But the race I’m most invested in on this ballot is our county judge-executive. In Kentucky, judge-executives touch almost every aspect of managing the places we live: snow removal, road construction, property taxes, business development, housing, water and sewer. You name it; the judge-executive has responsibility for it.

The last time our judge-executive was on the ballot, just over 10,000 people (in my county of around 140,000 people) voted in that race.

And I get it. Our brains fill up with our daily to-dos, insurance renewals, pet illness, the water heater leaking. Then we pour in national news, and we start to overflow. It takes energy and capacity to care about local races, and many of us simply don’t have it. I understand.

But I have that capacity, so I want to see how I can use it.

Enter Ballot Club.

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Several years ago, my neighbor Bethanie and I invited friends to my house right before election day. We made a simple slideshow listing the races that would be on our ballots. We described what the offices do (Kentucky elects constables! It’s bewildering!) and listed the candidates. We had some snacks, and we talked through the slides with the room. Does anyone know this person running for school board? How about this city council candidate? Have you ever tried to call our rep? What happened?

It was a lively, educational, fruitful, zero pressure conversation among lots of people from different corners of my life and their friends. We had one objective: everyone leaves a little more prepared to vote.

I’m planning to do it again for our upcoming primaries. Here’s my slideshow, which I’ll post on all the socials. I’ll invite my people and their people to come to my house if they want. I’ll assure them that I’m not fundraising or stumping for anyone. And we’ll see what happens.

Here’s a link to the slideshow with working links, in case some of these elections affect you!

This feels very low-stakes to me. If no one shows up, some people will still look at the slides and click some links. Purpose served!

If I have a house full, I’ve only promised something that I’ve already done (and some snacks).

It takes an investment of time to put the information together, and if you, too, have that capacity, here are some ways to get started:

• Your state’s Secretary of State runs elections. Look at the Secretary of State website for important deadlines, a link to check on your voter registration status, and any other election headquarters-type information.

• Often, your Secretary of State’s office can point you to the right county official for more detailed information. In Kentucky, our county clerks run elections, and my county’s clerk does a fantastic job sharing election information. In other states, you might be looking for a county election supervisor or a similar title. If you’re not finding anything, trying Google-ing “who is the top election official in __ County, [state]?”

• Here’s the tricky part: information for each candidate. If you know of a local or regional news outlet, start there. See if they have an election guide or candidate round-up. Sometimes a local television station will have good links and resources. I resorted for one candidate to a Reddit thread because it was the best I can do. That’s ok! This isn’t a test (for you…you can divine what you will about the candidates from what they’ve shared about themselves).

In the general everything-overwhelm, we say to plug in locally so often that it sounds trite. Maybe it is. But I like seeing what I can do and doing it. - Beth

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We landed on two words: Good Neighbors.

We want to make a shirt that says something true about who we’re trying to be.

Here’s Where You Come In

We’re opening a design contest to the Pantsuit Politics community. We want to see what “Good Neighbors” looks like through your eyes. The winning design becomes our special edition t-shirt, released just in time for you to wear it all summer and (if you’re joining us) to the Spice Conference and live show in Minneapolis at the end of August.

We can’t wait to see a room full of these shirts in Minneapolis. But this isn’t just a live show shirt. It’s a shirt for wherever you are, doing whatever you do, being a good neighbor in your own community.

The Brief

Here’s what we’re looking for:

The required element: The theme of “Good Neighbors.”

Context to inspire you: This shirt celebrates three things at once: our community, America’s 250th birthday, and our Minneapolis event this August. Your design doesn’t need to reference all three. Just knowing the context might spark something.

What to avoid: Partisan imagery, political slogans, clip art, or AI-generated elements. We’re not looking for merch-for-a-brand-or-campaign.

Print constraints: Your design should work in one or two colors on a neutral-colored shirt (think navy, heather gray, or soft white).

