Why Now? A Political Junkie Podcast

President Donald Trump and Speaker of the House Mike Johnson answer questions about the budget bill from the media at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, May 20, 2025. Welcome back to the weekly politics chat with Neil and Claire! Remember that if you prefer to read, you can activate a transcript by clicking the “transcript” button above. We begin this week’s episode with a clip [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkTwvH_uEG4] from President Donald Trump’s speech on July 4, 2025, as he prepared to sign H.R.1, otherwise known in the Republican Party as as the One, Big, Beautiful, Budget Bill. In the news: * The search and rescue in Kerr County Texas following the July 4 flooding [https://apnews.com/article/texas-july-4-flood-timeline-ddf1090207b67c6ab716aedc8b239fc2] continues as a recovery operation. As of this morning, 120 people are confirmed dead, and 160 still missing. There seem to be several big questions [https://clairepotter.substack.com/p/on-rivers-and-politics]coming out of this tragedy What did officials know and when did they know it? Were the Trump Administration’s cuts [https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/05/us/politics/texas-floods-warnings-vacancies.html?unlocked_article_code=1.UU8.-lk9.-BKsO8gTY2Cf&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare] to the National Weather Service partly to blame [https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/5388436-texas-flooding-flash-flood-camp-mystic-trump-cuts-noaa-nws-fema-national-weather-service/] for late and incomplete warnings? Another question is whether the fate of FEMA, which the Trump administration wanted to dismantle [https://carnegieendowment.org/emissary/2025/06/trump-abolish-fema-states-fiscal-disaster?lang=en] to shift costs and coordination of disaster recovery onto states, will proceed as planned. We also highlight the sad story of Camp Mystic [https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2025/07/07/camp-mystic-girls-camp-texas-flooding/84489809007/], a Christian camp for girls decimated by the rising waters, despite a disaster plan implemented two days earlier [https://www.yahoo.com/news/texas-inspectors-approved-camp-mystic-235051076.html?fr=sycsrp_catchall]: 27 campers are among the dead. * Since the Kerr County disaster, there has been deadly flooding in the Raleigh-Durham area [https://www.yahoo.com/news/tropical-storm-chantal-brought-over-172148936.html?fr=sycsrp_catchall] of North Carolina, where 9 to 12 inches of rain fell in 24 hours; and in southeastern New Mexico [https://www.cbsnews.com/news/new-mexico-ruidoso-lincoln-flooding-nws/]. * After feeding conspiracy theories about financier and alleged sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein and vowing to reveal the “truth” about liberal elites’ coverup, the Trump administration has officially reversed course [https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/08/us/politics/trump-epstein.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare]. Laura Loomer, Tucker Carlson, and other MAGA influencers are crying foul, and demanding resignations from Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel. Even Fox News’s Peter Doocy, whose day job appears to be teeing up softball questions that give Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt opportunities to spread lies and propaganda, is demanding answers [https://www.dailymail.co.uk/media/article-14883295/Stunning-moment-Fox-News-reporter-confronts-Karoline-Leavitt-Epstein-client-list-MAGA-turns-Trump.html] for why Bondi promised to reveal an “Epstein client list” she now says does not exist. Critics now point to a new conspiracy [https://www.thebulwark.com/p/the-case-for-epstein-trutherism-bondi-trump-musk-patel-habba?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=87281&post_id=167900669&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=false&r=n6os&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email]—one hatched by the Trump administration. * Late last week, Elon Musk’s X released a new version of Grok; on Tuesday, the AI chatbot started kicking out [https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/elon-musk-grok-antisemitic-posts-x-rcna217634] antisemitic posts and praising Hitler. Although many of the posts are still up, Grok seems to be back on track as of today. On Wednesday, in what was said to be an unrelated development, X’s CEO, Linda Yaccarino, resigned [https://www.yahoo.com/news/x-hunt-ceo-linda-yaccarino-150011073.html?fr=sycsrp_catchall] after two years of working in the most highly-paid thankless job in the United States. Today’s focus: Trump’s Budget Bill, otherwise known as H.R.1: * What gets cut in this bill [https://www.cbsnews.com/news/whats-in-trump-big-beautiful-bill-senate-version/] to make room for the tax breaks it writes into federal law? Among other things, Medicaid and SNAP, some created by the difficulties recipients have in navigating new work requirements. Billions of dollars will be shifted to federal deportation and incarceration of immigrants, and there is a $150 billion bump in military spending, even as the United States withdraws its soft power around the globe. * Why was this bill was so huge to begin with? Here, we discuss the way it was passed: reconciliation [https://theconversation.com/what-is-reconciliation-the-legislative-shortcut-republicans-are-using-to-push-through-their-big-beautiful-bill-255487]. Does the use of reconciliation have ramifications for our democracy? The National Immigration Law Center argues that it does. [https://www.nilc.org/articles/9-things-to-know-about-the-reconciliation-bill/]However, President Joe Biden also used reconciliation in 2021 for pandemic recovery [https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/12/politics/house-reconciliation-package-explainer/index.html]; and againin 2022, to pass a sweeping agenda [https://ballotpedia.org/Inflation_Reduction_Act_of_2022] that included expansions of clean energy, the Affordable Care Act, and Medicare-subsidized prices for commonly used drugs. * Intriguingly, Trump’s bill is extremely unpopular [https://www.newsweek.com/trump-big-beautiful-bill-approval-polling-2096570]. According to a recent YouGov/Economist poll, only 35% of the public supports it, as opposed to 53% who strongly or somewhat oppose it. In fact, it seems that the more Americans know about it, the less they like it: the bill’s approval has fallen by ten points in the past month, and according to a Quinnipiac poll [https://poll.qu.edu/poll-release?releaseid=3924], only 67% of Republican voters support the bill—about 12 points lower [https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/donald-trumps-approval-rating-plummets-with-republicans/ar-AA1HUhEA] than Trump’s approval rating among Republican voters. * The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has denounced [https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-budget-bill-us-catholic-bishops/] Republican cuts to public assistance as “an offense to human life.” Evangelical Christians are sharply divided [https://www.baptiststandard.com/news/nation/christians-divided-on-budget-reconciliation-bill/?print=pdf], with the Southern Baptist Convention praising cuts to Planned Parenthood, and those involved in relief work condemning cuts to social welfare. * A few budget hawks on the Republican side voted no, pointing to the $3 trillion [https://www.crfb.org/blogs/cbo-estimates-3-trillion-debt-house-passed-obbba] the bill will add to the federal deficit over 10 years. Because of this, the bill passed very narrowly in the Senate: Republicans Rand Paul (KY), Susan Collins (ME), and Thom Tillis (NC) voted against it [https://www.axios.com/2025/07/01/republican-senators-vote-big-beautiful-bill-trump]; Lisa Murkowski (AK) cut big deals with the White House and voted for it, but Alaskans will still lose benefits [https://www.adn.com/politics/2025/07/01/murkowski-sullivan-vote-for-budget-reconciliation-bill-that-could-cause-thousands-of-alaskans-to-lose-health-benefits/]. What we want to go viral: * Neil recommends a podcast he was on this week, “This Guy Sucked: [https://www.thisguysucked.com] A Podcast by Professional Historians for Amateur Haters.” Hosted by historian Claire Aubin, the show delivers a historical figure to hate on with each episode: Neil’s is on Reagan White House aide Terry Dolan, a closeted gay man who pursued a homophobic agenda as thousands sickened and died from AIDS in the 1980s. * Claire recently binged “Lost Boys and Fairies [https://www.britbox.com/us/show/Lost_Boys_and_Fairies_m001wzp2],” a three-episode drama from the BBC, released in 2024 and available on Britbox. It’s about two gay men, a drag community in Cardiff, Wales, and the couple’s journey to adopting a child. But really, it is about the trauma of growing up with homophobia, and how those who have been hurt and abandoned helping each other heal and grow. 