Last year, the Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health decision. This has only emboldened the anti-choice movement. Those who hoped that abortion would at least be safe in blue states and kept available in red states via mifepristone are waking up to a world where the anti-choice movement is using legal warfare to move towards its goal of a nation-wide abortion ban. As Moira Donegan notes in a recent column in The Guardian, a right-wing Trump-appointed federal judge in Texas is hearing arguments for rolling back FDA approval of mifepristone. Elsewhere, pharmacists and doctors are being intimidated by legal threats so that even legal abortion services are getting harder to come by. A novel legal argument is being used to raise the possibility that anti-abortion laws can be applied retroactively, again creating a chilling effect.

I talked with Moira about these and other trends. As she notes, they raise a fundamental question about not just reproductive freedom but also the future of American democracy. It’s no longer clear whether there is a federal rule of law that can protect reproductive freedom even in blue states. We also take up the urgency of Democrats making reproductive freedom a top issue. 

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The good news is we have one less thing to worry about: so-called Havana Syndrome turns out not to be caused by a mysterious super-weapon to harm American diplomats and military personnel, despite numerous press reports warning of a hypothetical ray gun created by a foreign foe (Cuba? Russia? China?). Instead, an assessment by the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) concluded that the symptoms of Havana Syndrome, reported by hundreds of government officials working all over the world) likely had “medical, environmental, and social factors that plausibly can explain.” In less polite terms, this was an example of a mass psychogenic illness, a product of hysteria and over-active imaginations. 

Writing in Jacobin, Branko Marcetic links the Havana Syndrome frenzy to other examples of national security paranoia such as the false reports of Russians paying for Taliban bounty hunters and the recent meltdown over Chinese surveillance balloons. I talked with Branko about both the Havana Syndrome, and the reasons – political and psychological–that the military-industrial complex is going into over drive conjuring up imaginary or overhyped threats.

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The ongoing defamation suit launched by Dominion Voting Systems against Fox News for its coverage of the 2020 election has already resulted in the release of an eye-opening tranche of documents that give an unprecedented window into the inner workings of the TV network. As National columnist Chris Lehmann has noted, the major revelation is how completely beholden the network is to its right-wing base, to the extent of knowingly pushing false stories to please that audience.

On this episode of The Time of Monsters, Chris and I talked about what the Fox News revelations say not only about the powerful media site but also the state of journalism and American democracy. The problem is not just that Fox News lies but that millions of viewers have grown addicted to those lies, so much so that they’ll look for any source to bolster their worldview. More than a media problem, this is a democracy problem; one with few obvious answers. Using the Dominion lawsuit as a starting point, Chris and I talk about the broader problem of a post-truth society.

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The New York Times has become mired in an acrimonious public dispute over its coverage of transgender issues. A letter signed by more than 1,200 writers (both freelance and staff) for the newspaper has challenged the paper for mainstreaming transphobic ideas. A separate letter from the human rights group GLADD also criticized the Times.  The editors of the newspaper dismissed both letters and affirmed their faith in the professionalism of their handling of this issue. 

For The Nation, Jack Mirkinson, an interim senior editor at the magazine, wrote an important and detailed article noting that this is not the first time the Times has had to grapple with accusations of prejudice against LGBTQ people. As Jack documents, under the tenure of the late Abe Rosenthal from 1969 to 1986, the newspaper took what it now itself admits was homophobic editorial line. Among other things, the paper treated the rising gay rights movement with suspicion, it refused to use the term “gay” from 1975 to 1987 and it downplayed the AIDS crisis.

For this week’s podcast, Jack and I talk about the Times’ acknowledged history of homophobia and how it undermines the newspaper’s argument that it should be trusted on current transgender disputes.

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Last month, Pat Buchanan announced he was retiring as a newspaper columnist, an event that went strangely under-noticed in the mainstream press. The simple fact is Buchanan is one of the most influential writers and thinkers on the American right since World War II. He’s had a long career as not just a newspaper columnist and TV pundit but also as an advisor to presidents such as Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan and as a perennial presidential candidate.

As historian Nicole Hemmer persuasively argues in her new book Partisans: The Conservative Revolutionaries Who Remade American Politics in the 1990s, Buchanan’s political agitation was instrumental in the emergence of a new nationalist and populist right that replaced the earlier Cold War anti-communist consensus (which was much friendlier to immigration, trade agreements, and international alliances). Buchanan in other words was the essential bridge between Reagan and Trump. 