The Pantsuit Politics logo will be added to the final shirt by our team (likely on a sleeve or back), so you don’t need to include it in your design.

How to Submit

You’ll need to provide:

• Your name and email

• Your design file (high-resolution PNG, or a vector file: SVG, AI, or EPS)

• A short description of your concept — just 2 or 3 sentences about what you were going for

• A confirmation that the design is your original work and that you’re granting Pantsuit Politics the right to use it for this shirt

One submission per person. The deadline is April 30 at midnight Eastern.

Submit your design here!

What the Winner Gets

• Recognition on the show and in our launch announcement

• Five free shirts to keep and share

• Two tickets to the live show in Minneapolis (or, if you can’t make it, a free year of Spice Cabinet membership)

We can’t wait to see what Good Neighbors means to you!

Here’s a question from Victoria that we wanted to share with everyone:

I have a serious and a less serious question:

1) how to put context around the war for kids? My 12 year old is very anxious. I remember how I felt during 9/11 when I was 12 but also the odd reality of how ‘normal’ everyday life felt.

2) I’m going back to formal workforce after working from home for myself for a decade …. HALP!!! Encouragement? How do I interact with coworkers? How do I pace myself during a traditional work day? How can I set myself up for success?

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Talking to Your 12-Year-Old About War

I see and honor your 12-year-old’s feelings. That’s the place to begin. War is scary. It makes all of us anxious. It’s mature and caring to be worried for the world and people all over it. It’s a sign of a tender heart to experience the dissonance of knowing that while you took an algebra test, a school across the ocean was destroyed by bombs. Being mature, caring, and tender-hearted sucks sometimes. I think it’s good to be honest with our kids about this truth.

War is scary even when we clearly understand why it’s happening. It’s even scarier this time because we really don’t. This seems to be a war in search of a why. It’s hard knowing that sometimes adults, even the adults in the most powerful positions on earth, make catastrophic mistakes.

To me, that’s the most important context. Sometimes we make catastrophic mistakes, and then we have to figure out what happens next. We always do, in some form.

If I were sitting with you and your 12-year-old, I would do my best to answer any questions. I would be honest about all that I don’t know. I would say clearly that I don’t know much because we are somewhere in the middle of this mess. Maybe we’d talk about living through 9/11, which is a reminder that every person who has ever lived has seen some very scary events unfold. I think we’d talk about how all of us have moments in our lives that we think we can’t survive.

We get through those moments together. We adapt. We learn. We make our own mistakes, and we hope our mistakes are better ones than the people who came before us. We keep loving each other. That’s how we have a good life in a chaotic world.

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Re-entering the Workforce

Victoria, I’m going to answer all of your questions with one sentiment: Value your experience. I’m your personal hype-woman right now. See everything that feels out of place in your new workplace as a strength, and set your intention to make it so.

You worked for yourself for a decade that was extremely tumultuous in the world?

You must have great adaptability, foresight, and problem-solving skills.

You worked from home during this time?

That takes real focus and discipline.

Sounds like you’re also raising a family during this time?

I bet you can prioritize with the best.

You’re also arriving in this new role without the baggage of how the old company did it, or what the old office felt like, or what the current dynamics are in this place. You’re bringing in a fresh perspective. When a person is able to combine a fresh perspective with genuine curiosity about the new environment, that’s hugely valuable.

I want you to go in with confidence that you know exactly how to pace your day because you’ve been pacing your days in a much harder, more ambiguous environment. You’ll be able to meet whatever challenges this workplace throws at you because you’ve been solving problems in your business for ten years.

If a voice in your head is undercutting you, make a list of the specific things you’re good at. Remember that workplaces of all kinds struggle to find people who can stay calm in a crisis, who give and take feedback graciously, who know how to speak to another human being on the phone, and who listen to colleagues without distraction. There are so many things that I bet you do without thinking about them that your new employer is over the moon to find in you.

