Voting rights are the foundation of democratic governance. But recent changes in elections policies have disenfranchised millions of Americans, and the voting gap between White and minority voters is continuing to expand. Host Alex Lovit is joined by Sean Morales-Doyle. Morales-Doyle is the director of the Voting Rights and Elections Program at the Brennan Center for Justice. https://www.brennancenter.org/issues/ensure-every-american-can-vote
Jul 01, 2025•39 min•Ep. 41
Juneteenth commemorates the end of slavery in the United States. Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Annette Gordon-Reed joins host Alex Lovit to discuss Juneteenth’s history and the transformative potential of reckoning with our country’s complex past. Annette Gordon-Reed is the Carl M. Loeb University Professor at Harvard, where she teaches both history and law. She’s the author of The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family and On Juneteenth.
Jun 17, 2025•31 min•Ep. 40
Who should make decisions about what kinds of health care American minors can receive: their parents and doctors, or their state governments? A growing number of states are claiming the right to ban gender-affirming health care for minors—but only if the person being treated is transgender. This month, the Supreme Court will decide if those power grabs are constitutional. Host Alex Lovit is joined by Chase Strangio, one of the lawyers who argued the case in question, United States v. Skrmetti, b...
Jun 03, 2025•37 min•Ep. 39
Pro-democracy progressives are their own worst enemy when it comes to recruiting conservative Americans to their cause. In part two of our conversation, political strategist Sarah Longwell offers suggestions for how to connect with anti-Trump conservatives. Her ideas draw on what she hears from voters in her frequent focus groups, as well as on her experience as a gay conservative fighting for inclusion in American society and politics in the 2010s. Longwell is the publisher of The Bulwark and t...
May 27, 2025•36 min•Ep. 38
How did one of our major political parties abandon its principles? And what do voters make of that shift? Host Alex Lovit is joined by Sarah Longwell—a political strategist who broke from the Republican party when it acquiesced to Trump’s authoritarian tendencies. She went on to cofound a media outlet (The Bulwark) and an advocacy organization (Defending Democracy Together) to advance pro-conservative causes. She’s also the host of The Focus Group podcast and a senior fellow at the Charles F. Ke...
May 20, 2025•35 min•Ep. 37
Public schools are essential for democracy—and they’re under attack. But the very policies that are being championed as their salvation may have a catastrophic impact on American education for generations. Public education advocate and historian Diane Ravitch unpacks how school choice policies like vouchers and charter schools are dangerous for democracy. Diane Ravitch is a former assistant secretary in the United States Department of Education. She is the author of several books on the history ...
May 06, 2025•36 min•Ep. 36
US institutions are being pressured into compliance with the Trump administration’s capricious demands. Many law firms, philanthropic organizations, and higher education institutions are choosing the path of least resistance. But will it keep them safe? Sharon L. Davies is the president and chief executive officer of the Charles F. Kettering Foundation. Davies’ career experiences span both academic and nonacademic fields. From 2017–2021, she was provost and senior vice president for academic aff...
Apr 22, 2025•31 min•Ep. 35
Life under an authoritarian regime can erode one’s faith in humanity. Today's guest says that’s why it’s more important than ever for Americans to lean into building human connection. Ece Temelkuran is a Turkish political thinker, writer, and award-winning journalist. Her two most recent books are How to Lose a Country: Seven Steps from Democracy to Fascism and Together: Ten Choices for a Better Now. https://ecetemelkuran.net/
Apr 08, 2025•37 min•Ep. 34
A former member of the Hungarian Parliament tells us what interventions Americans need to take right now to avoid the authoritarian backsliding that has dismantled democracy in Hungary since Prime Minister Viktor Orbán came to power in 2010. Gábor Scheiring served in the Hungarian Parliament from 2010–2014. He is an assistant professor of comparative politics at Georgetown University, Qatar, and author of The Retreat of Liberal Democracy: Authoritarian Capitalism and the Accumulative State in Hu...
Mar 25, 2025•36 min•Ep. 33
Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign promised “the largest deportation operation in American history.” Will he be able to achieve this goal? What would this kind of mass deportation look like, and what would its human costs be? And what is the current “largest deportation operation in American history,” anyway? We get answers from Adam Goodman. Goodman is an associate professor in the Department of Latin American and Latino Studies and Department of History at the University of Illinois Chicago, and the...
