Can Maine Democrats Beat Susan Collins?

Can Maine Democrats Beat Susan Collins?

Dear subscribers: This post was supposed to go out last week, but due to a family emergency I had to suspend writing and publishing temporarily. All paid subscribers will receive an extra week in their billing cycle to compensate for the inconvenience. And now back to our regularly scheduled programming! Maine Senator Susan Collins has long been positioned as a persuadable moderate Republican who nevertheless has a strong record of voting for extremist policies and Trump nominees. Here, Collins meets with Ketanji Brown Jackson on March 8, 2022, who was successfully confirmed as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court with three Republican votes: Collins, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and Mitt Romney of Utah. Photo credit: Renee Bouchard/Wikimedia Commons [https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:KBJ-Collins.jpg] Our opening clip is from a 2020 interview [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSwvBheTmcQ] in which Susan Collins, Republican Senator from Maine up for re-election this November, expresses “concern” about then-President Donald Trump’s remarks that he would not accept the election results if he lost. Democrats targeted Collins’s seat as part of their plan to win the Senate majority. So, when Democrat Graham Platner, dogged by scandal and credible allegations of sexual violence, I knew Amy Fried could help us think more insightfully about what had happened in Maine, that state’s political culture, and whether a new candidate has the time and savvy to win. Fried is Professor Emerita of Political Science, and the former John Mitchell Nickerson Professor of Political Science, at the University of Maine, and a former President of the New England Political Science Association. She has served as the Policy Advocate for the Rising Tide Center, funded by a five-year National Science Foundation ADVANCE-Institutional Transformation grant Frored co-wrote and for which she served as Co-Principal Investigator. She is also an alternate delegate to the Maine convention that will pick a new candidate to replace Collins. Neil and I began the political obituary for Platner here [https://clairepotter.substack.com/p/as-maine-goes]in case you missed it. Our theme music this week is “Susie Q,” written by Dan Hawkins and Robert Chaisson, performed by Johnny Savage & the Riders, and licensed through LickD [https://app.lickd.co/music/artists/johnny-savage-the-riders]. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Claire Potter: I am here with one of my favorite political scientists, and definitely my favorite political scientist from Maine, Amy Fried of Political Sightlines [https://amyfried.substack.com/p/about-political-sightlines-and-author]. Amy, can you tell our listeners a little bit about your Substack? Amy Fried: I decided to start it about a year ago: I always knew I would be writing some about Maine politics because I’ve lived in Maine since 1997; I thought I’d write about other things as well. But somehow, with everything that’s been going on in Maine, particularly the Senate race. But there’s also this interesting race in Maine’s second congressional district, one of the few competitive house races really out there; it’s a Trump district with a now a very conservative Democrat who’s not running again. It seems like Maine has taken over. It certainly has. Last week, Neil Young and I talked about the implosion of the Graham Platner campaign. Before that, when the sexting scandal occurred in May, I wrote a post called “Who’s Afraid of Graham Platner [https://clairepotter.substack.com/p/whos-afraid-of-graham-platner],” in which I talked about whether sexting was a political issue or not. It turned out there was a lot more bad stuff out there, which a number of political journalists told me on X, and it makes me think that some of these stories were more well and widely known than Democrats who endorsed and supported Platner had imagined. Well, that’s certainly possible. I heard various rumors over time as well. I think that when the earliest controversies about the tattoo and the Reddit posts came out, Platner had a whole narrative about how he had changed, how he had worked through a lot of things in his life—including a lot of anger. The tattoo he just attributed to being drunk in Croatia with a bunch of his buddies, even though the social media posts were afterwards. Platner created this whole redemption arc, and Americans like that sort of thing a lot, I think. It always seemed to me to have certain kinds of Christian overtones that I didn’t necessarily relate to, and Maine’s a very secular state. But it’s in the cultural water currently, right? So, a lot of people were willing to say: That’s fine. That was in the past. They could believe Platner’s story because they liked other things about him. They liked his message. And he certainly was exciting. Lots of people were going to the town halls, and he got tons of volunteers. It fit a political moment in which people are somewhat anti-establishment. In addition, Platner’s major opponent initially was Governor Janet Mills, who’s 78 years old, and people don’t want older politicians. So, voters were willing to let a lot go when the campaign began. I think when that started to change was the sexting story in May, these texts between him and his various partners after he got married. After that came the first story, from Lindsey Fifield, about abuse. But with the sexting story, I started to see some people pulling away from him. Finally, there was Jenny Racicot’s allegation that Platner raped her. And I think the big difference, even before that, was that we had gone from things that happened a while ago, in words primarily--messages on Reddit and such--to behaviors, and they were more recent. All of those incidents—the sexting, the alleged violence towards women—were within the last five years. I agree with you: I think it escalated, as you’re saying, and on a certain level, the early scandals allowed us to become inoculated to later scandals, and then that too crumbled. With the Nazi tattoo, I thought, I’ve known a lot of troubled young men who’ve gone into the Marines. I’ve known a lot of troubled young men who’ve gotten weird tattoos when they were drunk. Platner doesn’t have a whole lot of formal education, so it also seemed plausible to me that he really had thought it was just a tough guy tattoo. And then that level of believing and making excuses takes you to the next level: sexting. Is this really something a voter should be concerned about? Isn’t this something his wife should be concerned about? Two other red flags that I think many people like me missed. Apparently in 2024 there was a Facebook post by Jenny Racicot on a Facebook forum where women identify men that might be cheating on them or might be married while trying to date them. Racicot saw his picture, wrote the woman and said: This is a problem, PM me. But the other red flag, and this allows us to turn to your post this week about misogyny on the left [https://amyfried.substack.com/p/misogyny-platner-campaign-maine], was that very early on, a woman who was very high up in the campaign resigned. Genevieve McDonnell resigned in October 2025 after the Reddit posts and the tattoo came out. That should have been a signal for the rest of us to step back and look a little more coldly at this, right? I think so. And you know, people sometimes say Maine is just a big, small town. I don’t live far from Genevieve McDonald; probably an hour and a half away. I know people who know her and they said to me, I really trust her. Very oddly, it turns out that someone I know also knows Jenny Racicot: Jenny was her massage therapist. So, there are all of these like connections. But one of the things Genevieve was upset about was that the vetting was so poor. She said, I would have never joined this campaign if I knew they hadn’t really checked him out. She was also upset because of the way she was being treated by the consultants. Because even though they tried to create this flavor of it being very homegrown main campaign, Platner was recruited by people from out of state and that’s who was really running the campaign. Right. And there’s a lot of money in political consulting. I mean, some political consultants routinely recruit candidates who they actually know aren’t going to win because of the fundraising. If you raise ten million dollars, the political consultant gets about twenty-five percent off the top, the media people get another twenty-five percent, and so on. So, there’s a lot of money passing through political campaigns. But the political consultant, and maybe you can remind us of his name, had also been part of the Sanders movement since 2015, where had misogynist elements, and this guy apparently had been kicked off Summer Lee’s campaign for sexually harassing people. So, as we were all focused on “should we or shouldn’t we” with Graham Platner, there was other evidence we should have been looking at. Absolutely. The one who had this sexual harassment thing from the other campaign is Daniel Maroff, and he was one of the two main recruiters. He had been involved with Sanders, involved with Fetterman and a number of other people. and interestingly, Platner wasn’t even his first choice. They were first trying to get this guy who is a labor leader in Bath, where naval ships are built. It’s one of these things which is very important, a local part of the military industrial complex. And Susan Collins is always bragging about getting the contracts for Bath Ironworks. But it’s also a place with very strong organized labor. And so initially, they had tried to recruit this labor leader, and they found something in his background they thought could be a problem. So, they decided to go find someone else and they ended up with Platner and didn’t have much time. Now, why didn’t they have much time? Because they had a schedule they wanted to follow. They wanted him to launch by Labor Day. To launch by Labor Day, you then have to make the launch video, you have to get some training, you have to get some of the legal stuff set up so they can start taking contributions. So, it meant that they were kind of pushed up against their own self-imposed deadline and they went ahead with him. Maroff, after his first conversation with Platner, called Mo Katz, who’s another one of these consultants, and was very involved in the Zohran Mandami campaign. Actually, the Democratic Socialists recently came out with a statement saying maybe this isn’t a good guy to work with because he doesn’t do things very well, they didn’t really vet him. They did this super-cheapo job: normally it takes at least a month