I will not read them for a million billion trillion dollars. Not from a reputable company. Not from the lens of actually this is just about health/hormones/fill-in-the-blank. Not in a car; not on a train; etc. I will not.

Advertising is a necessary evil of trying to make a thing consistently and well for a long period of time that you’d like to offer people for free. Because of that, I read the ads for all kinds of products, most of which I do actually like.

But I will not read weight loss ads of any kind for any reason because I think of Pantsuit Politics listeners as people I’ve invited into my living room. We might talk about all kinds of random shit in my living room: You got a presidential candidate for 2028 you like? How about a lip gloss/multi-vitamin/pair of socks? It’s fine. I would never, in my living room, say, “so how’re you feeling about your weight? How’re you feeling about mine? In fact, how about we take a pause right here just to remind us both that we carry around pounds? I bet you don’t already do that 900 times in the course of an afternoon.”

Women are currently encouraged to talk about our weight but only if that talk is prefaced, informed, and constrained by personal disclosure. If I am to write an essay about the size of my body, I am to include a full and detailed journey, complete with measurements, sizes, what I’ve tried to lose weight and what’s worked for how long and what hasn’t worked and how I feel about all of that working and not-working and what I’m currently trying, because I am of a size where I’d better be currently trying.

If I don’t include those details, it must be that I’m too ashamed. And really I should disclose the precise nature and source of my shame and what I’m doing to alleviate it, all while reassuring the audience that I definitely feel an adequate supply of it.

It must be that I’m ashamed. It couldn’t possibly be that somewhere along the way, I let the statistics and dates and point systems and disgusting Jenny Craig-wrapped “desserts” sail away in the breeze. It couldn’t be that I’ve decided my attention is better spent elsewhere.

The body positivity movement was important to me because it showed me pictures of bodies like mine living in the world. It showed me bodies like mine in bikinis, in evening gowns, on basketball courts, in clothes that perhaps I’d like to buy. For what felt like five minutes, some brands were actually marketing to me. That was nice.

This is how weird it is to have a large body. You actually feel excluded from capitalism.

I appreciated the concept of health-at-any-size. It, again, felt like I was finally invited to spend money in places where everyone else has been spending lots and lots of money.

As with all things, the “body positivity movement” got interneted. Now it’s fodder for a thousand essays attacking it, defending it, musing on just as I am right now. Rest in the cache, body positivity movement. I knew you when.

I do not want to talk about GLP-1s in my living room because I am in a body of a certain size. How on earth could I talk about GLP-1s without explaining whether I’m on one currently, and, if not, why not?

That question is rhetorical. The answer is that what I am and am not doing in my body is exactly no one else’s business. Same for you and you and you.

I could just talk about GLP-1s. I could.

But of course, I talk in public, on the internet, where someone will see a clip of me saying literally anything I could possibly say about these drugs, and that person will immediately raise an eyebrow and then search for additional photos of me to see if I’m in an approved container to be able to discuss this issue.

I’m sure this happens about everything I discuss, including and especially sex, which I do talk about on tomorrow’s episode of Pantsuit Politics. I can handle it on some topics, especially topics about which I know I have something to contribute, something that makes these mental calculations and risks worth it.

For a discussion about a medication that I feel nothing and everything about all at once, so much feeling that I can’t even put words around the feelings? Pass.

My daughter and I watched an Instagram reel over ice cream this week. The reel suggested replacing “what do you do for a living?” with “who’s the villain in your life?” as a get-to-know-you question. I didn’t have to think twice about who the villain in my life is. It’s a person who used my body to punish me.

(Pausing here to ask whether I really want to share that I had ice cream this week. That’s what this whole conversation does to us.)

I will not read weight loss ads, and this post is likely the first and last time I will type the letters G-L-P together on any keyboard. It is likely the first and last time I will say anything about my weight or anyone else’s online. No one needs to be reminded to think about this. We have nothing but reminders. For many of us, maybe most of us, the whole world reads as a series of post-it notes reminding us of our physical inadequacies.

