Joe Biden has a divided mind when it comes to the Republican Party. On the one hand, he’s all to aware that the GOP has become radicalized and is an existential threat to American democracy. On the other hand, Biden, drawing on his many decades in Washington, is drawn to the idea of bipartisan compromise and acts as if it is his duty to elevate the more moderate wing of the Republican party. We can see the two sides of Biden’s approach to the opposition party as he tries to navigate through the debt ceiling crisis. Biden has acknowledged the idea of taking the debt ceiling weapon off the table by invoking the Fourteenth Amendment even as he has also indicated a willingness to cut a deal. 

It's unclear which side of the equation will win. To take up the issue of Biden’s handling of the GOP and the debt ceiling crisis, I spoke with Brian Beutler, the editor-in-chief at Crooked Media. Brian edits a very fine newsletter, Big Tent, which can be found here.

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Over the last thirty years, Republicans, when in control the House of Representatives, have repeatedly used the debt ceiling to force Democratic presidents to make draconian budget cuts. This drama took place under both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. We are now witnessing a replay under Joe Biden. Under pressure from divergent political forces, Biden is being forced to make a choice between negotiating with the Republicans or figuring out a way to squash the debt ceiling threat.

In a recent statement, Jeff Hauser, founder of The Revolving Door Project, makes the case for a direct fight: “GOP leaders have sent a wildly exploitative ransom note to the public. The administration should not accept its terms. Biden, Yellen, and Garland have many executive branch pathways to avoid doing so, including by refusing to defend the debt ceiling against the recent lawsuit from government employees arguing that it is unconstitutional for the federal government to not pay its debts. The Biden Administration must not cave in to extremists and overwrite the best of the administration’s legacy merely in order to sustain the legal incoherence that is elites’ understanding of the debt ceiling.” I spoke to Jeff about the dangers of the debt ceiling as a threat to the constitutional order and how Biden can fight it.

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The emerging scandals at the Supreme Court are only getting worse with new revelations about Clarence Thomas and his wife Ginni being the beneficiaries of plutocratic largess. But it remains unclear whether the Democrats can mount an effective attack that uses the scandal to reform the courts. 

To discuss how gridlock and a lack of political will is allowing a constitutional crisis to fester, I spoke with Alexander Sammon, a political writer for Slate. He provides an expert tour of both the scandals and also of the completely inadequate political response, as well as providing some insights on how Democrats could use their existing power to actually reign in an increasingly lawless judiciary.

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This has been an eventful week in both the news media and social media. Tucker Carlson was apparently fired from Fox News. Meanwhile, Twitter under the aegis of Elon Musk continues to be in turmoil as it changes verification policies, to the irritation of longtime users. 

To make sense of it all, I talked to Ryan Cooper, managing editor of The American Prospect. Ryan has produced a fascinating Youtube video about the journalist Matt Taibbi, a one-time muckraking radical who in recent years has increasingly aligned himself with the reactionary agenda of Carlson and Musk. As it turns out, Taibbi’s trajectory provides a perfect storyline for tracing recent changes in the media and also the disturbing tendency of some former leftists to shift right under the impetus of the culture wars.

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The victories of Brandon Johnson in Chicago and Janet Protasiewicz in Wisconsin are the latest signs that the upper Midwest, after a long period of trending right, is now the home of a liberal and left resurgence. Chris Lehmann, who surveyed the region in a recent column for the Nation, joins the podcast to talk about this development. We look at the history of how the “Blue Firewall” that helped Obama win in 2012 became a cornerstone of Trump’s victory in 2016, the disastrous impact of the 2010 midterms, the GOP campaign (aided by Koch-family money) to create permanent Republican power in the region using gerrymandering, and the counterattack led by grass-roots activism and union organizing. 

In discussing the recent liberal resurgence, we examine the impact of social issues (notably abortion and trans rights) and economic issues (notably workers’ rights and trade). We also contrast the politics of Illinois, Wisconsin, and Michigan (where the Democrats are finding their footing) with Iowa (where the right continues to be ascendant). 

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While the arrest of former president Donald Trump on 34 counts of falsifying business record can be welcomed as a rare example of accountability for the elite Americans, the actual case will have to be tested in court. My colleague Elie Mystal has written an important column cautioning against having high expectations. The fact is the case brought by Manhattan D.A. Alvin Bragg is for one of Trump’s lesser offenses (compared to ongoing investigations over obstruction of justice, over attempted influencing of election officials, over incitement of the January 6 attempted coup, and over handling of classified documents, among other matters).

