Latest Campaignfinance Podcast Episodes
A Supreme Fact Check
Brennan Center LIVE - July 10, 2024 13:56 - 54 minutes ★★★★★ - 20 ratingsThe Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority has taken a hard originalist turn, citing history to justify rulings that have eliminated many long-standing American rights. What exactly does originalism mean? Should history be the sole source of rights? And what if the history that the Court has...
Supreme Court: Ready for Reform?
Brennan Center LIVE - July 03, 2024 14:44 - 52 minutes ★★★★★ - 20 ratingsPublic support for the Supreme Court has plummeted to an all-time low in the last year as the highest court has been ridden with controversy and ethics scandals. Hard-right rulings from a conservative supermajority have also raised concerns about the judicial independence of the institution. Is ...
A Politicized Supreme Court Is Remaking America
Brennan Center LIVE - June 26, 2024 13:32 - 51 minutes ★★★★★ - 20 ratingsPresidential immunity, limits on gun control, governmental oversight for agencies — the fate of these issues is in the hands of the Supreme Court this summer. Not only is the current Court the most conservative we have ever seen, it is also plagued with ethics violations. Brennan Center Presid...
What Originalism Means for Women
Brennan Center LIVE - June 20, 2024 19:06 - 53 minutes ★★★★★ - 20 ratingsThe Supreme Court has turned back time in recent decisions by regressing to an interpretation of the Constitution according to its “original meaning.” What has this meant for women’s rights? Listen in on a panel discussion with Madiba K. Dennie, author of the new book The Originalism Trap; K...
Resisting Minority Rule
Brennan Center LIVE - June 13, 2024 19:59 - 51 minutes ★★★★★ - 20 ratingsA governing majority in the United States has never required an actual majority of the voting population. And the tactics of achieving minoritarian control are always shifting. A minority of Americans are now set on thwarting the will of the people through voter suppression, gerrymandering, and ...
What Comes Next in the Trump Legal Saga?
Brennan Center LIVE - June 04, 2024 19:20 - 54 minutes ★★★★★ - 20 ratingsDonald Trump is now the first American president convicted of a crime. The smooth trial process shows that — independent of the outcome — the U.S. justice system can still work, even with a powerful defendant. But full accountability seems far off. The federal courts, including the Supreme Cou...
The High Cost of Public Service
Brennan Center LIVE - May 22, 2024 14:32 - 51 minutes ★★★★★ - 20 ratingsA new Brennan Center report reveals that intimidation aimed at state and local officials is distressingly common: For example, 43 percent of state legislators have experienced threats within the past three years. These threats have serious repercussions for representative democracy. Offic...
The Failed Experiment of Mass Incarceration
Brennan Center LIVE - May 08, 2024 14:06 - 52 minutes ★★★★★ - 20 ratingsMost of the more than 1 million Americans in prison — disproportionately low-income people of color — will return to their communities after serving long sentences with few resources and little support. Recidivism rates remain stubbornly high. The criminal justice system, then, fails to produce ...
Misdemeanors by the Numbers
Brennan Center LIVE - April 24, 2024 16:17 - 53 minutes ★★★★★ - 20 ratingsMisdemeanors, not violent offenses, dominate criminal justice. A decade of reforms has shrunk the sprawling misdemeanor system, but the prosecution of shoplifting, traffic violations, and other lesser offenses remains a burden on vulnerable communities and law enforcement resources even as publi...
Decoding the Trump Indictments
Brennan Center LIVE - April 09, 2024 16:47 - 51 minutes ★★★★★ - 20 ratingsListen to the recording of our in-person event from last month, Decoding the Trump Indictments. Melissa Murray and Andrew Weissmann, coauthors of the new book The Trump Indictments, discuss the historic charges against the former president in a discussion moderated by Brennan Center President Mi...
Anne Applebaum on the Twilight of Democracy
Brennan Center LIVE - October 28, 2020 11:00 - 33 minutes ★★★★★ - 20 ratingsWhat role do members of the cultural and media elite play in the ascent of nationalist rule? In her new book, Twilight of Democracy, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and historian Anne Applebaum examines the surrogates who enable autocracy. She discusses the patterns of weakening democracies ar...