I have been tempted at the beginning of every paragraph to do some form of disclosure, to tell you about my diet and exercise and lifestyle and conversations with my physician and my overall health, perhaps to throw in my resting heart rate and cholesterol numbers. I have been tempted to use these data points to try to earn your approval and maybe even your affirmation, although of course your approval and affirmation in this context are completely uncomfortable for you and for me. You’d probably agonize over what you could say that doesn’t sound any-kind-of-way that makes me or anyone else feel something because we all feel so much about our bodies.

THE HOURS OF OUR LIVES WE HAVE SPENT LIKE THIS.

It is nonsense. It is wasteful. It is reinforcing all of this tremendously toxic shit that makes us entirely too obsessed with ourselves.

So this is my one and only disclosure: I’m doing my best in this very body that I have to let some of this self-obsession die with me.

P.S. If you wonder where on earth this is coming from, I don’t blame you! This post is a follow-up to a conversation that Sarah and I stumbled into at the end of our regular Thursday Live conversation.

Here’s what she asked:

I am a Democrat in San Antonio, Texas — specifically TX-23, currently represented by the suddenly infamous Tony Gonzalez. I have never volunteered for a political campaign. I have donated occasionally. But the stakes are so high in this moment. So as I think about “What is my work to do?” — where do I put my limited time and money this year? Toward supporting Katy Padilla Stout, the mostly unknown Democrat running for TX-23? Or toward James Talarico’s Senate campaign? Who is going to have more impact in the long run if they win? What’s really the most effective thing to do in a campaign? Is volunteering more beneficial than getting back on Facebook and posting about these candidates? Are monthly donations more beneficial than occasional “we’re facing a deadline” donations?

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Bethany, I love this question, and I want to give you an honest answer: it depends — and the only way to find out is to reach out and ask.

I know that might feel unsatisfying, but nuanced answers always are!

Every campaign is different. Some are well-organized, have a volunteer coordinator who will put you to work immediately, and have a clear answer for exactly what they need most. Others are scrappy and still figuring it out. The best thing you can do — whether you’re drawn to Katy Padilla Stout’s race or James Talarico’s — is contact both campaigns directly and ask: What do you need most right now? Their answer will tell you a lot, both about where your effort will have the most impact and about how prepared they are to actually use you well.

On the question of where your dollars go furthest: monthly donations are genuinely more valuable to campaigns than one-time gifts, even if the total amount is the same. It’s not just a fundraising talking point — recurring revenue lets campaigns plan and hire and spend strategically rather than scrambling from deadline to deadline. If you can commit to even a small monthly amount, that is worth more than a bigger check you write in October.

As to volunteering versus social media: volunteering wins. Posting on Facebook feels like doing something, and it can matter at the margins, but the research on what actually moves voters keeps coming back to real human contact — door-knocking, phone banking, and conversations. It’s harder, sure. But it’s also SO rewarding. I always tell people door-knocking has the essential components of mental health: getting outside, moving your body, and connecting with other people!

As for which race — I’m not going to tell you where to put your energy because I genuinely think that’s yours to decide, and it may come down to which campaign actually has the infrastructure to use a first-time volunteer well.

You asked what your work is to do, and - guess what? - By asking this question, you’re already doing it! Now, go reach out and take the next step.

We’re rooting for you.

Tickets are officially on sale to everyone for our live show and afterparty in Minneapolis on August 29! You can get them at this link:

Buy live show tickets now!

If you are a member of the Spice Cabinet, we want to thank you for that! Check out this post for your coupon code.

If you want to supercharge your live show experience, consider joining us for the first-ever Spice Conference, which kicks off Friday night, August 28, and features special sessions and activities leading up to the live show all day on Saturday. Tickets for that are already on sale:

Get Spice Conference Tickets

Important Note: If you purchase a ticket to the Spice Conference, it includes a ticket to the live show and afterparty, both at the Hyatt Centric in Minneapolis. Do not buy additional live show tickets!