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). You can also get all video and audio content by subscribing to my podcast, Why Now? available for free 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]. One of the ways you can support Political Junkies, and the work that goes into it, is to: 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] as a welcome bonus. Or, for the rest of the month, you can choose to have all of your subscription dollars go to The Trevor Project [https://www.thetrevorproject.org], an LGBT youth suicide prevention organization. As we said on today’s show, the Trump administration has ended all federal funding for LGBTQ causes. Next week, on July 17, The Trevor Project loses its federal funding. If you would rather just give directly to that cause, click the button below: Short takes: * Have you ever wondered what it is like to be some of the most hated people in the United States? When The Atlantic’s Nick Miroff [https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/07/trump-ice-morale-immigration/683477/] “spoke with a dozen current and former ICE agents and officers about morale at the agency since Trump took office,” he found that the face of Trump’s police state demoralized, burned out, and distressed about what they are being forced to do. “The frustration isn’t yet producing mass resignations or major internal protests,” Miroff writes, “but the officers and agents described a workforce on edge, vilified by broad swaths of the public and bullied by Trump officials demanding more and more.” Furthermore, “ICE’s physical infrastructure is buckling. The agency is holding nearly 60,000 people in custody, the highest [https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ice-record-59000-immigrant-detainees-half-no-criminal-record/] number ever, but it has been funded for only 41,000 detention beds, so processing centers are packed with people sleeping on floors in short-term holding cells with nowhere to shower.” (July 10, 2025) * Democrats are hoping that once the practical realities of the Trump budget sink in that working and middle-class voters will come home. Not so fast, Lauren Egan explains at The Bulwark. [https://www.thebulwark.com/p/why-trump-republican-budget-bill-elixir-democrats-imagined-optimism-fading?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=87281&post_id=167951292&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=false&r=n6os&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email] True, “The bill’s polling is toxic,” but “The most politically toxic policy changes, like the cuts to Medicaid, won’t be fully implemented until after the midterm elections, while the more popular elements—such as $1,000 investment accounts for newborn children—will go into effect immediately. Some Democrats are concerned that their posture could alienate those parents aided by the new accounts.” Furthermore, the Democrats are still just the Party of No. The party must support “efforts have begun to help the party fill out the ‘What we will do’ part of the pitch to voters.” (July 9, 2025) * At Axios, Mike Deehan reports [https://www.axios.com/local/boston/2025/07/09/massachusetts-school-cellphone-ban-state-house-boston?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter_axioslocal_boston&stream=top] that legislation moving through the Massachusetts legislature could ban mobile phones in public schools beginning with the 2026-2027 school year. Although the bill “allows local schools some flexibility in implementing the ban,” such as for students with disabilities and multilingual learners, “School districts must create `bell-to-bell’ prohibition policies during school hours, meaning phones would be off limits during the school day.” You know what would be even better? Legislation that prohibited smart phones for everyone under 16, and that required all major carriers to support a good, affordable flip phone. (July 9, 2025) Thanks for reading Political Junkie! You can support us bye haring with a friend and asking them to try us for a few weeks! Get full access to Political Junkie at clairepotter.substack.com/subscribe [https://clairepotter.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

We begin with a response [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9h8ZVGRTkBU] to last Saturday’s attacks on Minnesota State legislators and their families from Minnesota Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar, as well as her comment about Utah Republican Senator Mike Lee’s ugly social media posts. Our title is a nod to Richard Slotkin’s classic text on America’s historical embrace of violence, Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth-Century America [https://bookshop.org/a/110427/9781504090346](Atheneum, 1992). News roundup: * On Wednesday, the United States Supreme Court delivered an unsurprising, distressing, decision in United States v. Skrmetti [https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/19/magazine/transgender-supreme-court-skrmetti-takeaways.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare]. In a 6-3 decision, SCOTUS ruled that a Tennessee state law banning pharmaceutical treatments or surgery for trans minors does not violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution. Key point: it does not ban the treatments or procedures, only using them for transition for minors. Here’s the response from Samantha Williams [https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/18/opinion/supreme-court-trans-care.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare], the parent who brought the case. * On Tuesday, New York City Comptroller and mayoral primary candidate Brad Lander became the second Democratic politician to be detained by ICE as he sought to escort an immigrant who had showed up for a hearing out of the building. Numerous Democrats, including Governor Kathy Hochul, defended him: Hochul went down to retrieve Lander and, in an unusual display of anger, tell the press Lander’s arrest was “b******t.” Right-wing media went berserk, with many misleadingly characterizing the arrest as a “campaign stunt [https://nypost.com/2025/06/18/opinion/brad-landers-ice-arrest-stunt-letters/].” * Right after last week’s broadcast, Israel launched air attacks on Iran that decapitated its military leadership, damaged nuclear facililties, and killed at least two leading nuclear scientists. Those attacks, and Iranian retaliation (which one friend of mine on the spot characterized as “terrifying,” continue as we speak. The possibility of US involvement in this war has split the MAGA coalition, with many Trump allies urging their President not to betray his America First pledge [https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/dont-betray-america-first-war-iran]. Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (GA-14) has opposed [https://www.newsweek.com/most-gop-voters-oppose-us-military-involvement-israel-iran-conflict-poll-2086862] intervention; on his X podcast, Tucker Carlson pilloried Ted Cruz [https://www.cbsnews.com/news/tucker-carlson-spars-with-ted-cruz-on-israel-iran-strikes/], a traditional GOP Israel hawk on his X podcast; and there is bipartisan legislation [https://thehill.com/homenews/house/5354540-us-involvement-iran-house-resolution-bipartisan/] invoking the War Powers Act floating around Capitol Hill. 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). While the right-wing American militia movement began outside the two-party political system, since 2017, it has visibly supported President Donald Trump. Above, members of the Proud Boys mustered in Raleigh, NC, as part of a “Stop the Steal” protest on November 28, 2020. Photo credit: Anthony Crider/Wikimedia Commons [https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Proud_Boys_in_Raleigh_(2020_Nov)_(50658113833).jpg] Today’s focus: escalating political violence * On Friday, the New York Times delivered a stinging rebuke [https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/20/opinion/political-violence-hortman-minnesota.