Further, this particular case against Trump has to clear some high legal hurdles. On this episode of The Time of Monsters, I talked to Elie about Trump’s legal status, why we should welcome the former president’s arrest, why we should be clear-eyed about how far the court case can go, and how MAGA Republicans are using this case to foment racism.

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Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is the preferred Trump foe of the Republican establishment. Both the donor class and media outlets (notably those owned by Rupert Murdoch) have rallied around DeSantis as a figure who can unite the party by adopting the policies of Donald Trump but without Trump’s embarrassing personal flaws. But their theory of Ron Santis isn’t working out: he’s faltering in the polls and some of his major supporters are starting to waver. Other Trump rivals, like former vice president Mike Pence, are also having trouble gaining traction.

Writing in The New Republic, Alex Shepard cogently noted that De Santis and other would-be Republican presidential nominees face the same difficulty as candidates like Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz did in 2016: they're afraid to alienate Trump’s passionate base of support, so they can’t fully challenge him. This makes them look weak when Trump attacks them in the most lurid and contemptuous ways imaginable. In this podcast, Alex and I survey the GOP primary race with a focus on why Trump remains the man to beat.  

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Last year, the Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health decision. This has only emboldened the anti-choice movement. Those who hoped that abortion would at least be safe in blue states and kept available in red states via mifepristone are waking up to a world where the anti-choice movement is using legal warfare to move towards its goal of a nation-wide abortion ban. As Moira Donegan notes in a recent column in The Guardian, a right-wing Trump-appointed federal judge in Texas is hearing arguments for rolling back FDA approval of mifepristone. Elsewhere, pharmacists and doctors are being intimidated by legal threats so that even legal abortion services are getting harder to come by. A novel legal argument is being used to raise the possibility that anti-abortion laws can be applied retroactively, again creating a chilling effect.

I talked with Moira about these and other trends. As she notes, they raise a fundamental question about not just reproductive freedom but also the future of American democracy. It’s no longer clear whether there is a federal rule of law that can protect reproductive freedom even in blue states. We also take up the urgency of Democrats making reproductive freedom a top issue. 

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The good news is we have one less thing to worry about: so-called Havana Syndrome turns out not to be caused by a mysterious super-weapon to harm American diplomats and military personnel, despite numerous press reports warning of a hypothetical ray gun created by a foreign foe (Cuba? Russia? China?). Instead, an assessment by the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) concluded that the symptoms of Havana Syndrome, reported by hundreds of government officials working all over the world) likely had “medical, environmental, and social factors that plausibly can explain.” In less polite terms, this was an example of a mass psychogenic illness, a product of hysteria and over-active imaginations. 

Writing in Jacobin, Branko Marcetic links the Havana Syndrome frenzy to other examples of national security paranoia such as the false reports of Russians paying for Taliban bounty hunters and the recent meltdown over Chinese surveillance balloons. I talked with Branko about both the Havana Syndrome, and the reasons – political and psychological–that the military-industrial complex is going into over drive conjuring up imaginary or overhyped threats.

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The ongoing defamation suit launched by Dominion Voting Systems against Fox News for its coverage of the 2020 election has already resulted in the release of an eye-opening tranche of documents that give an unprecedented window into the inner workings of the TV network. As National columnist Chris Lehmann has noted, the major revelation is how completely beholden the network is to its right-wing base, to the extent of knowingly pushing false stories to please that audience.

On this episode of The Time of Monsters, Chris and I talked about what the Fox News revelations say not only about the powerful media site but also the state of journalism and American democracy. The problem is not just that Fox News lies but that millions of viewers have grown addicted to those lies, so much so that they’ll look for any source to bolster their worldview. More than a media problem, this is a democracy problem; one with few obvious answers. Using the Dominion lawsuit as a starting point, Chris and I talk about the broader problem of a post-truth society.

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The New York Times has become mired in an acrimonious public dispute over its coverage of transgender issues. A letter signed by more than 1,200 writers (both freelance and staff) for the newspaper has challenged the paper for mainstreaming transphobic ideas. A separate letter from the human rights group GLADD also criticized the Times.  The editors of the newspaper dismissed both letters and affirmed their faith in the professionalism of their handling of this issue. 

