Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign promised “the largest deportation operation in American history.” Will he be able to achieve this goal? What would this kind of mass deportation look like, and what would its human costs be? And what is the current “largest deportation operation in American history,” anyway? We get answers from Adam Goodman. Goodman is an associate professor in the Department of Latin American and Latino Studies and Department of History at the University of Illinois Chicago, and the author of the award-winning book, The Deportation Machine: America’s Long History of Expelling Immigrants. https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691182155/the-deportation-machine https://immpolicytracking.org/ https://www.icirr.org/ https://ndlon.org/

The Constitution is under attack—and not just by Trump and the executive branch. For a long time, the conservative justices on the Supreme Court have been inconsistently interpreting the Constitution. But our guest, Madiba Dennie, says focusing on their decision-making processes is a trap. She says there’s a better way for concerned citizens to take action against the backsliding of social progress fueled by the Supreme Court. Madiba K. Dennie is an attorney, columnist, and professor whose work focuses on fostering an equitable multiracial democracy. She is the deputy editor and senior contributor at the critical legal commentary website Balls and Strikes and the author of The Originalism Trap: How Extremists Stole the Constitution and How We the People Can Take It Back. Dennie previously served as counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice, and her legal and political commentary has been featured in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, the BBC, and MSNBC. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/735353/the-originalism-trap-by-madiba-k-dennie/

The United States is the wealthiest nation in the world, but millions of its citizens live in poverty. What prevents poor, low-wage, and low-wealth Americans from using democratic government to fight for a fairer distribution of resources? And how can they overcome the structures set against them? The answer is counterintuitive, but it's worked on other social issues in the past.  Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II is president and senior lecturer of Repairers of the Breach, cochair of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival, and a Charles F. Kettering Foundation senior fellow. He is a bishop with the Fellowship of Affirming Ministries and an executive board member of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). He is also a professor in the practice of public theology and public policy and founding director of the Center for Public Theology and Public Policy at Yale Divinity School.  https://breachrepairers.org/our-work/moral-fusion-organizing/

Why do so many Americans think tax breaks for the uber-wealthy will help the average person? According to Jeffrey Winters, the answer is simple: oligarchy. Today Winters breaks down how massive wealth distorts politics, and what can be done to combat it. Winters is professor of political science and director of the Equality Development and Globalization Studies (EDGS) program at Northwestern University. His research focuses on oligarchy in the US and around the world, historically and today. His forthcoming book, Domination through Democracy: Why Oligarchs Win, will be published by Penguin Random House later this year. Winters is also an expert on the politics of Southeast Asia, especially Indonesia. He is an award-winning teacher, and his book Oligarchy (Cambridge, 2011) won the Luebbert Prize in 2012 for the best book in comparative politics from the American Political Science Association.

The separation of church and state is a foundational principle of American democracy, but that doesn’t mean that religion hasn’t played an important role in American politics. Throughout American history, varied political movements have claimed religious motivations and scriptural justifications, sometimes in contradictory ways (e.g. both to support and oppose systems of racial hierarchy). Today, evangelical Christian institutions are powerful political organizers, often promoting a nationalist and White-exclusive vision of American identity. These ideas have deep historical roots and continue to undermine principles of inclusive democracy today. Anthea Butler is the Geraldine R. Segal Professor in American Social Thought at the University of Pennsylvania. A historian of African American and American religion, Butler’s research and writing spans African American religion and history, race, politics, Evangelicalism, gender and sexuality, media, and popular culture. Butler is the winner of the 2022 Martin Marty Award from the American Academy of Religion. She was a contributor to the book, The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story, and her most recent book is White Evangelical Racism: The Politics of Morality in America. https://uncpress.org/book/9781469661179/white-evangelical-racism/ https://www.msnbc.com/author/anthea-butler-ncpn840911

This special episode of The Context includes voices from three previous guests on the show: James Comey, Stacey Abrams, and David Pepper. All three have had significant careers in public service, and all three have also written multiple novels. In these short excerpts, they all also argue that their creative writing is a method to communicate some of their knowledge and insights about democracy and public institutions. James Comey spent many years in public service, culminating in serving as Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation from 2013 until 2017. He is also a senior fellow at the Kettering Foundation. He’s written three novels, including one that will be published next year. Stacey Abrams served in the Georgia House of Representatives from 2007 until 2017, including six years as minority leader. She ran two celebrated gubernatorial campaigns in Georgia in 2018 and 2022. She’s written eleven novels. David Pepper is a former elected official and an adjunct law professor who served as chair of the Ohio Democratic Party from 2015 until 2021. He is also a senior fellow at the Kettering Foundation. He’s written six novels. https://jamescomeybooks.com/ https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/authors/2214766/stacey-abrams/ https://davidpepper.com/ https://davidpepper.substack.com/p/2025-a-novel