Martin Garbus and the Cuban Five
Brennan Center LIVE - July 08, 2020 10:00 - 19 minutes ★★★★★ - 20 ratingsIn his most recent book, North of Havana, legendary trial lawyer Martin Garbus recounts one of his most high-profile cases: the Cuban Five. In this episode of Brennan Center Live, Garbus talks to Victoria Bassetti about what this case can teach us about the U.S. justice system, American politics...
Supreme Inequality
Brennan Center LIVE - June 24, 2020 09:00 - 26 minutes ★★★★★ - 20 ratingsIn recent years, the Supreme Court has empowered moneyed interests to wield disproportionate influence in elections, gutted the Voting Rights Act, and upheld President Trump’s travel ban. These decisions fit a troubling, decades-long pattern, argues journalist Adam Cohen. He talks with NYU Law p...
George Washington: You Never Forget Your First
Brennan Center LIVE - June 10, 2020 09:00 - 35 minutes ★★★★★ - 20 ratingsHow did George Washington view the presidency? What might he think of politics today? Historian Alexis Coe examines America's first president in a freshly humanizing light in her new book You Never Forget Your First. She talks with Julian Zelizer in this new episode of Brennan Center Live.
Susan Rice on Things Worth Fighting For
Brennan Center LIVE - June 03, 2020 09:00 - 23 minutes ★★★★★ - 20 ratingsIn her memoir Tough Love: My Story of the Things Worth Fighting For, former National Security Advisor and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice reveals pivotal moments from her career on the front lines of U.S. diplomacy and foreign policy. In this episode of Brennan Center Live, Rice...
Election Meltdown
Brennan Center LIVE - May 27, 2020 09:00 - 25 minutes ★★★★★ - 20 ratingsThe coronavirus pandemic has exposed several problems with the American elections system, but even outside of global pandemic, Americans are increasingly questioning the fairness and accuracy of our elections. In his new book Election Meltdown: Dirty Tricks, Distrust, and the Threat to American ...
When Should Law Forgive?
Brennan Center LIVE - May 20, 2020 09:00 - 33 minutes ★★★★★ - 20 ratingsWhen Should Law Forgive?, former Harvard Law School dean Martha Minow argues that we should build forgiveness into the administration of American law. She speaks with NYU Law Professor Melissa Murray in this new episode of Brennan Center Live."}" data-sheets-userformat= "{"2":13245,"3":{"1":0},"...
The Fight for Reproductive Rights
Brennan Center LIVE - May 13, 2020 10:00 - 33 minutes ★★★★★ - 20 ratingsNearly half a century after Roe v. Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court seems poised to undermine or overturn the landmark ruling. It’s an unnerving time for reproductive rights across the U.S., but it’s not new: social movements, politics, and courts have lead us here. Legal experts Melissa Murray, Rev...
The Revolution in Prosecutors’ Offices
Brennan Center LIVE - April 15, 2020 09:00 - 43 minutes ★★★★★ - 20 ratingsDistrict attorneys wield tremendous power and have for decades been a driving force in mass incarceration. In her new book Charged: The New Movement to Transform American Prosecution and End Mass Incarceration, journalist Emily Bazelon follows a new crop of district attorneys who are using their...
How Progressives Can Compete for Power
Brennan Center LIVE - April 08, 2020 09:00 - 41 minutes ★★★★★ - 20 ratingsPolicies supported by a majority of Americans are stymied in Washington and state capitals time and again. Enacting this agenda requires progressives to redouble their efforts at gaining power by expanding the franchise, ending voter suppression, and winning judicial elections, argues Caroline F...
The Great Migration’s Complicated Legacy
Brennan Center LIVE - April 01, 2020 09:00 - 44 minutes ★★★★★ - 20 ratingsAfrican Americans fleeing racial terror in the South sought refuge in the North but instead encountered discrimination in housing, employment, and policing. Marcia Chatelain, Kenisha Grant, Ted Johnson, and Mark Whitaker discuss the history of the Great Migration and how it reverberates in mass ...