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare] to Donald Trump for having fomented political violence against politicians in both parties. * On Saturday, Vance Boelter, a 57-year-old evangelical Christian [https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/what-to-know-about-the-shootings-of-2-minnesota-lawmakers-and-the-arrest-of-suspect-vance-boelter] and registered Republican executed Democratic Speaker of the Minnesota House Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark; afterwards, he severely wounded Democratic State Senator John Hoffman and his wife Yvette. He apparently planned the attacks for months, left behind a long list of other targets, and disguised himself as a policeman. * Although President Donald Trump posted a long, rambling repudiation of the violence on Truth Social, when asked whether he would call Minnesota Governor Tim Walz [https://apnews.com/article/trump-walz-minnesota-lawmakers-shot-call-064092d14bea4c3141da31b7a5e5c9b3], Trump said no [https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/17/us/trump-walz-minnesota-shootings.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare], that it was “a waste of time.” He then went on to insult Walz. Other Republicans, and Republican influencers, also spread disinformation and mockery [https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/06/trump-walz-minnesota-shootings-mike-lee/] about the attacks. Most egregiously, Utah Senator Mike Lee posted a series of now-deleted remarks on X, now deleted, including: “This is what happens when Marxists don’t get their way.” Lee was personally confronted by Senators Klobuchar [https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/5352566-sen-amy-klobuchar-condemns-sen-mike-lee/] and Smith [https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/tina-smith-mike-lee-cruel-social-media-posts-minnesota-shootings-rcna213396]; he removed the post, but has not publicly apologized. * The Minnesota shootings have restarted the conversation about American political violence, which has escalated in the years that Donald Trump has been in political life. [https://time.com/7294891/political-violence-rise-america/] Trump has twice been a target himself [https://www.politico.com/news/2025/06/14/political-violence-minnesota-fears-00406289], as have other members of Congress. Are Democrats targeted disproportionately? It’s hard to know: in February, Axios published a list of how much members of Congress and Senators spend for security: [https://www.axios.com/2022/02/16/congress-spending-personal-security] Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz topped the list at over $350,000 a year. Last year, at least one Republican, Mike Gallagher, may have left his Wisconsin House seat because he feared for the safety of his family [https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/apr/18/mike-gallagher-congress-quits-threats-swatting]. but research from the Brennan Center [https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/political-intimidation-threatens-diversity-state-and-local-office] shows that female politicians and politicians of color are most frequently targeted with online hate and threats of violence. * On Wednesday, the Democratic Mayor of Memphis, Paul Young, who is Black, confronted found a 25-year-old White man in his yard [https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/19/us/threat-kidnapping-memphis-mayor.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare]. Trenton Abston, who had climbed over a wall to, as he explained, have a conversation, was armed with a stun gun, rope, and duct tape. What we want to go viral: * Neil wants you to read historian Nicole Hemmer’s review [https://democracyjournal.org/magazine/77/the-real-bill-buckley/] of Sam Tannenhaus’s towering biography, Buckley: The Life and the Revolution That Changed America (Random House, 2025). As it turns out, “Buckley was no stranger to ethical vacuums,” Hemmer writes in Democracy: A Journal of Ideas. “Throughout his life, Buckley was guided by ideology and personal gain far more than truth and virtue. Yet his charm, generosity, and loyalty ensured that he never paid much of a price for his transgressions.” * Claire wants you to listen, if you have 90 minutes to spare, to Ezra Klein’s interview with Democratic Congresswoman Sarah McBride (DE-01), the first transperson to serve in the House of Representatives. In “Sarah McBride On Why the Left Lost Trans Rights [https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/17/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-sarah-mcbride.html?unlocked_article_code=1.QE8.UjvQ.J_f35z_vBh3X&smid=url-share]” (New York Times, June 17, 2025), McBride reveals herself as a savvy politician, a pragmatic gradualist, and one of the party’s up-and-coming leaders. 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] as a welcome bonus. You can also get all video and audio content by subscribing to my podcast, Why Now? available for free on Apple iTunes [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/why-now-a-political-junkie-podcast/id1653007976], YouTube [https://www.youtube.com/@PoliticalJunkieSubstack-j3l], Spotify [https://open.spotify.com/show/3Azy3LXNaKhUhVAWnaoRv8], or Soundcloud [https://soundcloud.com/user-3472525-698621322]. Short takes: * ICE raids are not just a danger to Latinos, Sherdell Baker warns at Ebony [https://www.ebony.com/ice-raids-protest-what-you-need-to-know/]: Black immigrant workers are vulnerable too. “As these raids have persisted, Afro Latinas have been left out of the conversation and media representation as Black immigrants can also be impacted,”Baker writes. “This can impact African Americans based on appearance generalizations, and commonalities between the two cultures.” Racialized policing makes it likely that African Americans will suffer the same assaults from police that legal Latino citizens have. “To help combat this growing issue, those who are African American should share resources from organizations that are helping to aid immigrants, and heighten their awareness when traveling,” Baker writes. “It is also helpful to keep up with ICE raid announcements in their area via news outlets or social media to stay up to speed with locations on where they’re taking place. Carrying identification with you at all times can also be helpful when it comes to stay alert.” (June 20, 2025) * A lawyer in Cambridge, MA told me last week that the Trump administration was likely to lose every case that Harvard University has brought, and you could probably extend that prediction to individual academics who have been swept up by the government. The release of former Columbia graduate student Mahmoud Khalil “is the latest setback for the Trump administration’s effort to detain and deport foreign academics who have been involved in pro-Palestinian campus activism,” Erica Orden and Kyle Cheney write at Politico. [https://www.politico.com/news/2025/06/20/judge-orders-mahmoud-khalil-released-00415566?nname=playbook&nid=0000014f-1646-d88f-a1cf-5f46b7bd0000&nrid=0000016e-e2a8-d86a-ab6e-fafb994f0000] “Judges have ordered the release of Georgetown researcher Badar Khan Suri, Tufts University PhD student Rümeysa Öztürk and Columbia student Mohsen Mahdawi, who were similarly detained after Secretary of State Marco Rubio invoked the same law used against Khalil.” (June 20, 2025) * We know that the right has embraced pronatalism, but are falling g birthrates only a conservative issue? As Amanda Taub argues in The New York Times [https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/20/world/americas/birthrate-fertility-feminism.html?unlocked_article_code=1.QU8.JXU8.SFDQ4IFsHByK&smid=url-share], there is also a feminist case to be made for policies that encourage child-bearing, and we child-free folks should support them. Why? Because the next generations support all of us. “As the problem of falling birthrates attracts more concern — and previous efforts to reverse it have proved insufficient — a growing body of research indicates that a genuine solution will require a paradigm shift in society’s understanding about what is worth paying for and who ought to pay it,” Taub writes. “As the ratio of working-aged adults to dependent children and retirees falls, there are fewer workers to support the social safety net. The result is that taxes rise, the quality of public services deteriorates, and the economy eventually shrinks.” (June 20, 2025) Thanks for being a subscriber! One of the ways you can support Political Junkies, and the work that goes into it, is to: Get full access to Political Junkie at clairepotter.substack.com/subscribe [https://clairepotter.