In this two-part interview, we take a deep dive into a right-wing hellhole with acclaimed scholar Nancy MacLean, the author of the bestseller Democracy in Chains, which discusses how anti-democratic networks run by powerful plutocrats came to hold the United States hostage. MacLean discusses the Koch dark money network and its shadowy political partners, the decades-long libertarian takeover of the Republican Party by far-right mercenaries, the infrastructure of this extremist network and how it has sustained itself for so long, the rise of the neo-confederacy, and the dystopian plans billionaires have for the American future. We also get MacLean’s opinions on recent crises like the pandemic, the Trump Crime Cult’s Capitol attack, and the assault on voting rights. And of course we ask her how we best battle these insidious adversaries, break America’s Koch addiction, and get our country back!

Dr. Nancy MacLean is an award-winning scholar of the twentieth-century United States, a distinguished professor of History and Public Policy at Duke University, and the author of the modern-day classic, Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America. Booklist called it “perhaps the best explanation to date of the roots of the political divide that threatens to irrevocably alter American government.” MacLean is the author of four other books, including Freedom is Not Enough: The Opening of the American Workplace, called by the Chicago Tribune "contemporary history at its best,” and Behind the Mask of Chivalry: The Making of the Second Ku Klux Klan, named a New York Times "noteworthy" book of 1994. Her articles and review essays have appeared in American Quarterly, The Boston Review, Feminist Studies, Gender & History, In These Times, International Labor and Working Class History, and many edited collections.

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Despite the Democrats holding the presidency, Senate and House, LGBTQ rights are in greater danger than they have been in over a decade. The revival of the right-wing culture wars along with sustained court packing by Republican radicals has put hard-won rights in jeopardy. Gaslit Nation welcomes Chase Strangio of the ACLU to break down the legal landscape of LGBTQ rights in the US today, including challenges to the legal right to gay marriage, the battle for transgender rights, and the religious extremism of today’s Supreme Court majority. He also addresses what ordinary Americans can do to preserve equal rights for all. Strangio is Deputy Director for Transgender Justice with the ACLU's LGBT & HIV Project and a history-making expert on transgender rights. He is the lawyer behind the historic June 2020 Supreme Court ruling protecting LGBTQ rights in the workplace and in 2020, was in Time Magazine’s list of the 100 most influential people in the world.

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In this interview conducted a few weeks before Russia’s escalation of its invasion of Ukraine, Eastern European journalist and writer Maksym Eristavi explains the social and political crises that led the world to this point. Andrea and Maksym discuss corruption in Ukraine, how the Kremlin has weaponized that corruption, and how corruption in Ukraine is an enduring legacy of Russian genocidal colonialism, and how the West can help Ukraine by cleaning up its own corruption. They also discuss Ukraine’s efforts to build a free and just civil society despite corruption, in particular ongoing initiatives to preserve LGBTQ rights. This interview provides vital historical context on the ongoing regional conflict.

Maksym Eristavi is an Eastern European journalist and writer. His work explores the intersection of identity politics, disinformation and Russian colonialism. A self-described 'bridge-builder', he amplifies and explains stories from global frontline battles for equal human and civil rights. He is a Transatlantic Leadership fellow with the Center of European Policy Analysis, a DC-based foreign policy think-tank; co-founder of the Free Press for Eastern Europe that manages the largest hub for independent journalism in Eastern Europe; a former policy adviser at the European Parliament; writer for Washington Post, Politico, Foreign Policy, among others and sits on the managing board of Kyiv Pride, the biggest pride event in Eastern Europe. Eristavi is a 2015 Poynter fellow at Yale University with a focus on informational wars and pan-regional LGBTI civil rights movements.

