Amber Nicole Thurman was a 28-year-old medical assistant, devoted mother from Georgia, and one of the first women to die following the Dobbs decision. In August 2022, she sought a medication abortion due to an unplanned pregnancy. Following the procedure, she experienced severe complications, including a grave infection. Despite her critical condition, medical staff at Piedmont Henry Hospital delayed performing a necessary dilation and curettage (D&C) procedure for over 20 hours, reportedly due ...
Mar 04, 2025•44 min•Season 9Ep. 267
Congressional Republicans have fast-tracked the SAVE Act (Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act)—legislation that could disenfranchise tens of millions of American voters by imposing strict new citizenship verification requirements. Is this bill really about election integrity, or is it an unprecedented voter suppression effort? Host Jen Taylor-Skinner sits down with Eliza Sweren-Becker from the Brennan Center for Justice to break down the dangers of the SAVE Act, who it targets, and how it c...
Feb 24, 2025•30 min•Season 9Ep. 266
Natalie Davis, CEO of United States of Care, joins The Electorette host Jen Taylor-Skinner to examine the critical postpartum care crisis in the United States. Despite being a high-income nation, America’s maternal mortality rates highlight significant gaps in postpartum support. Davis discusses The 100 Weeks Project, a groundbreaking initiative designed to transform postpartum care by providing comprehensive, personalized support from conception through the first year postpartum. This initiativ...
Feb 20, 2025•37 min•Season 9Ep. 265
For over a century, the NAACP has been a driving force in the fight for civil rights, shaping American democracy through groundbreaking legal victories, grassroots activism, and political advocacy. From dismantling segregation in Brown v. Board of Education to championing the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, the NAACP’s impact is undeniable. And today, their fight continues. In this episode, I sit down with Patrice Willoughby, Chief of Policy and Legislative Affairs at the NAACP, for a power...
Feb 18, 2025•44 min•Season 9Ep. 264
Episode Summary Donald Trump is now once again the president of the United States, but his victory in 2024 was more than just a victory for himself or the Republican Party, it actually is part of a larger advancement that is happening across many different countries around the globe for right-wing reactionary parties who are sometimes incorrectly referred to as populist. (These parties are not populist, in fact, because their policies that they pursue have no material benefit to the people who v...
Feb 09, 2025•1 hr 5 min
Is it possible to turn Texas Blue? Especially considering the large Latino, and Black voters in the state who share political interests like climate justice, housing justice, and immigration reform. Brianna Brown of the Texas Organizing Project, or TOP, joins Jen Taylor-Skinner, on The Electorette, to discuss how they are using collective organizing to build community, grow political power, and build unstoppable coalitions in Texas. We also discuss how the organization seeks to repair fissures c...
Feb 07, 2025•45 min•Season 9Ep. 263
Episode Summary The second term of Donald Trump has officially begun, but despite all the things he’s unveiled in the past several weeks, we don’t know fully what his policies are going to be over the next four years. That is in part because Trump himself is a very erratic figure who says things that are nonsensical, even by his own standards. While there are documents such as Project 2025 which were created by Trump's ideological allies in the reactionary movement, that document itself is not p...
Feb 03, 2025•1 hr 12 min
The gun violence crisis in America has shown little signs of slowing, and even though most Americans are desperate to stop the violence, congressional gridlock prevents us from making progress. Guns Down America—an organization focused on building a future with fewer guns, weakening the gun industry, and building political and cultural support for policies that will keep us safe from gun violence—has a plan to circumvent that gridlock. Morgan Avrigean of Guns Down America discusses the organizat...
Jan 29, 2025•58 min•Season 9Ep. 262
Episode Summary As Donald Trump’s second presidential administration takes shape with a host of controversial and unpopular executive orders and numerous unqualified and bizarre nominees like Fox News weekend host Pete Hegseth, it raises the question, is this what his voters asked for? That question is actually a lot more difficult to answer than it may seem, because people voted for Trump for a variety of different reasons, some of which were even contradictory. We'll get into that on today’s e...
Jan 23, 2025•1 hr 5 min
Episode Summary Following her recent electoral defeat, many people have questioned why Kamala Harris didn't go on to the podcast of Joe Rogan, the standup comedian and sports commentator who has the number-one podcast in the world. For the record, Harris’s former advisers have said that they tried to coordinate a time with Rogan , but they very obviously did not make it a priority. The more interesting related question that other people have been asking post election is why is there no left-wing...
