In 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. stood before a group of students and asked them: What is your life’s blueprint? Nearly 60 years later, that question still echoes louder than ever. We’re living in a time of weaponized exhaustion. Democracy is being undermined, basic human rights are under attack, and billionaires are playing dictator, gleefully sentencing millions to death by slashing desperately needed aid. But history shows us again and again: when the forces of destruction rise, ordinary ...
May 30, 2025•25 min
This past year, what feels like a hundred in Trump years, Gaslit Nation listeners have asked the same question: How did we get here? The answer, though deeply unsettling, is vital to understand. It's the story of a 40-year campaign waged by far-right Christian nationalists, Big Oil, and corporate power to undermine our democracy. To help us all make sense of this crisis moment, as a firehose of corruption and racist disinformation blasts from the White House, we’ve created a special “Best of Gas...
May 28, 2025•51 min
A 2021 Department of Justice investigation concluded that former Governor Andrew Cuomo sexually harassed 13 women, fostering a toxic workplace culture defined by power abuse, intimidation, and retaliation. In 2020, Lindsey Boylan did something brave and necessary. After years of working under former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, she became the first woman to publicly accuse him of sexual harassment. Her voice cracked the silence, and eventually, 13 women in total came forward as part of a Depa...
May 22, 2025•26 min
The Fox News Supreme Court is a political weapon, and it’s being wielded to wreck what remains of American democracy. What happens if Trump declares martial law? This week on Gaslit Nation, Andrea interviews Leah Litman, a constitutional law professor at the University of Michigan Law School, co-host of the award-winning Strict Scrutiny podcast, and author of the new book LAWLESS: How the Supreme Court Runs on Conservative Grievance, Fringe Theories, and Bad Vibes . This Court is a multi-decade ...
May 21, 2025•51 min
How much have the Trumps made since returning to power? According to The New York Times, a staggering $2 billion in the last month alone. From Russia to the Middle East, the Trumps have long cultivated ties with the global oligarchy, welcoming support from some of the world’s most repressive regimes to gain power in 2016 and, now, to enrich themselves. You’ve likely heard about the infamous June 2016 Trump Tower meeting with Russian operatives. And perhaps you know about Trump’s covert meeting w...
May 16, 2025•15 min
New York City’s mayoral race is heating up, and into the inferno walks Brad Lander: City Comptroller, longtime progressive pain in the ass (in the best way), and, most importantly, not a corrupt tool of the oligarchy. That alone is refreshing. Lander’s running on a revolutionary NYC platform: competence, decency, and not being Eric Adams, Andrew Cuomo, or a trash fire named Donald Trump. He’s spent his career backing tenants, workers, and immigrants, including showing up at an ICE facility to de...
May 15, 2025•23 min
Welcome to the jetstream, where elite criminal impunity flies above laws and accountability. Russian mafia expert Olga Lautman joins Gaslit Nation to connect the global dots on oligarchy in the White House. We start with Qatar, a small but powerful gas station dictatorship, and a leading financier of terrorists. Once diplomatically isolated for its links to fellow terror-state Iran as well as groups linked to Al-Qaeda and ISIS, Qatar has been back in business, brokering nuclear talks with Russia...
May 14, 2025•51 min
Fifteen years after Sarah Silverman’s viral call to “Sell the Vatican, Feed the World,” we now have a “Marxist Pope,” according to Trump stormtrooper Laura Loomer, and our wildest dreams. This week for Gaslit Nation’s bonus show, we dive into the groundbreaking election of the first American pope, Robert Francis Prevost, now Pope Leo XIV, whose ancestry ties him to Black lineage. While many celebrate this historic milestone, deeper questions remain. Most crucially, Pope Leo’s stance on Opus Dei,...
May 09, 2025•20 min
In 1816, 18-year-old Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (later Shelley) birthed science fiction during a rainy vacation on Lake Geneva. Inspired by a vision of a man crouched beside the corpse he reanimated, Frankenstein warned of what happens when man tries to play God. Two centuries later, the monsters are real, and they’re called Musk, Altman, and Zuckerberg. Today’s tech titans, like Frankenstein’s Victor, race to build superintelligent machines in their image: soulless wannabe-gods with devastating...
May 07, 2025•48 min
This week, Canadians didn’t just politely shuffle into voting booths: they kicked the door down and destroyed Conservative leader and longtime MAGA fanboy Pierre Poilievre, who lost his seat to Bruce Fanjoy (who we’re now, quite literally, major fans of. More on him in this episode!) Meanwhile, here in the U.S., specifically kleptocrat-besieged New York City, we’ve got our own political swamp to drain. Mayor Eric Adams, who once likened himself to Biden, now seems more Nixonian, dodging Departme...