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This is Part II of our discussion. Gaslit Nation is excited to welcome Anne Nelson, an expert on American right-wing aspiring autocrats who has been warning about the conditions that led to our present national crisis for our entire adult lives! Yes, you should have listened to Anne Nelson’s warnings earlier but it’s never too late to start. In this crash course in America’s secret history, Nelson describes a radical right-wing takeover that was decades in the making. She explains the nefarious financial and political alliances that arose during the Reagan administration and still guide the US today, the rise of the religious right over the past five decades, “shadow network” think tanks like the Council for National Policy, and the infusion of dark money in politics. She also describes the ineffective response of the Democratic Party to Republican extremists, the January 6 attack on America, and what steps we can take to preserve our democracy.

Anne Nelson is the author of Shadow Network: Media, Money, and the Secret Hub of the Radical Right, and a lecturer in the fields of international affairs, media and human rights. As a journalist she covered the conflicts in El Salvador and Guatemala, and won the Livingston Award for best international reporting from the Philippines. She served as the director of the Committee to Protect Journalists. In 1995, she became the director of the international program at the Columbia School of Journalism, where she created the first curriculum in human rights reporting. Her 2009 book Red Orchestra describes the way media was used for both propaganda and resistance in Nazi Germany. She writes regularly for the Washington Spectator and you can read her work there.

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Gaslit Nation is excited to welcome Anne Nelson, an expert on American right-wing aspiring autocrats who has been warning about the conditions that led to our present national crisis for our entire adult lives! Yes, you should have listened to Anne Nelson’s warnings earlier but it’s never too late to start. In this crash course in America’s secret history, Nelson describes a radical right-wing takeover that was decades in the making. She explains the nefarious financial and political alliances that arose during the Reagan administration and still guide the US today, the rise of the religious right over the past five decades, “shadow network” think tanks like the Council for National Policy, and the infusion of dark money in politics. She also describes the ineffective response of the Democratic Party to Republican extremists, the January 6 attack on America, and what steps we can take to preserve our democracy.

Anne Nelson is the author of Shadow Network: Media, Money, and the Secret Hub of the Radical Right, and a lecturer in the fields of international affairs, media and human rights. As a journalist she covered the conflicts in El Salvador and Guatemala, and won the Livingston Award for best international reporting from the Philippines. She served as the director of the Committee to Protect Journalists. In 1995, she became the director of the international program at the Columbia School of Journalism, where she created the first curriculum in human rights reporting. Her 2009 book Red Orchestra describes the way media was used for both propaganda and resistance in Nazi Germany. She writes regularly for the Washington Spectator and you can read her work there.

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Next year, 2023, will mark the 50-year anniversary of the landmark Roe v Wade case…if it is not overturned by then. Gaslit Nation welcomes Imani Gandy and Jessica Mason Pieklo, the cohosts of the podcast Boom! Lawyered, to explain the ongoing attack on reproductive rights, why prior warnings were not heeded, and what actions we can take to fight back now. We discuss the long-term Republican takeover of the courts, the questionable legitimacy of the Supreme Court, the connections between the erosion of reproductive rights and the strengthening of an autocratic surveillance state, new laws legalizing violent vigilantism against women in states like Texas, why the media played down these threats, how the Democrats should respond, and much more!

Imani Gandy is Senior Editor of Law and Policy for Rewire News Group, where she covers law and courts and co-hosts the RNG podcast Boom! Lawyered. Imani is a recovering attorney turned award-winning journalist and political blogger. Previously, Imani founded Angry Black Lady Chronicles, winner of the 2010 Black Weblog Award for Blog to Watch and the 2012 Black Weblog Award for Best Political Blog. She received her JD from University of Virginia School of Law in 2001. Jessica Mason Pieklo is a Senior Vice President and Executive Editor and the co-host of Boom! Lawyered. Jessica has over a decade of experience as a former litigator, and taught law for four years before transitioning to journalism. She was part of the SCOTUSblog symposium on abortion rights following Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt and won the Excellence in Online Journalism award in 2018 from the Association of LGBTQ Journalists. Boom! Lawyered won Podcast of the Year in 2017 from the Population Institute.

