Politics Brief

Devin Coleman has been out of prison for 12 years. Thanks to the passage of Amendment 4 in Florida, he will now be eligible to vote once more. Steve Bousquet of the Tampa Bay Times joins the Takeaway to discuss the implications of the amendment.

Nancy Solomon, managing editor of New Jersey Public Radio, talks about election results in New Jersey. Joining her are Kai Wright, editor and host of WNYC’s narrative unit, and Gabriel Debenedett, New York Magazine national political correspondent, to take a look at other races around the country.

It's Election Day on The Brian Lehrer Show. Scott Bland, editor of Campaign Pro for Politico, and TIME National Correspondent Charlotte Alter discuss how both parties have worked to get out the vote in the run-up to the midterm election. And later, listeners share their stories of voting for different candidates than their loved ones.

A group of progressive Texas women who are organizing in secret, out of fear of retaliation from neighbors, friends, and even family. Now, as WNYC's Amanda Aroncyzk reports, some are ready to speak out.

Lilliana Mason is professor of government and politics at the University of Marylandand author of Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity. She joins On The Media's Bob Garfield to discuss how anger and tribal identity have gotten us to the current political moment, and how we might move past it.

In the latest episode of The United States of Anxiety, we meet Rena Cook, a voice coach in Oklahoma who’s training progressive, female candidates on how to subvert our inbuilt biases about women’s voices. Plus, we look back on what the 1977 National Women’s Conference did (and didn’t) do for feminism.

Just four percent of T.V. campaign ads explicitly mention climate change despite warnings from the United Nations and others that predict catastrophic damage from climate change as early as 2040. Millennials are the only generation where a clear majority believes that there is solid evidence of global warming and who also attribute this primarily to human activity. The Takeaway holds a roundtable discussion with three millennial voices on why climate change matters to them and their generation.

Charlie Sykes, longtime conservative talk host and MSNBC contributor, Eddie Glaude, chair of Princeton's new department of African-American studies and president-elect of the American Academy of Religion, and Alexis Grenell, co-founder of Pythia Public, a political and public affairs firm, look back at what issues both Democrats and Republicans have chosen to campaign on this election season, and what the choices say about the culture. This segment is part of The Brian Lehrer Show's 30 Issues in 30 Days series.

On The Brian Lehrer Show, Dean Baker macroeconomist and co-founder of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, D.C. and Stephen Moore, fellow at the Project for Economic Growth at the Heritage Foundation and author of Trumponomics: Inside the America First Plan to Revive Our Economy, debate about whether Trump's approach to the economy is responsible for the wage growth, and how to keep it going for all Americans. This segment is a part of the series 30 Issues in 30 Days. 

Drew Desilver is a senior writer at Pew Research Center. He joins The Takeaway to discuss what some problems may be with a system that hasn’t changed in nearly 90 years.

Reporter Eliza Griswold follows political campaigns in Pennsylvania. She joins The New Yorker Radio Hour to talk about the controversial Mariner East 2 Pipeline Project, which has rare bipartisan support... and opposition.

Melissa Mark-Viverito, vice president of strategic engagement for the Latino Victory Fund and former New York City Council speaker, joins The Brian Lehrer Show to survey how Latino voters are feeling about and voting in the midterm elections. Also joining the show is John Della Volpe, director of polling at the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics, who talks about the latest polling on young voters.

Clare Malone, senior political writer for FiveThirtyEight, joins On The Media to talk about the figures, myths and exaggerations making their way into the national conversation ahead of the midterms. 

Traditional canvassing can help 'get out the base' but it has little success winning over voters on the other side. So, as WNYC's Fred Mogul reports, canvassers on Staten Island are trying an experiment. 

WNYC's Brian Lehrer talks with Washington Post national security reporter Nick Miroff about how the caravan of asylum seekers traveling from Central America is playing a role in the midterm elections. Plus New York Times reporter Annie Correal shares snapshots from the caravan of migrants making their way through Mexico to the U.S. border.

The New Yorker Radio Hour takes a look at several candidates on the far right openly espousing white-supremacist and white-nationalist views in this midterms election season. Reporter Andrew Marantz tells host David Remnick that candidates who used to “dog-whistle”—use coded language to appeal to racist voters—now openly make white-supremacist statements that Republican Party leadership won’t disavow. 

Danielle Root is the voting rights manager at the Center for American Progress. She joins The Takeaway to discuss what it'd take to make America's voting systems better.

Rachel Silberstein, staff writer at The Times Union, joins The Brian Lehrer Show to talk about the latest debate between incumbent Rep. John Faso and Democratic challenger Antonio Delgado in New York's highly contested District 19 congressional race.

Walter Shaub, senior advisor at the watchdog group CREW, and former director of the United States Office of Government Ethics, joins The Brian Lehrer Show to talk about Capitol Hill's swelling crisis of ethics. 

WNYC's Jessica Gould reports on the intense race in Long Island between Democrat Liuba Grechen Shirley and Republican Pete King.

Joining The Takeaway to break down how voting varies across the country is David Becker, the executive director and founder of the Center for Election Innovation & Research.

