The Supreme Court is in the news – issuing surprising rulings on the Dreamers and abortion access in Louisiana, but predictable ones limiting absentee voting in Texas and okaying the denial of contraception coverage based on employers’ religious beliefs. Chief Justice Roberts seems to be the new swing vote, so what should we expect? Let’s listen to my 2013 conversation with MARCIA COYLE on her book THE ROBERTS COURT: The Struggle for the Constitution. By the way, Coyle confirms my belief that the most crucial issue in considering the last few GOP-nominated justices is not abortion or gun control – but the rights and powers of corporations vs those of human beings

Psychiatrist and author ROBERT JAY LIFTON has spent a lifetime not turning away from our dark side: writing about Hiroshima survivors, Nazi doctors, and the Japanese cult that released sarin gas in Tokyo’s subways. Now 93, he finds the darkness closer to home. He wrote the foreword to The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Experts Assess a President, and his latest book is LOSING REALITY: On Cults, Cultism, and the Mindset of Political and Religious Zealotry. How can Trump’s alternative facts compete with the harsh realities of this moment?

“We’re still fighting the last battles of the Civil War,” according to attorney CONNIE RICE in a recent interview. Rice has for decades been doing the hard work of police reform. She believes, “There’s a war within American policing … Does it continue to go with the policing that descended from slavery, which is containment suppression? Or do they go toward community healing, wraparound safety, public health policing — which doesn’t even promote cops for making arrests?” Here’s my 2012 conversation with Rice about her book, POWER CONCEDES NOTHING.

ELIZABETH FERNANDEZ has worked on voter education and GOTV campaigns, helping to register thousands of new voters. She’s now Communications Director of MOVEMENT VOTER PROJECT, which offers a clear break from failed electoral strategies of big donors, big consultants, and big TV ad buys. MVP helps donors move their money to the best local community-based organizations in key states, who are alive on the ground 365 days a year, election or not. In 2018, they moved more than $13M to 350+ groups in 42 states – in almost every competitive US House, Senate, Governor’s race and ballot measure. You can learn more at movement.vote.

GEORGE PACKER’s recent essay in the Atlantic, We Are Living in a Failed State, was being quoted a lot – before George Floyd’s death and the ensuing days of rage. Packer is the author of 2013’s THE UNWINDING, which reported on a country growing vulnerable to a demagogue like Trump, and 2019’s Richard Holbrooke biography OUR MAN, just out in paperback. He’s a staff writer at The Atlantic and I reached out after reading two of his recent essays The President Is Winning His War on American Institutions and We Are Living in a Failed State. We talk about how it all fits together.