For The Nation, Jack Mirkinson, an interim senior editor at the magazine, wrote an important and detailed article noting that this is not the first time the Times has had to grapple with accusations of prejudice against LGBTQ people. As Jack documents, under the tenure of the late Abe Rosenthal from 1969 to 1986, the newspaper took what it now itself admits was homophobic editorial line. Among other things, the paper treated the rising gay rights movement with suspicion, it refused to use the term “gay” from 1975 to 1987 and it downplayed the AIDS crisis.

For this week’s podcast, Jack and I talk about the Times’ acknowledged history of homophobia and how it undermines the newspaper’s argument that it should be trusted on current transgender disputes.

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Last month, Pat Buchanan announced he was retiring as a newspaper columnist, an event that went strangely under-noticed in the mainstream press. The simple fact is Buchanan is one of the most influential writers and thinkers on the American right since World War II. He’s had a long career as not just a newspaper columnist and TV pundit but also as an advisor to presidents such as Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan and as a perennial presidential candidate.

As historian Nicole Hemmer persuasively argues in her new book Partisans: The Conservative Revolutionaries Who Remade American Politics in the 1990s, Buchanan’s political agitation was instrumental in the emergence of a new nationalist and populist right that replaced the earlier Cold War anti-communist consensus (which was much friendlier to immigration, trade agreements, and international alliances). Buchanan in other words was the essential bridge between Reagan and Trump. 

Since Buchanan’s long shadow is ignored by the media, I was happy to have Nicole on as a guest on this week's episode of The Time of Monsters to discuss his history. We take up his roots in conservative Catholicism, his life-long anti-Semitism and racism, his friendliness with media elites who helped soften his image, and his lasting impact on American politics.

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In two previous podcasts, we talked about the strong left resurgence in Latin America that is shaping up to be a second “pink tide.” But the new “pink tide” is much stronger in South America than Central America, where the left is often stalled, even in countries where it holds power.

To examine the special history of the region, I turned to Jeffrey Gould, who has known the area well as an activist, documentary filmmaker, and scholar since the 1970s. Currently distinguished visiting professor at the Institute for Advanced Study, Gould is author of many books on social movements in El Salvador and Nicaragua, most recently Solidarity Under Siege (2019). In this discussion we’re joined by frequent podcast guest, journalist Doug Bell.

Among the topics we take up are the “minor utopias” that occasionally rise up in the region through grassroots organizing, the counterrevolutionary violence from death squads that these movements confront, the American support for counterrevolution particularly under Ronald Reagan, the need for cooperation between the radical left and more center-left, and the persistence of authoritarianism in political institutions.

Jeffrey brings a lifetime of engagement with Central America to the discussion and provides a truly illuminating survey of crucial recent history.

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The movie award season is in full swing and this year’s crop of potential Oscar winners includes a healthy and diverse array of films, ranging from psychological studies like Tár to big blockbusters like Avatar: The Way of Water. 

I sat down with Adam Nayman, a film critic for The Ringer, about the Oscar list. We also discuss, at greater length, one particular nominee which we felt merited a long discussion: The Fabelmans, Steven Spielberg’s semi-autobiographical account of his youth. Adam’s review of the movie can be found here. As Adam notes, the the movie is multi-layered and rewards a deeper examination. It’s a portrait of the artist as a youthful cinephile which also makes explicit the family break-up that would haunt Spielberg’s work. Surprisingly self-critical, the movie is not, as some have said, a victory lap. Rather, it delves into the psychological price paid by becoming an artist who uses creativity to hide from reality. It also tells the complex story of Jewish assimilation into an American mainstream aided and abetted by Hollywood.

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Host: Jeet Heer

Executive Producer: Ludwig Hurtado

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It’s easy enough for liberals to laugh at Marjorie Taylor Greene, the voice of the most unhinged faction of the Republican party. The onetime QAnon supporter who will always be associated with the immortal concept of “Jewish space lasers.” But inside the Republican party, Greene is no joke. She’s a rising star and has emerged as the kingmaker who ensured that Kevin McCarthy would be House Speaker. McCarthy reportedly told a friend, “I will never leave that woman. I will always take care of her.”

For Greene, the sky might be the limit. As my colleague Chris Lehmann recently reported, she even has hopes of being Donald Trump’s vice presidential pick in 2024. On this episode of The Time of Monsters, I spoke to Chris about Greene’s ascendency and also about another recent column he wrote, on the dubious history of Joe Biden’s new chief of staff, Jeffrey Zients.