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Back in 2015 and 2016, as the GOP caved to the Trump crime cult and the mainstream media normalized their corrupt ambitions, a few voices from the right rose up in dissent. One of the leading lights in this regard was Cheri Jacobus, a political commentator and former Republican who was an early target of Trump’s vicious campaign and its propaganda machine. Currently a registered Independent, Cheri was the founder, President, and Executive Producer of “America Reads The Mueller Report” and the former host of the podcast “Politics with Cheri Jacobus”. She remains an outspoken critic of the Trump crime cult and its enablers.

In this interview, we discuss Trump’s rise to power, how the GOP facilitated it, and the mafia tactics the Trump team uses to try to silence their critics. We pay particular attention to early campaign advisors like Roger Stone and Michael Caputo, who targeted Cheri personally as she fought to bring the truth to light. We also discuss the FBI, the Mueller probe, Merrick Garland’s DOJ, and the general failure to enforce accountability. Cheri also shares her thoughts on the “Never Trump” Republicans, the Lincoln Project, and the hypocrisy of George Conway. She gives us a behind the scenes look at how the mainstream media did Trump’s bidding – in particular, Jeff Zucker of CNN. (This interview was taped before Zucker resigned in disgrace.) We also discuss what’s worth fighting for in America today and what values transcend party lines.

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Countries undergoing extreme instability – like, say, a violent insurrectionist coup, a deadly plague, climate change catastrophes, and domestic and foreign information warfare – tend to breed cults, and America is no exception! This week Gaslit Nation welcomes cult and extremism expert Dr Janja Lalich to explain the rise of fringe movements in the US and how to deal with it.

Lalich is a researcher, author, and educator specializing in cults and extremist groups, with a particular focus on charismatic relationships, political and other social movements, ideology and social control, and issues of gender and sexuality. Her books include Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships, Captive Hearts, Captive Minds, and Bounded Choice: True Believers and Charismatic Cults, based on her research on the Heaven’s Gate cult, the group that committed collective suicide in 1997, and her own 10+ years’ experience in a political cult, the San Francisco-based Democratic Workers Party.

We discuss Trump, QAnon, the “Mueller will save us”-style cults of bureaucracy, how social media and disinformation operations shape the US political landscape, and the rise of authoritarianism and cults of personality worldwide. We also discuss what to do if someone you love has fallen under the sway of a cult and what social and political conditions make cult mentalities thrive.

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As we’ve been saying since the start of the show, Ukraine is on the frontlines of Putin’s global war against democracy. Ukraine has long been a testing ground of Kremlin aggression, including cyberattacks and disinformation warfare that helped tipped the scales in both the Brexit referendum and bringing Trump to power. In this special episode, we feature insights over the years from the many Ukraine experts who have been on Gaslit Nation to share urgent lessons of hope and resilience in the global struggle of democracy versus fascism.

Featured episodes are:

• Ukrainian journalist and author Nataliya Gumenyuk on Lessons from Ukraine Five Years After the Revolution (Full episode here)

• Film producer Anna Palenchuk sharing the incredible story of how former political prisoner Oleh Sentsov Directed a Film from a Siberian Prison (Full episode here)

• Journalist and author Vladislav Davidzon on the political rise of Volodymyr Zelenskyy following the 2019 presidential election (Full episode here)

• Ukrainian journalist Olga Tokariuk on how Kremlin disinformation wormed its way into an Italian trial of a Ukrainian soldier, Vitalii Markiv, who was eventually acquitted (Full episode here)

• Ukrainian filmmaker Oleh Sentsov on how Dictators Die, But Art is Forever (Full episode here)

• Razom co-founder Olya Yarychkivsk on the importance of staying true to one’s values when battling corruption (Full episode here)

If you would like to support Ukraine during this horrific time, we encourage you to donate to Razom, at RazomForUkraine.org, which is working hard through its international network to help refugees and deliver much needed medical aid to Ukraine.