“Administrative burdens” is a term for the frictions people experience when interacting with government—learning how a program works, taking the time to fill out paperwork, and experiencing the frustrations and shame that can come from the process. Sometimes this is accidental—just the result of a bureaucracy failing to think through how it interacts with citizens. But it can also be purposeful—a way for politicians and policymakers to limit or direct programs without openly admitting to it. In this conversation, Donald Moynihan describes how administrative burdens affect how citizens experience government agencies and how interactions between the three branches of federal government can get in the way of efficient and effective public service. Donald Moynihan is a public policy professor at the University of Michigan's Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy and codirects the Better Government Lab at Georgetown University. He previously served as the McCourt Chair for Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy and as director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s La Follette School. His work focuses on the administrative burdens citizens encounter during interactions with government. In addition to his research, Moynihan is the president of the Association for Public Policy and Management. https://donmoynihan.substack.com/

In 2015, Crossroads Church, a majority-White evangelical megachurch based in Cincinnati, Ohio, launched a new program to address racial division and racism. In this episode, Hahrie Han discusses her new book Undivided: The Quest for Racial Solidarity in an American Church, which tells the story of this program and its participants, many of whom changed their thinking, behavior, and relationships after taking part. The impact of Crossroads’s Undivided program demonstrates some of the elements of successful antiracist organizing —or organizing in general. These elements include sustained commitment, building relationships across difference, and empowering people to find their own solutions. Hahrie Han is the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Professor of Political Science, the inaugural director of the SNF Agora Institute, and the director of the P3 research lab at Johns Hopkins University. An elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, she has published four previous books. She was named a 2022 Social Innovation Thought Leader of the Year by the World Economic Forum’s Schwab Foundation. She has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The New Republic, among other national publications. The daughter of Korean immigrants, she lives in Baltimore, Maryland. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/669326/undivided-by-hahrie-han/

Donald Trump has been elected the 47th president of the United States. He will enter the White House with his party in control of both the House and Senate and with a Supreme Court mostly composed of Republican appointments. This election will have real impacts on American policy, which will not only change the lives of Americans, but also reverberate around the world, from Ukraine to Israel to Taiwan. Early signs of what to expect from the incoming Trump administration, and the new Republican-controlled federal government more generally, can be seen in who Trump appoints to high-level positions in the White House and who wins leadership in the Senate. And until the next election, public reaction to these and other actions will be the best way for politicians, the media, and citizens to influence government. Chris Matthews began his career in politics, including serving as a speechwriter for President Jimmy Carter and as administrative assistant to Speaker of the House Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill Jr. But for most of the last 40 years, Matthews has been a journalist. He has been a syndicated columnist for the San Francisco Examiner, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the Washington Monthly. Most famously, he was the news anchor of Hardball with Chris Matthews on MSNBC from 1994 until 2020. He’s written ten books and holds 34 honorary degrees. He’s also a senior fellow at the Kettering Foundation.

Argentina’s constitution is among the oldest democratic constitutions in the world, and in significant respects it was modeled after the constitution of the United States. But Argentine democracy hasn’t always been stable. Between the 1930s and 1970s, the government was overturned by military coups six times. Even when there have been free and fair elections, some elected leaders have governed as authoritarians. This experience of dictatorship is a source of trauma for Argentinian citizens—and also a source for the rebuilding and resilience of democracy since 1983. This conversation with Roberto Saba and Steven Levitsky explores the history of Argentine democracy and some of the parallels the country shares with the United States. Roberto Saba obtained his law degree (JD) at Buenos Aires University and his Master’s (LLM) and doctoral (JSD) degrees at Yale Law School. He was the cofounder of the Association for Civil Rights (an organization inspired by the American ACLU) and served as its executive director (2000-2009). He was also executive director of Citizen Power Foundation, Transparency International’s Chapter in Argentina (1995-1998), and dean of Palermo University School of Law (2009-2016). Saba is currently a professor of constitutional law at Buenos Aires University and at Palermo University Law Schools. Saba has published on a wide variety of subjects, including deliberative democracy, judicial review, constitutional theory, freedom of expression, freedom of information and structural inequality. His connection with the Kettering Foundation began in 1992, when he served as an international fellow at the foundation. Since then, he has participated in numerous Kettering seminars and workshops. He is currently a board member of the Charles F. Kettering Foundation. Steven Levitsky is David Rockefeller Professor of Latin American Studies and professor of government at Harvard University, director of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard, and a senior fellow at the Kettering Foundation. His research focuses on democracy and authoritarianism. He and Daniel Ziblatt are authors of How Democracies Die (2018) and Tyranny of the Minority: Why American Democracy Reached the Breaking Point (2023), both of which were New York Times bestsellers.