to do a full vetting. They create a whole big book, hundreds of pages, so you don’t have any surprises—or you may even decide not to run. At least you know what’s in the person’s background. But instead of doing a month-long one that would cost at least twenty thousand dollars, they did a cheapo one that took three days and it cost about, I don’t remember, $4500, something like that. That shows kind of an arrogance and a lack of seriousness. Well, let’s talk a little bit also about this fictional outsider candidate who’s supposed to be the magic man for Democrats, something I don’t remember being a thing in politics until Donald Trump was so successful, or maybe right before—the Tea Party. The problem of a sketchy political consultant is amplified when the candidate is also not a politician, or an experienced campaigner. People who have run before are aware of what a good campaign looks like or doesn’t look like. Platner himself might have thought, in all of his inexperience, that none of these things in his background were that important, and been very willing to take the political consultants’ opinion that he had something special that would override his vulnerabilities. Do you think the political consultant even knew about these things? I think that there’s a lot they didn’t know, but they should have known more because they should have done a serious job in looking at his background and asking him questions. One thing that struck me about the sexting story was that it was a few days after the campaign launched when Platner’s wife Amy Gertner told Genevieve McDonald about it. They shouldn’t have waited until after the campaign started to find these things out, and it shouldn’t have been up to the candidate and the wife to just volunteer the information. That should be something that someone running a campaign would ask about. Do you have a history of XYZ? You go through a whole list of possibilities, have them tell you about it. and then decide what to do about it. The flip side of this is that we have someone in the White House, Donald Trump, who has been convicted by a civil jury of sexual assault. We have Ken Paxton, running for Senate in Texas, who allegedly committed Biblical sins against his marriage. We have former Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz, who engaged underage sex workers. There are any number of Republicans about whom various ugly sexual shenanigans, some of them illegal, some of them immoral, have been revealed. One of the things I remember hearing from people is that Democrats lean too far towards punishing masculine misbehavior. The phrase they use is “HR Lady politics:” you know, “Democrats are just too sensitive and Republicans let men get out there and be men and the voters love it.” Maybe the Democrats need to sort of adopt some tolerance for human error and flaws, but they draw the line with violence against women. In point of fact, it looks like Maine voters did care: Platner was leaking support even as he was winning that primary by such big numbers, right? His numbers did start going down in the matchup with Collins. He started out being ahead by eight, ten, maybe even more, points. Then, by the time of the primary and immediately after, it was much closer. There was even a poll with Collins ahead. So, I think this information really made a difference. I heard a lot of people saying during the campaign, Well, there’s Trump out there, so we shouldn’t care about that. But I think there is actually a different ethic among at least many Democrats where they don’t find this sort of thing acceptable. People didn’t know him well, and I think a lot of people were worried about what was going to happen next, and what was going to come out next. Platner kept saying there’s nothing more, there’s nothing more—then something new would happen. Voters just really lost faith in him. About that big primary win: I think that in some ways it’s being misinterpreted. By election day, Janet Mills had suspended her campaign, and it was essentially an uncontested race. There was one more person on the ballot, David Costello, who was really not doing much of anything—no events, he didn’t have much money. Very few people knew about him. Then there was a write-in candidate who was trying to get some purchase, but how do you do that when your name isn’t even on the ballot? So, I saw news reports, both interviews and in print, with some voters who said: I do have concerns, but he’s going to be the nominee and I’m going to vote for him. So, some portion of the people who voted for him weren’t necessarily hard-core Platnerites. And, putting my little political science hat on, there’s some interesting research about what is called “mandate construction,” in which after an election, the person who wins tries to make a case for why they won that will be politically useful. For example, Ronald Reagan said: I won because people wanted a tax cut, so let’s cut taxes. But in fact, a lot of people voted for Reagan because they were upset with high energy prices and inflation. It really it wasn’t a big anti-tax moment. In the same way, Platner and his supporters have said he won because everybody supported everything he had to say. And I don’t think that’s quite right. But then there was the charisma argument. I remember listening to an interview that Platner did with Lulu Garcia-Navarro [https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/16/magazine/graham-platner-interview.html], and up to that point, I hadn’t been impressed with him. I’d thought, this is Maine, I vote in Massachusetts, and I don’t have to be impressed with him. But the interview was deeply moving. I remember him talking about his friends being killed in Iraq and he started to cry and get very emotional. The video in which he dropped out of the race was also extremely emotional—and a little scary. He has something that a lot of male candidates don’t, which is the capacity to at least appear to be projecting an authentic self. But that too was a problem, since he presented himself as working-class when, in fact, that wasn’t true. There was a lot of discussion about that, and part of it got into: what does it mean to be working class? But Platner didn’t come from a working-class family, that’s for sure. His father’s an attorney, and his mother had been very involved in Democratic politics and owns a pretty upscale restaurant. Then, they tried to get their son, in a way all parents want to, the best education they could. They sent him to fancy boarding school; then he came back and he went to a prep school in Bangor—and a lot of people who go to there aren’t fancy because they attend for free. If you don’t have a local high school in your school district, the state of Maine will pay for you to go to private school. Wasn’t there a Supreme Court case [https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/20-1088_dbfi.pdf] about that? Yes; it had to do with a Christian school taking public funds that didn’t want to hire gay people. Let’s pivot back to your post about misogyny on the left. Platner in fact stayed alive as long as he did in part because so many people, perhaps outside the state of Maine, were willing to tolerate bad behavior from men. I remember at one point this phrase sort of popped up about Graham Platner being a “bad boyfriend;” I think around the Lindsay Fifield revelations. Even though I wasn’t sure I believed her, because she was a Republican political operative, I still thought: That’s not being a bad boyfriend. That’s being a really screwed up, violent and scary person. So why did it satisfy some on the left to say that Platner was just a bad boyfriend? Young men moved decisively towards the Republican party in the last presidential election. Since then, there’s been a lot of interest in trying to figure out how to recapture them. Now, one thing I can say, as someone who follows polls, is there’s not that much you have to do right now, because those same young men who moved towards Trump now can’t stand him. They’ve totally flipped. But I think there is still an interest in trying to bring those folks into, or back to, the party, even though women have been the democratic base for a long time. Women became more democratic than men in 1980. In 1980 that, for the first time, the Republican Party platform opposed Roe—and the Equal Rights Amendment, which they had supported when it was first introduced in the early 20th century. Right. The gender gap. So, there’s been this recent interest in getting someone with a particular kind of style, a swagger, to appeal to young men. But I think it goes over a line at points, and I wrote the piece with that in mind after that abuse story. That’s when Platner went on the Chris Hayes show and said, “I was a bad boyfriend.” I thought: Is he just totally misunderstanding this? If so, he needed to take women’s studies 101 because he doesn’t understand gendered violence and abuse, and he doesn’t understand how it affects women’s lives. Is there also something in our current culture that makes it possible for Platner, and/or his political consultants, to ignore misogyny? Yes. Feminists used to talk a lot about what our experiences were. Whether it was in consciousness-raising groups or whatever, people talked about what it meant to live in a female body and how they were treated by men, experiences that have included sexual harassment and too often, sexual assault. I think a lot of the feminist movement is now professional and institutionalized. We focus on policies, or on these other things run by organizations. Somehow, we’ve stopped talking so much about the day-to-day experiences of women. There’s a lesson there, because I think the debate over Platner would have been different if feminism had been part of the overall conversation. Instead, Platner’s campaign was so focused on class, class inequality, the oligarchy, and then relating policies to that, with some focus on war and peace. But mostly it was about Medicare for all and other things we could be getting if we raised taxes on the rich and decided to care about ordinary people. Platner talked only a little bit about race and really did not talk about women at all. When the anniversary of Dobbs, the decision that overturned Roe, came around, he did talk about abortion; and he was endorsed by Planned Parenthood Action. Then of it turns out that he’s also the guy who’s been accused of taking his condom off in the middle of intercourse and thinking that was really funny, which—maybe because I’m gay—I’ve never heard of before. It’s just an awful, cruel, dangerous and disrespectful thing to do. Let me add some other cross-cutting themes. The Maine Democratic Party has all of these great candidates who are popping to the top to do the Kamala Harris thing: you know, 100 days and go! Chuck Schumer stepped on a lot of those candidates [https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/13/us/politics/maine-democrats-schumer-stay-out-senate-race.