In this double feature episode of Inside the Hive, cohosts Joe Hagan and Emily Jane Fox interview rising Democratic star Joe Neguse, Congressman from Colorado, about last week’s impeachment trial of Donald Trump and what was and was not achieved after Republicans refused to convict. Neguse takes us behind the scenes with the impeachment managers, including the controversial decision not to call witnesses before a final vote, and considers what lessons Democrats should draw from it.

That's followed by Texas Democrat Beto O’Rourke, who talks to Hagan about the state of emergency in Texas and the intransigence of his former rival for Senate, Ted Cruz. O’Rourke lays into Cruz, who flew to Cancún during statewide blackouts: "I don't know how much we were expecting from him to begin with,” he says. “That guy wants nothing to do with government, or at least our form of it.” Whether voters, suffering from food shortages following a freak snow storm, will make the GOP pay—and create an opening for O’Rourke to run for Texas governor in 2022—remains to be seen. But O’Rourke finds optimism for the country in new leaders like Neguse, who he calls “an all-time American hero.”

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The “Absolute and Abject Failure” of the GOP: Democratic Stars Joe Neguse and Beto O’Rourke on Trump, Cruz, and Finding Hope