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 post was originally published on Gaslit Nation with Andrea Chalupa and Sarah Kendzior.

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 how unless Congress 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.

This post was originally published on Gaslit Nation with Andrea Chalupa and Sarah Kendzior.

It has now been over a year since the worst attack on the Capitol since 1812, and Attorney General Merrick Garland has responded to the ongoing threat of bloody sequel coups and the rapid erosion of our democracy with…a tepid speech. We break down his weasel words and analyze his “probe” that consists of rounding up minor participants and giving them sentences so light or slow that they can commit vehicular manslaughter while they wait, and discuss why he continues to ignore the criminal elites at the helm.

This post was originally published on Gaslit Nation with Andrea Chalupa and Sarah Kendzior.

We’ll discuss Merrick Garland’s press conference in next week’s episode. For today’s somber one year anniversary of Trump’s attempted coup, we’re sharing with the public, along with some additional commentary, our pre-announced January 6th, 2020 special that ran on Patreon. We encourage you to share with us what your initial reaction was that day — it’s important to stay grounded in this time of chaos agents. So share your story with us on Twitter or by sending us a note at gaslitnation@gmail.com.

This post was originally published on Gaslit Nation with Andrea Chalupa and Sarah Kendzior.

Welcome to the first Gaslit Nation episode of 2022! Just think, one year ago we were all sitting around in a plague waiting for an attempted coup to happen, and now we are…sitting around in a plague waiting for an attempted coup to happen. And by the same coup plotters, too because mafia state enabler Merrick Garland refuses to hold criminal elites accountable!

This post was originally published on Gaslit Nation with Andrea Chalupa and Sarah Kendzior.

Meet the patriots of the Gaslit Nation 2020 Save Democracy Challenge! We speak to superheroes who organized, stayed engaged, and did what they could wherever they were, often facing threats and other pressures, to help save our democracy in 2020. Their efforts matter, made a difference, and planted powerful seeds for protecting their communities, and therefore our country.  

This post was originally published on Gaslit Nation with Andrea Chalupa and Sarah Kendzior.

Since the start of Gaslit Nation, we’ve warned of Trump’s determination to use violence to consolidate power and stay in power. The 2016 election was the culmination of a coup, and the rampant corruption, purging, threats, harassment of investigators, whistleblowers, and law enforcement that followed was done to ensure that coup successfully entrenched a dictatorship. January 6, 2021 was inevitable. Our democracy cannot survive another coup.

This post was originally published on Gaslit Nation with Andrea Chalupa and Sarah Kendzior.

Like a sleigh ride on a mobius strip through hell, this week’s Gaslit Nation takes you on a journey back in time to the many acts of treason committed over the years and the utter lack of accountability for any of them! Today’s Evidence of Obvious Crimes includes the Mark Meadows’ coup PowerPoint, Trump’s latest televised confession of obstruction of justice, and a bunch of texts from three Fox News propagandists and the most pathetic Trump family member.

This post was originally published on Gaslit Nation with Andrea Chalupa and Sarah Kendzior.

This week we look at Biden’s big anti-corruption plan – and wonder if anyone will actually implement it! The Biden admin has put out a kleptocracy battle missive that reads like Gaslit Nation’s greatest hits. But will the U.S. finally clean house this time?

This post was originally published on Gaslit Nation with Andrea Chalupa and Sarah Kendzior.

We’ve got a brand-new coup plot and a brand-new plague variant – and a brand-new Gaslit Nation to examine the nexus of the crisis and the origin of the storm! We start by discussing the coup that the Kremlin is allegedly preparing against Ukraine and review Paul Manafort’s career of evil. Manafort, best known for plotting coups with Kremlin-affiliated actors, has been MIA since being pardoned by Trump in December 2020, and our guess is that he is…plotting a coup with Kremlin-affiliated actors.

This post was originally published on Gaslit Nation with Andrea Chalupa and Sarah Kendzior.

Ron Bloom, a sleazeball DeJoy Defender who works for the company that helped bail out Jared Kushner’s debt in a dirty deal under congressional investigation, will be replaced! Does this mean the corrupt Postmaster General who deliberately slowed down the mail will soon be fired? We also discuss the Kyle Rittenhouse verdict. Like the January 6 Capitol attackers lured into action with promises of protection, Rittenhouse is a pawn in a broader authoritarian play.

This post was originally published on Gaslit Nation with Andrea Chalupa and Sarah Kendzior.