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share] during the primary campaign because he wanted Janet Mills. So, for me, one of the cross-cutting themes is age versus youth. I am a great admirer of Janet Mills. How she stood up to Trump for trans kids and won is a lesson for all of us. She’s obviously smart and a great fighter. She is also 78. I have very strong feelings about how old the Senate is. We’re seeing the Republicans are kind of suffering from that now, having lost two of their most senior members to illness and death. In addition, it never seemed to me like Janet Mills really wanted it. She was obviously very popular with a range of Mainers, but I didn’t feel like she had that campaign in her. Having watched Mills in two other campaigns, I think she was different. You know, she got a late start. She could have declared much earlier, before Platner created a different dynamic. If she had declared a month after that whole “see you in court” confrontation with Trump, she could have been way, way ahead. But she didn’t do that, and then she took her time. And yes, there were a lot of people who were thinking of running. I’m not sure if the ones that are in it now are those people, because they claim they always wanted to be governor and not a senator, but who knows? Other people were waiting for Janet to decide and then all of a sudden, Platner bursts upon the scene. Mills also didn’t campaign terribly hard. She did a lot of very small events. She didn’t push very much or remind people of things she had done, which I thought was kind of a problem. You can’t expect these days for people to know. There were also some things that people on the left were unhappy with her about. She had vetoed some labor bills. And tribal sovereignty is a really big issue in Maine: while she had taken a lot of steps towards expanding that, the push was for full tribal sovereignty and she didn’t support that. She had a legalistic reason about an agreement signed decades ago, and believed Maine was acting within that. So, there were a lot of people on the left who called her racist because of it, and those two things really threw the entire campaign. That said, she signed a sweeping reproductive rights bill: Maine had been pro-choice, but this protected women up to the point when any doctor would say it is acceptable to have an abortion, which meant that women with dangerous pregnancies or non-viable fetuses late in a pregnancy could have abortions in Maine. That was a big step, and she was very good overall on trans rights, which was very controversial. he Maine Christian Civic League was talking about going out and getting signatures for referenda to overturn those two things, which they didn’t end up doing. My point is: it’s not like those were like necessarily easy things to do. Yet even though she had done a lot of things like that and signed a state-level Family Medical Leave Act into law, she had these other problems. A lot of unions were unhappy, and I think that is really part of how the Platner candidacy came to be, because union people were interested in finding someone to run against her. Can you become a paying reader for only $5/month? So, that’s another backstory that actually explains the elevation of Platner in a way that that maybe people who aren’t from Maine wouldn’t understand. Yes, and I think ties that intersects with the lack of attention to women’s issues. Obviously, a lot of unions have women, but with when the voter base is in places like the Bath Ironworks—this is a very male union. You have all these electricians, pipe fitters and welders, jobs which tend to be male. The Maine Education Association was another big union backer, and I don’t know them directly, so maybe I shouldn’t say this, but I don’t think they really had women’s issues on their mind either. When all of this started coming out, like that thing about being a bad boyfriend, I wrote a piece about how Platner should learn more about gendered abuse and harassment in women’s lives. There were people who tried to get that to his campaign to get them to listen: one told me that she thought women in the campaign felt the same way, but there just was no response. The phrase “bad boyfriend” is so trivializing. It’s very different from saying “I was a bad man.” Saying you’re a bad boyfriend kind of conveys: “I was I was late to the restaurant all the time, I didn’t open doors, I forgot the flowers, blah blah.” It really does trivialize the nature of these charges. I think what you’re saying about labor is very interesting too, because of course one of the big struggles nationally over working class votes is when both parties say they support workers, they really do mean white men. They don’t mean Hispanic people. They don’t mean Black people. They don’t mean women or LGBTQ+ folks. Which is nuts, because there is a labor tradition of supporting marginalized workers. Alan Bérubé wrote about a maritime union that was very pro-gay, and we’ve seen a lot of really good queer and feminist politics coming out of labor unions. If, in fact, you’re saying this archetypic typical working-class voter is really a white man or a young white man who can’t get the training to be a pipe fitter or something like that, you’re really not dealing with the history and, in many ways, the present of labor, right? And Frances Perkins, Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Secretary of Labor and the first woman in the job, is from Maine. Right. Maine is a really interesting state for labor because there are so many different kinds of workers. There’s the big maritime trade, there is the interior, there’s the seasonal trade: what I am getting at is that a lot of people who I’ve been talking to about this race, I think fundamentally misapprehend the political culture of Maine. Maine is not Connecticut; it’s not even Massachusetts. Maine is a place that, in my understanding and in my experience campaigning there for Sarah Gideon, cares about itself as a kind of state culture, a set of values organized as a state. Susan Collins has been expert at mobilizing that. I mean, I know somebody, a Democrat, who used to work with her in the Senate who said she’s a really good person. And she’s a really moral person. If the worst thing they could think of to say aboutCollins was that she started dating her husband before he left his previous wife, that really doesn’t hold a candle to a Nazi tattoo. Sure, sure. When I moved to Maine, which now is almost 30 years ago, what people told me about the political culture was that it had a big emphasis on civility and bipartisanship, and that people liked to be able to talk to each other and be kind of reasonable with. They liked people who would be respected and independent in Washington. That’s the tradition. In the 1950s, Margaret Chase Smith, a Republican, made a speech questioning McCarthyism, so she has all these things named after her. The federal courthouse in my town, Bangor, is the Margaret Chase Smith courthouse. You walk in, and there’s a quote from her 1950 speech, the Declaration of Conscience [https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/resources/pdf/SmithDeclaration.pdf?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email], which is about standing up for certain values and not giving way to fake scandals and calumnies; not attacking people for no reason. Maine has elected other Republicans in that vein—Bill Cohen, Olympia Snow—and independents who caucused with Democrats. Maine voters are calm and even-handed. You may not agree with them on everything, but they’re willing to talk. In a way, I thought when Platner first came along that might be a problem, that he was too hot, and Janet Mills was a better fit. The national misapprehension of Maine political culture is interesting to me at a moment when so many races nationalize. When it was clear that Platner had to drop out, but hadn’t done it yet, the New York Times wrote a piece in which they had three or four politicians they thought might succeed, a couple of businessmen, and then actor Patrick Dempsey and historian Heather Cox Richardson. You know, Heather’s great, but I thought: no, she is not running for Senate. Then she put out a video explaining why she wouldn’t. But I thought: only in New York would they believe that the name recognition of a Patrick Dempsey or a Heather Cox Richardson would be the thing that Maine voters were actually looking for. So, what do what do Maine voters want in the Senate candidate who is going to be picked by the July 25 nominating convention in Augusta [https://mainedems.org/advisory-mdp-to-host-u-s-senate-nominating-convention/]? I think that there are some things they want that Platner had. They want someone who’s going to be aggressive and is going to challenge the Trump administration. In the policy vein, they want a person who are going to stand up for policies like Medicare for all. They want to raise taxes on the rich, preserve social security, and oppose foreign wars. And I think they also want somebody who in some ways is going to run a campaign like Platner did, with lots of town halls. Because it is true, the kind of thing that Platner did in terms of always getting out there, talking to voters—we really had not seen anything like that. It’s also very rare nationally. The only person I can think of who at least I knew something about doing that was Beto O’Rourke in Texas when he ran for Senate. He did a lot of big events, rallies with Q and A’s. So, Maine Democrats will want someone who’s going to be accessible and come off as strong. Being less intense and having a little more experience and knowledge may be helpful. That is something that tends to be good for the swing voter in Maine, usually an older woman, either working class, or an educated worker like a nurse. You know, someone with a very like practical, day-to-day, job. They know what that job is and how to do it. In the past, folks like that have tended to like Susan Collins, and they realize that they would be losing some seniority if he she’s replaced. On the other hand, her popularity has gone down, and I think someone has an opportunity, if they can both keep the energy that Platner had and persuade some of those voters. By the way, in the last New York Times/Siena poll before Platner dropped out, which had him ahead only by two points, he was only winning 4% of Trump voters. Collins was winning 10% of Kamala Harris voters. So it wasn’t as though Platner was doing what he said he could do. If a new candidate could pick away at more of those