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Thank you to everyone who tuned into today’s live video! This morning, Natalia and I had fun talking about Elle Woods (Reese Witherspoon) making the transition from SoCal sorority president to class valedictorian at Harvard Law School! If you have not yet watched “Legally Blonde,” go here [https://www.amazon.com/Legally-Blonde-Reese-Witherspoon/dp/B0CGTFQBNK/ref=sr_1_3?crid=1I84V20PEA5K&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.Pw8sfcKts12_dgPGwxd74Z1tdeY3_jl6a1prZDEt_1CLrtoo84aqgCjezF1iawZsXAZSpuD07IESHPl9Y-GYjAnCb-lvE56kSpcLx5wGkMj6mYyhPgu93qgUgoVFdBPbVovsOpQUCZHzTekpq36t4QyInqjIl-4wjwVrHGv5w16RaB-txTO6sOZyj40bltF1WViUD7LT8VR6AF4Cx-6Qvum8jNQKO60rioD01oN6sco.9C-VHbVPEIhL9ED_ks4b8DVp2ffER4TTs2PIFnHkhCY&dib_tag=se&keywords=Legally+blonde&qid=1750355763&sprefix=legally+blonde%2Caps%2C127&sr=8-3]. Stay tuned for the next film in my series about the cultural obsession with Harvard University. Historian Neil J. Young will join us for a Substack Live about that classic Harvard romance, “Love Story [https://www.amazon.com/Love-Story-Ali-MacGraw/dp/B072ZWHY7K/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2ZL1XQG4I0J29&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.GFq_dqe-eMpgH6wWe6P2Pqhu-vDmH-LbQgH9_uB6Q6qIyNwl2Gpd_XBq37mejIfkcC_yE-e-aaf6gMWJSwktyUMKHyH-WaM9A4nwikrgDIsxKG9lP5j6moQcsG7MTHI9zHOMEQxX1U7LrdV6HMHmTndd8_N2ai71d5wblwkVDNjfrWKWLsz3vmVXEpjqpzWPaQ9vtae0rPkvSbIPUkEu3evCNEX3vR_zTIcTkqI8_L4.5zww3Rvp1xcCN62rSnsVHP9Pkt5PVf_fUd2ksMksC0E&dib_tag=se&keywords=Love+story+the+movie&qid=1750355586&sprefix=love+story+the+movie%2Caps%2C116&sr=8-1]” (1970), adapted from the 1970 best-selling novel of the same name by classics professor Erich Segal. A faculty member at Harvard, Yale and Princeton universities, Segal is rumored to have based the lead male character Oliver Barrett IV (O’Neal) on two Crimson athletes: future Vice President Al Gore and his roommate, future actor Tommy Lee Jones. The film stars Ryan O’Neal and Ali McGraw in breakout performances as cross-class undergraduate lovers. Get full access to Political Junkie at clairepotter.substack.com/subscribe [https://clairepotter.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Hi friends: You may have seen changes in this neighborhood lately. Starting this summer, there’s going to be more multi-media content that you can consume the way you choose: you will be able to read, or watch, or listen on the Why Now? podcast platform. You can also elect to have podcast episodes download directly to your device from Apple iTunes [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/why-now-a-political-junkie-podcast/id1653007976] or Spotify [https://open.spotify.com/show/3Azy3LXNaKhUhVAWnaoRv8].) In addition to my weekly date with historian Neil J. Young, where we dive deeply into one political story, I am tapping my list of friends to bring more expert opinion on current events to you. This means altering the subscriber model. Most of the content will be free, except for live chats, which you can watch as they are happening (I will give you ample warning), or at your convenience. In other words, I am asking you to become a paying subscriber because you believe in this platform and its mission. This week’s subscriber-only live chat will be with historian of gender, culture, and fitness Natalia Mehlman Petrzela [https://nataliapetrzela.com]: it’s the first episode in a summer series where I am going to explore the American cultural obsession with Harvard University. On Thursday June 19, at 11:00 a.m., Natalia and I will kick off this special feature with a deep dive into Reese Witherspoon’s 2001 girl power flick, Legally Blonde [https://www.netflix.com/title/60021025]: paying subscribers will get an email with a link so they can listen and ask questions in real time. Today’s interview is with Ilyse Hogue, an American activist with a long history on the progressive left. Ilyse is perhaps best known as president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, now Reproductive Freedom for All [https://reproductivefreedomforall.org], a position she held from 2013-2021. There, she emphasized integrating the reproductive rights struggle into the larger progressive movement, linking feminism to other, related projects: the environment, our changing media, and the health of the Democratic Party itself. During a stint at New America [https://www.newamerica.org], Ilyse was part of a team (with former Congressman Colin Allred and pollster John Della Volpe) that incubated a new project to persuade young men that the Democratic Party cares about what they care about: prosperity, economic justice, and the resources everyone needs to build a future. Speaking with American Men [https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/25955887-sam-plan/] is a $20 million initiative to re-engage men between the ages of 18 and 29 in the project of rebuilding our democracy. Why? Because, across racial groups, Democrats narrowly lost this demographic to Donald Trump in 2024, after winning it by 12 points in 2020. Like many feminists, Ilyse isn’t the kind of person who walks away from a fight like that—and friends, she’s got plan. Let’s listen to what she had to say. Photo credit: Dean Drobot/Shutterstock [https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/cheerful-old-friends-having-fun-by-663323185] Claire Potter: Ilyse, welcome to the show. Ilyse Hogue: Hi, Claire, it's so great to be here. I'm excited about this because I was reading SAM—the Speaking with American Men document—and you're one of the co-authors. I wonder if we could just start by you telling our listeners: Where did the concept for Sam emerge, who backed the initial phases of the project, and who is moving it forward now? Sure. Honestly, we certainly weren't calling it SAM at the time, but the challenge that we were trying to address came to my attention while I was leading NARAL Pro-Choice America, which is now called Reproductive Freedom for All, one of the country's preeminent abortion rights organizations. As part of my tenure there (I was there for the better part of a decade), we decided we really had to understand the information ecosystem. We realized we were in an information war, one driving anti-abortion narratives and mobilizing adherence on the other side. So, we set up an opposition research operation. It was the most robust in the sector and, sort of by accident, honestly, Claire, we started to see all this activity of young men who were not presenting the way traditional anti-choice people were. They were not even overtly anti-choice but animated by a lot of information ecosystems that were just kind of swimming in misogynistic content. They emerged as a huge force and came out of online spaces that organized around Gamergate. I don't know if your listeners know Gamergate, but it was online bullying of female game designers who were creating games with female protagonists. And this loosely organized group emerged as a huge force for Trump in his first run. Arguably, it did a tremendous amount of work to help him emerge out of the initial primary in 2016 and then continued to back him through his first presidency. I kept monitoring these online spaces, trying to understand what young men were being fed as they were driven more and more online, but I couldn’t do anything about it while I was at NARAL. So, after I left NARAL, I spent a couple years at New America, which is a fantastic D.C. organization that supports research about what we called our “gender extremism and engagement program.” In real time, we were looking at what was happening online with these young men who are going online to look for things like fitness or gaming strategy or things like that and see what was getting served up to them in their online algorithms. What we learned was startling: that the right had put an enormous number of resources and energy into establishing a presence in these online spaces and cracking the algorithms. So, if you are on TikTok or in Twitch, it's not that far a journey for you to go on to saying: I want to learn how to bench press better. Pretty soon you're getting an Andrew Tate video that's telling you that you can't have nice things because women are advancing too far in the world. But the other thing that happened through this research was an understanding that temperamentally, a lot of these young men are not what we would call progressive but that they had progressive priorities. They want affordable housing. They want universal healthcare. And we