Decodedc

Now that Donald Trump has the nomination, what's the game plan to win the general election? That's the question DecodeDC host Jimmy Williams poses to Kellyanne Conway, a top advisor to the GOP nominee. We bring you this podcast from Cleveland, Ohio at the Republican National Convention. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The day no one thought would actually happen has arrived. As the Republican National Convention kicks off this week, Donald J. Trump, real estate magnate-turned-reality TV-star-turned-birther-turned-presidential candidate will formally accept the Grand Old Party's 2016 presidential nomination. By all accounts, Trump is the most unlikely candidate to receive a major party nomination in recent memory, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't have seen it coming. This week on the podcast, host Jimmy Williams sits down with DecodeDC's Dick Meyer to dissect his story, "The Road to Trumpdom" and try to pin down how one of the great oddball events in American politics came to be. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Kindergartners having nightmares of Donald Trump. Second graders wondering if their families will be deported. Muslim students being called terrorists. This is the trickle down effect of the 2016 presidential campaign in schools, and it’s happening across the country. That’s according to a survey of 2,000 teachers released by the Southern Poverty Law Center, titled “The Trump Effect: The Impact of the Presidential Campaign on our Nation’s Schools.” On the latest DecodeDC podcast, host Jimmy Williams speaks with a researcher, and one of the teachers who took the survey, diving into the disturbing realities of how the rhetoric from this election season is having a major impact on kids. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This ain't your daddy's federalism. Heather Gerkin of Yale Law School tries to convince Jimmy that even though federalism (or states' rights) was used in the past to keep segregation in place, today it can be used to knock down discriminatory laws. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

People really don't like Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. But will that matter come election time? Probably not. Are voters ditching the parties in droves to declare themselves independents? Not really. Take everything you think you know about this election cycle and throw it out the window, says Alan Abramowitz, a professor of political science at Emory University. On the latest DecodeDC podcast, Abramowitz strikes down some of the conventional wisdom surrounding the 2016 campaign, and instead offers up some conclusions from a model that he’s built to predict election outcomes. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Every campaign season has its winners and its losers - but there are some people who win no matter what happens. Political consultants are considered a necessity in today's elections, and about half of all money spent in campaigns is going through consultants, whether their candidate wins or loses. Adam Sheingate, a professor at Johns Hopkins University, explores the world of political consultants in his new book "Building a Business of Politics: The Rise of Political Consulting and the Transformation of American Democracy." And in today's episode, he tells Jimmy that business is booming. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Nearly a year after the Supreme Court made marriage equality the law of the land, the main plaintiff in the case, Jim Obergefell, has released a new book called ‘Love Wins.’ On the latest DecodeDC podcast, host Jimmy Williams talks with Obergefell about the book, his relationship and marriage, the legal road to the Supreme Court and other plaintiffs in the case. We should note that this interview took place before the Orlando massacre, where 49 people were killed for being gay or trans, gay allies or in a gay club. But if there’s anything to learn from Jim Obergefell, there’s always hope. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Bernie Sanders isn't giving up. The Vermont senator is vying for a contested convention in Philadelphia this July, even as Hillary Clinton has reportedly reached the golden number of delegates to win the Democratic nomination. As is par for the course this election cycle, the convention this summer could be full of surprise, drama and who knows what else. In fact, it could mark a return to the very theatrical conventions of decades past, like in 1952, where both the GOP and Democrats had contested conventions -- fights broke out on the floor, and party bosses eventually picked the nominees. We tried doing a podcast a few weeks back about a potential contested convention on the Republican side, but then The Donald creamed all 16 of his opponents. So now we bring you this show, slightly de-Trumpified, about picking presidential candidates, and why 2016 could be the year when the greatest political show on Earth returns. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Can you feel the Bern yet? With the California primary less than a week away, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders continues to battle erstwhile frontrunner Hillary Clinton despite a clear deficit in delegates. The longtime independent has staked his campaign on grassroots support from middle and working class voters, but it's a different electorate that has kept him afloat: snake people--er, millennials. This week on the podcast, host Jimmy Williams and Scripps campaign reporter Miranda Green dig into the growing millennial support for Bernie Sanders on college campuses. Why are these millennials such fervent supporters and what does this mean for the Democratic Party moving forward? See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

One grew up the daughter of a Navy petty officer in 1950s suburban Chicago, the other spent formative years in Indonesia before being raised by his grandparents in Hawaii. Their experiences couldn’t have been more different but over the last eight years, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have become the twin pillars of the Democratic Party. Once rivals, then colleagues, it would seem that there’s not much daylight between the President and his former Secretary of State on major foreign policy issues. But there are differences and, as New York Times White House correspondent Mark Landler discovered in reporting his new book, "Alter Egos: Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and the Twilight Struggle over American Power," those differences are sometimes quite significant. This week on the podcast, we sit down with Landler to talk about the relationship between the president and his party’s presumptive nominee, how their backgrounds shaped their views on foreign policy, and the pair's evolving relationship. See omnyst

Dick Durbin is a four-term senator and the Democratic whip, whose job is to keep the party together. So what does he make of the fact that the GOP has its presidential nominee while the Democrats are still fractured? ”It’s a split that can help us,” he says. This week on the podcast, we speak with the senator about the biggest lesson he’s learned from the 2016 campaign so far. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Quick, what do these things have in common: Cocoa Pebbles and Winston cigarettes? One answer might be that Fred Flintstone is their biggest fan. Another might be that they’re highly addictive. And that’s not the only thing they share. When former dentist Cristin Kearns was told at a conference that sugary sweet tea was a healthy choice, she went searching for evidence that the sugar industry was trying to spin the science. What she found was a strategy to push products and influence policymakers borrowed straight from the playbook of Big Tobacco. In this episode, we follow up on an investigation by Duke University’s Ways & Means podcast into the way the sugar industry has borrowed from Big Tobacco in responding to threats from regulators. Find their podcast here: http://www.waysandmeansshow.org/episode-blog/2016/3/15/sugar-fix See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

