking to 2024 and wondering what's going to happen. - Brianna Lennon

We speak with a Brianna Lennon, Boone County, Missouri County Clerk and co-host of the High Turnout, Wide Margins podcast, about what a county clerk does, what voters should think about when electing one, and the importance of the position in upholding democracy. 

Media outlets began reporting this week that nearly the entire population of Alaskan snow crabs — over a billion — had “disappeared,” forcing the state to cancel winter crab season, an important part of its economy. Government agencies and scientists have suspected side effects of climate change, such as increased predation and disease, contributed to the population collapse.

But science journalist and ecologist Spencer Roberts points to evidence that melting sea ice increasingly allowed crabbers to harvest in previously-untouched waters, and industry harvesting quotas may have already at unsustainable levels. He joins us to discuss the myriad factors that led to the Alaska snow crab population collapse, its ripple effects and how the state could respond.

Coroners are elected in counties in 20 states in the country.

To learn more about about what a coroner does, and what is important to consider when voting for a coroner, we speak with Darnell Hartwell. He is currently chief deputy coroner of Berkeley County, South Carolina, which encompasses parts of North Charleston and its outskirts. He is also a Republican candidate for coroner of Berkeley County running unopposed in the November midterm election.

A new book, “Meme Wars: The Untold Story of the Online Battles Upending Democracy in America,” explains how the “Stop the Steal” movement started online and resulted in the January 6 insurrection, using examples from Gamergate, the Occupy Wall Street movement and Donald Trump’s rise to the presidency to develop its playbook.

"Meme wars are about the struggle or battle over the definition of a situation or the definition of what it means to be on one side of an issue," book co-author Dr. Joan Donovan told The Takeaway. Donovan is the research director of the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. 

"In a lot of ways, [meme wars] are an insurgent attack on the mainstream in some way. And in that sense, the idea is to bring fringe outsider ideas into the realm of the powerful," added co-author Emily Dreyfuss, Senior Managing Editor of the Shorenstein Center's Technology and Social Change Research Project project. 

Dreyfuss and Donovan co-authored "Meme Wars" with Brian Friedberg, Senior Researcher on the Technology and Social Change Research Project.

For our #DOWNBALLOT series, we're looking at the role and importance of school board elected officials. 18-year-old Shiva Rajbhandari is a high school senior in Boise, Idaho, who also was recently elected to serve on Boise's School Board. We speak with Shiva about his experience as a student serving on the school board, why he believes students should have a seat at the table in school boards, and explore the importance of school boards as an important downballot elected office.

The fallout from the leaked audio of racist and derogatory comments made by Los Angeles City Councilmembers Nury Martinez, Gil Cedillo and Kevin De Leon continues.

How does the city heal and move on from this? We’re joined by Councilmember Marqueece Harris-Dawson who represents the 8th district in Los Angeles and Dr. Danielle Clealand, associate professor in the departments of Mexican American and Latina/o Studies and African and African Diaspora Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, to discuss anti-Blackness and colorism within the Latine community. 

Oscar-winning actor Tim Robbins joins us to discuss the 40th anniversary of The Actor’s Gang and their reprisal of the Play Ubu the King in Los Angeles. Robbins also discusses the ongoing work of their internationally recognized rehabilitation program, The Actor’s Gang Prison Project.