Welcome to month ten of post-Capitol attack America in which no elite operatives have been punished for the worst attack on the Capitol since 1812! This includes fascist felon Steve Bannon, who turned his surrender for subpoena dodging into a reality TV show starring himself. We discuss Bannon’s brazen criminality and why the lack of urgency from agencies tasked with accountability is so dangerous. In times of extreme threat, complacency is complicity.

This post was originally published on Gaslit Nation with Andrea Chalupa and Sarah Kendzior.

Welcome to the Gaslit Nation election aftermath hellhole special! We look at two big factors in Posh Trump Glenn Youngkin’s win: 1) how the GOP’s elite criminal impunity draws white voters to backing raw power, in the hope that this power will protect them and in fear that it will not 2) how the canard of “critical race theory” was weaponized by propagandists and the Dems did little to combat it, despite GOP operatives spelling out the strategy very clearly in March!

This post was originally published on Gaslit Nation with Andrea Chalupa and Sarah Kendzior.

There’s a lot going on, but Sarah isn’t feeling well and lost her voice. We plan to cover the major news events next week, like the elections and what they can tell us, and Joe Manchin’s latest betrayal of the American people. This week, after recently speaking at Congress about the Equal Rights Amendment, and getting arrested in Washington, DC in a protest demanding voting rights legislation, Alyssa Milano stops by Gaslit Nation to discuss this and more, including her new book Sorry Not Sorry.

This post was originally published on Gaslit Nation with Andrea Chalupa and Sarah Kendzior.

This is a special extra urgent Gaslit Nation news bulletin for anyone anywhere around the world who has friends, family, co-workers, acquaintances, old flames who can vote in Virginia. The governor’s race this Tuesday is extremely close. If Trumpist Glenn Youngkin wins, he can help steal Virginia for the Republican party in the 2024 election, ensuring Democrats lose the White House.

This post was originally published on Gaslit Nation with Andrea Chalupa and Sarah Kendzior.

Welcome to the Gaslit Nation Halloween Special! At Gaslit Nation, it is forever Halloween AND Groundhog’s Day, so we revisit some familiar villains – Mark Zuckerberg, Donald Trump, Steve Bannon – and look at the incredibly bad horror sequels they are plotting!

This post was originally published on Gaslit Nation with Andrea Chalupa and Sarah Kendzior.

This week’s Gaslit Nation explores narrative warfare, from Russia’s Stalinist revisionism (now including an attack on Andrea’s film Mr Jones!) to the “both-sidesing” of the Holocaust in US schools, to the memory-holing of the Capitol attack.

This post was originally published on Gaslit Nation with Andrea Chalupa and Sarah Kendzior.

It has now been over nine months since the January 6 attack on the Capitol, and none of the key perpetrators – Trump, Bannon, Flynn, Stone, etc – have been held accountable. And now they are dodging and defying subpoenas! What the Democrats are showing is that you cannot fight hate speech with weasel words, and you cannot fight accelerationism with inertia. This whole gang is running out the clock – the GOP and the transnational crime syndicate that backs them.

This post was originally published on Gaslit Nation with Andrea Chalupa and Sarah Kendzior.

The US government may have avoided a shutdown, but Facebook did not! On Monday everyone’s least favorite data-mining, genocide-abetting tech behemoth had the longest shutdown in its history, less than a day after an explosive interview with a Facebook whistleblower aired on “60 Minutes.” We speculate on what Zuckerberg and his dirty partners were doing in their offline interim period and discuss what should be done about this mass surveillance and propaganda system posing as a social media site.

This post was originally published on Gaslit Nation with Andrea Chalupa and Sarah Kendzior.

The government may be shutting down – again! Thanks to fatuous GOP concern about the debt ceiling, the government may be shutting down and the Treasury may be out of money by October 18. This is part of a long and destructive pattern.

This post was originally published on Gaslit Nation with Andrea Chalupa and Sarah Kendzior.

Today we examine the most powerful person in the United States — Elizabeth MacDonough! Who, you might ask? Why, the Senate Parliamentarian, of course! You know, that person who you stood outside for hours in line in a plague waiting to vote for, the person whose policies you studied and advocated and critiqued…oh wait, that’s Joe Biden, the helpless inhabitant of the White House! Once again, the Biden administration agenda is being held up by the thumbs down recommendation of the Parliamentarian.

This post was originally published on Gaslit Nation with Andrea Chalupa and Sarah Kendzior.