Mar 11, 2025•34 min•Ep. 32
The Constitution is under attack—and not just by Trump and the executive branch. For a long time, the conservative justices on the Supreme Court have been inconsistently interpreting the Constitution. But our guest, Madiba Dennie, says focusing on their decision-making processes is a trap. She says there’s a better way for concerned citizens to take action against the backsliding of social progress fueled by the Supreme Court. Madiba K. Dennie is an attorney, columnist, and professor whose work ...
Feb 25, 2025•41 min•Ep. 31
The United States is the wealthiest nation in the world, but millions of its citizens live in poverty. What prevents poor, low-wage, and low-wealth Americans from using democratic government to fight for a fairer distribution of resources? And how can they overcome the structures set against them? The answer is counterintuitive, but it's worked on other social issues in the past. Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II is president and senior lecturer of Repairers of the Breach, cochair of the Poor People...
Feb 11, 2025•43 min•Ep. 30
Why do so many Americans think tax breaks for the uber-wealthy will help the average person? According to Jeffrey Winters, the answer is simple: oligarchy. Today Winters breaks down how massive wealth distorts politics, and what can be done to combat it. Winters is professor of political science and director of the Equality Development and Globalization Studies (EDGS) program at Northwestern University. His research focuses on oligarchy in the US and around the world, historically and today. His...
Jan 28, 2025•50 min•Ep. 29
The separation of church and state is a foundational principle of American democracy, but that doesn’t mean that religion hasn’t played an important role in American politics. Throughout American history, varied political movements have claimed religious motivations and scriptural justifications, sometimes in contradictory ways (e.g. both to support and oppose systems of racial hierarchy). Today, evangelical Christian institutions are powerful political organizers, often promoting a nationalist ...
Jan 14, 2025•45 min•Ep. 28
This special episode of The Context includes voices from three previous guests on the show: James Comey, Stacey Abrams, and David Pepper. All three have had significant careers in public service, and all three have also written multiple novels. In these short excerpts, they all also argue that their creative writing is a method to communicate some of their knowledge and insights about democracy and public institutions. James Comey spent many years in public service, culminating in serving as Dir...
Dec 31, 2024•15 min•Ep. 27
“Administrative burdens” is a term for the frictions people experience when interacting with government—learning how a program works, taking the time to fill out paperwork, and experiencing the frustrations and shame that can come from the process. Sometimes this is accidental—just the result of a bureaucracy failing to think through how it interacts with citizens. But it can also be purposeful—a way for politicians and policymakers to limit or direct programs without openly admitting to it. In ...
Dec 17, 2024•41 min•Ep. 26
In 2015, Crossroads Church, a majority-White evangelical megachurch based in Cincinnati, Ohio, launched a new program to address racial division and racism. In this episode, Hahrie Han discusses her new book Undivided: The Quest for Racial Solidarity in an American Church, which tells the story of this program and its participants, many of whom changed their thinking, behavior, and relationships after taking part. The impact of Crossroads’s Undivided program demonstrates some of the elements of ...
Dec 03, 2024•51 min•Ep. 25
Donald Trump has been elected the 47th president of the United States. He will enter the White House with his party in control of both the House and Senate and with a Supreme Court mostly composed of Republican appointments. This election will have real impacts on American policy, which will not only change the lives of Americans, but also reverberate around the world, from Ukraine to Israel to Taiwan. Early signs of what to expect from the incoming Trump administration, and the new Republican-c...
Nov 19, 2024•30 min•Ep. 23
Argentina’s constitution is among the oldest democratic constitutions in the world, and in significant respects it was modeled after the constitution of the United States. But Argentine democracy hasn’t always been stable. Between the 1930s and 1970s, the government was overturned by military coups six times. Even when there have been free and fair elections, some elected leaders have governed as authoritarians. This experience of dictatorship is a source of trauma for Argentinian citizens—and a...
Nov 05, 2024•43 min•Ep. 22
Project 2025 is a transition plan for a second Trump administration created by the Heritage Foundation, along with other conservative organizations. Heritage has created similar documents for presidential transitions every four years since 1980. One aspect of Project 2025, which is distinct from these previous iterations, is a focus on personnel policy. Near the end of the first Trump administration, the White House issued an executive order establishing a new classification of federal bureaucra...
