On November 5, Americans went to the polls and once again elected Donald Trump president of the United States. By this point, you probably know the broad strokes of his victory: He won every swing state and, unlike in 2016, the popular vote as well.  It also seems clear that a key part of the Democratic Party’s message — that another Trump term would threaten democracy and push the nation toward authoritarianism — didn’t resonate with voters like they hoped it would.  However, as Financial...

On November 5, all eyes will be on the race between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump for the White House. But no matter who wins the presidency, there’s another close competition that will have a huge impact on U.S. politics: the fight for control of Congress. In fact, next year’s Congress will play a role in our politics even before the next president is sworn in; they’ll be responsible for certifying election results on January 6, 2025.   Republicans appear...

Remember the supply chain problems of 2020 and 2021? The story we were told was that COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the world’s ability to make and transport goods, leaving us with shortages of everything from surgical masks to infant formula (not to mention seven dollar eggs). However, it turns out that the real story behind those shortages is more complicated, and has less to do with the pandemic than with transformations to our economy that have been taking place over decades.  On this...

While no one knows how this November’s election is going to go in the U.S., there’s one thing most experts agree on: It’s likely going to be close. Very close. Poll after poll suggests that, especially in a few key states, support for the two candidates is evenly split in a way we haven’t seen in decades.  So, with just about four weeks to go before election day, Dan Richards spoke with two experts about the key factors shaping this race. They discuss why neither Biden’s winning coalition in...

Even for an election year, the last few months have seen a head-spinning amount of political news in the United States. So, on this episode, Dan Richards spoke with someone uniquely suited to help make sense of the race as it enters the homestretch. Isaac Dovere is a senior reporter for CNN based in Washington covering Democratic politics. He’s also a senior fellow at the Watson Institute and teaches a class on political journalism. Prior to working at CNN, he was a staff writer at The...

Many Americans see a potential Trump victory in this year’s election as a threat to American democracy. Whether you share that concern or not, the rise of Donald Trump and the prospect of a second Trump term have brought up new and unsettling questions about presidential power and the fragility of our democratic institutions.  But as Corey Brettschneider explains in his new book “The Presidents and the People: Five Leaders Who Threatened Democracy and the Citizens Who Fought to Defend It,”...

In March 2020, the Vatican’s Apostolic Archives of Pope Pius XII — also known as the Vatican’s “secret archives” — were opened to scholars from around the world. Historian and Watson Professor David Kertzer was one of those scholars.  What he found there is helping to reframe the role that the Catholic Church — and its then-leader, Pope Pius XII — played in World War II.   Pius XII’s legacy is heavily debated. Some want him to be made a saint. Others call him ‘“Hitler’s Pope,” blaming him for...

This is the second part in our two-part series on South Africa’s politics 30 years after the election of Nelson Mandela, and with it, the end of apartheid.  Around the same time as that anniversary this past spring, there was another momentous event in the country: South Africans went to the polls in May, and for the first time in 30 years, the African National Congress — the political party of Nelson Mandela — lost its parliamentary majority.  On this episode, Dan Richards talks with three...

Over the course of 2024, roughly half of the world’s population will participate in national elections.  On this episode, we take a closer look at two of them: this summer’s elections in the United Kingdom and France.  In the U.K., the center-left Labour Party won in a landslide in July, ending 14 years of Conservative Party rule. In France, an alliance of left-leaning parties banded together to defeat the right-wing National Rally Party, led by Marine Le Pen.   But as political economist and...

This spring marked the thirtieth anniversary of the election of Nelson Mandela as South Africa’s president and the end of apartheid, the system of legalized racial segregation that had existed in South Africa for decades.  Around the same time as that anniversary, there was another momentous event in the country: South Africans went to the polls in May, and for the first time in 30 years, the African National Congress — the political party of Nelson Mandela — lost its parliamentary...

On June 4, results came in from the largest democratic election in history. Over 640 million people voted in India’s election, which took place at over one million polling places across the country over the course of six weeks.  Many predicted that India’s prime minister Nerandra Modi and his party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) would dominate the election, grow their ranks in Parliament, and further impose their Hindu-nationalist ideology on the country.  However, that wasn’t what...

For this week’s show, we’re sharing an episode of “Humans in Public Health,” a podcast from The Brown School of Public Health. It makes a great follow-up to our episode earlier this month about Rhode Island’s first-in-the-nation legally approved proposal for a safe injection site (also known as an overdose prevention center) and how such programs will hopefully fit into the fight against America’s overdose crisis.  Host Megan Hall spoke with Brandon del Pozo, an assistant professor of...

