The Catturd Deficit

Some say Margaret Atwood wrote the dystopia that best describes America's bleakest future. We say it was Robin Marty.  Her “The New Handbook for a Post-Roe America” laid out almost exactly that sort of war Republicans would wage on reproductive freedom with their new 6-3 Supreme Court majority, and how to still get health care by any means necessary.  And she’s living the nightmare of the post-Dobbs South first-hand as the executive director of West Alabama Women’s Center. Please donate to support their life-saving work. We talked about what her clinic can’t tell their patients. She told us why the blue states have let her down. And she leaves us with a vision of how abortion rights could help spark a movement that inspires a new day in the South. Catch up on all the episodes of “How are you feeling about democracy?” here. Special thanks to members of this Patreon for sponsoring and sharing this podcast. If you want to back what we’re doing, please join the earlyworm society – free or paid, your support matters. 

Donald Trump's presidency sucked. Everyone agrees. For you, it may have sucked because he bumbled us into the worst response to the worst pandemic in a century. For the vast right-wing conspiracy, it sucked because we still have pretty much the same government we had before he took and refused to leave office. That's why the Heritage Foundation has brought together the GOP establishment to craft both a plan to unwind democracy and a growing personnel database of loyalists willing to help stomp out freedom. Historian Thomas Zimmer has been explaining what's behind Project 2025 in his Democracy Americana newsletter and on the "Is This Democracy?" podcast he co-hosts. We talked to him about Project 2025 and how the right plans to exploit the presidency should Trump grab it, again. This time they will be ready. And so must we. That's why we started Project 2024. So thank you, Project 2025. Thanks to you we know for sure that the right plans to criminalize porn, track every abortion in America, fire just about every expert in the U.S. government... And that's just the beginning.

Professor Carol Anderson discusses the true history of Black America's fight for democracy, connecting past oppression to current threats. Topics include voter suppression, historical racism, and the importance of fair democratic processes in ensuring equal access to voting rights.

Marcy Wheeler doesn’t want to hear your complaints about Merrick Garland.  She has her own. But she doesn’t want to hear yours. Not yet. Why? Because it’s time to save democracy. The publisher of the essential Emptywheel.net and a renowned national security and civil liberties reporter for decades, Marcy Wheeler joined us this week to unspool the “Ball of Thread” that has led us to the point where a party that is embracing fascism has almost even odds of taking over all three branches of our government. No one follows the legal machinations of Trump’s legal mire more rigorously than Marcy. And she does it without ever losing track of the context that brought us to this point. Most importantly, she makes the case for the rationality that Trump, Putin and all their authoritarian friends are aiming to destroy. Because this episode is so jammed packed with detail that may have been familiar to you at one point but has been lost in the flood of MAGA shit we’re forced to endure, I’ve littered the transcript with links to her site so you can dig in deeper. Catch up on all the episodes of “How are you feeling about democracy?” here. Special thanks to members of this Patreon for sponsoring and sharing this podcast. If you want to support what we’re doing, please join the earlyworm society – free or paid, your support matters.   

How did we get to the point that it’s good news for Donald Trump, according to The New York Times, when a *majority* of Americans think he has committed serious crimes? Jamison Foser can tell you. He writes the Finding Gravity newsletter and he's also a strategist who co-created Media Matters. And he now advises Take Back the Court. America’s right wing is so good at creating and spreading myths that many liberals have bought into two big ones. The first is that we have a liberal media. And not just at MSNBC’s weeknight lineup. There’s a belief that everything from The New York Times to Disney to Taylor Swift to Bud Light’s ad agency has a left-leaning agenda. Not that these entities are following their own intentions or market forces but that there is a left-leaning gravity that cannot be defied. Because woke or something. The second myth is that running against the Supreme Court only works for Republicans. Democrats have long believed that actively running to overturn Citizens United or the gutting of the Voting Acts Act or Dobbs by making the Supreme Court reflective of American voters could never work out for them. Even though it's pretty much the only thing that works for the Republican party, who've recognized that an activated base is the secret to winning close elections, almost everywhere. When myths are so strong, you can only call them one thing — frauds. And almost no one is better at calling out frauds than Jamison Foser. If you follow him at all, you probably know there's one media company that particularly upsets Jamison. So we started there.

Those with the most power tend to oppose democracy. And that even seems to be true as we face actual fascism. Dr. Jennifer Mercieca -- our guest for the second episode of "How are you feeling about democracy?" -- told me that as long as there has been a United States those with the most to lose have been the most afraid of rule by the people. Her first book explored our Founding Fictions. And she thought that might inspire America to become more democratic. Instead, we got Donald Trump. Her second book "Demagogue for President: The Rhetorical Genius of Donald Trump" exposed the verbal weapons Trump was wielding as he tried to take and hold power.  Now she's warning us that Donald Trump is no longer running just to be a demagogue. He wants to be a dictator. We spoke to Dr. Mercieca about her love of democracy, Donald Trump's rhetorical yet evil genius, and how she accidentally helped inspire the project that you are now involved in -- earlyworm. 

Our first guest on "How are you feeling about democracy" is Ari Berman, Mother Jones' national voting rights correspondent. Ari has literally written the book on voting rights. His GIVE US THE BALLOT was lauded for its telling of the modern struggle to expand voting access against the backlash to the civil rights movement. And his new book MINORITY RULE is the book democracy has been waiting for. Pre-order it now. Ari gave us a look at some of the nation's worst laboratories of autocracy and contrasted them with the states where democracy is being reborn. And he told us how America's democracy problem is much bigger than just Donald Trump.