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We’ve got a new District Attorney in New York City – but it’s the same old story of entrenched corruption and impunity for criminal elites! Last month, new DA Alvin Bragg decided not to pursue the prosecution of Trump for obvious crimes, and last week, lawyer Mark Pomerantz, who had come out of retirement to aid then-DA Cy Vance in the Trump Crime Cult investigation, published a blistering resignation letter in which he blamed Bragg for stopping the investigation in its tracks. What Pomerantz failed to mention was that Vance had spent his entire tenure protecting criminal elites – including the Trump family! – while lawyers in the know like Pomerantz said nothing until it was too late. Bragg did not create these problems; he inherited them. But now it is Bragg’s job to fix them, and he seems more content to be the fall guy than to act.

This episode is a deep dive into the shady world of the Manhattan DA’s office, focusing mainly on Cy Vance and all the crimelords he let off, from Weinstein to Epstein to the Trumps to Bannon to Manafort. Sarah discusses how letting these operatives go free not only endangers the United States, but the entire world, particularly since so many are tied to Russia as Russia brutally invades a sovereign country that it sees as its first stop to a broader imperial conquest. If only the strong words that Biden accidentally uttered in his “gaffe” about Putin – the “gaffe” that righteously condemned a war criminal and therefore upset the DC establishment – were used to describe domestic threats as well.

For our Patreon bonus episode, available to subscribers at the Truth-Teller level or higher, we are airing the live Q & A special with our beloved listeners that we held last week. This was the first Gaslit Nation live event but it will not be the last! We plan to do this again over the summer so sign up at the Democracy Defender level or higher to join the Gaslit Nation Zoom Party! In this week’s bonus we discuss Ukraine, voting rights, the midterms, Eric Greitens the serial abuser Senate candidate and more. We thank you for your continued support of our extremely independent show!

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This episode tackles the urgent need for accountability in both the United States and in Putin’s war on Ukraine. We start out with yet another deep dive into the cesspool that is Merrick Garland’s political career and in particular, his alliance with lifelong mentor and corruption queen Jamie Gorelick. We have located the ur-text that spurred the “Garland nabbed Timothy McVeigh” propaganda myth and learned that it includes an endorsement from…Trump Coup Plot pal and Russian oligarch lawyer Joseph DiGenova! Learn about this and other seedy ties (Rex Tillerson makes an appearance) in the latest Great Debunking of Merrick Garland.

We then turn again to the Kremlin’s war on Ukraine and the urgent need for Ukrainians to be protected from the brutal Russian air strikes and ongoing mounting genocide of Ukrainian civilians. Andrea details the latest in the Russian assault and examines how decades of complicity brought us to this point.

So what should the West be doing to stop this horrific crisis? We welcome a special guest this week: Ukrainian analyst Olena Tregub, Secretary General of NAKO (the Independent Defense Anti-Corruption Committee), an international oversight body created by Transparency International. From 2015 to 2017, Olena led the national authority for international development assistance coordination as the director at Ukraine's Ministry of Economic Development. She answers our questions on what the West should be doing to help Ukrainian civilians, how Ukraine can get a no-fly zone and what that would lead to, talk of World War III, and Putin’s broader agenda.

Our bonus episode this week is the recording of our special live Zoom Q & A with our Patreon subscribers at the Democracy Defender or higher! True to form, we forgot to tape the first thirty minutes, so we stayed for an extra thirty minutes to make up for it! We thank everyone who turned out for this fun event; we loved getting to see you and answer your questions. We will be doing another one of these events this summer so please join at the Democracy Defender level if you’d like to take part! Gaslit Nation is and shall forever remain an independent podcast and we are able to keep going thanks to listeners like you.