were ceding to the right a space that formulates, first their identity, and then their politics. A handful of us were writing papers and articles and screaming into the void in the lead up to 2024 saying: “Houston, we have a problem. There's an entire online ecosystem you all aren't even aware of that is pursuing grievance politics on behalf of Trump. And we can't win if we don't play. We don't have anyone in these spaces. We're not resourcing leaders.” And that like I said, fell into a vacuum. But after the election, the results were too stark to ignore. We lost men of every race, class, and ethnicity. And by lost, I don't mean absolute numbers, but I mean there was rightward slide in those demographics: 28 points for Latino men. It depends on how you slice and dice the data, but it's double digits, no matter how you look at it. Eleven points, wasn't it? I mean, that's a lot. I came together with a couple of other folks who were saying: Unless we're willing to invest in engagement, be in the spaces where these young men are getting their information, equipping folks to fight the fights, then we're losing this generation, not just for the next election, but for the next 50 years of their voting lives. And not only does that mean Democrats can't win, but it means democracy honestly cannot survive. So, I'm thinking about a couple of things. One is that for about 20 years, feminist sociologists have been talking about how lonely boys are, how difficult it is for them to make and keep friends. A friend of mine named C.J. Pascoe wrote a book called Dude, You're a Fag [https://bookshop.org/a/110427/9780520271487] (University of California, 2011), in which she talked about homophobia as the way men express their frustration with each other and fend off the idea that to be a friend means to be gay in some way. We've also got a fair amount of literature that shows how much the right has invested in campus activism. Liberals give students unpaid internships to do diversity work in the dorms and conservatives pay people to go around campus turning in their professors and write blogs. We know a lot about what the right has invested in youth. What makes boys and young men so vulnerable to that siren call? Sam has a mantra: we can't win if we don't play. So, part of what makes them vulnerable is, as you say, a lack of dedicated resources to listening to them, vying for their attention and offering an alternative vision of how they can be included in a pluralistic coalition that fights for progress for everyone. There's a lot more technical elements to it than that, to your point. Turning Point USA [https://www.tpusa.com/], for example: Charlie Kirk got runs an $80 million a year campus organization. He made a big bet (that he openly says his benefactors laughed at), which was that he could move young men, a typically Democratic constituency, 10 points in 10 years. Well, he beat that. He beat it by four years, and he moved them by more than 10 points. To some degree, that is because of the total absence of alternative voices in the spaces where young men are. Loneliness is something that came up in our 60 hours of listening. I think everyone is lonely; I don't totally think that that's restricted to young men. But there's no question that young men who encountered the triple-whammy of online culture, breakdown of civic institutions, and then the pandemic, which pushed them even more online—they tell us they don't really know how to form community relationships and we’re not helping them do that. But another thing that I think is possibly even more potent when we look at the collective impact of what's happening with young men is a broad expression of shame; shame that is coupled with economic and social anxiety. They don't know how to get ahead. They don't know how to provide, which is what their culture and all their role models told them is a core masculine trait. They don't know how to protect, and that has created a sense of internal shame. You may be familiar with an academic literature that shows shame is one of the most salient emotions, and most easily translated into radicalism. So, thinking about shame as a driver, one of the things that we are working on are messages like: The shame is not theirs to own. Shame is produced by a manipulation of social and market forces that are designed to exclude them. If they can, and are willing, to participate in work to diminish the power of those forces—and that's concentration of wealth and power and all the things you know about, and I know about—t here is a different pathway forward. Yes. I want to be clear with our audience that SAM is not associated with the Democratic Party. But are there policy proposals that you hope will come out of this project? Because one of the things I think about, is that I don’t want the draft to come back, but military service was one thing that many young men had in common. And then there was a certain point at which it was either the anti-war movement or the draft. There were also organizing projects, either state-sponsored or grassroots, that pulled young men into alliances with each other. One was ERAP (Economic Research and Action Project), a Students for Democratic Society initiative during the Great Society, in which mostly White kids went into Black and Brown neighborhoods to organize and so on. Are there policy proposals that go beyond living in these virtual communities, initiatives that seek to pull young men into physical and social community with each other? There are, but SAM is not a policy shop, and I really want to be clear about that. We work with great people who do that hard work. Richard Reeves is among the best known, Gary Barker at Equimundo [https://www.equimundo.org/], Ross Morales Rocketto: The role that I think we play is saying we've mapped these information ecosystems. We see leaders within them who, to your point, are not resourced, are not actually networked together to make a bigger impact on how young men are interpreting what is happening in the world around them—far upstream from politics, then politics as well. Our listening inevitably allows us to communicate to our partners in the field and to any candidate willing to listen. Our audience tends to be more Democratic leaning about how these guys are seeing their interests. I intentionally differentiate interests from policies, because the idea that most Americans are sitting there reading and looking at policies and understanding the nuances are, is sort of fundamentally flawed. But, like I said, interests are something that we can effectively reflect for people who are writing policy and running campaigns. Then, the question of when policies are moving and when they are in the news, how we can make sure that men are getting the progressive perspective in the Discord servers that they're in, in the subreddits and in the Twitch streams, is crucially important. Right now, you could have the best policy in the world but their interpretation of what that policy is, what it means, and who benefits from it is entirely mediated by right-wing forces. I think there would be a tremendous amount of openness to an idea of national service. Really, we're talking about what's popping being much more sort of survival based. How do I get a better paying job? How do I afford stable housing? Those kinds of things. What we've learned from being in these spaces is that men want more information about how to make their lives better. They're getting it from one side and not from the other. One of the things I've noticed, is that my generation saw the Peace Corps as that kind of opportunity. I knew a lot of people in my senior class at college who did the Peace Corps, and they came back with very strong ideas, not only about what they wanted to do, but how they were going to get there. But now, getting into and paying for college itself is really sort of under question. It's very difficult for people to do. It appears that young men look at the whole thing and go, “No, I can't deal with this.” Whereas young women will sort of pull themselves together and figure it out. Why is there such a difference between young women feeling a sense of purpose and young men feeling a sense of purpose? That is a very big question that I can take a stab at, but I'm not sure I can answer. I think we have rightly and reasonably—and both you and I have participated in this—resourced and moved social and political agenda that young women see their interests reflected in. Right? There's a lot of rhetoric, but also actual policies, and ambassadors for