Dec 19, 2024•1 hr 8 min
Episode Summary Kamala Harris’s loss to Donald Trump came as a huge surprise to many Democratic Party loyalists, especially since Republicans had a number of serious defeats in elections in 2018 and in 2022, and abortion rights ballot initiatives prevailed in every state where the public had voted on them since the Republican Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade . So what happened? We've talked on this program at length in several episodes about how Democrats have failed enormously to invest in ...
Dec 09, 2024•1 hr 5 min
Episode Summary Donald Trump’s victory in the 2024 presidential election was a triumph of political ecosystems and how much better the right has been in the United States at creating a full-scale ecosystem to funnel people into their party, but it also took place within a larger political environment in which many Americans are unsatisfied with the way things are. For a decades, most Americans have felt that the country is headed in the wrong direction and that the economy is getting worse . But...
Dec 02, 2024•55 min
In this final episode of the season, I have a casual and meaningful conversation with a friend: essayist and National Endowment for the Arts Fellow, Leta McCollough Seletzky. Leta joins me to discuss the impact Black women had on this election, on Vice President Kamala Harris' campaign, and we explore how the campaign affected us personally. We also discuss how the country's treatment of marginalized people, particularly Black women, is a bellwether for anti-democratic trends. This episode was m...
Nov 21, 2024•41 min•Season 8Ep. 261
Episode Summary The Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson ending a national right to terminate a pregnancy came as an abrupt shock to millions of Americans. But if you had been paying attention beforehand, the verdict was no surprise at all. In fact, the repeal of Roe v. Wade was the culmination of a successful strategy that began in the 1970s to flood the American legal system with activist judges who would impose their viewpoints that were so radical that congressional Republicans didn’...
Nov 20, 2024•1 hr 3 min
Episode Summary The 2024 presidential election is over, and the results are not what many of us hoped for. Despite engaging in treason against the United States on January 6, 2021, Donald Trump will become president once again. While there are plenty of things that Kamala Harris could have done better, she was up against several larger obstacles, chief among them the price inflation that has troubled every country in the world after the Covid-19 pandemic and also the gigantic far-right media app...
Nov 12, 2024•1 hr
Transcript Election Day is upon us, and as you surely know, the presidential contest between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump is looking excruciatingly close. After Harris jumped to a small lead once she became the Democratic standard-bearer, Trump has tightened things up, primarily with the assistance of crazed former Democrat Robert Kennedy Junior. How much support each candidate is receiving is truly difficult to say. Normally, public opinion surveys could provide some useful information in thi...
Nov 05, 2024•13 min
Pamela Smith, election security expert and President and CEO of Verified Voting, delves into the critical aspects of voting integrity, and gets into the weeds of voting equipment, voter purges, ballot audits, recount procedures, and the hand-counting process, while addressing every conceivable question on election security. We also revisit the historic 2000 Presidential Election between George W. Bush and Al Gore, exploring the notorious "hanging chad" incident. Finally, Pam offers practical adv...
Nov 03, 2024•47 min•Season 8Ep. 260
Kelly Hall, the Executive Director of The Fairness Project, an organization focused on empowering voters through citizen-led ballot measures, has become the country's largest backers of abortion ballot measures, investing $30M to critical ballot campaigns like those in Arizona, Florida, Missouri, Montana, and Nebraska. Ballot measures have become a critical lifeline to strengthening, restoring and expanding abortion rights across the country. Kelly discusses what's on this ballot this year, incl...
Nov 03, 2024•28 min•Season 8Ep. 259
Political activist, and co-founder of the progressive organization Indivisible, Leah Greenberg, discusses the early days of the organization, and what she hoped would happen after publishing the first Indivisible Guide in 2016. We also discuss the big tent strategy embraced by the Harris-Walz campaign, and whether the coalition can hold after the election. Lastly, we discuss what you can do NOW, ahead of Tuesday's election, to help save democracy. (Hint: Vote, get your friends & family to vote, ...
Nov 02, 2024•31 min•Season 8Ep. 258
Kelley Robinson, the President of the Human Rights Campaign (HRC.org), the nation’s largest LGBTQ+ civil rights organization, discusses the enthusiasm on the ground for the Harris-Walz campaign. Kelley and the folks at Human Rights Campaign have held GOTV events across the country, in battleground states, on college campuses, and at HBCUs. She provides an update on those events, talks Project 2025, and delivers a closing message to voters on what we should remember as we head toward the most con...