As part of the fun, we’ve booked the entirety of the Hyatt Centric for YOU! Staying there will be the best place to be surrounded by this wonderful community — and to have a short trip to bed once the afterparty winds down. You can book your room there through this link.

We can’t wait to be with you in August! It’s going to be a wonderful time!

So, I reached out to Hala Furst to discuss violence prevention. Hala has a wealth of experience and insight to share. We decided to share this conversation in the form of a transcript (many thanks to Alise for her time working on this project). I hope you find it as valuable as I have.

This conversation has been transcribed from audio and, in the process, has been edited and condensed for readability.

Beth Silvers: We last talked about DOGE and the experience of being an employee at the Department of Homeland Security. We’re gonna move on from that even though there’s a lot to say about the Department of Homeland Security right now because you are still working in violence prevention and I want to draw that expertise out today.

First, I wanna talk to you about how you assess the current environment. I remember in our chat talking about the difference between being radicalized and being radicalized to violence. That’s on my mind a lot right now watching everything that’s unfolding, particularly in Minnesota. Help me think through, from the perspective of a violence prevention expert, what the environment looks like right now.

Hala Furst: I wanna be clear that my expertise is on targeted violence and terrorism prevention. Targeted violence is in a larger bucket of violence that can include terrorism but is targeted against a person, a place, a group of people – sometimes ideologically motivated, but not always ideologically motivated.

It’s this category of violence that we’ve all seen, but we don’t always know how to talk about. And it is not unique, but it is written about in a really exotic way. It includes things like school shootings. It includes things like the shooting in Las Vegas years ago. It includes politically motivated violence. It includes premeditated hate crime. It’s a large category.

It gets at something that is not necessarily new in our country. Terrorism has this ideological, interrupting-political-process-or-society component. Sometimes things are less than that, but there’s still a form of violence that is not just street crime or heat-of-the-moment or something interpersonal.

We’re trying to get at this idea that people can become radicalized by either what they’re encountering in their everyday lives or what they’re seeing online. They can stay in that steady state for a while, but once they adopt the belief that violence is the way to further their aims, which is what radicalization is, and start to move towards that, that’s when we get into this difficult place of ideas versus action, which is always in play when you’re in a constitutional democracy. We have to have a way of addressing the very real issue of somebody radicalizing and then thinking that they need to move to violence that does not infringe on their civil rights and civil liberties.

We’re in a really, really tough place right now. Part of it is because of the amount of information that we’re encountering online and the communities that are operating in that space. The switch from radicalizing to mobilizing can happen very, very quickly. So, does it make the most sense to catch them in that moment or does it make more sense to move the full conversation upstream to where we’re talking about what the underlying protective and risk factors are that make a person more likely to radicalize and then mobilize the violence?

That’s where we are right now. I know that’s sort of like a long walk away from your question, but I think it’s important to put context around how we think about these issues.

It’s a very difficult moment in terms of polarization. I work at the Polarization and Extremism Research and Innovation Lab (PERIL) at American University. What we’re seeing more and more is people polarizing and radicalizing against one another. The belief that the other side, whatever that might be, is an existential threat.

So, we are in a position where folks are moving further into this belief that the other side is an existential threat. When that happens – when you believe that other people or another ideology or another group is an existential threat – it gets tied up in identity. It gets tied up in all these other issues that are very, very difficult to disentangle.

It’s also a lot harder to deradicalize someone than to prevent them from walking down that road in the first place. So, we’re working against a lot of factors big and small.

The same risk factors that could lead a person to radicalize to targeted violence could also lead them to domestic violence, suicidality, or a whole host of potential harms. What we find is just like people choose – and choose is a harsh, harsh word – to self-medicate with alcohol or drugs or domestic violence, they’ll also self-medicate with violent ideology. That becomes the thing that helps them feel better.