those policies, saying, “Hey, look what's in this for you. If you work with us, if you put the time in, you're going to reap the benefits of it.” So, young women have bought into a component of a social contract that is coded Democratic that young men have not. Why? Because we haven't put in the commensurate interest. We sort of sweep them in, and we tend to lead with race or ethnicity. Democrats have a program for Black men, and they assume that means that young men see themselves as Black before male. We're trying to challenge those assumptions. One of the things we learned in our research is that Generation Z has bought into that they are the most multiracial generation. They're mostly totally fine with that. So, misogyny has become the gateway drug for the right to pull them in much more than white supremacy, which we saw is more effective for the older generations. The Proud Boys [https://www.splcenter.org/resources/extremist-files/proud-boys/] say they're one of the most diverse groups in America and they're not wrong. There's a piece of this that we need to think about in terms of how people are self-identifying, the multiple identities that, we, the left would call it intersectionality. That is not language that these young men are using, but it happens to be true. There are people who do this well--Governor Wes Moore, Governor Gretchen Whitmer, Senator Cory Booker— they have started to say, “We want you to see yourself as part of this coalition. We're going to call you out explicitly, and sometimes we're going to have policy that is for you.” The pushback on SAM has been informative, But one of the things that I feel viscerally coming from critics on the Democratic and left sides is that we have cemented ourselves in this zero-sum game way of doing politics. To me, that is very anti-progressive and anti-democratic, right? We should and can have a vision that is not about moving pieces on a board where one person gets ahead and then the other person must take a step back. In fact, the winning vision is going to be the one that can really inhabit pluralism as people have more and more intersecting identities. Let's talk about masculinity, because there's a lot of stuff out there about what's wrong with men, and what's wrong with young men. The right picks up on that and says, yes, all these things are wrong with you, but it's not your fault. It's the fault of women. It's the fault of Black people and immigrants taking your jobs and so on. How might one turn that around in an online space and say, “Hey guys, here's what's right about you, and this is how to activate it?” The way that I see doing that is lifting up the young men who are doing that all the time. And I have been in these spaces long enough to say, “My God, that guy, Luke—" I sometimes only know them by their handles because they're online—"is really trying to fight for a different vision of masculinity, but he's being drowned by the surround sound of the right.” So, how do we find a hundred Lukes and network them together so they're not doing a hand-to-hand combat one by one, but they become much more of an organized force? Quite honestly, it's basic organizing. Then, how do we resource them with what they need to fight for this vision better. There are positive visions of masculinity out there. There are also people who are pointing out that the negative vision doesn't work, right? And every time that we see a clip of Trump bullying someone, there needs to be a service that is clipping that, putting it into all these spaces, giving it to these young men who are organizing and saying, “Hey, I don't know that we know what a new version of masculinity totally looks like, but it doesn't look like that. I was raised by my father, my grandfather, my coaches to say that bullying is not what a man does.” And I think we're not doing any of the above right now. I think that's important. I am sort of a sideways fan of Taylor Lorenz. I read her newsletter [https://www.usermag.co/], and one of the things she's been talking about a lot lately, is that the left has abandoned online spaces to the right, and the right has a powerful online infrastructure. If we point to what's going on in Los Angeles now, the right had influencers on the ground immediately. There were these networks of professionals who were just pumping out content. How do we go about doing that but doing it in an ethical way where we're being upfront about who we are, being authentic and connecting with people without bending the facts or trying to manipulate them? The good news is that we don't have to bend the facts to win our arguments, which they do have to do. We saw that over and over in our town halls with young men. What we need to do is break the monopolistic grip that the right has on these channels, right? I keep saying that it's not rocket science, it's doing what we've done in other sectors. The innovation is recognizing that we need to do it in this sector. There are great leaders and great organizers and people who are producing content. They need resources to get out in the streets of LA and show a different version of what's going on. Then, what I would call a back office which is a little bit what SAM is, to make sure it's getting distributed as widely as possible. That's much more than half the battle, right? Because if you look at the media asymmetry, just a map of how much real estate the right owns in online space, Taylor is totally right about this. We should have lost that election by a lot more than we did, which says to me that some modest investments will go a long way in regaining ground. SAM put out a funding proposal for $20 million—the media imagined that that we had all the money, and we don't; that it was all for research; it's not. It's a two-year engagement program. Here’s an apples-to-apples comparison: Trump's campaign spent $20 million on engagement of young men between Labor Day and Election Day in 2024. Sam is suggesting we spend the same amount over two years. I’ve got to say the pushback that these young men were not worth that level of investment was dispiriting, but it’s also kind of terrifying, because the alternative is not great. Part of what you're making me think about, and tell me whether this is right or not, is that SAM has a goal, and then there need to be ancillary efforts to say to young women: “This is not about boxing you out. What can a feminist do to support young men? What can a feminist do to think about policies that allow young men to achieve their dreams.” Is that right? I think that's right. And I also think, again, that we don't see much divergence on the policies. We had young men say to us in our listening tour: “I love that my wife makes more money than me. I just want to be able to contribute as well.” I think some of this is in our own flawed frames. I come from the feminist world; I am a proud feminist. I would never promote any kind of policy that is at the expense of those hard-fought gains. What we do need to quell are people in our own ranks who seem to authentically believe that any young man who is not already with us is a hair away from becoming a knife-wielding incel. That is the furthest thing from the truth of what we have experienced. So, you know, just extending a hand, recognizing that these, grievances that are being weaponized politically are grounded in real problems, human problems. That's where you start, just saying: “My God, I see you, it's hard for me to afford rent too. What do we do together to make that a reality?” I don't want to connect too many different things because I don't know whether the research leads you there, but we're also seeing a lot of research that says that young women are frustrated in the ability to find a man who will really be a partner to them. I think it's upwards of 40 % of young women are saying: “I probably won't get married and if I have a baby, it'll be by myself. That's a huge shift in the culture. And without saying whether it's a good shift or a bad shift, I don't think young women are finding that there are men who feel that they can support a family or support a partner or whatever. So, doing this for men is doing this for women too. I say that as a lesbian, but you know what I mean. You're getting to one of my favorite points. There's both this sort of capital P “political” point, which is that there is a portion of young women who are sort of in the feminist tank with us, and are, stridently, rightfully wary of anything that would ask them to subsume their own goals and dreams to create more space for men. I