Is this #Freedom? I think not!
Just a month ago, the story of two lawmakers expelled from the #Tennessee Legislature by #RepublicanLawmakers captured headlines across the country. Their offense wasn't #corruption or #criminal activity- instead, they had joined a #protest at the #statehouse in favor of #GunControl, shortly after the #Nashville #shooting at a #Christian school. Earlier this week, Representative #ZooeyZephyr, of #Montana, was barred from the #RepublicanHouse chamber after making a #speech against a #TransHealthCare ban. In the past few years, in #RepublicanControlled #Arizona, #Wisconsin, and #NorthCarolina, legislatures have worked to strip powers from state officials who happen to be Democrats in order to put those powers in #RepublicanHands. Jacob Grumbach, a political-science professor and the author of "Laboratories Against Democracy," talks about how state #politics has become #nationalized.
"If you're a politician, and you're trying to rise in the ranks from the local or state level in your party," he notes, "your best bet is to join the national culture wars"-even at the expense of #constituents' real #concerns.
Plus, the contributing writer Joshua Yaffa talks with David Remnick about #EvanGershkovich, the first #American #reporter imprisoned in #Russia on charges of espionage since the nineteen-eighties. "Evan was not sanguine or Pollyannaish or naïve about the context in which he was working," Yaffa notes, but he returned to Russia again and again to tell the story of that country's #descent into #autocracy.
Apple Podcasts
Have State Legislatures Gone Rogue? And Joshua Yaffa on Evan Gershkovich
Podcast Episode · The New Yorker Radio Hour · May 5, 2023 · 31m