Harris voters, they really could win. My experience on the Gideon campaign six years ago was that voters would say, Of course I’m voting for Joe Biden—and I’m voting for Susan Collins. So, there were all of these ticket splitters who didn’t dislike Sarah Gideon. They were nice about her, but the big line was: She’s not from Maine. She just moved here twenty years ago and she’s not from Maine. Susan Collins is really from Maine, and she really gets us. I guess I want to end on this question. I can’t imagine what the attack line is on Susan Collins. We’ve hung Brett Kavanaugh around her neck. I don’t think that really grabs people anymore, so what does? I think the line has got to be that she’s not the Susan Collins you liked before, that she’s done good things, but she’s not the same person. That’s a very different tone than “Susan Collins is a bad person,” which was the Platner line. Say it more in sadness than in anger. She’s not the same person. She’s voting with Trump more than 90% of the time. Collins said she would have so much power when she was chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, and yet she doesn’t, because she lets them run roughshod. She put this guy into power at the OMB who didn’t really believe that Congress has any power and that the President should run everything. She voted for him; she’s voted for all these terrible people. She’s not really using her power the way she said she would. Yes, the Collins campaign can keep running all these ads about how Susan Collins got money for a firehouse here and there or did this little thing, but in the big picture she’s not doing what she should. She voted for the One Big Beautiful bill to proceed, then she voted against it. Before she voted against it, she got a little bit of money in the bill for this rural hospital fund, which is much less than what Maine lost under the bill. Then she runs ads about how she got all this money for rural hospitals. When people said, But she she’s responsible for the One Big Beautiful Bill passing, one of the fact checkers came out and said, No, she’s not, because she voted against it. But she did vote for it to proceed. So, it’s very hard sometimes. She can be very, very slippery. And I think when debates happen, she will pull that sort of thing. With Kavanaugh, it is an old story. I think the way to frame that is that she either completely misjudged him, so she has poor judgment, or she was not honest about what she thought. Neither of them is good. Paying subscribers, look tomorrow for an exclusive newsletter with this weekend’s short takes, updates on what I am reading and watching this summer, and a poll! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit clairepotter.substack.com/subscribe [https://clairepotter.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]

As Maine Goes

We began this episode with Graham Platner’s announcement [https://www.youtube.com/shorts/mQbcsaoaiZU] on Wednesday that he will step down as the Democratic nominee for Senate in Maine. Our theme music this week is Born Again [https://t.lickd.co/l/bO43EJp9q5n], written and sung by Jelly Roll, copyrighted music licensed from Lickd [https://lickd.co/]. Former president of the Maine Senate Troy Jackson and Senate primary candidate Graham Platner at a Portland Hearts of Pine match on September 27, 2025. Jackson is now a candidate to replace Platner on the ballot. Photo credit: MAINEiac4434/Wikimedia Commons [https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jackson_and_Platner_at_Hearts_of_Pine.jpg] In the news: * On Wednesday, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, who ran a construction crew in Houston, because the most recent casualty [https://www.fox26houston.com/news/timeline-surveillance-video-family-account-help-reconstruct-final-moments-before-deadly-ice-shooting-hous] of Donald Trump’s deportation machine. Araujo was approached by ICE agents, who claim he was in the United States illegally, and that he assaulted them. The evidence remains vague: Araujo’s son has suggested that his father was alert to being robbed for his tools and may have believed that the agents were thieves. The Office of the Inspector General and the FBI have taken over the case [https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/2026/07/08/feds-sideline-texas-officials-probe-into-ice-shooting-district-attorney-says/], sidelining local officials: the family has asked for an independent investigation. The Washington Post reported this morning that agents did not have a warrant for his arrest [https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/09/us/witnesses-houston-ice-shooting.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share] and had mistaken him for another. * Donald Trump’s Great American State Fair [https://freedom250.org/celebration/the-great-american-state-fair] ends today. Billed as a “A world-class exposition and modern-day World’s Fair” clustered around the National Mall, by all reports it was slightly better quality than the 2017 Fyre Festival [https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-46904445]. It featured, among other things, a piece of the stage falling on a troupe [https://www.thedailybeast.com/dancers-dodge-death-as-donald-trumps-state-fair-stage-falls-apart/] dancing to “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy,” Meghan McCain’s new game show streaming to an empty crowd [https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-politics/meghan-mccain-trump-great-american-state-fair-b3011169.html], massive amounts of junk food [https://www.washingtonpost.com/food/2026/07/09/great-american-state-fair-maha-mondays-are-deep-fried-contradiction/], Kash Patel’s girlfriend Alexis Wilkins stepping in [https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/alexis-wilkins-kash-patel-trump-great-american-state-fair-1236629693/] when nearly every other performer pulled out, 10 no-show states [https://nypost.com/2026/07/02/us-news/the-top-10-most-unamerican-no-show-states-at-trumps-great-american-state-fair/], at least one Confederate battle flag [https://www.washingtonpost.com/food/2026/07/09/great-american-state-fair-maha-mondays-are-deep-fried-contradiction/], and a baptism pool [https://www.newsweek.com/great-american-state-fair-visitor-escapes-extreme-heat-in-baptism-pool-12155229] that fairgoers used as a swimming pool. It is said to have cost $68 million [https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/02/us/politics/trump-allies-firm-organizing-250th.html], funding run through a third-party, and was organized by a long-time Trump vendor, Event Strategies, Inc [https://teamesi.com/] of Alexandria, VA. Freedom 250 is claiming that 150,000 people attended: by contrast, the Minnesota State Fair claimed almost 2 million visitors [https://www.mnstatefair.org/about] in 2025. * Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear has asked Republican Senator and former majority leader Mitch McConnell’s staff for an update on his health [https://www.cnbc.com/2026/07/08/mcconnell-health-update-beshear-hospitalization-kentucky.html]. McConnell has been publicly declining for months, has sometimes appeared to freeze in public, and has fallen in the Capitol. McConnell has not been seen [https://www.livenowfox.com/news/mitch-mcconnells-hospital-latest-wife-releases-statement] since an emergency medical call to his home on June 14, reportedly because of an “unconscious person.” Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) and Whip John Barasso (R-WY) each claim [https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/5957438-mcconnell-thune-barrasso-health/] to have had “substantive” 20-minute conversations with McConnell on the phone, but no one—not even his wife, former Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao, claims to have seen him—and some are speculating that McConnell is in a coma and/or brain-dead. [https://newrepublic.com/post/212798/mitch-mcconnell-office-dodges-questions-brain-dead] However, his absence throws the Senate Appropriations Committee into a deadlock around requests [https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2026/07/09/how-mitch-mcconnells-absence-complicates-senates-business-this-summer/] from the Trump administration for enhanced military spending to find the war against Iran. Your hosts: Claire Potter is a historian of politics and media, a writer, a podcaster, and the sole author and editor of the Political Junkie Substack. Her most recent book is Political Junkies [https://bookshop.org/a/110427/9781541644991]: [https://bookshop.org/a/110427/9781541644991] From Talk Radio to Twitter, How Alternative Media Hooked Us on Politics and Broke Our Democracy (Basic Books, 2020), and she is currently writing a biography of feminist journalist Susan Brownmiller. Neil J. Young is a historian of religion and politics, a journalist, and a former co-host of the Past Present podcast. His most recent book is Coming Out Republican: [https://bookshop.org/a/110427/9780226818054] A History of the Gay Right (University of Chicago Press, 2024). Platner’s Senate campaign headquarters in Ellsworth, ME, following his victory in the Democratic Senate primary in June, 2026. Photo credit: Quintin Soloviev/Wikimedia Commons [https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Graham_Platner_campaign_headquarters.jpg] News focus: Graham Platner is forced out of the Maine Senate race * Maine Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner ended his insurgent candidacy last night after suspending it on Wednesday. The final straw was former girlfriend Jenny Racicot detailing rape allegations [https://www.politico.com/news/2026/07/06/graham-platner-sexual-assault-allegation-00987737] from late 2021 to a reporting team from Politico. Racicot was one of three women, including Lindsay Fifield, a Republican political operative, who had spoken to the New York Times [https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/04/us/politics/platner-maine-senate-girlfriends-relationships.html] about violence in their relationship with Platner prior to the primary. At the end of May, Platner’s wife Amy spoke to the campaign about Platner sexting with other women [https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/30/us/politics/graham-platner-maine-senate-texts.html]. * The Wall Street Journal’s reporting team supplied a timeline [https://www.wsj.com/politics/elections/graham-platner-maine-senate-campaign-43717e4c?st=8kFPqW] of Platner’s rise and fall, highlighting a 2024 Facebook post by Racicot that should have been a red flag, and an ambitious pair of progressive political consultants, Daniel Moraff and Morris Katz; Moraff has had close ties to Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders for a decade. Platner’s social