Since Buchanan’s long shadow is ignored by the media, I was happy to have Nicole on as a guest on this week's episode of The Time of Monsters to discuss his history. We take up his roots in conservative Catholicism, his life-long anti-Semitism and racism, his friendliness with media elites who helped soften his image, and his lasting impact on American politics.

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In two previous podcasts, we talked about the strong left resurgence in Latin America that is shaping up to be a second “pink tide.” But the new “pink tide” is much stronger in South America than Central America, where the left is often stalled, even in countries where it holds power.

To examine the special history of the region, I turned to Jeffrey Gould, who has known the area well as an activist, documentary filmmaker, and scholar since the 1970s. Currently distinguished visiting professor at the Institute for Advanced Study, Gould is author of many books on social movements in El Salvador and Nicaragua, most recently Solidarity Under Siege (2019). In this discussion we’re joined by frequent podcast guest, journalist Doug Bell.

Among the topics we take up are the “minor utopias” that occasionally rise up in the region through grassroots organizing, the counterrevolutionary violence from death squads that these movements confront, the American support for counterrevolution particularly under Ronald Reagan, the need for cooperation between the radical left and more center-left, and the persistence of authoritarianism in political institutions.

Jeffrey brings a lifetime of engagement with Central America to the discussion and provides a truly illuminating survey of crucial recent history.

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The movie award season is in full swing and this year’s crop of potential Oscar winners includes a healthy and diverse array of films, ranging from psychological studies like Tár to big blockbusters like Avatar: The Way of Water. 

I sat down with Adam Nayman, a film critic for The Ringer, about the Oscar list. We also discuss, at greater length, one particular nominee which we felt merited a long discussion: The Fabelmans, Steven Spielberg’s semi-autobiographical account of his youth. Adam’s review of the movie can be found here. As Adam notes, the the movie is multi-layered and rewards a deeper examination. It’s a portrait of the artist as a youthful cinephile which also makes explicit the family break-up that would haunt Spielberg’s work. Surprisingly self-critical, the movie is not, as some have said, a victory lap. Rather, it delves into the psychological price paid by becoming an artist who uses creativity to hide from reality. It also tells the complex story of Jewish assimilation into an American mainstream aided and abetted by Hollywood.

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Host: Jeet Heer

Executive Producer: Ludwig Hurtado

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It’s easy enough for liberals to laugh at Marjorie Taylor Greene, the voice of the most unhinged faction of the Republican party. The onetime QAnon supporter who will always be associated with the immortal concept of “Jewish space lasers.” But inside the Republican party, Greene is no joke. She’s a rising star and has emerged as the kingmaker who ensured that Kevin McCarthy would be House Speaker. McCarthy reportedly told a friend, “I will never leave that woman. I will always take care of her.”

For Greene, the sky might be the limit. As my colleague Chris Lehmann recently reported, she even has hopes of being Donald Trump’s vice presidential pick in 2024. On this episode of The Time of Monsters, I spoke to Chris about Greene’s ascendency and also about another recent column he wrote, on the dubious history of Joe Biden’s new chief of staff, Jeffrey Zients.

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Since 2016, the Democratic Party has moved steadily to the left. Even tried and true moderates like Joe Biden have adapted to this new reality with greater government intervention in the economy than was contemplated in the eras of Bill Clinton or Barack Obama.

But centrist Democrats still sometimes revert to their bad old habits. We saw two signs of this recently with New York Governor Kathy Hochul nominating a conservative judge despite the opposition of a wide swath of her own party and Joe Biden tapping Jeffrey Zients, a notorious corporate predator, to be the White House chief of staff.

Alexander Sammon wrote about Hochul’s blunder at Slate.com. He joins The Time of Monsters to discuss both of these inexplicable cases.

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Republican congressman George Santos seems to have lied about everything: about his ancestry, his education, his career, his charitable work, his medical history, and other things. Many people have taken delight in the Santos story as an over-the-top example of a con-man who rose to the top.

But Moira Donegan, a columnist for the Guardian, pushed the discussion about Santos deeper in a recent column by asking what purpose Santos’ lies serve and what we are to make of a political system where a liar like Santos can flourish?

The Santos story is about more than just one fibber, but a deeper and more systematic corruption. I was happy to talk to Moira on this episode of The Time of Monsters to tease out the meaning of the scandal. 

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