Two middle-aged men, one black and one white, were walking up a street in downtown Charlottesville, Virginia, yelling at each other. It was a moment of relative normalcy in a day otherwise defined by mayhem. Both men use the phrase “born and bred” to define their relationship to the smallish Southern college town, nestled in […]
Baynard Woods
Posted inMusic
Jason Isbell Discusses Reckoning with White Southern Masculinity on His Excellent New LP, The Nashville Sound
Jason Isbell’s The Nashville Sound is the summer soundtrack for those of us who fled small towns because of the sexism or the racism or the lack of opportunities, only to see all of those things amplified with the election of Donald Trump, rendering our hometowns almost hostile to our very existence. “I used to […]
Posted inNews
Democracy in Crisis: Yo Senators, Quit Being So Mean to Jeff Sessions
If you didn’t know, via obscure Latin etymology, that the word testify is related to the word testicles, you could guess it from watching Senate testimony pretty much any time ever, but certainly this year. (For what it’s worth: in Rome, you swore on your testicles to tell the truth). Back when now-Attorney General Jeff […]
Posted inNews
Trump, Erdoğan, and Populist Oppression: What We Can Learn from Turkey’s Regime
I messed up on Twitter last week when sending out a story I wrote about Kurds and other activists who were attacked by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s security forces outside of the Turkish ambassador’s Washington, D.C., residence. Instead of typing, “Turkish security forces,” I inadvertently wrote, “Trump security forces.” I deleted the tweet and regretted the […]
Posted inNews
Democracy in Crisis Podcast: If Trump Doesn’t Pay His Taxes, Should You?
Feeling crushed by your own taxes, while wondering why President Trump won’t release his tax returns? This week, cohost Baynard Woods talks with Democracy in Crisis FOIA expert Mary Finn about her story this week on tax resisters in the Trump era.
Posted inNews
A Reality-Show President Enters the Theater of War
Not far from the White House, at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., Yayoi Kusama’s blockbuster retrospective show Infinity Mirrors has been attracting insane crowds of people who stand in line, eager for the twenty-second stretches of disorientation inside Kusama’s infinity rooms. The rooms use facing mirrors, hanging lights, and polka dots […]
Posted inNews
Democracy in Crisis Podcast: The Dangers of a Trump Supreme Court
On this week’s episode, Lawrence Weschler—a long-time New Yorker staff writer and the author of numerous books, including the recent Waves Passing in the Night: Walter Murch in the Land of Astrophysicists—talks with host Baynard Woods about the catastrophic implications of confirming Neil Gorsuch, the need for massive mobilization, and the nature of scientific inquiry.
Posted inNews
Could Dems Use Trumpcare’s Implosion to Push for Single-Payer?
As the debate on Trumpcare raged in the House, Wisconsin U.S. Representative Mark Pocan spoke outside the Capitol at a small Progressive Caucus press conference, comparing the bill to a Trojan horse sneaking disastrous measures to the American public. “And of course these days we know Trojans are something a little different, and they’re only […]
Posted inNews
Democracy in Crisis Podcast: Imara Jones on Health Care and the Russia Investigations
In this week’s episode, hosts Baynard Woods and Marc Steiner talk with writer and analyst Imara Jones about what’s next for health care and the ongoing investigations into Russian involvement in the presidential election. Jones holds a degree from the London School of Economics and is currently developing a television news program aimed at progressive […]
Posted inNews
Democracy in Crisis: Trump Taking Cues from Russian Propaganda
The Senate Intelligence Committee questioned three experts on Russian active measures, or propaganda, campaigns Thursday morning. One of them, Clint Watts, of the Foreign Policy Research Institute and George Washington University’s Center for Cyber and Homeland Security, made it clear that the propaganda campaign was successful because of Trump’s use of similar tactics. When asked […]