don't want to do that. Nobody should want to do that. T here are also, just to be real, increasing numbers of young women who are like, “I want a boyfriend, and I want to get married, and I want to have a baby.” And if they don't see that perspective, reflected in Democratic policies, then we start to lose them too. The other thing I've been warning about is I'm starting to see among a lot of liberal and independent Moms a concern that Democrats don't care about their sons. So, we're going to start to see that impact voting patterns. But on the larger scale, I live for the world where everybody gets married because they want to, and nobody gets married because they must. It's much more about an emphasis on mutually supportive partnerships. I think that that is the vision that we want to put out there. And I also think that what young men are perceiving right now is that unless they are parroting progressive lines, then they are treated as predators, dangerous, and that is not a pathway forward for anyone. Before we go, I'm wondering if you could tell our listeners where they can read more of your writing? I write for The Bulwark and Democracy Journal of Ideas, but we also have a SAM Substack, and you should check it out. It is, we just launched it a couple weeks ago and we look for subscribers. Fantastic. Ilyse, thank you so much for your time. Thank you, Claire. Nice to see you. What I’m doing when you’re not looking: * When I am down in New York City during Pride week, I will head over to the center for Architecture to see “Fantasizing Design: Phyllis Birkby Builds Lesbian Feminist Architecture.” Curated by historians Stephan Vider [https://www.brynmawr.edu/inside/people/stephen-vider] and M.C. Overholt [https://www.design.upenn.edu/people/mc-overholt], the exhibit explores the life and work of a pathbreaking designer who asked the question: what would spaces look like if they weren’t designed and built by men? Short takes: * At The Liberal Patriot, Michael Baharaeen argues [https://www.liberalpatriot.com/p/life-in-america-feels-unsettling?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=239058&post_id=166087685&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=n6os&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email] that if the Democrats are going to push Trumpism aside, they need to address Americans’ ongoing anxiety about the state of the nation. Many respondents in a recent survey “fondly recall” the Reagan era “as a time when the country succeeded under the leadership of a strong and confident president—especially coming out of the Vietnam War and economic stagnation of the 1970s,” a finding that does not suggest voters will automatically respond to the chaos of the Trump era by rushing back to the Democratic Party.” Democrats “would be wise to reckon with the disquieting feelings many people possess right now, including speaking directly to the issues that informing those feelings” with policy proposals that project decisiveness and strength. (June 17, 2025) * Donald Trump’s Bunker-Busting Budget Bill has drawn a lot of attention for what it takes away, and less for where that money is going. As Felipe De La Hoz points out at The New Republic [https://newrepublic.com/article/196753/trump-republican-budget-bill-immigration-enforcement], “the Democrats have been largely silent on perhaps the bill’s most ominous characteristic: an orgy of resources for Kristi Noem and Stephen Miller’s shock troops to carry out President Trump’s indiscriminate crackdown on immigration and protest.” The bill “is effectively a blank check,” De La Hoz continues, and “ would take everything we’ve seen so far—the targeting of activists for their speech, masked agents grabbing people off the street, sudden flights to Guantánamo or out of the country, ramping up detentions—and crank it to 11.” (June 17, 2025) * Calls for Barack Obama to take charge of the Democratic Party are revealing—but not about Obama. This plea "speaks to an accepted truth: The Democratic Party lacks leadership,” media sociologist Tressie MacMillan Cottom writes at The New York Times. [https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/13/opinion/obama-save-america-trump.html] But it also speaks to an inability to grasp that political communication has changed drastically since 2016: the Obama that generates such nostalgia governed in a different country and a different media environment. “Yes, he was a historic president and a gifted speechmaker. But he was also speechifying in a media environment that could easily deliver 50 million viewers for political theater,” Cottom explains. “It is also symptomatic of a deeper problem among both the political center and the political left: They don’t want the discipline of a political faith, but they still clamor for a charismatic preacher.” (June 13, 2025) Political Junkie is a reader-supported publication. Can you become a paying subscriber for only $5/month? Get full access to Political Junkie at clairepotter.substack.com/subscribe [https://clairepotter.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Today’s video cast is available to all subscribers and will also be issued as a Why Now? podcast: this means that you can listen here, on the Substack app. If you want to enjoy this episode as you walk, garden, or work out, you can either download the file to your device or subscribe on Apple iTunes [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/why-now-a-political-junkie-podcast/id1653007976] or Spotify [https://open.spotify.com/show/3Azy3LXNaKhUhVAWnaoRv8]. Los Angeles has been organized to defend migrants all year: in a February protests, marchers wave Mexican flags and pronounce Donald Trump “El Criminal.” Photo credit: Ringo Chiu/Shutterstock [https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/demonstrators-protest-during-rally-against-president-2583051847] Our episode begins with a clip from Gavin Newsom’s June 10, 2025, speech [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0n77NFjDlBI] to the people of California—and perhaps to 2028 Democratic primary voters as well? In the News: * Democratic Senator Alex Padilla was wrestled out of the room [https://apnews.com/article/alex-padilla-noem-immigration-protest-california-f67d220a0254473c53c16aa96f554239], thrown to the ground, and briefly handcuffed for trying to ask Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem a question at her Los Angeles press conference on Thursday. * David Hogg, the 25-year-old anti-gun activist, influencer, and Vice Chair of the Democratic Party is making good on his promise to shake things up [https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/06/08/dnc-hogg-martin-infighting/]. Hogg’s Leaders We Deserve PAC puts money behind primary challengers to older Democratic officeholders. This put him is conflict with DNC Chair Ken Martin and as of late Wednesday, Hogg is out. [https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/11/us/politics/david-hogg-dnc-democrats.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare] We also learned on Wednesday that 89-year-old Eleanor Holmes Norton, a civil rights warrior and the Representative from the District of Columbia, plans to run again [https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/10/us/politics/iowa-young-democrats.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare] despite visible decline. * Sexual harasser and former governor Andrew Cuomo seems set to hammer [https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/polls/nyc-mayoral-primary-election-polls-2025.html] progressive Zohran Mamdani in the June 24 New York City mayoral primary. On Wednesday, Cuomo scored an endorsement [https://nypost.com/2025/06/10/us-news/mike-bloomberg-endorses-andrew-cuomo-in-nyc-mayoral-race/] from former mayor Michael Bloomberg. Whether he wins or not, Cuomo says he plans to run [https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/andrew-cuomo-fight-and-deliver-party/] on the “Fight and Deliver” party line—a party he created for himself. * On June 14, as Donald Trump assembles a $45 million military parade [https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/how-much-will-the-dc-military-parade-cost-heres-a-tally/3932636/] in Washington to celebrate himself the Army, activists will celebrate No Kings Day with nonviolent protests around the country. You can find the nearest one here [https://www.nokings.org/]; the Craig’s list ad asking for “seat fillers” is here [https://washingtondc.craigslist.org/doc/tlg/d/washington-seat-fillers-needed-june/7857143452.html]. In response,Trump has said that protesters will be greeted [https://www.nationalmemo.com/trump-protests] with “very big force.” It would also be terrible if the people who signed up for free tickets [https://events.america250.org/events/250th-anniversary-of-the-us-army-grand-military-parade-and-celebration] just didn’t show up. * This week we lost Brian Wilson [https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/11/arts/music/brian-wilson-dead.html], the musical heart of The Beach Boys and a pathbreaking composer, at 82. 