And then there was one. Following the Indiana primary earlier this week, Ted Cruz made the inevitable but shocking decision to suspended his presidential campaign. Less than 24-hours later, John Kasich followed suit. That makes real estate developer and reality tv star Donald Trump the presumptive Republican nominee. But the one remaining candidate for the GOP has divided the Republican party in two. This week on the podcast, we ask supporters on both sides what’s next for the GOP? On one side is Matt Lewis, a conservative commentator and senior contributor for The Daily Caller. On the other is South Carolina Lieutenant Governor Henry McMaster, one of Trump’s earliest and most outspoken supporters. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In 1942, Norman Mineta and his family were forced from their home in San Jose, California and into an internment camp in Wyoming. The Minetas were among tens of thousands of Japanese-Americans subjected to internment in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor Mineta left the camp in 1945 and went on to become the first non-white mayor of San Jose. Then, as a congressman from California, he sponsored legislation that paved the way for reparations for thousands of Japanese-Americans. And as George W. Bush's Secretary of Transport, he oversaw the FAA's response to 9/11 from a bunker under the White House. DecodeDC host Jimmy Williams interviewed Norman Mineta for episode 137: The Supreme Court's Loaded Gun. Enjoy the great stories that didn't make it into that episode. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

More than 70 years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a decision often regarded as one of the worst in its long history. In Korematsu v. United States, the court validated putting American citizens in internment camps during wartime, based on their race or ethnicity. The decision came in the wake of President Franklin Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066, which came after the Pearl Harbor attack and granted the U.S. military the power to ban tens of thousands of American citizens of Japanese ancestry from areas deemed critical to domestic security. The court has never overturned the Korematsu decision, and as the 2016 presidential election approaches, the debate over the case has new life. Some candidates have called for banning groups of people from the U.S. based on their religion, or for targeted surveillance. On the latest DecodeDC podcast, we ask if these suggestions for blanket policies based on religion or national origin—like the Japanese internment camps upheld in Korematsu—could legally happen aga

She’s made millions of dollars, achieved world-wide fame and yet, former world number one tennis pro Martina Navratilova likes to spend her days tweeting about...politics. The tennis legend is a self-identified liberal, and two major events affected her politics and how she sees the world. At age 18, she defected from the then-Communist country of Czechoslovakia. She’s also an openly gay woman. “I was political when I came out of the womb, I just didn’t know it,” says Navratilova. On the latest DecodeDC podcast, host Jimmy Williams sits down with Navratilova to find out why someone who has enjoyed so much success chooses to enter the political fray. While she actively engages in politics on both Twitter and real life, don’t expect Navratilova to run for office anytime soon. “I know I would be okay as a politician, but maybe my skin is too thin. I would have a really hard time dealing with people that really don’t know what they’re doing, if they have the power,” she explains. And true to her competitive spiri

When Ronald Reagan signed the 1986 Tax Reform Act into law, the Republican president hoped that the law would simplify the tax code and close loopholes. Reforming the tax code had been Reagan’s number one domestic priority during his campaign and it took him more than two years of wrangling members of Congress, even pushing past a blockade by House Republicans. But according to Pam Olsen, whose résumé includes stints at the IRS and U.S. Treasury Department, says the Tax Reform Act did the exact opposite. “It made the tax code a lot bigger. It certainly made the tax code a lot longer and a lot more complicated,” said Olsen. On the latest DecodeDC podcast, host Jimmy Williams tells the story of the how the tax law came to be, and the consequences of its passage, including loopholes for billionaires and laymen alike, and how it created an avenue for members of Congress to push through social policy without actually legislating. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

When Hillary Clinton first ran for president in 2008, forecasters and prognosticators quickly seized on what they perceived as a concerted effort to project an image of strength, in part by de-emphasizing her gender. But eight years later, her 2016 campaign seems to be embracing her potentially historic election as the country's first female president. This time, so goes the story, Clinton is "running as a woman." This week on the podcast, we sit down with Corrine McConnaughy, a political scientist professor and researcher at George Washington University, to talk about how this strategy plays among different generations and political persuasions. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The 2016 presidential election is on track to becoming the most expensive campaign in U.S. history. But the the Federal Election Commission, charged with regulating how that campaign money is raised and spent, may be the least understood and most ineffective agency of them all. On the latest DecodeDC podcast, host Jimmy Williams sits down with three people who have all been part of the FEC. They explain that from the start, the agency had a built-in partisan divide that made decision making difficult. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the latest DecodeDC podcast, host Jimmy Williams sits down with Scripps Investigative Reporter Mark Greenblatt about his 6-month-long investigation into problems at the Cincinnati VA. Greenblatt teamed up with WCPO reporter Dan Monk, who together connected with more than 30 whistleblowers. They discovered that a new solution created to solve the VA wait-time scandal that left some veterans for dead back in 2014, may be causing new problems for veterans and hospital staff alike. From staffing cuts, to cost shifting, to the hospital’s acting chief of staff prescribing controlled substances to her boss’ wife, issues at the Cincinnati VA are leaving veterans who are trying to seek care in a bureaucratic abyss. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.