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In this episode of Gaslit Nation, we revisit some familiar terrain – you know, like Putin did when he decided to invade Ukraine yet again. In Monday’s bonus episode, available to Gaslit Nation listeners at the Truth-Teller level or higher, we answered questions about particular issues in Putin’s war on Ukraine: nukes, Israel, UK sanctions, and so on. In today’s episode, we revisit the history of the current conflict – since many people still do not grasp that the defense pact of NATO is not what prompted Putin’s invasion – and of the USSR itself.

We discuss the illusion of Russian military might and how Ukrainians have punctured that myth, while also analyzing the successful hybrid warfare – cyberattacks, propaganda, Western useful idiots and oligarch partners – that was put in its place. We speculate on where Putin may strike if he decides to withdraw from Ukraine and temporarily focus on other territories that were once forced to be part of the Soviet colonial empire. Andrea also breaks down the latest in the ongoing war, including new war crimes in Ukraine and arrests of journalists and protesters in Russia.

This has been an absolutely exhausting few months for us at Gaslit Nation, and lucky you, for a mere ten dollars you can see us looking exhausted in person! On March 22 at 4:00 EST/3:00 CST, you can join Sarah and Andrea at the first ever live Gaslit Nation chat for subscribers at the Democracy Defender level or higher. We will be answering your questions and thanking you for being part of the supportive and engaged community that has kept us going for all these years! If you’re interested in participating, sign up on Patreon.

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Putin’s brutal escalated invasion of Ukraine was predictable – not only because he announced it in advance, but because Russia has carried out extreme military violence in other regions for decades, most notably Chechnya in the 2000s and Syria over the last decade. As Ukraine continues to fight back, Syria suffers due to the partnership of Putin and Assad and the war crimes they carried out on Syrian civilians, which killed hundreds of thousands and displaced several million. To understand what may be in store for Ukraine, we need to understand Syria, so we invited an expert on Syria for an urgent discussion with Gaslit Nation.

Our guest today is Mouaz Moustafa who is featured in the must-watch documentary about Syria called Red Lines. Mouaz was born and raised in Damascus, Syria before moving to the US as a teenager. He is the current Executive Director for The Syrian Emergency Task Force (SETF). As a former staffer for Congressman Vic Snyder and Senator Blanche Lincoln, Mouaz spent a few years on Capitol Hill before joining SETF in the fall of 2011 to help advocate on behalf of the pro-democracy movement in his native Syria. He regularly travels to Turkey, Syria, and Jordan. He has organized many staff and congressional delegations to the region including Senator McCain's trip to northern Syria in 2013. He worked closely with the Defector Caesar, bringing him to testify in front of the House Foreign Affairs Committee in the US House of Representatives. Mouaz has also worked closely with the US Holocaust Memorial Museum to bring awareness to the atrocities taking place in Syria including a continuing exhibit of the Caesar photos currently at the Museum.

Mouaz discusses what Ukrainians can do to fight against Russian military aggression, what the West should do and should have done to protect Syria, what the West should do to protect Ukraine, the online disinformation warfare that Russia has been carrying out globally for decades, and how to sustain resilience and defiance in the midst of such horror. Mouaz reminds us that we must never give up the fight and we must never give up on each other.

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This week, we review the chaotic and horrific developments in Putin’s war against Ukraine. We cover the West finally sanctioning Russia and beginning to isolate it from positions of geopolitical power; Putin’s threat to use nuclear weapons; the protests in support of Ukraine that broke out all over the world, in particular in independent states that were once colonized by the Soviet Union; the shameful and unforgivable role Kremlin media lackeys played in abetting Kremlin violence in Ukraine and Syria; and what NATO and the West should do to protect Ukrainians trying to flee to the border.

Most of all, we discuss the toll this war has taken on the people of Ukraine. While their resilience is inspiring, it is also tragic. Putin’s escalated invasion was predictable and therefore preventable. The West owes Ukraine every bit of support it can give them after decades of looking the other way while taking Russian oligarch blood money.