media posts [https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/06/opinion/graham-platner-rape-accusation.html] and his obfuscations about his motives, and understanding, of a tattoo that was a Nazi symbol, were an even earlier issue. * In the aftermath of Politico’s story, new allegations have emerged from Fifield that Platner also removed his condom [https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/5958131-ex-girlfriend-alleges-graham-platner-removed-condom-during-sex-without-consent/] while they were having intercourse, knowing that she was not on birth control. * That day, Drop Site’s Ryan Grim appeared to be questioning Racicot’s account, inferring that she had invited Platner over: Drop Site apologized [https://x.com/DropSiteNews/status/2075255951460851921] on Thursday, and Grim appears to have removed these posts. * Here [https://www.politico.com/news/2026/07/08/graham-platner-potential-replacements-maine-00991341] is a complete list of candidates who might replace Platner. In the first round of speculation, the New York Times included actor Patrick Dempsey, as well as historian and Substacker Heather Cox Richardson. Richardson then published a video [https://www.youtube.com/shorts/VIWmu0eTTQI] explaining why she is not interested in running for Senate. * The state party is planning a nominating convention [https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/09/us/politics/platner-maine-democrats-replacement-candidate.html] to choose a new candidate. * Did Democrats, in their eagerness to win the Maine seat, create a situation [https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/06/opinion/graham-platner-rape-accusation.html] in which better candidates were ignored and Platner seemed like the most vigorous alternative to Susan Collins? * In October 2025, when the news about the Totenkopf tattoo emerged, feminists Moira Donegan [https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/oct/30/graham-platner-male-working-class] and Tressie McMillan Cottom [https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/29/opinion/nazi-tattoo-graham-platner-democrats.html] both warned that Democrats were too infatuated with the illusion of working-class authenticity to heed the warning signs about Platner. Monica Potts [https://newrepublic.com/article/212801/graham-platner-rape-allegations-progressives-working-class-voters], Katha Pollitt [https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/graham-platner-out/], and Rebecca Traister [https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/what-women-saw-in-graham-platner.html] have added feminist voices to the discussion. * In the past two years, a Senate candidate has only been replaced nine times, [https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/09/upshot/platner-senate-replacements-history.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share] and in only two cases—Arkansas Republican Tim Hutchinson and New Jersey Democrat Frank Lautenberg—has it been successful. * That said, Nate Cohn argues that Platner was losing support, and that a new candidate will boost the party’s chances. [https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/08/upshot/platner-maine-election-accusation.html] What we want to go viral: * Neil wants you to read Rose Horowitch’s tale of American literary apocalypse, “The End of Reading is Here [https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/08/reading-crisis-postliterate-age/687618/],” (The Atlantic, July 8, 2026). * Claire wants you to read, or listen to (as she did), Sarah B. Franklin’s tour de force about twentieth century publishing, The Editor: [https://bookshop.org/a/110427/9781982134372] How Publishing Legend Judith Jones Shaped Culture in America (Atria Books, 2025). Jones edited and cooked alongside Julia Child, Marcela Hazan and other great cookbook, as well as major authors like Anne Tyler and John Updike. Don’t miss new drops from Claire and Neil. You can subscribe for free or support us for only $5 a month. You can also become an annual supporter for $50/year and choose Neil’s Coming Out Republican [https://bookshop.org/a/110427/9780226818054] or Claire’s Political Junkies [https://bookshop.org/a/110427/9781541644991]: [https://bookshop.org/a/110427/9781541644991] as a welcome bonus. You can also get all audio content for free by subscribing on Apple iTunes [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/why-now-a-political-junkie-podcast/id1653007976], YouTube [https://www.youtube.com/@PoliticalJunkieSubstack-j3l], or Spotify [https://open.spotify.com/show/3Azy3LXNaKhUhVAWnaoRv8]. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit clairepotter.substack.com/subscribe [https://clairepotter.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]

The GOP’s Unwelcome Mat

We began this episode with a June 30 clip of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w72BdDKjzTc] responding to the United States Supreme Court decision to uphold birthright citizenship. In a feat of MAGA cognitive dissonance, DeSantis was at The Villages, an age-restricted adult community in Central Florida, to unveil a statue of President Abraham Lincoln. Our theme music this week is Redemption Song [https://app.lickd.co/music/artists/johnny-cash/track/redemption-song], written by Bob Marley and sung by Johnny Cash and Joe Strummer, copyrighted music licensed from Lickd. [https://lickd.co/] White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Stephen Miller, the architect of the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant campaign. Photo credit: Gage Skidmore/Wikimedia Commons [https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2025_Stephen_Miller_close-up_(cropped).jpg] In the News: * It was a big week [https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/01/us/politics/supreme-court-term-trump-conservatives.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share] at the Supreme Court. In addition to the birthright citizenship case, the court declined to take Donald Trump’s appeal [https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn8q2z5wpn2o] of the verdict in the E. Jean Carroll sexual abuse case, and Carroll’s attorneys have asked the judge to release [https://www.cnn.com/2026/06/30/politics/e-jean-carroll-asks-for-release-5-million-dollars-trump] the $5 million damages—now $5.8 million. Here’s a summary of the full term [https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/01/opinion/supreme-court-birthright-citizenship-slaughter.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share] by three experts assembled by the New York Times. The court also upheld existing state bans [https://www.npr.org/2026/06/30/nx-s1-5836513/supreme-court-transgender-athletes] on transgender girls and women participating in sports designated for women—here [https://www.espn.com/espn/story/_/id/49229623/faq-supreme-court-transgender-athlete-ruling-title-ix-scope-states] is what the ruling has, and has not, settled. The court also rejected [https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court/supreme-court-allows-states-count-mail-ballots-arrive-late-rejecting-r-rcna266933] the Republican National Committee’s bid to override state laws on the counting and timing of mail-in-ballots. * Colorado held its primaries [https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/01/us/politics/colorado-primary-takeaways.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share] this week: the well-funded Michael Bennet will return to the Senate [https://coloradosun.com/2026/06/30/colorado-primary-election-governor-phil-weiser-michael-bennet/] after State Attorney General Phil Weiser ate his lunch [https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/5945425-weiser-defeats-bennet-for-democratic-nod-in-colorado-governors-race/]; at hte time we recorded, the Republican contest between Barb Kirkmeyer and Victor Marx was still too close to call; today, Marx appears to have taken the lead. * Also in Colorado, Democratic Socialists of America are still on a little roll: Melat Kiros, a lawyer and Ph.D. candidate [https://time.com/article/2026/06/30/melat-kiros-democratic-socialist-colorado-congressional-race/] at UC-Denver, toppled [https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/democratic-socialist-melat-kiros-defeats-longtime-house-incumbent-in-colorado-primary] 68-year-old progressive incumbent Diana DeGette. Support for Israel appears to have been one issue, but Democratic voters discontent with the party establishment may be [https://newrepublic.com/article/212581/colorado-democratic-primary-results-left-wins-gaza-socialism?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=tnr_daily] a bigger factor. * A series ads attacking Ken Paxton feature the Texas GOP Senate nominee’s moral failings as a husband [https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/30/us/politics/paxton-talarico-corruption-affordability-texas.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share]. Presumably they are an attempt to heighten the contrast with Democrat James Talarico, a devout—and to all appearances, socially proper—Christian. This week, Talarico himself distributed the Daily Mail’s story [https://www.dailymail.com/news/article-15936929/Ken-Paxton-US-Senate-campaign-Iceland-mistress.html?ito=social-twitter_dailymailus] about Paxton on his social media: not yet divorced, Paxton appears to have traveled to Iceland with a woman not his wife (a different one [https://www.advocate.com/politics/national/ken-paxton-mistress-iceland-spotted] than the woman who appears to have precipitated the marital split.) But wouldn’t a high focus on 20 years of corruption [https://thebarbedwire.com/2026/02/17/ken-paxton-scandal-timeline/] be more effective? * A new Times/Siena poll reveals [https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/01/us/iowa-ohio-governor-poll.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share] that Republicans are in a dogfight to hang onto the governors’ mansions in two red states, Iowa and Ohio, a bellwether state [https://www.nbc4i.com/news/local-news/columbus/new-poll-finds-husted-narrowly-leading-brown-ohio-governors-race-tied/] for 2028. Incumbent Republican Senator Jon Husted leads former Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown 50% to 47%, while tech bro Vivek Ramaswamy and physician Amy Acton are in a dead heat for the governor’s mansion [https://www.dispatch.com/story/news/politics/state/2026/06/29/amy-acton-vivek-ramaswamy-ohio-governor-race-poll-aarp/90708432007/]—except that Acton is up by three points. That same poll indicates that control of the Senate is up for grabs, [https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/01/us/politics/polls-senate-control.