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“What did they know and when did they know it?” It’s Washington’s favorite question for scandal, for mystery or subterfuge. Senator Howard Baker coined “what did they know and when did they know it” back in the Watergate hearings. It’s what lawmakers are asking about politics within the IRS, what regulators asked bank executives about the financial crisis and, of course, what EVERYONE wants to know about Hillary Clinton’s emails. But it also is the question at the heart of the current challenge to the Affordable Care Act, the ACA, also known as Obamacare. That’s the challenge the Supreme Court heard last week. Specifically, what did the people who wrote the law know about six words in the middle of a 906-page document. Those words stipulate that for people who cannot afford health care coverage, subsidies are available through “an exchange established by the state.” A key reminder, an exchange is just another word for a marketplace where you can go and buy health insurance. If you know anything about the ACA,

Political scientists and lawyers have had their chance to diagnose the causes of the obvious ills in the American body politic, and to write some prescriptions. It’s high time to give some other faculties a chance. In this week’s podcast, we talk to a psychologist, Dr. Jean Twenge, of San Diego State University and the author of “Generation Me.” Twenge’s research often involves psychological differences between generations. Her writings are smart, thought provoking and very in tune with the times. One research finding we talk about in the podcast is that the well-documented decline in the trust Americans have in government and big institutions mirrors a decline in trust we have for each other. We just generally trust people less than we have in the recent past. So which is the chicken and which is the egg, less trust in people or in “the system”? It is all scrambled. Twenge suspects that a big part of this change is that Americans’ identity – our sense of individualism – is much less bound up in belonging

We are only hours away from the release of season three of House of Cards, the dark, cynical world of Washington politics as ruled by Francis Underwood. It’s a world that series showrunner Beau Willimon is well familiar with. As a playwright, he tackled similar themes with Farragut North, later adapted into the film Ides of March, starring George Clooney. And it’s a world Willimon has also lived as a former campaign staffer during several elections. In the final installment of our special series of podcasts, “Inside House of Cards,” Willimon tells us that working on the series and working on a campaign are not that different. “You have a big team of people who are all trying to accomplish the same goal. In the case of the campaign, it’s to get someone elected on a certain date. On a TV show, its to have 13 hours of content produced and ready to be delivered by a certain date and then on that date you see what the world thinks.” Frank Underwood, a ruthless and conniving congressman maneuvers his way to the Ov

Francis Underwood has finally made it to the White House. The character, played by Kevin Spacey, spent the first two seasons of “House of Cards” scheming, murdering and blackmailing his way from Congress to the vice presidency to the Oval Office. Together with his equally conniving wife, Claire, played by Robin Wright, they knock down every conceivable barrier, using any means necessary, in their quest for power. The show is filled with a lot of people willing to do almost anything to get what they want – but among the sleaziest characters in the series are a couple of female political reporters. They sleep with their sources, can’t help but catfight with each other and have the ethical standards of …. Well, they don’t have any ethical standards. We’re talking about Zoe Barnes, the young ambitious upstart reporter who starts at the conventional Washington Herald and flees for greater freedom and fame at the start-up digital “Slugline.” Her nemesis is the Herald’s White House correspondent, Janine Skorsky,

It’s “House of Cards” week on DecodeDC. We are helping get YOU ready for the release of Season 3 of the Netflix series with a five-podcast special series, “Inside House of Cards.” Today’s installment – the third – is all about the business, or maybe the bloodsport, of lobbying and politics. One day, you’re an elected official or a political staff member. The next, you’re a member of a K Street firm trying your best to influence the very same government officials and legislators you just worked with.That’s the revolving door Jimmy Williams spun through when he went from Senate staffer to lobbyist. In the Netflix series, Remy Danton is a former press secretary and protege of Frank Underwood turned lobbyist. He uses his connections and contacts on behalf of one main client, an energy company. Jimmy Williams says Danton is a great character – he’s just not realistic. “You know what a lobbyist does in Washington, D.C.?” he rhetorically asks podcast host Andrea Seabrook. “Fund-raises. Nothing more and nothing less