Apr 30, 2025•45 min
There’s a reason the loudest voices online are often the least helpful. The edgelords, those who posture with performative rage, contrarian hot takes, and a cynical flair for nihilism, aren’t trying to build anything. Their goal isn’t liberation. It’s clout. But we don’t have time for clout. We’re living through a coordinated, well-funded, global assault on democracy. In the U.S., basic freedoms are under attack, from reproductive rights to the ability to teach honest history in schools. While t...
Apr 26, 2025•31 min
Welcome to Gaslit Nation, where the firestorm of corruption meets the firehose of resistance. Terrell Starr of the Black Diplomats Podcast and Substack , recently home from Ukraine–the frontline of showing the world how to stand up and fight, joins Andrea to discuss how good Democrats, and We the People they serve, have a lot of power, if we remain defiant. Senator Chris Van Hollen provided an urgent reminder of this as he warned El Salvador’s wannabe strongman Nayib Bukele: the U.S. isn’t the o...
Apr 23, 2025•53 min
Thank you to all who joined our live-taping last Monday with senior advisors from Judge Susan Crawford's team that defeated Elon Musk, who lost bigly even after handing out million dollar checks. Patrick Guarasci, chief political strategist for Judge Crawford, and Sam Roecker, senior campaign advisor and communications lead, share how they pulled off a landmark win in Wisconsin’s pivotal Supreme Court race, offering a blueprint for reclaiming power in GOP-dominated states. In Wisconsin, the land...
Apr 21, 2025•47 min
The Tech Bros., like Elon Musk and JD Vance puppetmaster Peter Thiel, see Trump as a means to an end: to build their own tech-state fiefdoms as they usher in the A.I. age, at the expense of us peasants. But can this unholy alliance survive Trump’s disastrous trade war? And why do they fetishize hating Ukraine? This week’s special guest, Adrian Karatnycky, has been on the frontlines fighting for democracy both at home and abroad. In his critically acclaimed book Battleground Ukraine , Adrian trac...
Apr 16, 2025•42 min
In a powerful callout, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez slammed Congress and the White House over insider trading. Elected officials shouldn’t hold stocks—period. While Martha Stewart went to prison for it, members of Congress routinely outperform the market, raising red flags of insider trading. Donald Trump, for example, told people to buy stocks just before pausing tariffs, triggering a historic $304 billion windfall for billionaires, according to Bloomberg. How many people did Trump tell in pri...
Apr 11, 2025•22 min
This week’s special guest, Adrian Karatnycky, has been on the frontlines for decades fighting for democracy both at home and abroad. In his critically acclaimed book Battleground Ukraine , Adrian traces Ukraine’s struggle for independence from the fall of the Soviet Union to Russia's genocidal invasion today, drawing important lessons for protecting democracies worldwide. He has worked alongside civil rights legend Bayard Rustin and the AFL-CIO, the largest federation of unions in America. He al...
Apr 09, 2025•42 min
Why did Trump hit 185 countries with tariffs, even uninhabited islands of penguins near Antarctica , but not Russia and its vassal state Belarus, used to wage Russia’s genocidal invasion of Ukraine? It’s almost like Trump is a Russian asset, repaying Russia for helping him rise to power twice and for all the easy money he received over the years when no credible institution would lend to this trust-fund kid who went bankrupt six times. But why crash the global economy? The answer only makes sens...
Apr 06, 2025•15 min
Romania made headlines—and shocked the world—when it annulled a presidential election at the end of last year, citing evidence of foreign interference aimed at supporting a pro-Russian far-right candidate. It was a bold and necessary move, one that stands in stark contrast to what the U.S. should have done—and is now facing the consequences for not doing. But why would Romania take such a decisive stand? The answer lies in its history. Romania’s Moscow-backed dictatorship was among the most brut...
Apr 02, 2025•1 hr 6 min
If you thought SignalGate was bad, wait until you hear about ArchiveGate. Trump illegally fired the National Archivist—the first president in U.S. history to do so since the position was established in the 1930s. This wasn’t just about a change in leadership; it was revenge on the Archivist’s office alerting the DOJ about Trump’s stolen classified documents, which were stored around Mar-a-Lago, a known hub for foreign spies. But it gets worse. Marco Rubio, who is currently the Trump/Putin lackey...
Mar 30, 2025•11 min
In this week's Gaslit Nation bonus show, we’re joined by Olga Lautman, an expert on the Russian mafia. Her Substack, Trump Tyranny Tracker , is a vital resource documenting Trump’s war against America, and the global war of fascism vs. democracy. Olga made headlines recently by exposing connections between Trump’s National Security Advisor, Mike Waltz, and Russia, connected to SignalGate. (We call it the Kremlin Klown Kar for a reason!) Olga breaks down the implications of SignalGate and Trump’s...