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). News focus: * Thursday, Congress seemed to want to dress the anti-immigrant raids up in the cloak of legality by bringing in [https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/12/us/politics/republicans-governors-hochul-walz-immigration.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare] Governors Kathy Hochul (New York), Tim Walz (Minnesota), and J. B. Pritzker (Illinois) in for a turn in the GOP’s barrel. You can see “Sanctuary State City Governors” (Minnesota is not a sanctuary state.) * Jonathan Van Last asks: Are anti-immigration protests a good thing [https://www.thebulwark.com/p/the-protest-dilemma?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=87281&post_id=165539166&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=false&r=n6os&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email]? Hint: it’s hard to know. (June 9, 2025) * Journalist Michael Tomasky speculated that, unlike advisors in the first administration, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth would not dissuade Trump from giving an order to fire on Americans [https://newrepublic.com/article/196268/trump-hegseth-protesters-los-angeles?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=tnr_daily] with live ammo or calling up citizen militias. (The New Republic, June 9, 2025) * The troop deployment to LA will cost $134 million [https://www.cnbc.com/2025/06/10/trump-la-marines-protests-guard.html]. (The Hill, June 10, 2025) * The battle between citizens and police in Los Angeles immediately became the object of fake news and conspiracy theories [https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/10/technology/la-protests-conspiracy-theories-disinformation.html?smid=url-share]. (June 10, 2025) * Taylor Lorenz explains why protesters in LA are burning their beloved Waymos [https://www.usermag.co/p/why-people-are-burning-waymos?utm_campaign=email-half-post&r=n6os&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email]. (June 9, 2025) * Seth Masket interviews a political science professor arrested in Los Angeles, [https://smotus.substack.com/p/arrested-in-la?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1327720&post_id=165730384&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=n6os&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email]despite asking repeatedly to leave. (June 12, 2025) * Molly Jong-Fast argues that the show of military might in Los Angeles, and in Washington on Saturday, are accumulating evidence that the Trump administration is failing [https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/donald-trump-los-angeles-troops?utm_source=nl&utm_brand=vf&utm_mailing=VF_MollyJongFast_06102025&utm_medium=email&bxid=5bea04353f92a404693e32a3&cndid=44691879&hasha=30ca3164a2ee75a2fcdea9acd31c7ff0&hashb=4a143b91923b930db563c95a184a15acc3e47348&hashc=175c7ebc71d84b708080750f16f4c04e9b95345a322caadb0210b3539946bd09&esrc=&mbid=mbid%3DCRMVYF012019&source=EDT_VYF_NEWSLETTER_0_HIVE_ZZ&utm_campaign=VF_MollyJongFast_06102025&utm_term=VYF_JongFast]. (Vanity Fair, June 10, 2025) * Jill Filipovic asks: are the protests are a turning point [https://jill.substack.com/p/turning-points?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=9349&post_id=165700064&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=false&r=n6os&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email], and if so, for whom? (June 11.2025) * Let’s go back to Gavin Newsom: what are the opportunities and risks [https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/11/us/newsom-speech-2028.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare] for him going up against Trump? What we want to go viral: * Neil is excited about Sierra Crane Murdoch, https://bookshop.org/a/110427/9780399589171Yellow Bird: [https://bookshop.org/a/110427/9780399589171]Oil, Murder, and a Woman's Search for Justice in Indian Country ( Random House, 2021), a true story of a murder on an Indian reservation, and the unforgettable Arikara woman who becomes obsessed with solving it. * Claire wants you to read Molly Jong-Fast’s memoir about her mother, Erica Jong, How to Lose Your Mother: A Daughter’s Memoir [https://bookshop.org/a/110427/9780593656471] (Viking, 2025) Short takes: * President Donald Trump has been very public that he and President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador are partners in the United States deportation project. But, as T. Christian Miller and Sebastian Rotella report at ProPublica [https://www.propublica.org/article/bukele-trump-el-salvador-ms13-gang-vulcan-corruption-investigation], if the United States has an MS-13 problem, Bukele is implicated. “A long-running U.S. investigation of MS-13 has uncovered evidence at odds with Bukele’s reputation as a crime fighter,” Miller and Rotella write. “The inquiry, which began as an effort to dismantle the gang’s leadership, expanded to focus on whether the Bukele government cut a secret deal with MS-13 in the early years of his presidency.” It gets worse. “Bukele’s allies secretly blocked extraditions of gang leaders whom U.S. agents viewed as potential witnesses to the negotiations and persecuted Salvadoran law enforcement officials who helped the task force, according to exclusive interviews with current and former U.S. and Salvadoran officials, newly obtained internal documents and court records from both countries.” There are also allegations that U.S. humanitarian aid to El Salvador ended up in the gang’s coffers. (June 12, 2025) * Trumpist attacks on universities and cultural institutions seem to be driving an escalation in state-level culture wars too. “In a chilling meeting of the Florida State Board of Education last week, a school district superintendent was publicly browbeaten and repeatedly threatened with criminal prosecution,” Judd Legum writes at Popular Information [https://popular.info/p/florida-officials-threaten-librarians?utm_campaign=email-half-post&r=n6os&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email]. The crime? Not removing 55 books designated as pornography from Hillsborough County Schools, despite the fact that none are pornographic, and they are classic YA literature no parent has complained about. “Kelly Garcia, who was appointed to the State Board by Governor Ron DeSantis (R) in 2023, suggested that librarians in Hillsborough County were illiterate and told [Hillsborough School Superintendent Van] Ayres they lacked a `single shred of decency,’” Legum reports. “She described the librarians as `child abusers’ and asked if Ayres had considered firing all of them.” (June 12, 2025) * A deep dive into his family tree gives new meaning to the joke: Is the Pope catholic—and please note I am using the small c. “Go back to our 12th great grandparents, and everyone has a whopping 32,766 forebears,” Henry Louis Gates, Jr., reminds us in a New York Times story about Pope Leo XIV’s genealogy, [https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/06/11/magazine/pope-leo-xiv-ancestry-family-tree.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare] which includes Black people and minor Spanish nobility, colonizers and freedom fighters. “The initial finding about the pope’s Black ancestry looked back three generations,” Gates continues. “In collaboration with the genealogists at American Ancestors and the Cuban Genealogy Club of Miami, we were able to identify more than 100 people going back 15 generations and discovered a wealth of fascinating stories. We all agreed that, after more than a decade of doing this kind of genealogical work, the pope’s roots make for one of the most diverse family trees we have ever created.” (June 11, 2025) Can you support the work that goes into Political Junkies for only $5 a month? You can also take out an annual subscription 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. Get full access to Political Junkie at clairepotter.substack.com/subscribe [https://clairepotter.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]