So, what could help that instead? That’s the question that we have to answer. What are the protective factors that we can bolster and what are the risk factors that we can reduce to make this particular type of self-medication less attractive? Then, simultaneously, how do we communicate so that the polarization doesn’t teach us that other people or other groups are an existential threat?

Beth Silvers: I wanna try to put a container around this to get more specific and concrete in my own mind about what violence prevention work looks like.

I just read this article about a bunch of podcasters and influencers live-streaming themselves for like 12 hours in Miami. They have an unbelievably large audience and a pretty profound influence over that audience. They live-streamed themselves out partying in Miami and went to a club. They requested the DJ play a song about Hitler that has been banned from most streaming platforms. They did the Nazi salute repeatedly. I didn’t watch, so I’m taking someone else’s word for it, but it read like a clear demonstration of their antisemitism.

Then, they got in a little spat afterward because a couple of them were blaming it on someone else and walking their own part in it back. Others were like, “I can’t believe you’re apologizing for antisemitism. What is wrong with you?”

Let’s say I’m the mom of a young man who really watches these guys closely. Where are the lines around this? Where should I be concerned that he is consuming content that I think is hateful?

I’m unsure whether that hate will translate to behavior or if it is an experimentation or, as you said, a self-medication. How should I be thinking about this?

Hala Furst: It’s a really tough spot. I have a 15-year-old stepson and this is something that I’m constantly on guard for. It doesn’t make it any easier because turns out, even as a prevention expert or someone who works with prevention experts, you still live the same life that everyone else does.

In those instances, the instinct is for parents to just take the phones, right? And there are a lot of phone bans happening right now. The problem is that kids are less likely to talk to you about what they’re seeing and what they’re experiencing. If your instinct is to just take away the phone or take away their access to their friends, to information, to all of this stuff, they’re not going to be open with you.

The hardest thing about this work is to come at it from a place of curiosity and empathy. Now, I’m not saying to be empathetic towards Andrew Tate or virulent antisemites. That’s not at all what I’m saying. What I’m saying is, if your kid is looking at this content, the hardest, but most necessary thing to do is sit beside them and talk to them about what they’re seeing. What do they like about it? What do they not like about it? Just start to ask questions.

We find that often it’s easiest if you’re sitting in a car because you’re both looking forward. It’s not confrontational. We have resources on the PERIL website that are specific for parents and caregivers to talk through some of these questions and how to address this.

Access PERIL's caregiver resources

What you have to do is get curious and sit in this place of empathy and trying to understand what is the underlying need or desire that this content is supporting in your kid. Is it just that their friends are looking at it, so they are looking at it? Is it that these men seem to have power or prestige or something else that they also want? Are they role models?

Looking at the why and getting curious about the why is the majority of the battle. Then, going back to this idea of risk factors and protective factors, you can start to understand what the underlying needs are that could be met with other things.

Let me give you a very simplistic example. Your kid is watching this and he’s seen the camaraderie amongst these men, That’s what we see time and again; it’s not always the specific ideology that attracts people. You will see folks go ideology shopping because what they’re actually looking for is community and belonging and mission and purpose.

Which, is why the years of counterterrorism work that have been done is necessary, but not sufficient to address this problem. Folks are, generally speaking, not always attracted to the ideology. Some are, but most are attracted to the community, the belonging, the sense of self, the sense of purpose, and then the ideology comes alongside of it.

If that’s what they’re looking for, then great. There are so many other routes that a kid can go to get those needs met. But, if your immediate instinct is to just shut it off, end it, don’t look at this, you’re not gonna learn what the underlying need is. Part of what prevention asks of us is to take that step back, to start at an earlier point.

A protective factor could be parental involvement. You’re already asking these questions before you start seeing your kid even going online. Then, when they see this content – maybe for the first time or the 10th time – they have that built-in sort of antibody against it.