Oct 29, 2024•39 min•Ep. 21
For 49 years, from 1973 until 2022, the Supreme Court declared that the US Constitution protected abortion rights. With this precedent overturned, decision making about reproductive rights now resides with state governments. But the court’s 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization relied on a partial and inaccurate understanding of American history, and its claims to be a pro-democracy decision were disingenuous. Dobbs is just one example of the court smashing precedents in ...
Oct 22, 2024•46 min•Ep. 20
Latinos are the fastest growing demographic group in the United States and are now the second-largest ethnic group in the country. Growing diversity shouldn’t be a challenge to democracy—no race or culture holds a monopoly on self-government. But Latinos are disproportionately young, and like other young voters, they often vote at lower rates and can benefit from being explicitly invited to participate in elections and other democratic practices. Latinos also have a particular set of shared inte...
Oct 08, 2024•54 min•Ep. 19
For democracy to endure, democratic institutions and values must be passed from one generation to the next. And there’s plenty of good news about how Gen Z—the youngest and most diverse generation of voters—is engaging in politics. Young people are participating and voting at levels at least equal to previous generations. But there are reasons for concern too: Many Americans are growing up in civic deserts, without access to political associations or other forms of collective action. Many of Gen...
Sep 24, 2024•58 min•Ep. 18
In a democracy, we resolve political disagreements through elections rather than through physical force. Political violence is a threat to democratic societies – but it can also be connected to a complex range of other political and social problems, including corruption, polarization, social division, and limitations on free speech. These are not easy problems to solve, but the United States can learn from international examples – both about what can go wrong in democracies, and also how structu...
Sep 10, 2024•50 min•Ep. 17
Democracy should work for everyone. Christine Todd Whitman explains how political parties are more concerned with maintaining power than solving problems for everyday people. She discusses the factors underlying American political dysfunction, including the growth of political parties, noncompetitive districts, and money in politics. Christine Todd Whitman is president of Whitman Strategy Group. She served as the 50th and first woman governor of New Jersey and as administrator of the Environment...
Aug 27, 2024•50 min•Ep. 16
American history is a story about diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). Stacey Abrams discusses why Americans should embrace and defend DEI as democratic values. She explains how DEI benefits all Americans, expanding participation in our democracy and access to the American dream. Stacey Abrams is a political leader, lawyer, voting rights activist, and bestselling author. Abrams served in the Georgia House of Representatives for over a decade and as the Minority Leader from 2011-2017. As Georg...
Aug 13, 2024•51 min•Ep. 15
American democracy relies on nonpartisan civil servants to detect and combat corruption. Alexander Vindman was one such civil servant when he reported abuses of power by former President Trump, resulting in Vindman being fired from the federal government and retiring from the armed forces. Vindman discusses what a second Trump administration and Project 2025 would mean not only for democracy in the US, but also in Ukraine. Vindman explains the history of the conflict between Ukraine and Russia a...
Jul 30, 2024•55 min•Ep. 14
The Supreme Court does not belong in the crosshairs of the American political debate. Neal Katyal discusses how the court’s rush to decide social controversies and overturn foundational precedents is damaging its legitimacy. Katyal addresses the court’s recent decisions concerning presidential immunity and regulatory agencies and their implications for American democracy. Neal Katyal is the Paul and Patricia Saunders Professor of National Security Law at Georgetown University and a partner at Ho...
Jul 16, 2024•58 min•Ep. 13
What if the January 6 attack on the US Capitol had been successful? Alan Jenkins and Gan Golan explore just that in their graphic novel series, entitled 1/6: The Graphic Novel. They also discuss how the events of January 6, 2021, diverge from democratic principles, such as free speech and the right to protest. Alan Jenkins is a Professor of Practice at Harvard Law School. His previous positions include President of The Opportunity Agenda (a social justice communication lab that he cofounded), As...
Jul 02, 2024•56 min•Ep. 12
The Human Rights Campaign declared a state of emergency for LGBTQ+ Americans for the first time in 2023. In state houses across the country, we are seeing legislation that targets the rights and dignity of LGBTQ+ people. Kelley Robinson discusses how these attacks are part of a broader antidemocratic movement in the US and why it is important to develop a more inclusive culture for our democracy. Kelley Robinson is the president of the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) and one of TIME’s 100 Most Influ...
Jun 18, 2024•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 11