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share] with six seats in play: Democrats must take four. [https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/01/upshot/polls-ohio-iowa-alaska-carolina.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share] Your hosts: Claire Potter is a historian of politics and media, a writer, a podcaster, and the sole author and editor of the Political Junkie Substack. Her most recent book is Political Junkies [https://bookshop.org/a/110427/9781541644991]: [https://bookshop.org/a/110427/9781541644991] From Talk Radio to Twitter, How Alternative Media Hooked Us on Politics and Broke Our Democracy (Basic Books, 2020), and she is currently writing a biography of feminist journalist Susan Brownmiller. Neil J. Young is a historian of religion and politics, a journalist, and a former co-host of the Past Present podcast. His most recent book is Coming Out Republican: [https://bookshop.org/a/110427/9780226818054] A History of the Gay Right (University of Chicago Press, 2024). Dred Scott and Harriet Robinson Scott, who filed concurrent suits for their freedom in 1852. The Supreme Court ruled in a 7-2 decision on the grounds that, as enslaved African Americans, they had no claim to citizenship, and that—as property—to free them violated the Fifth Amendment. Image credit: The Century Magazine/Wikimedia Commons [https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dred_Scott._Harriet,_wife_of_Dred_Scott_LCCN2014645331_(cropped).jpg] News focus: Birthright citizenship survives the Trump administration—for now * Yesterday, the Supreme Court upheld the principle of birthright citizenship [https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/about-immigration/birthright-citizenship/] in Trump v. Barbara [https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/25-365_4hdj.pdf]. The vote was 6-3 on the constitutionality of the executive order, but 5-4 on [https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/in-birthright-citizenship-opinions-a-major-constitutional-disagreement]the core constitutional question: does the Citizenship Clause protect the children of people who are temporarily or illegally in the United States? * Two Trump-appointed associate justices, Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh, voted with the majority on the EO; Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the decision, and Clarence Thomas wrote a 91-page dissent: Alito and Gorsuch wrote dissents; Associate Justice Jackson wrote a concurrence rebuking Thomas; and Kavanaugh wrote a concurrence in which he joined the minority on the constitutional question, and urged Congress to pass a law to amend birthright citizenship. You can read about it all here [https://www.scotusblog.com/2026/06/breaking-down-the-birthright-citizenship-decision/]. * Caveat: much as Republicans promise that they will introduce a law [https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2026/07/01/supreme-court-ruling-birthright-citizenship-congress-trump/90759645007/] to ban birthright citizenship outright, that too would be dead on arrival because of Barbara. The Constitution itself would have to be amended. Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) claims [https://time.com/article/2026/06/30/birthright-citizenship-constitutional-amendment-republicans-supreme-court/] he plans to spearhead that effort, while other Republican Senators vow to take up Kavanaugh’s invitation to legislate on the question of temporary or illegal status. * Why does birthright citizenship matter [https://campaignlegal.org/update/why-birthright-citizenship-essential-part-our-democracy] to our democracy? Here is how the citizenship clause of the 14th amendment of the Constitution has been commonly interpreted [https://constitutioncenter.org/the-constitution/amendments/amendment-xiv/clauses/700]; here is the Trump administration’s argument [https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/fact-checking-the-trump-administrations-challenges-to-birthright-citizenship] against it. * Claire and Neil discuss history of birthright citizenship [https://www.scotusblog.com/2025/02/a-history-of-birthright-citizenship-at-the-supreme-court/], how the concept has evolved legally since the Dred Scott case in 1857, and the importance of United States v. Wong Kim Ark [https://www.oyez.org/cases/1850-1900/169us649] (1898). In that case, the Supreme Court affirmed that Asian Americans born in the United States whose parents had been barred from naturalized citizenship were entitled to Fourteenth Amendment protection. Nativists then turned to anti-immigration laws to limit the non-white population: the reform of these statutes began in 1952 [https://cis.org/Historical-Overview-Immigration-Policy] with the McCarren-Walter Act [https://history.state.gov/milestones/1945-1952/immigration-act]. * Perhaps the most important reform, and the one most despised by today’s MAGA zealots, was the 1965 Hart-Cellar Act [https://history.house.gov/Historical-Highlights/1951-2000/Immigration-and-Nationality-Act-of-1965/], which eliminated the racist quota system, prioritized highly skilled immigrants, and had a provision for family reunification. Today, most Americans support birthright citizenship. [https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/31/us/politics/birthright-citizenship-support.html] * It is this last provision that white nationalist Republicans have spun into a vast conspiracy theory, contending that the only way Democrats can win elections is by importing and “breeding” voters. It was Jeb Bush [https://www.hrw.org/news/2015/09/02/anchor-baby-myth], as a presidential candidate in 2015, who promoted the myth of the “anchor baby,” a phrase that first emerged in 1987 [https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/whats-behind-anchor-babies-buzz-phrase] in relation to a wave of immigrants fleeing communist Vietnam. * Since 2009, and the rise of the Tea Party movement, a Republican party moving right has leaned in hard [https://theconversation.com/republicans-once-championed-immigration-in-the-us-why-has-the-partys-rhetoric-and-public-opinion-changed-so-dramatically-239836] on the idea that immigrants defraud the American people, and at the heart of any social and economic problems that may exist. * Trump-aligned forces are now elevating the harm of so-called “birth tourism,” and are vowing to stop all pregnant women who are not citizens [https://www.politico.com/news/2026/07/01/after-supreme-court-loss-on-birthright-citizenship-white-house-eyes-crackdown-on-pregnant-foreigners-00984187] at the border. Coming to the United States exclusively to give birth, and registering that child as a citizen under the Fourteenth Amendment, is already prosecutable as visa fraud and is a rare crime. [https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/5951451-trump-birthright-citizenship-outcry/] What we want to go viral: * Neil just binged season three of “America’s Sweethearts: Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders [https://www.netflix.com/search?q=dallas%20cowboy%20cheerleaders%20season%203&jbv=81685878]” (Netflix, 2026), which follows this hard-working squad through the pains and gains of a new season’s selection process. * Claire wants you to read Louisa Thomas’s piece, “Serena Williams Returns to Wimbledon [https://www.newyorker.com/sports/sporting-scene/serena-williams-returns-to-wimbledon?utm_source=nl&utm_brand=tny&utm_mailing=TNY_Daily_070126&utm_campaign=aud-dev&utm_medium=email&utm_term=tny_daily_digest&bxid=5bea04353f92a404693e32a3&cndid=44691879&hasha=30ca3164a2ee75a2fcdea9acd31c7ff0&hashb=4a143b91923b930db563c95a184a15acc3e47348&hashc=175c7ebc71d84b708080750f16f4c04e9b95345a322caadb0210b3539946bd09&esrc=OIDC_SELECT_ACCOUNT_PAGE&mbid=CRMNYR012019],” (The New Yorker, July 1, 2026) which delivers the sad news that age really does impose limits on the best, most ambitious, hardest-working, and most gifted of athletes. Don’t miss new drops from Claire and Neil. You can subscribe for free or support us for only $5 a month. You can also become an annual supporter for $50/year and choose Neil’s Coming Out Republican [https://bookshop.org/a/110427/9780226818054] or Claire’s Political Junkies [https://bookshop.org/a/110427/9781541644991]: [https://bookshop.org/a/110427/9781541644991] as a welcome bonus. You can also get all audio content for free by subscribing on Apple iTunes [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/why-now-a-political-junkie-podcast/id1653007976], YouTube [https://www.youtube.com/@PoliticalJunkieSubstack-j3l], or Spotify [https://open.spotify.com/show/3Azy3LXNaKhUhVAWnaoRv8]. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit clairepotter.substack.com/subscribe [https://clairepotter.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]

It’s Not Easy Being Green

We begin with a June 22 press conference [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HY08SA92fQA], in which Donald Trump blames faceless, nameless enemies for the failed renovation of the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool. Our theme music this week is Dirty Water, written by Ed Cobb and performed live by the Standells [https://t.lickd.co/l/8YLv05mGlZE]; copyrighted music licensed from Lickd. [https://lickd.co/] The Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool on the National Mall as it appeared on June 16, 2026, chokes with algae and with bits of the liner floating to the surface. Photo credit: G. Edward Johnson/Wikimedia Commons [https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2026-06-17_Cleaning_algae_from_the_Reflectiong_Pool_Washington_DC_18-57-39_1.jpg] In the News: * On Monday, a federal judge in Minnesota unsealed a ruling [https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/judge-says-justice-department-overstepped-with-subpoenas-to-minnesota-officials-bae70b1e?st=4QSLwL&reflink=article_email_share] that six elected officials in Minnesota, including Governor Tim Walz and Attorney General Keith Ellison, were improperly subpoenaed in relation to resistance to federal immigration enforcement last winter. Patrick Schlitz, a George W. Bush appointee, said there was no plausible justification for this investigation aside from political retaliation. * New York City’s primaries are over: we saw big victories for candidates endorsed [https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/24/nyregion/mamdani-politics-influence.html] by Mayor Zohran Mamdani, several of them dramatic upsets. Former city councilman Brad Lander defeated [https://www.politico.com/news/2026/06/23/brad-lander-trounces-new-york-rep-dan-goldman-in-election-upset-00972326] incumbent Dan Goldman for the nomination in NY-10; Assemblywoman Claire Valdez defeated [https://www.politico.com/news/2026/06/23/claire-valdez-wins-brooklyn-queens-primary-00972255] Antonio Reynoso in NY-07; and in a major upset, Darializa Avila Chevalier, a doctoral student and pro-Palestinian activist, defeated Adriano Espaillat, a five term incumbent in NY-13 and chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. In NY-12, Micah Lasher dashed the dreams [https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/23/nyregion/schlossberg-loses-camelot.html] of multiple candidates, including Jack Schlossberg, in a $26 million primary mostly focused on the future of AI. * Yesterday, in a perhaps unprecedented act of petulance, Donald Trump canceled a signing ceremony for a major bipartisan housing bill [https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/06/24/trump-abruptly-cancels-signing-bipartisan-bill-affordable-housing/] that seeks expand the residential housing stock and limit the number of units that private equity companies can stockpile (hello, Jared Kushner [https://www.propublica.org/article/kushner-apartments-lawsuit-baltimore-maryland-settlement]!) The event was set up in the Capitol when, 90 minutes before it was supposed to start, Trump announced he would not sign it until Congress passed the SAVE Act, federal voting legislation that lacks the votes to pass in either chamber. Both majorities for the housing bill are veto proof [https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/23/us/politics/congress-housing-bill.html]—but will Republicans have the courage to not reverse their votes? * In Texas, nine protesters prosecuted as terrorists received decades-long sentences [https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2026/06/23/alleged-antifa-members-texas-get-maximum-sentences-ice-protest/] for a protest at a federal detention center that turned violent. They were prosecuted under a September 2025 executive order [https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/09/designating-antifa-as-a-domestic-terrorist-organization/] that designated “antifa” as a domestic terrorist organization. The sentences were longer than any sentence handed down for J6 defendants. Your hosts: Claire Potter is a historian of politics and media, a writer, a podcaster, and the sole author and editor of the Political Junkie Substack. Her most recent book is Political Junkies [https://bookshop.org/a/110427/9781541644991]: [https://bookshop.org/a/110427/9781541644991] From Talk Radio to Twitter, How Alternative Media Hooked Us on Politics and Broke Our Democracy (Basic Books, 2020), and she is currently writing a biography of feminist journalist Susan Brownmiller. Neil J. Young is a historian of religion and politics, a journalist, and a former co-host of the Past Present podcast. His most recent book is Coming Out Republican: [https://bookshop.org/a/110427/9780226818054] A History of the Gay Right (University of Chicago Press, 2024). Claire’s favorite social media meme about the Reflecting Pool News focus: President Renovation Strikes Again * Donald Trump has committed over $1.2 billion to 18 different construction and renovation projects around Washington [https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/06/24/us/trump-dc-costs-ballroom-arch-pool.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share]: he has produced conflicting statements about where the money for them is coming from, has made his projects a destination for donor money at the same time as taxpayer dollars are diverted to meet ballooning budgets. The historic Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool is only one of Trump’s efforts [https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-undertakes-sweeping-makeover-white-house-washington-2026-06-05/] to put his stamp on the Capitol. It is an effort that has precedent: during Franklin Roosevelt’s four terms, he made Washington D.C. into a modern metropolis [https://dcist.com/story/17/09/13/map-see-all-of-dcs-new-deal-projects/] with federal dollars. * The Reflecting Pool has also become a metaphor [https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/24/us/reflecting-pool-visitors.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share] for the President’s slumping popularity. Here is a timeline of the project [https://www.nbcnews.com/data-graphics/dc-reflecting-pool-renovation-timeline-2026-rcna351410], beginning on April 23, that has produced acres of green sludge and detached fragments of flag-blue pool liner. * A firm tied to Trump donor John Cafano got the no-bid contract [https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/18/us/politics/trump-donor-contract-reflecting-pool.html], the bill for which came to over $16 million: Cafano, who resembles drag king Murray Hill [https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/19/style/murray-hill-showbiz-netflix-somebody-somewhere.html], is a Mar-A-Lago neighbor. His company, Greenwater Contracting, won a no-bid federal contract last year to clean the Tijuana River [https://voiceofsandiego.org/2026/06/22/environment-report-reflecting-pool-contractor-tried-cleaning-tijuana-river-too/]—also a failure. The Reflecting Pool has been plagued with problems [https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/05/31/us/trump-reflecting-pool-problems.html] since it was created in the 1920s, and a new liner and filters were unlikely to address them. * Having claimed [https://x.com/bulwarkonline/status/2069178160847962311?s=12] that the new pool liner was indestructible, Trump now blames vandals for the problem [https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/23/us/trump-reflecting-pool-green-peeling.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share]. He has surrounded the tourist attraction with security personnel, and threatened 10-year sentences [https://x.com/FoxNews/status/2069054344515797157?s=20] for the mysterious figures he believes are responsible. U.S. Attorney Jeannine Pirro has vowed to prosecute the culprits [https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5933461-lincoln-memorial-pool-vandalism-prosecution/]. As the Anonymous X account pointed out, [https://x.com/YourAnonNews/status/2069034529965162525?s=20] the Reflecting pPool is surrounded with security cameras, and any vandal should be easily detected; in other words, there is no evidence that this is anything but a renovation failure. [https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/the-reflecting-pool-is-about-to-be-drained-again-heres-what-to-know] * Yet, according to the Associated Press [https://apnews.com/article/reflecting-pool-liner-cut-national-park-service-trump-98e11bfcb5899753c79bf55698dc958f?taid=6a3d5a134493680001f18a36&utm_campaign=TrueAnthem&utm_medium=AP&utm_source=Twitter], in a court filing today a National Parks Service official attested that the liner was cut with a knife or other sharp object. * For historians, this is a relaxing, old-fashioned scandal: Claire and Neil point to Mayor William “Boss” Tweed’s court house at 52 Chambers Street [https://www.nyc.gov/site/dcas/business/dcasmanagedbuildings/tweed-courthouse.page] in New York City, opened in 1881. Initially budgeted at $250,000, the Board of Supervisors began to smell a rat [https://www.americanheritage.com/house-tweed-built] when the bill went over $3.1 million; an investigation showed that the project was a pass-through for payoffs and graft. Tweed was convicted of corruption [https://history.nycourts.gov/figure/boss-tweed/#:~:text=Tilden's%20anti%2Dcorruption%20crusade%20was%20a,to%20the%20Presidency%20in%201876.&text=Tweed%20was%20arrested%20in%20October,on%20%241%20million%20dollar%20bail.] in one of the unfinished building’s courtrooms in 1876. * However, it also seems like Trump, frustrated by problems of his own making, is returning to his roots [https://www.rawstory.com/trump-wollman-rink-reflecting-pool/] to create the illusion of success. In 1975, in his first major Manhattan project, he bought the decrepit Commodore Hotel over Grand Central station [https://www.nytimes.com/1975/05/04/archives/deal-negotiated-for-commodore-hyatt-would-operate-it-after.html] and built the Grand Hyatt; and in 1986, he took over the renovation of Wollman Rink [https://www.nytimes.com/1986/06/07/nyregion/trump-to-rebuild-wollman-rink-at-the-city-s-expense-by-dec-15.html] in Central Park. Another gag at Donald Trump’s expense found on social media. What we want to go viral: * Claire wants you to read (or listen tomorrow which is what she is doing) Tia Levings, A Well-Trained Wife [https://bookshop.org/a/110427/9781250898050]: My Escape from Christian Patriarchy (St. Martins, 2026.) Don’t miss our conversation about how this book does, and does not, teach us about the politics of gender on the Christian fundamentalist right, and why conservatives are so committed to the gender binary. * Neil is repping Spencer Kornhaber’s article about why a rapper is trying to take America back to the 1990s, “Vanilla Ice Knows When America Was Great [https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/2026/06/vanilla-ice-america-250/687661/],” (The Atlantic, June 24, 2026.) Don’t miss new drops from Claire and Neil. You can subscribe for free or support us for only $5 a month. You can also become an annual supporter for $50/year and choose Neil’s Coming Out Republican [https://bookshop.org/a/110427/9780226818054] or Claire’s Political Junkies [https://bookshop.org/a/110427/9781541644991]: [https://bookshop.org/a/110427/9781541644991] as a welcome bonus. You can also get all audio content for free by subscribing on Apple iTunes [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/why-now-a-political-junkie-podcast/id1653007976], YouTube [https://www.youtube.com/@PoliticalJunkieSubstack-j3l], or Spotify [https://open.spotify.com/show/3Azy3LXNaKhUhVAWnaoRv8]. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit clairepotter.substack.com/subscribe [https://clairepotter.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]

No Donald, You Can’t Have A Pony