Oct 31, 2024•21 min•Season 8Ep. 257
USAFacts President, Poppy MacDonald, discusses their mission to provide solid, unbiased facts about the United States that are rooted in data. USAFacts is a nonprofit, founded by Steve Ballmer, who assembled a small team of economists, writers, and researchers to help comb through government data. Poppy MacDonald discusses how this data can then be used to shape policy, to inform constituents, and even, to strengthen our democracy. This episode was made possible with a grant from the MacArthur F...
Oct 30, 2024•32 min•Season 8Ep. 256
In 2018, Liuba Grechen Shirley launched a historic congressional campaign to represent New York’s 2nd District in the U.S. House of Representatives—all while raising two young children under six-years-old. As her demanding campaign schedule clashed with limited access to affordable childcare, Liuba quickly realized the whole thing was untenable. So, six months into her campaign, Liuba petitioned the Federal Election Commission, making history as the first woman to receive federal approval to spe...
Oct 29, 2024•38 min•Season 8Ep. 255
This Doomscroll episode is available on audio only. As always, it’s not “safe for work.” Chapters 00:00 — The presidential election is a nailbiter 05:06 — Former model says she was groped by Trump and Jeffrey Epstein 08:47 — Study finds Harris's policies are a lot more popular than Trump's 10:09 — Trump's small-dollar donations have collapsed from 2020, he's totally dependent on oligarchs now 12:39 — Presidential candidates fanning out to pop culture podcasts 15:25 — Rudy Giuliani finally forced...
Oct 25, 2024•31 min
Senior Advisor for Black Engagement for Climate Power, Markeya Thomas, discusses the organization's $10 Million Black Engagement program, aimed at mobilizing Black voters around climate change, in battleground states. Climate Power is focus on educating voters on the differences between the two campaigns—one which has a track record of putting forth policies that create green jobs, with a history of holding big oil companies accountable, and the other, which has primarily denied climate science,...
Oct 24, 2024•24 min•Season 8Ep. 254
Episode Summary JD Vance, Donald Trump’s running mate, is a newcomer on the political scene, and as such, a lot of people don’t know very much about his ideas. That’s concerning because Vance identifies with a reactionary far-right tradition that is explicitly and fundamentally at odds with American democracy. Donald Trump, by contrast, has no core ideology and no core beliefs. His main goal at all times and all places is to advance his own personal interests, and that is literally it. Vance isn...
Oct 22, 2024•58 min
Historian, educator, and author, Carol Anderson, discusses her book, "One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression Is Destroying Our Democracy." This episode replay is part of The Electorette 2024 Election Coverage series, and is a reply of an important conversation with voting rights scholar, Carol Anderson. Prof. Carol Anderson, the Charles Howard Candler Professor and Chair of African American Studies at Emory University and author of the bestseller, "White Rage," discusses her new book "One Pe...
Oct 18, 2024•2 hr 32 min•Season 8Ep. 253
Episode Summary JD Vance, Donald Trump’s running mate, is a newcomer on the political scene, and as such, a lot of people don’t know very much about his ideas. That’s concerning because Vance identifies with a reactionary far-right tradition that is explicitly and fundamentally at odds with American democracy. Donald Trump, by contrast, has no core ideology and no core beliefs. His main goal at all times and all places is to advance his own personal interests, and that is literally it. Vance isn...
Oct 12, 2024•57 min
Aimee Allison, the Founder and President of She the People, the nation’s leading organization dedicated to an America redefined and inspired by women of color, discusses a new poll of women of color, conducted by She the People, in collaboration with The 2040 Strategy Group. The poll found Harris should actually LEAN into her identity, as it motivates this group of voters. It also uncovers the key issues important to women of color, and delves into what will move undecided voters from this group...
Oct 10, 2024•40 min•Season 8Ep. 252
Episode Summary As he nears the end of his third presidential campaign, Donald Trump is falling apart in public view. He’s holding far fewer public events than ever before where he constantly goes off on bizarre and irrelevant tangents and conspiracy theories about everything from sharks and hurricanes to Kamala Harris’s headphones . But most people don’t tune into his rallies. Instead, they hear about them from the mainstream media, which often delivers a highly sanitized version of Trump’s ins...
Oct 09, 2024•53 min
Sociologist, and sexual violence researcher, Dr. Nicole Bedera, discusses her new book, On the Wrong Side: How Universities Protect Perpetrators and Betray Survivors of Sexual Violence. The book is a must-read, and Dr. Bedera's research often spills over into conversations on social media — like a recent thread in which she unpacks how the implicit thread of sexual violence, has seeped into political rhetoric — and it's employed in a way that's both racist, and sexist. This episode was made poss...
Oct 03, 2024•1 hr 6 min•Season 8Ep. 251