Our bonus episode this week, available to Patreon subscribers at the Truth-Teller level or higher, is the full interview with Gustav Gressel, a senior policy fellow with the Wider Europe Programme at the European Council on Foreign Relations. Gressel is an expert on Russia, Eastern Europe, and defense policy. He discusses Germany’s termination of the Nordstream 2 project, the need for anti-corruption laws and sanctions, and how energy policy is used as political leverage in Europe. He also discusses parallels between Putin and Hitler.

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Putin’s pre-announced escalated invasion and occupation of Ukraine has commenced, and it happened when we said it would: on the anniversary week of Ukraine’s 2014 uprising and the eight year anniversary of Putin’s annexation of Crimea. 2-22-22 is set to go down in history – should the future be lucky enough to have history – much as 8-08-08 did when Putin invaded Georgia fourteen years ago. The escalated invasion of Ukraine, a sovereign nation for over thirty years, is a humanitarian disaster and a profound violation of international law.

Perhaps world leaders should have been more assertive in battling the Kremlin’s multiple invasions of sovereign countries, oligarch infiltration of Western institutions and partnerships with the most corrupt Western actors, and Putin’s general disintegration into madman status! Perhaps if they had listened to the many warning signs that this situation would get extraordinarily dangerous unless action was taken – if you would like a recent list of them, please consult our archives – Ukraine would not be in a terrifying and tragic position and the entire world would not be dealing with a nuke-bearing dictator who will stop at nothing to get his way.

In this episode, we discuss Putin’s desire to rebuild the Soviet Union even if it brings mass death, Zelensky’s fierce opposition to the assault on Ukraine, the insufficient sanctions passed by the UK and the promising curtailing of Nordstream 2. We speculate on which countries may be in danger from Kremlin invasion in the future. We debunk Putin’s bullshit blatherings and analyze them in the context of the generation gap between Putin and the citizens of the countries he seeks to conquer.

We conclude our episode with an interview with Gustav Gressel, a senior policy fellow with the Wider Europe Programme at the European Council on Foreign Relations. Gressel is an expert on Russia, Eastern Europe, and defense policy. He discusses Germany’s termination of the Nordstream 2 project, the need for anti-corruption laws and sanctions, and how energy policy is used as political leverage in Europe. He also describes the chilling similarities between Putin, Mussolini, and Hitler.

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We have two special guests reporting from L'viv, Ukraine! Gaslit Nation welcomes back intelligence expert Malcolm Nance, the author of several bestsellers on Trump’s ties to the Kremlin as well as the aptly titled upcoming book on Trump’s insurgency, THEY WANT TO KILL AMERICANS. (Listen to our previous interview with Malcom here.) We also welcome back journalist Terrell Starr, host of the must-listen podcast Black Diplomats which decolonizes foreign policy by amplifying historically marginalized voices and providing crucial perspectives on the crises the world faces. (Listen to our previous interview with Terrell here.)

Malcolm and Terrell are traveling Ukraine, where the country is bracing for an escalated invasion of Putin's war. They answered our questions on a variety of topics including: * Why did the Kremlin choose this month to escalate its invasion? * What are some indicators that Putin will go all in? * What are the real reasons Putin wants to occupy Ukraine? * What is the state of the Western alliance? What should NATO members be doing now? * What should the Biden administration be doing? * What role does the threat of nuclear weapons play? * What does Ukraine need from the West to succeed against Russia? * How does Russia’s history of imperialism and colonialism shape its actions in Ukraine today? * What are some ways the West can fend off Kremlin aggression without using military force?

This is an in-depth conversation about a complex and horrifying conflict by people who have been studying Ukraine and Kremlin aggression for decades. If you’re trying to figure out what’s going on and what may happen next, this is the conversation for you.

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Welcome back to another week of us anxiously anticipating a European land war while contending with rising autocracy at home! We start out by analyzing the Trump crime cult’s destruction of federal records, contemplate who in the admin may have been responsible, and put it in the context of the nationwide book bannings and assault on collective memory. Sarah also gives the backstory into the strange circumstances that launched career criminal coverup guy Bill Barr into the Attorney General position in 1991.

