Political Gabfest - Gabfest Reads | Why America Is Spiritually Broken and How to Fix It

Description

Emily Bazelon interviews Senator Chris Murphy about his new book Crisis of the Common Good: The Fight for Meaning and Connection in a Broken America. [https://books.apple.com/us/book/crisis-of-the-common-good/id6758423831?itscg=30200&itsct=books_box_link&mttnsubad=6758423831&at=1000l38Mz] Murphy argues that Trump is not the root cause of America's political crisis—he's a symptom. The real diagnosis: a country ravaged by loneliness, disconnection, and the collapse of community. From gun violence to Jan. 6, Murphy traces our troubles back to a spiritual unspooling, a loss of meaning and purpose. But his book offers solutions. Murphy lays out a provocative agenda for Democrats to call Americans to national service, break up corporate power, rebuild local communities, and create a bigger tent that reaches disaffected conservatives hungry for change. Murphy makes the case that fixing America's spiritual crisis is not just morally necessary—it's the only way Democrats win. Winning by being against Trump is not enough. Democrats must offer a proactive vision of an America where people feel powerful in their economy, connected to their communities, and called to something greater than themselves. The book isn’t about policy prescriptions, but rather a fundamental reimagining of what Americans want from their government and from each other. Tweet us your questions @SlateGabfest or email us at gabfest@slate.com. (Messages could be quoted by name unless the writer stipulates otherwise.) Podcast production by Nina Porzucki. ---------------------------------------- Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy [https://acast.com/privacy] for more information.

Amicus With Dahlia Lithwick | Law, justice, and the courts - Guns, Weed, and the Forgotten Framers

The Supreme Court handed down a unanimous ruling this week in United States v. Hemani [https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/24-1234_g2bh.pdf], holding that a marijuana user cannot be stripped of his Second Amendment right to own a firearm simply because he sometimes uses cannabis. Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote the majority opinion, leaning heavily on the founders' own well-documented love of alcohol to argue that responsible substance use has never historically disqualified Americans from bearing arms. Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern unpack the ruling, note what it does not settle about the still-murky Bruen [https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/20-843_7j80.pdf] test, and reflect on how dramatically the justices’ posture toward marijuana has shifted since the "Bong Hits for Jesus [https://www.oyez.org/cases/2006/06-278]" case they decided less than two decades ago. Then, Dahlia sits down with David Gans, director of the Human Rights, Civil Rights, and Citizenship Program at the Constitutional Accountability Center [https://www.theusconstitution.org/], to discuss his forthcoming Stanford Law Review article, Forgotten Framers: Black Conventions and the Second Founding [https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=6292939]. Between 1864 and 1869, Black Americans gathered in more than fifty conventions in packed churches and meeting halls across the country to demand equal citizenship, voting rights, bodily autonomy, protection from racial violence, and access to education. These conventions molded the Reconstruction amendments in ways that originalist jurisprudence ignores. Gans explains how the Roberts court's colorblind reading of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments distorts this history by ignoring the explicitly race-conscious vision the conventions—and the amendments themselves—championed. He also explains how the Guarantee Clause, long a "sleeping giant," could still offer a constitutional path to combat partisan and racial gerrymandering after https://www.supremecourt.gov/Calais and Milligan. Gans wrote about this facet of the history https://slate.com/recently in Slate [https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2026/06/supreme-court-analysis-congress-scotus-chuck-schumer.html]. This is part of Opinionpalooza [https://slate.com/tag/opinionpalooza-2025], Slate’s coverage of the major decisions from the Supreme Court. The best way to support our work is by joining Slate Plus [https://slate.com/plus]. (If you are already a member, consider a donation [https://slate.com/donate?utm_medium=link&utm_campaign=plus&utm_content=nav_bar&utm_source=nav] or merch [https://shop.slate.com/collections/exclusive-amicus-merch]!) Want more Amicus? Join Slate Plus to unlock weekly bonus episodes with exclusive legal analysis. Plus, you’ll access ad-free listening across all your favorite Slate podcasts. You can subscribe directly from the Amicus show page on Apple Podcasts [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/amicus-with-dahlia-lithwick-law-justice-and-the-courts/id928790786] and Spotify [https://open.spotify.com/show/7DpL32jgjwBTah8o9HQkBl]. Or, visit slate.com/amicusplus [https://slate.com/podcast-plus?utm_medium=link&utm_campaign=plus_pod&utm_content=Amicus&utm_source=show_summary] to get access wherever you listen. ---------------------------------------- Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy [https://acast.com/privacy] for more information.

20. juni 20261 h 2 min

Political Gabfest - Gabfest Reads | Why America Is Spiritually Broken and How to Fix It

Description

Comments

1 month for 9 kr.

All episodes