We begin with a clip [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-jKOTpNdds] from the June 14 2026 UFC event on the White House Lawn, in which MMA fighter Josh Hokit declares that Jesus Christ is greater than Hulk Hogan and Michelle Obama is a man. Our theme music this week is Kung Fu Fighting by Carl Douglas [https://t.lickd.co/l/D9XWBeVB2wx], copyrighted music licensed from Lickd. [https://lickd.co/] President Donald J. Trump and Dana White, President and CEO of the Ultimate Fighting Championship at the mixed martial arts event on Sunday, June 14, 2026, on the South Lawn of the White House. Photo credit: Andrea Hanks/Wikimedia Commons [https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:UFC_Freedom_250,_the_mixed_martial_arts_event_produced_by_the_Ultimate_Fighting_Championship,_Sunday,_June_14,_2026,_in_the_Grand_Foyer_of_the_White_House_-_11.jpg] In the News: * Georgia had its primary on Tuesday: [https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/17/us/politics/georgia-alabama-elections-trump-takeaways.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share] health care executive Rick Jackson beat out Lieutenant Governor Burt Jones, and incumbent Senate Democrat Jon Ossoff got the opponent he wants: extremist Mike Collins. Ossoff also got an obscene new nickname [https://www.thedailybeast.com/donald-trump-80-hurls-obscene-nickname-at-rising-dem-star-jon-ossoff-in-morning-meltdown/?via=newsletter&source=DDMorning&user_emailA=30ca3164a2ee75a2fcdea9acd31c7ff0&user_emailB=175c7ebc71d84b708080750f16f4c04e9b95345a322caadb0210b3539946bd09&lctg=5bae999d3f92a46ecbcfef8a&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=260617-AMDigest&utm_term=F%20List%20Daily%20Beast%20Newsletter%20AM] from Donald Trump, who has now dubbed a sitting senator Jon Oss(jerk)off. The Jones loss is being read as an upset and a defeat for Trump, since the President endorsed him: but is it really? Since Jackson claims to be embracing a softer version of MAGA, that would mean that Trump, and the movement that brought him to power, are becoming two different things. In other news from The Peach State, election denier Vernon Jones lost his bid [https://www.atlantanewsfirst.com/2026/06/17/tim-fleming-wins-gop-secretary-state-runoff/#:~:text=(Atlanta%20News%20First)%20—%20Tim,state%2C%20defeating%20Democrat%2Dturned%2DRepublican%20Vernon%20Jones.] to represent the GOP on the Secretary of State ballot line. * Could the District of Columbia be putting a Democratic Socialist mayor right in Donald Trump’s back yard. It looks like it! Democrat Janeese Lewis George has took an early double-digit lead [https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/2026/06/16/dc-mayor-primary-election-live-results-democrats-vie-replace-bowser/] in the primary to replace centrist Muriel Bowser, and never let go of it: her opponent, Kenyan McDuffie, conceded earlier today [https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/dc-primary-mayors-race-results-draft/4115973/]. Lewis George currently represents Ward 4 on the D.C. Council—and as we know, the Democratic primary is basically the whole race. * Republicans have told us nonstop that cuts to the social safety net are just about fraud and waste, but ProPublica reports [https://www.propublica.org/article/snap-benefits-children-food-stamps?utm_source=sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=majorinvestigations&utm_content=feature] that as of this week, over 770,000 children have been cut from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), born in 1939 as a New Deal program commonly known as food stamps. Altogether, almost 1.7 million people have been dropped from federal food assistance using a common tactic: increasing the paperwork necessary to receive the benefit. * In yet another attack on LGBTQ+ people timed for Pride Month, on June 12, the Department of Veterans Affairs ordered VA hospitals to end gender-identity based initiatives [https://www.advocate.com/politics/national/trump-abandons-lgbtq-veterans], and to dismantle networks and services designed to support LGBTQ+ veterans. This includes mental health and cognitive behavioral health programs designed to help former service people cope with homophobia, as well as removing the presence of LGBT+ folks from the website. Your hosts: Claire Potter is a historian of politics and media, a writer, a podcaster, and the sole author and editor of the Political Junkie Substack. Her most recent book is Political Junkies [https://bookshop.org/a/110427/9781541644991]: [https://bookshop.org/a/110427/9781541644991] From Talk Radio to Twitter, How Alternative Media Hooked Us on Politics and Broke Our Democracy (Basic Books, 2020), and she is currently writing a biography of feminist journalist Susan Brownmiller. Neil J. Young is a historian of religion and politics, a journalist, and a former co-host of the Past Present podcast. His most recent book is Coming Out Republican: [https://bookshop.org/a/110427/9780226818054] A History of the Gay Right (University of Chicago Press, 2024). Podcaster Joe Rogan interviews UFC Fighter Ilia Topuria at the ceremonial UFC Freedom 250 weigh-ins on the Ellipse, Saturday, June 13, 2026. Photo credit: Sgt. 1st Class Brittany Primavera/Wikimedia Commons [https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:UFC_Freedom_250_Ceremonial_Weigh_In_(9748628).jpg]. News focus: * On Sunday, Donald Trump celebrated his own birthday and launched a series of events intended to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence with an Ultimate Fighting Championship mixed-martial arts extravaganza on the White House lawn [https://www.npr.org/2026/06/15/nx-s1-5858610/trump-birthday-ufc-white-house]. It cost at least $60 million [https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5919806-trump-administration-ufc-60-million-white-house-cage-fight/], which is said to have been absorbed by sponsors and by the UFC (Dana White, the CEO of the UFC, is a long-time friend of Trump’s [https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/white-house-ufc-event-spotlights-trumps-decades-long-partnership-with-dana-white].) It’s unclear whether this includes the $700,000 in security provided by the District of Columbia Police. * First of all, what is the UFC [https://www.opro.com/en-us/blogs/fighter-hub/what-is-ufc-guide?srsltid=AfmBOopwBaHXLc3_r8t0G8roqj-BKVowVgcFtXqOK4kYUICVSgZ_auPM]—and why do Trump—and other MAGA celebrities like Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk—identify with it [https://www.theatlantic.com/books/2026/06/trump-ufc-250-and-barthes-spectacle-excess/687549/]? The audience is largely male, and Trump has been [https://www.theatlantic.com/books/2026/06/trump-ufc-250-and-barthes-spectacle-excess/687549/]involved with the sport since 2001 [https://www.theatlantic.com/books/2026/06/trump-ufc-250-and-barthes-spectacle-excess/687549/], when he owned the Taj Mahal in Atlantic City. UFC has also been welcomed to David Ellison’s new CBS: a televised event three months ago drew almost 2,5 million viewers. [https://www.sportsmediawatch.com/2026/03/ufc-cbs-viewership-debut/] The UFC is worth over $1 billion, [https://time.com/article/2026/05/26/dana-white-ufc-white-house-fight-interview/] and has an overwhelmingly male audience. * The event sparks memories of other Presidents staging other controversial events at the White House. In 1837, Andrew Jackson installed a 1,600-pound block of cheese in the entrance hall [https://www.foodandwine.com/news/real-story-huge-chunk-cheese-sat-white-house-year] of the White House and invited “the people” to come in and hack away at it; Jackson’s inauguration also turned into a riot [https://www.whitehousehistory.org/events/whhl-inaugurations-gone-wild], where the guests refused to leave and had to be lured out of the building with ice cream and whiskey punch. During the Senate inquiry into the Teapot Dome Scandal that began in 1923, it was revealed that President Warren G. Harding held smokers in the White House that featured illegal alcohol and fight films. In a different vein, Theodore Roosevelt was at the center of an uproar when he invited Booker T. Washington to dine with him at the White House [https://millercenter.org/president/roosevelt/domestic-affairs]. And there have been several presidents who have been characterized as rubes: Abraham Lincoln, Jimmy Carter, and Bill Clinton spring to mind. * The New York Times’s Michelle Goldberg, thought it was significant [https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/15/opinion/ufc-freedom-250-fight.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share] that the UFC fight occurred on the same day that a memorandum of understanding was signed with Iran to end a needless and unprovoked war that has left the United States, and the world, in a worse position than it was before the conflict. Both things, she argues, indicate the nation’s decline. Here’s what the MOU says [https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5927787-trump-iran-agreement-details/] (it pretty much gives Iran everything they might want in exchange for nothing.) * There are risks to having high-profile events at the White House: [https://www.espn.com/mma/story/_/id/49081439/fbi-arrests-suspects-planned-attacks-white-house-ufc-event] the FBI claims to have made four arrests of people allegedly conspiring to attack the event with explosive drones. Apparently the investigation is ongoing: as usual, Keystone Kash announced it, presumably to nudge the Secret Service, which owns the operation, [https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2026/06/16/secret-service-kept-ufc-plot-probe-secret-fbi-kash-patel-announced-it/90581017007/] out of the limelight. Fourteen other people were arrested at the event for crimes like disorderly conduct and drug possession. * Hope Reeves, a liberal journalist, wrote about taking her teenage sons to the event, [https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/17/opinion/ufc-trump-fight-white-house-birthday.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share] and their love for UFC fighting: what’s the argument about this being an entertainment for kids that isn’t so terrible? What we want to go viral: * Neil wants you to read Matt Flegenheimer, “New Yorkers Are Living in a Peculiar Harmony. [https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/29/nyregion/knicks-nba-finals-nyc.html] Thank the Knicks” (New York Times, May 29, 2026). * Claire wants you to read Claire Hoffman’s “The Gospel of Erika Kirk: [https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/erika-kirk-christian-women-tpusa-1235576963/] Leaning In with the Christian Women of TPUSA” (Rolling Stone, June 13, 2026). Don’t miss new drops from Claire and Neil. You can subscribe for free or support us for only $5 a month. You can also become an annual supporter for $50/year and choose Neil’s Coming Out Republican [https://bookshop.org/a/110427/9780226818054] or Claire’s Political Junkies [https://bookshop.org/a/110427/9781541644991]: [https://bookshop.org/a/110427/9781541644991] as a welcome bonus. You can also get all audio content for free by subscribing on Apple iTunes [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/why-now-a-political-junkie-podcast/id1653007976], YouTube [https://www.youtube.com/@PoliticalJunkieSubstack-j3l], or Spotify [https://open.spotify.com/show/3Azy3LXNaKhUhVAWnaoRv8]. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit clairepotter.substack.com/subscribe [https://clairepotter.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]