Andrea then answers the questions that are on everyone’s mind: Are we headed for World War III thanks to Putin escalating his invasion of Ukraine? What does Putin really want? Why do certain political pundits not understand that the Soviet Union no longer exists and why do those pundits still have jobs? This episode is a Gaslit Nation History Lesson on Russian colonialism, the origins of NATO, the relationship between the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact states, the infiltration of Western Europe by oligarchs during the Iraq War era, the struggles of dissidents from post-Soviet dictatorships, and the propaganda tactics that people use to distort information about all this and more!

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Congratulations, you survived January 2022! Now it’s time for another disaster -- Putin’s scheduled escalation of his ongoing invasion of Ukraine, which he announced months ago, thus giving his oligarchs plenty of time to get their dirty financial affairs in order. We dig deep into this complex conflict, examining the humanitarian toll it takes on Ukraine, Putin’s ambitions for other regions of the world (more on that in our Patreon bonus!), the American exploitation of the conflict for partisan purposes and the way the West can force Putin’s hand and clean its own house at the same time: sanction the oligarchs!

Sanctions on the international band of oligarchs propelling the Kremlin are long overdue, and it is time for the West to quit taking dirty money and instead strip the Kremlin and its mafia partners of their power. We speculate as to the oligarchs’ backup plans and what will happen in the months to come should the sanctions actually be enacted. We also discuss Trump’s ongoing coup attempt and his dream of Putin-style rule – a dream that may come true since the DOJ refuses to act.

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In June 2021, we did a Gaslit Nation episode called “Voter Suppression Emergency” where we interviewed election integrity expert Ari Berman. Guess what? We’re still in a Voter Suppression Emergency so Ari is back to share his thoughts with us again! Ari Berman is a writer for Mother Jones who closely documents dark money, voter suppression, and the ever-changing laws that GOP legislatures are using and abusing to hijack our democracy. He has long followed the power struggle for progressive values and democracy in Washington, and his books include Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America and Herding Donkeys: The Fight to Rebuild the Democratic Party and Reshape American Politics.

This week we catch up with Ari and discuss how the voter suppression emergency has turned into a voter suppression apocalypse. We get his thoughts about what’s really behind Manchin and Sinema’s obstructionism, whether the Democratic leadership’s inaction has alienated their grassroots base, why Merrick Garland has not cracked down on insurrectionists, the GOP strategy for the midterms and their dangerous placement of insurrectionists into elected offices, the new voter suppression laws enacted since 2020, the culture of threat toward poll workers and public officials, the role of dark money in shaping elections, what ordinary citizens can do to combat this threat, what tools the Democratic Party has left at their disposal, and much more!

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This week we examine what drove Koched-up Karen of the Senate Kyrsten Sinema to destroy voting rights on Martin Luther King, Jr. weekend. We dig into Sinema’s questionable past and shady backers and debate rumors about her political future. We also discuss the fact that unless Congress nukes the filibuster and passes voting rights protections, it doesn’t matter who runs in 2024, because the election will be determined not by candidate popularity but by the most extreme voter suppression laws since the era before the VRA. We praise the Black activists who continue to fight for voting rights despite contending with a white supremacist death cult in one party and cowardly corporate enablers in the other.

We then discuss Merrick Garland’s valiant arrest of career criminal Donald Trump and his mafia syndicate coup plotters…wait just kidding he arrested a guy who posted as “oathkeeper4lyfe” while announcing his January 6 insurrection plans on Reddit. (Seriously.) We review the career of Yale law graduate Stewart Rhodes, the indicted Oath Keepers leader, and explain that arresting him and ten others is not sufficient to protect our country from coup-plotting militants backed by powerful billionaire networks and a sociopathic cult leader currently on tour doing his best Charlie Manson imitation in an attempt to incite a race war.

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