Remember back in April when we described Joe Manchin as a “an enigma wrapped in a riddle wrapped in a lot of money”? Well, the Dem’s most annoying kleptocrat obstructionist isn’t so mysterious anymore! We discuss who’s funding him and why, the illicit and evil business activity in which his daughter is engaged, the attempt to buy off his wife with a government position, and his cavalier attitude toward the destruction of US democracy, infrastructure, and voting rights.

This post was originally published on Gaslit Nation with Andrea Chalupa and Sarah Kendzior.

This week’s episode is devoted to the Texas state attack on reproductive rights and civil rights and its ramifications – not just for Texans, but for all Americans. This authoritarian attack codifies violent vigilantism, will inspire baseless reporting of citizens for political reasons, cultivates an atmosphere of vengeance and paranoia, and is backed by a Supreme Court packed with multiple corrupt justices installed by a career criminal Kremlin asset president. The Texas attack on reproductive rights is where theocrats, kleptocrats, authoritarians, white supremacists, misogynists, and secessionists all meet – much like they have in the Trump administration and its GOP backers. Texas is a hostage state, and we encourage you to support the Texans fighting back against their oppressive legislature. We are all Americans and we must support vulnerable Americans threatened by this abuse of power and corruption of law.

This post was originally published on Gaslit Nation with Andrea Chalupa and Sarah Kendzior.

On August 31, the War in Afghanistan – a war that has been going on for nearly our entire adult lives – came to an end, at least officially. We discuss the ramifications of twenty years of war and how different political entities worldwide are exploiting the situation. We situate Afghanistan in the history of other quagmire wars – Vietnam, Iraq – and revising Eisenhower’s 1953 speech on the military-industrial complex, “A Chance for Peace”, a prescient warning which would today be reviled as radical.

This post was originally published on Gaslit Nation with Andrea Chalupa and Sarah Kendzior.

This week we discuss Angela Merkel’s recent trips to Russia and Ukraine while getting played by Putin and his merry band of Western blood money lobbyists, finally some hope in the Congress for democracy-saving legislation (it’s going to be a make-it-or-break-it fall!), and the latest with the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan and the US evacuation. We detail why we need a comprehensive investigation of the entire twenty years of war instead of letting Republicans politicize the humanitarian crisis.

This post was originally published on Gaslit Nation with Andrea Chalupa and Sarah Kendzior.

We break down myths about “the unvaccinated” vs the anti-vaxxer propagandists and discuss the institutional distrust that have made a diverse crowd of Americans hesitant about the vaccine. We go through twenty years of horrific policy decisions that enabled a humanitarian catastrophe in Afghanistan, wasted trillions of tax dollars, and led to war crimes and tens of thousands of Afghan civilian casualties. And we end with hopeful words from our December 2019 interview with Congresswoman Barbara Lee.

This post was originally published on Gaslit Nation with Andrea Chalupa and Sarah Kendzior.

The corruption in our broken and abusive systems won’t change until we change them ourselves. That’s why we need you — yes, you — to serioiusly consider running for something. Don’t know where to start? Meet Amanda Litman, author of the essential roadmap to running for office Run For Something: A Real-Talk Guide to Fixing the System Yourself, a book that will hold your hand and help you through the entire process.

This post was originally published on Gaslit Nation with Andrea Chalupa and Sarah Kendzior.

With so much ominous news about the climate crisis heralding the man-made apocolypse, we need leaders like the women highlighted in the must-read book All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis. Co-edited by Dr. Katharine Wilkinson, climate author and teacher, and Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, marine biologist and founder of the non-profit think tank Urban Ocean Lab, this soul-hugging anthology provides a breathing space. Dr. Wilkinson joins us for an unforgettable discussion.

This post was originally published on Gaslit Nation with Andrea Chalupa and Sarah Kendzior.

Nelson George set off to become the greatest music writer in the world. Given his strange relationship with Prince who summoned him to listen to new music, George achieved his dream. George contributed to the bohemnian renaissance of Spike Lee turning Brooklyn into a global brand, living the explosion of Black culture across film, music, art, and more at the close of the 20th century and looks back at this groundbreaking time in a sweeping and important discussion of why art matters.

This post was originally published on Gaslit Nation with Andrea Chalupa and Sarah Kendzior.

In this eye-opening discussion to kick off the Gaslit Nation Summer Reading Series: Essential Conversations with Leading Experts on How to Protect Our Democracy, running mid-July to mid-August, Bill Browder discusses the ongoing threat of Putin’s aggression and what to do about it. We ran an excerpt of our interview with Browder in May. This is the full interview.

 

This post was originally published on Gaslit Nation with Andrea Chalupa and Sarah Kendzior.