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Since 2016, the Democratic Party has moved steadily to the left. Even tried and true moderates like Joe Biden have adapted to this new reality with greater government intervention in the economy than was contemplated in the eras of Bill Clinton or Barack Obama.

But centrist Democrats still sometimes revert to their bad old habits. We saw two signs of this recently with New York Governor Kathy Hochul nominating a conservative judge despite the opposition of a wide swath of her own party and Joe Biden tapping Jeffrey Zients, a notorious corporate predator, to be the White House chief of staff.

Alexander Sammon wrote about Hochul’s blunder at Slate.com. He joins The Time of Monsters to discuss both of these inexplicable cases.

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Republican congressman George Santos seems to have lied about everything: about his ancestry, his education, his career, his charitable work, his medical history, and other things. Many people have taken delight in the Santos story as an over-the-top example of a con-man who rose to the top.

But Moira Donegan, a columnist for the Guardian, pushed the discussion about Santos deeper in a recent column by asking what purpose Santos’ lies serve and what we are to make of a political system where a liar like Santos can flourish?

The Santos story is about more than just one fibber, but a deeper and more systematic corruption. I was happy to talk to Moira on this episode of The Time of Monsters to tease out the meaning of the scandal. 

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Good news is easier to notice if you consider the alternatives. On Monday, the Biden offered “unwavering” support of Brazil president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in the aftermath of an right-wing coup. It’s easier to imagine earlier presidents, not just Republicans like Donald Trump but also Democrats like Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, taking a very different stand when a socialist government in Latin America is facing a right-wing attempt at regime change.

In a recent article in The New Republic, Matthew Duss and Stephen Wertheim note that the rising progressive movement in the Democratic Party has usefully pushed Biden to partially move beyond the failed policies of the past. This can be seen especially in the withdrawal from Afghanistan and the retreat from drone warfare. But there’s still much work to be done, with USA foreign policy still to militarized.

For the latest episode of The Time of Monsters podcast, I talked to Duss and Wertheim about Biden's foreign policy record. Duss is a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and former foreign policy advisor to Senator Bernie Sanders. Wertheim is also affiliated with Carnegie, where he is a senior fellow. He’s the author of Tomorrow, the World: The Birth of U.S. Global Supremacy. 

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In recent years, ads from companies such as 23andMe and AncestryDNA have become a staple on television and social media. They promise customers a chance to find out family secrets through DNA collection. What’s rarely emphasized is that the real DNA data goldmine is selling the information gathered by customers to big pharma, which can then be better positioned to sell its products.

To look into how DNA became a multibillion dollar industry, I talked to Myles W. Jackson, the inaugural Albers-Schönberg Professor in the History of Science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. Myles is the author of three books, Spectrum of Belief (2000), Harmonious Triads (2006), and The Genealogy of a Gene (2015). In our conversation, we take up Myles’ fascinating new essay “Ownership, Knowledge, and Genetic Information” which will appear next year in a book titled Ownership of Knowledge: Beyond Intellectual Property, edited by Dagmar Schäfer, Marius Buning, and Annapurna Mamidipudi.

In our wide-ranging discussion, we talk about how the courts have opened the door to corporate ownership of DNA data and how the DNA industry ends up promoting a regressive idea that ethnic identity is a matter of bloodlines. There are many reasons to be wary of the corporate ownership of DNA data, not least that it ends up replicating racism in a new way.

Myles and I are joined in this conversation by journalist Doug Bell, a frequent guest on the podcast who can be found here. 

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On a previous podcast, the TV critic Sean T. Collins and I discussed how we were both surprised that Andor, the latest iteration of the Star Wars franchise, was actually a good TV program rather than just fan service. 

Now, the first season of Andor is over and there’s room for a larger appraisal. David Klion, writing in The New Republic, makes the bold claim that the show deserves to be seen as great TV, in the same league as shows like The Wire and The Sopranos. David and I share our enthusiasm for Andor on this week’s podcast.

Among other topics, we discuss the way the show draws on the history of revolutions, including the Russian revolution; the extraordinary acting of Stellan Skarsgård, Denise Gough, Kyle Soller, and Genevieve O’Reilly; and the shaping role of writer/director Tony Gilroy, the mastermind behind the series.

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