In the second installment of our DecodeDC special series, “Inside House of Cards,” we go into the world of journalism and politics. Our guide, Matt Bai, spent years as a Washington political reporter for The New York Times Magazine and is now a political columnist for Yahoo News. He has a particularly interesting perspective on how “House of Cards” depicts his profession, because Bai plays himself in several episodes of the second season of the series. While Bai thinks journalism in “House of Cards” is much darker than what really happens in Washington, D.C., he says there still is a lot that rings true. Frank Underwood and other characters are more transactional than real politicians, Bai says, but the series represents some essential truths about how the public sees Washington politics. “Sadly the thing that ‘House of Cards’ gets at is that everybody is about themselves, everybody is trying to game the system to their own advantage” Bai says. “There’s virtually no one for whom the end game is the actual en

February has been a brutal month for most of us – snow and cold and ice and kids home from school and trips cancelled. Perhaps the only thing that redeems this month is the release of season three of “House of Cards” on Feb. 27. Perhaps it is our fascination with the dysfunction of Washington that makes the Netflix drama so irresistible. Perhaps it’s the fact that the series takes you where no journalist is allowed to go - into the fantastical and not so fantastical political wheeling and dealing going on all around us – with a large dose of dramatic license. Where exactly is that line between truth, fiction and Washington politics? That’s the question we try to answer with a special series of podcasts – that’s right, it is “House of Cards” week on DecodeDC. Whether you are a series fan or just want to get the inside scoop on the dirtiest deeds of politicians, journalists and the political operatives that occupy Washington, you will definitely want to listen. **Spoiler alert – we’re going to talk about things

Picture this: Girl agrees to go on date with boy. Girl and boy are having a great time together. But girl has a really bad feeling about boy. Girl thinks boy is a Republican. Date comes to a screeching halt. No, this is not some weird political romance novel. It’s the true story of Jessica’s first date with her now-husband, Ross. (Side note, he’s not a Republican.) “I sort of stopped and was like, can we set the record straight on this, like are you a Republican or not? Because if you are, like we could just end this date right now,” said Jessica Morales Rocketto. It may sound a little dramatic—refusing to date someone based on political ideology. But on this week’s podcast, host Andrea Seabrook and producer Rachel Quester explore the wonky world of how much politics actually affect our romantic relationships. For liberals and conservatives, compatibility on political ideology is more important when picking a spouse than personality or physical characteristics. That’s according to John Alford, a political sci

Ever since President Obama unveiled his proposal to make two years of community college free for every American, it seems like all we’ve heard about is the money. How much would it cost? (Answer: about $6 billion.) How much would it bring in, once those students graduate, get better paying jobs, and contribute more in taxes? Here’s what no one seems to be talking about: actually finishing. Just 35 percent of students who start a two-year community college program get their degree within six years. There are a lot of reasons for that, says Krissy DeAlejandro, who started a full-tuition community college scholarship program in her home state of Tennessee. There isn’t one big reason why students tend to drop out, says DeAlejandro, but a combination of lots of little reasons. If their parents haven't been to college, which is the case for most of the students DeAlejandro works with, all of the college jargon can sound like a foreign language. "Oftentimes, what we've found is that they have questions you or I woul

Crowds in the street chanting, “Bring back our girls!” Images of distraught parents and an outraged community. That’s how most Americans first learned about the terrorist group Boko Haram, which kidnapped more than 250 school girls from a state run school in Nigeria last April. In recent weeks, several brutal attacks have brought Boko Haram back into the news, from the all out assault and destruction of a fishing village in northeastern Nigeria that may have left as many as 2,000 dead, to the use of children as young as 10 years old in recent suicide bomb attacks. Secretary of State John Kerry, who has called Boko Haram “without question one of the most evil and threatening” terrorist organizations on Earth, traveled to Nigeria earlier this week to meet with the two main candidates running in next month’s presidential elections and stress the U.S.’s support for the Nigerian government in combating this terrorist organization. But when it comes to a group committing acts that are so heinous and with seemingly