Last year, when Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman became Saudi Arabia's Deputy Prime Minister, the press fawned over his reforms in the arena of women's rights and business.  The Western media has devoted less coverage to his regime's human rights violations and destruction in Yemen. Georgetown University in Qatar professor Abdullah Al-Arian speaks to On The Media's Brooke Gladstone about the trope of the Saudi royal "reformers," where it comes from and why it persists.

On The Brian Lehrer Show, Andy Borowitz, comedian and creator of The New Yorker's "The Borowitz Report" column, gives his satirical take on the news.

Trump has been doing business with Saudis for years, even bragging during his presidential campaign about the large amount of money Saudi buyers paid for his apartments. In this Trump, Inc. podcast extra, WNYC’s Charlie Herman talks with The Washington Post’s David Fahrenthold and Joe Nocera from Bloomberg Opinion about all the ways Saudi Arabia is intertwined with U.S. business interests, including those of the president himself.

WNYC's Nancy Solomon reports on three activists groups changing the political landscape of a large swath of New Jersey suburbs, places that have elected Republicans to local and national office for decades.

New Labor Department numbers this week point to a record number of job openings, and a booming labor market like this means it’s a great time for employees to ask for more money in their current role, or to find new, better work. Harry Holzer, a professor of Public Policy at Georgetown and former Chief Economist for the U.S. Department of Labor, joins The Takeaway to discuss why the economy looks the way it does, how workers can benefit, and who is left out of this prosperous moment. 

Hear the latest episode of More Perfect from WNYC Studios, featuring a song the legendary Dolly Parton wrote for the show about the 19th Amendment to the US Constitution, which gave women the right to vote.

Ben Sasse, Republican U.S. Senator from Nebraska and author of Them: Why We Hate Each Other--and How to Heal, argues that loneliness is the underlying cause of America's extreme polarization and that the solution lies in finding deepening "rootedness." That's on The Brian Lehrer Show.

Russian intelligence has been probing for weaknesses in our election systems. And there are plenty. Can states secure themselves from attack in time for the midterms? Sue Halpern, who reports on election security, joined The New Yorker Radio Hour to discuss.

WNYC reporter Fred Mogul on the secrets (and limits) to Andrew Cuomo's long-shot Republican challenger for Governor of New York, Marc Molinaro. 

Are open borders and #AbolishICE actually stances of a potential Democratic House? Rep. Adriano Espaillat discusses his party's plan for immigration policy if they win a majority. This segment is a part of The Brian Lehrer Show's series, 30 Issues in 30 Days. 

Two years ago, then-candidate Donald Trump ran for president on a series of promises to the American people: creating millions of new jobs, revitalizing manufacturing, renegotiating NAFTA, and of course, building the wall. How has he fared? Hear analysis from Politics with Amy Walter.

Jehmu Greene, the only black woman candidate in the 2017 race for DNC chair and founding member of VoteRunLead, joins The Takeaway to discuss why she "ghosted" the Democratic Party and some of the steps it could take to repair the relationship between the party and black women.

Juan Williams, political analyst for Fox News and the author of What the Hell Do You Have to Lose?: Trump's War on Civil Rights, and Roger Clegg, president and general counsel of the Center for Equal Opportunity, debate the future of affirmative action under President Trump. This segment is a part of The Brian Lehrer Show's 30 Issues in 30 Days series.

On Trump, Inc.: a look at the relationship between President Trump and Sheldon Adelson. Adelson, a casino magnate, is one of the wealthiest people in the world, and the Trump administration has advanced his ideological and financial interests.

With the midterm elections just weeks away, campaign workers are in crunch time. But there's been a growing movement over the past few months to protect these workers from exploitation. WNYC reporter Shumita Basu takes a look at a new independent union springing out of this movement called the Campaign Workers Guild. 

Landing a year into the #MeToo movement, Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women's Anger is timely. Written by the feminist journalist Rebecca Traister, the book combines an analysis of the ways in which women’s anger is discouraged, with a historical look at moments when that anger has had political implications. Traister spoke with David Remnick of The New Yorker Radio Hour.

On The Brian Lehrer Show, HuffPost Senior politics reporter Jennifer Bendery offers analysis on the Kavanaugh cloture vote.

A federal judge blocked the Trump administration’s efforts to end Temporary Protected Status for 300,000 people, providing momentary relief for immigrants from Sudan, Nicaragua, El Salvador and Haiti. WNYC's Arun Venugopal reports.

Alexis Grenell, New York Daily News contributor and co-founder of the political affairs firm Pythia Public, joins The Brian Lehrer Show to talk about the impact of #MeToo in New York State with Erica Vladimer, co-founder of Sexual Harassment Working Group.

Trump, Inc. co-hosts Andrea Bernstein and Ilya Marritz talk about the New York Times investigation that calls into question Pres. Trump's claims that he received little of his wealth from his father.

Though President Trump has claimed that trade wars are "easy to win," in states like North Dakota, Ohio, and Tennessee, the effects of protectionist tariffs on Chinese-made goods — and China’s sixty billion dollars in retaliatory duties — could give Democrats control of the Senate. On the New Yorker Radio Hour, staff writers John Cassidy and Sheelah Kolhatkar, parse how candidates in both parties are navigating a new economic order.