At the Watson Institute, the beginning of summer means commencement festivities, moving trucks, and bittersweet goodbyes. In American politics, the beginning of summer means something very different: the approach of the Supreme Court's summer recess and, with it, the handing down of the Court’s final decisions from this term. This year’s cases will have profound effects on the 2024 election, gun rights, reproductive rights, and more.  While it’s nothing new for the Supreme Court to weigh in...

Mexico, like the United States, has a gun violence problem. It has one of the highest murder rates in the world, and most of those murders come from firearms. In 2019, for example, almost 70% of  the country's 35,000 murders involved firearms. But unlike the U.S., Mexico doesn’t have tens of thousands of licensed firearms dealers.  It has two.  So how do so many guns make their way into Mexico? And how do these guns shape Mexican society?  These are two of the questions Ieva Jusionyte...

In February of this year, Providence became the first city in America to approve opening a state-sanctioned overdose prevention center. Sometimes known as safe injection sites, these are facilities where people can bring illegal drugs and consume them under the supervision of trained volunteers and health professionals.  It’s one of the boldest experiments in the U.S. of an approach to addressing the drug overdose crisis known as “harm reduction,” which is focused less on forcing people to...

In the 1970s in Nicaragua, left-wing rebels, calling themselves the Sandinista National Liberation Front, fought to overthrow their country’s dictator.  It worked. The Sandinistas led a coalition that took over the government in July 1979, in what became known as the Sandinista Revolution.  However, within a few years, the Sandinistas faced a violent backlash, which pushed the country into a state of unrest that lasted for almost a decade.  This period of violence, from roughly 1982-1988, was...

Here’s a depressing fact: it takes longer to travel from Boston to Los Angeles today than it did 50 years ago. Getting to the airport, getting through the airport, the flight itself — just about every part of the process takes longer than it once did.   According to New York Times senior writer David Leonhardt, this is just one example of the stagnation defining so many aspects of America’s society and economy today. From life expectancy to education outcomes to rates of income inequality, by...

The last decade has seen the growth of two political movements that appear diametrically opposed: the Black Lives Matter movement and the rise of Donald Trump.  But as our guest on this episode explains, these two movements are linked, and can only be understood together.  On this episode, Dan Richards talks with political scientist Juliet Hooker about how these movements are just the most recent evolution of two of the most powerful forces in American politics — what she describes as “Black...

We’ve got a lot of exciting new Trending Globally episodes coming up in the next few weeks and months, but this week we’re sharing an episode of another podcast from the Watson Institute: Mark and Carrie.  The show is hosted by political economist Mark Blyth and political scientist Carrie Nordlund. On each episode, they discuss, debate and, occasionally, make fun of the biggest headlines of the day. The conversations are always thought-provoking and informative, and while the topics are...

February 24, 2024, marks two years since the beginning of the War in Ukraine.  In the war’s first year, Russia’s assault on Ukraine shook the West, while Ukraine's defense of the territory captivated the world.  While no less deadly or consequential, the war's second year has looked very different. The war has become a stalemate on the battlefield, altering the politics in Kyiv, the Kremlin, and among their respective allies. Neither country’s leaders appear to be looking for a way out of the...

In the United States, inequality along the lines of race in education is such a persistent issue that it often fails to make headlines. COVID-19 brought it back to the front of the nation’s consciousness as evidence mounted that nonwhite students were experiencing roughly twice as much learning loss as their white counterparts.  Yet, as our guest on this episode explains, if history is any guide, more attention to the issue doesn’t necessarily mean better outcomes for nonwhite and poor...

Backlash is hardly a new political force — since America’s founding, change has often been driven by citizens mobilizing in opposition to policies, programs, or social movements.  But recently, as our guest on this episode explains, backlash movements have come to dominate our politics in unprecedented ways. He argues that to build a more stable and healthy politics, we need to better understand how these forces work.  Why do certain policies, movements, or individual politicians incite...

Trending Globally will be back with all new episodes soon, but in the meantime we’re rereleasing some of our favorite episodes from 2023. We hope you enjoy – and have a great start to 2024! *** The beginning of 2023 saw a disturbing milestone: the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved the ‘Doomsday Clock’ forward to 90 seconds to midnight – the closest it’s been to ‘Doomsday’ since the clock was established in 1947.  But what would it take for a nuclear weapon to actually be used in the...

“Trending Globally” will be back with all new episodes soon, but in the meantime, we’re rereleasing a few of our favorite episodes from 2023. We hope you enjoy — and have a great start to 2024! *** In 2007, Watson Professor John Eason moved with his family from Chicago to Forest City, Arkansas. At the time Eason was getting his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago, and he moved to Forest City to learn about America’s mass incarceration crisis from a perspective that’s often overlooked: that of...