So, here’s a question. When is it too early to assess a president’s legacy? How about two years before his term ends? Not for David Haskell, an editor at New York magazine, who polled 53 historians and asked them how they thought we’d remember President Obama 20 years from now. On this week’s DecodeDC podcast, we talk with Haskell about his piece and what he learned. When asked what the president's legacy might be, the overwhelming response, according to those Haskell spoke with: Obama’s status as the first African-American president will be the defining aspect of his legacy. Yet they didn’t always agree on how race would affect the way we will remember Obama. Some pointed to the effect his race had on the opposition. These historians said what contemporary pundits won’t: that the rise of the Tea Party had something to do with Obama’s race. “Seeing a black family in the White House reminds us that this isn’t a white nation,” wrote historian Annette Gordon Reed. That simple fact, said the historians Haskell in

For the Obama administration, it’s the beginning of the end: the fourth quarter of his presidency. That means political junkies have moved on to 2016, while historians, scholars and, undoubtedly, the president himself have turned their attention to Obama’s legacy. Will he be known for Obamacare? For his Wall St. reforms? Or for ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? And how will people view those actions -- as accomplishments or failures? “These things are not fixed,” says Julian Zelizer, political historian at Princeton University. Presidential legacies shift and change over time, so Zelizer counsels that chief executives shouldn’t work too hard to shape how they’re viewed in the future. “The best they can do is just build a very good and vibrant record,” says Zelizer. Take Lyndon Johnson, the subject of Zelizer’s new book “The Fierce Urgency of Now: Lyndon Johnson, Congress, and the Battle for the Great Society”. For decades after Johnson left office, says Zelizer, “the one thing anyone could remember abo

We’ve all been watching events unfold in Paris with sinking horror. Another terrorist attack, turning police, civilians, writers and satirists into blood and meat. Another man-hunt broadcast on TV; mugshots of terrorists with Muslim names. And now the chattering class is once again embroiled in the divisive argument we’ve witnessed for the last couple of decades; the argument over terrorism and Islam. To one side it seems obvious that Muslims condone violence, that Islam is the problem, or part of it anyway. To the other, it’s blasphemy to even consider the idea, wrong to even ask the question, ‘is there something about Islam that leads its followers to violent tactics?’ The two sides are deeply entrenched and totally sure of their points of view -- with mostly anecdotes to back them up. Well today we talked to a guy who does have data, a political science professor at U.C. Berkeley named M. Steven Fish. His research lead to a book with this title: Are Muslims Distinctive? A Look at the Evidence. Here’s a pas

Picture this: two candidates take the stage for a debate. One steps to the podium and begins with a few biographical facts. He was born to a factory worker and a stay-at-home mom, and he went to public school. Before says a word about policy, the second candidate steps up to the mic. You find out he went to private boarding school, and his dad was a doctor. Whether you realize it or not, in that moment, your brain has already taken some shortcuts to help you process what’s going on. Despite the fact that you don’t know anything about how either candidate feels about poverty, food stamps, schools, or taxes, there’s a good chance you’ve made some assumptions about the candidate from a working class-background. This is where we get in trouble, says political scientist Meredith Sadin. She studies social class and voting behavior at U.C. Berkley, and she runs real-life experiments that look a lot like the scene you just pictured. “These stories, which are sometimes very emotionally compelling, they are persuasive,

‘Tis the season for the year-end list. And we thought it fitting that our contribution to this mainstay of holiday journalism be the best political lies of 2014 - from tiny truth-stretching fibs to all out, no-shame whoppers. To help us in our task, we turned to our friends at Politifact , the Pulitzer Prize- winning independent journalism Website that fact-checks statements from the White House, Congress, candidates, advocacy groups and pundits. Politifact uses very complex, purpose-built technology to rate these statements, the Truth-O-Meter. It has a scale that runs from “true” to “pants on fire” – as in “ liar, liar...” The Truth-O-Meter’s needle also can point to half-true, mostly-true, mostly-false and false. Politifact selected 10 finalists for 2014 lie of the year. Angie Drobnic Holan is the editor of Politifact and she said some of the selections probably sound pretty familiar. “Global warming is a hoax, ” was said by South Louisiana congressional candidate Lenar Whitney in a campaign video. “It is j