Mar 28, 2025•32 min
The Gaslit Nation Media Committee, a watchdog against access journalism and regime propaganda, has developed this essential guide. We urge all members of the media to reject complicity in the erosion of democracy. The American crisis is a global struggle between democracy and fascism—one that threatens the entire world. Each of us has a role in defending freedom. If you work in media, use this guide to safeguard your integrity, your liberty, and the values we cherish—before it’s too late. Doing ...
Mar 27, 2025•6 min
What’s the best way to fight evil? Laugh at fascist idiots and keep hunting Nazis, with your camera and the power of your voice. This week, we’re honored to welcome legend Sandi Bachom, an award-winning documentary filmmaker of such powerful films as Telling Jokes in Auschwitz and a Getty Images contributor whose work has appeared in acclaimed films like Laura Poitras’s All The Beauty and All The Bloodshed, Danny’s Strong’s Dopesick, and Alex Gibney’s Crime of the Century. But Sandi isn’t just b...
Mar 26, 2025•52 min
Here's the first half of our recording of Monday's Gaslit Nation Salon with Dr. Lisa Corrigan , author of Prison Power: How Prison Politics Influenced the Movement for Black Liberation , and Black Feelings: Race and Affect in the Long Sixties . Dr. Corrigan is the Director of the Gender Studies Program at the University of Arkansas, and Affiliate Faculty in both African & African American Studies and Latin American and Latino Studies. The full discussion was over two hours, with Dr. Corrigan sta...
Mar 21, 2025•41 min
What’s the easiest way for Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin to invade Canada? Simple: Have voters sit out the upcoming election and let Pierre Poilievre become Prime Minister. If you’re Canadian—especially if you live abroad—now’s the time to get organized. Make sure you and at least five of your family and friends have a plan to vote. Not sure if you’re registered? Check here! Voting from abroad? Double-check your registration and make sure you’ve got everything you need by visiting this link. I...
Mar 19, 2025•1 hr 6 min
What’s the Republican spending bill all about? It’s an extremely dangerous powergab engineered by Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House and dirty lawyer who came up with the legal strategy to try to overturn the 2020 election. The Republican spending bill essentially grants legal protections to Trump and Musk’s ongoing illegal mass purge, to protect them against court orders–one of the last levers of power we have left. Any Democrat who votes for this is complicit in Trump and Musk’s tech-backe...
Mar 14, 2025•19 min
How do we fight back against the broligarchs? Journalist Gil Durán, of the must-read newsletters Nerd Reich and FrameLab, shows the way, in this week’s Gaslit Nation. Jean-Paul Sartre’s famous line, “Hell is other people,” from his play No Exit, written in Nazi-occupied France, captured a grievance that mirrored the era’s ideological clashes—fascism, communism, and isolationism, often overlapping and competing, fueling Stalin’s genocides, the Holocaust, and World War II. The solution to sharing ...
Mar 12, 2025•49 min
This motivating discussion was supposed to run earlier, but then the third year anniversary of Russia’s full scale invasion of Ukraine was marked by Trump viciously reminding the world he works for Russia by kicking Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy out of the White House, after he, Vance, and MTG’s boyfriend tried to ambush the war hero. In our recorded first ever Gaslit Nation book club, we discussed Albert Camus’ The Stranger (Matthew Ward translation) and Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search f...
Mar 10, 2025•16 min
Who is "Woke Jesus"? It’s the actual Jesus from the Bible—the dark-skinned Jewish revolutionary who advocated for feeding the poor and healing the sick. The Christian nationalists who use Trump’s MAGA movement as a weapon against our democracy are also at war with Jesus, as this week’s guest explains. By the strictest definition, doesn't that make Trump the anti-Christ? Investigative journalist Katherine Stewart, author of the new book Money, Lies, and God , examines the right-wing Libertarian e...
Mar 05, 2025•1 hr 7 min
You may be asking: does America even have free and fair elections in GOP-gerrymandered hostage states like Florida? Under a wannabe-autocrat like Ron DeSantis, voting becomes a defiant fact check of the legitimacy of the GOP’s power. If they were truly effective at governing, why would they resort to gerrymandering and other forms of voter suppression to maintain control? By voting, even if your vote is illegally not counted, your presence casting the vote adds up, and together the exit polls ca...
Mar 04, 2025•17 min
America joined Russia, Iran, North Korea, and Israel, led by indicted corrupt criminal and Putin pal Netanyahu, wanted for war crimes, to vote against Ukraine’s United Nations resolution calling for peace and an end to Russia’s genocidal invasion. In this week’s Gaslit Nation, Andrea and Terrell Starr, of the Black Diplomats Podcast and Substack, joining from Kyiv, explain how we got here and what to do about it. Fascism helped build America, and global resistance to fascism will help us overcom...
Feb 26, 2025•59 min