How the Tumultuous ’70s Shaped Our Political Conflicts
Brennan Center LIVE - March 25, 2020 09:00 - 40 minutes ★★★★★ - 20 ratingsThe upheavals of the 1970s — the Watergate cover-up, defeat in Vietnam, racial conflict, and economic convulsions — formed the contours of today’s polarization, argue Princeton historians Kevin M. Kruse and Julian E. Zelizer. They joined Soledad O’Brien to discuss their new book, Fault Lines: A ...
Preet Bharara on Crime, Punishment, and the Rule of Law
Brennan Center LIVE - March 18, 2020 09:00 - 40 minutes ★★★★★ - 20 ratingsReflecting on a distinguished prosecutorial career, former U.S. attorney Preet Bharara discusses the need for lawyers to take into account flaws in the legal system and in human nature in his new book, Doing Justice: A Prosecutor’s Thoughts on Crime, Punishment, and the Rule of Law. He is joined...
Ta-Nehisi Coates on Race, the Law, and Politics
Brennan Center LIVE - March 11, 2020 09:00 - 40 minutes ★★★★★ - 20 ratingsJournalism and cultural production are crucial to making law and policy, Ta-Nehisi Coates argues, because they expand peoples’ empathy and imagination. In a wide-ranging conversation, the celebrated journalist discusses criminal justice reform, the 2020 election, the #MeToo movement, and more wi...
Lessons From Watergate
Brennan Center LIVE - November 29, 2018 10:00 - 30 minutes ★★★★★ - 20 ratingsWatergate revealed a trail of crimes and coverups that brought down a president and changed the course of American history. With Robert Mueller's findings likely to be unveiled soon, what can we learn from Watergate about Trump-era abuses of power? John Dean, who was President Nixon's White Hous...
Van Jones, Darren Walker: How To End Mass Incarceration
Brennan Center LIVE - November 20, 2018 10:00 - 38 minutes ★★★★★ - 20 ratingsAmerica has five percent of the world’s population, but nearly a quarter of its prisoners. Now, a dynamic movement for change is sweeping the country. CNN host Van Jones and Ford Foundation president Darren Walker on how to keep the momentum going. Brennan Center Live is a weekly series of pod...
Carol Anderson: One Person, No Vote
Brennan Center LIVE - November 03, 2018 09:00 - 58 minutes ★★★★★ - 20 ratingsNew York Times best-selling author Carol Anderson speaks with Cornell Brooks about her new book on racist voter suppression and the fight against it. Anderson focuses in particular on the drive to weaken the landmark Voting Rights Act, and argues that voter suppression ultimately aims to make it...
Voter Suppression 2018
Brennan Center LIVE - October 30, 2018 08:30 - 58 minutes ★★★★★ - 20 ratingsAs crucial elections approach, voters from Georgia to North Dakota to Texas are at risk of disenfranchisement, and the result could be further skewed by extreme gerrymandering. Meanwhile, automatic voter registration could expand access to the polls in several states. How will the battle over vo...
Danielle Allen: Cuz – A Memoir of Mass Incarceration
Brennan Center LIVE - October 24, 2018 08:00 - 35 minutes ★★★★★ - 20 ratingsHow did we lose an entire generation to the American prison system following the War on Drugs? In Cuz, The Life and Times of Michael A., the Harvard professor and political theorist Danielle Allen explores the issue through the experience of her cousin, who served 11 years in prison for an atte...
Trumpocracy: A Conversation With David Frum
Brennan Center LIVE - October 16, 2018 15:16 - 34 minutes ★★★★★ - 20 ratingsDonald Trump poses a grave, long-term threat to our democratic institutions, Atlantic senior editor and former White House speechwriter David Frum has been warning. But, in this wide-ranging conversation with NYU Law School president Trevor Morrison, Frum argues we need to focus not just on Trum...
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