It was the early morning hours of Oct. 6, 1976. Adolph Lyons, a 24-year-old African-American, was driving through Los Angeles with a broken taillight. Two LAPD officers in a squad car pulled Lyons over, and approached with their pistols drawn. Lyons got out, the cops turned him around, spread eagle, and placed his hands on the back of his head. Lyons’ keys, still in his hand, dug into his scalp and he complained. One of the police officers called that resisting arrest and grabbed Lyons from behind, putting an arm across Lyons’ neck. The cop kept Lyons in the chokehold until he passed out and dropped to the ground. Lyons awoke to find that he had urinated and defecated on himself and was coughing up blood and dirt. The police officers who had pulled him over then issued him a citation -- a traffic ticket for the broken taillight -- and let Lyons go. Reporter Dave Gilson of Mother Jones Magazine rediscovered this story after the death of Eric Garner last summer. Garner had been put in a chokehold by a police of

There are hard, deep-seeded questions in the public’s outcry following two police killings – that of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner in New York City. Race, poverty, police training, and the use of deadly force are only a few of them. There’s a legal question, too, only a small slice of the issue, but one that could be worked on in concrete ways. It stems from this: In both Ferguson and New York City, local prosecutors took the cases before local grand juries, and in both instances the jurors declined to indict the police officers involved in the killings. So the legal question is this: Should a criminal justice system investigate itself? Is there a conflict of interest when prosecutors, who work with cops every day putting away criminals, turn around and prosecute accused police officers? Gina Barton, an award-winning investigative reporter at the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, says it’s a question people have been asking in Wisconsin for years. “If somebody in your own police department do

Like any parent might, one Wisconsin mom wanted to make sure her adult daughter’s new boyfriend was a decent guy. So she went online and and searched for his name, Matthew Carr. What she found was nothing -- which, in retrospect, is incredibly shocking. A few years earlier, while serving in the Air Force, Carr had been court-martialed for posing as a doctor and luring women into “gynecological exams.” The Air Force convicted Carr of “indecent assault" of seven women and sentenced him to seven years in prison. But none of this came up in the Wisconsin mom’s search. Carr’s name didn’t pop up in criminal background checks or appear on any sex offender registry. So by the time the mom learned the truth -- from another family member’s deeper sleuthing -- her daughter had already submitted to several of Carr’s “exams.” This convicted military sex offender had blended back into civilian society, only to commit the same heinous crime against more women. This week on the DecodeDC podcast, host Andrea Seabrook talks wi

Does the thought of Thanksgiving make your palms sweat? Does your stomach hurt, BEFORE the meal? Maybe holiday fun translates to holiday dysfunction when it comes to your family gathering? We hear you. So just in time for your yearly gathering of the relatives, from the left, right and center, we offer this survival guide for talking turkey and politics. On this week’s podcast, host Andrea Seabrook takes your stories of politics and holidays past and runs them by journalist Amy Dickinson , who writes the syndicated advice column Ask Amy. Here’s an excerpt of their conversation. Amy: It’s very common starting around September for people to write to me already nervous about Thanksgiving and how are they going to manage these disparate points of view. And its not like “oh how silly”, it’s a real issue. We don't spend enough time together to work things out, so it all happens around the table…I actually have a number of suggestions for families to cope with the dinner. A lot of people say pass the butter and re

If you’re anxious about the dinner topics during the holiday season, Decode has your back. We hope to help you navigate your way through the Turkey dinner with our political guide to surviving Thanksgiving. So, for your listening pleasure we are releasing snippets, sneak-peeks, giblets—if you will of our upcoming Thanksgiving episode: Politics around the Turkey. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.