Obviously, if you see imminent danger where your kid is writing something about wanting to commit acts of violence, there are other things we can do at that point. But, if it’s just that you don’t like your kids seeing specific content, you have to get to that underlying issue.

Beth Silvers: I have to believe that we are in a Ruby Ridge type moment right now with the government’s actions through ICE and Border Patrol, where there will be people radicalized to violence by this. In the moment, a lot of us in a position to see that and get upstream of it share the rage and frustration. So what does PERIL’s work look like in this context?

Hala Furst: PERIL’s work is predominantly with youth and people who support youth: parents, caregivers, educators. However, the Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships (CP3) where I used to work at Department of Homeland Security before I moved to PERIL did work across all, all age groups.

I absolutely agree that the events that are happening right now could have the effect of radicalizing people. I didn’t talk about Minnesota at the beginning when I was kind of laying out the moment that we’re in and the way that prevention could operate because it has felt to me, and those of us who’ve done this work, that this escalation has been happening for a while. It could be that Minnesota was going to radicalize people, or Gaza was gonna radicalize people, or any of the violent incidents that have happened along this timeline. The concern is ongoing. The same thing that works for kids can work for adults.

When you’re asking about people who are showing sympathy for violence against ICE or CDP, the same things that work when you’re talking to your kid about violent content they might be seeing online and why it resonates with them and what their underlying grievances are works on adults, too. We often see that when we do training for parents or caregivers. They also get quite a bit of training for themselves. It’s still about understanding the underlying grievance, the underlying issue that is upsetting here.

I think it’s pretty obvious that what is upsetting people here is the injustice, the extrajudicial killing. I will caveat that we don’t know everything yet, but that’s what it seems like. The feeling that people are powerless, the feeling that people are being taken from their homes, and that the laws are not being abided by, and that they have no control.

Those are pretty obvious concerns. So, I don’t know that you need to ask the questions about why people are feeling activated or potentially radicalizing. I think we know that. The question is, where do we channel that energy instead?

I actually think Minnesota’s an incredible example of where we’re channeling that energy instead. It’s back into community; it’s back towards each other. It’s leaning on one another. Again, if the reason that these violent ideologies, these violent movements are attractive is in part because of need for community belonging, mission, purpose, et cetera, then finding another container for that in your actual lived community is essential.

I think Minnesota’s doing a really, really beautiful job with that. They have training and organizing. They’ve got mutual aid networks. I went to college in Minneapolis and have many friends there. This also comes from the Scandinavian stoic work ethic that operates in Minnesota and has for years. Turning that rage and that effort back to the community is part of how you prevent violence.

I’ve definitely seen posts or heard comments from people who believe peaceful protest isn’t gonna work or who think we need a violent overthrow of the government or of ICE. I think anyone can understand why someone might feel that way. But the Minneapolis community is doing a really good job of wrapping their arms around those folks and bringing them back in. That is an intervention in and of itself. It usually takes feeling like you’re been heard to channel that energy right.

Beth Silvers: I think that the online component is so daunting because in some ways the proximity to the thing also makes it so real to people. They can see that what’s needed right now is that community and that kindness and that sense of looking out for each other and looking after each other. I worry less about people in Minnesota being radicalized honestly, than people who have taken all this in on their screens and aren’t in the middle of efforts to actively, but peacefully resist it, you know?

Hala Furst: It’s such a good point. Look, the internet is a tool and there is community on the internet. I will not say it’s not worthwhile community. It absolutely is. The Pantsuit Politics community is a perfect example. But, when you are ingesting all of this content in a constant barrage without context…

If you see an incident in real life, you have the ability to literally touch grass. You’re out. Let’s say you’re at a protest or something like that. You’re outside. There are other people. There are senses; it’s cold there.

Beth Silvers: And connection. Someone else saw this, too.

Hala Furst: Right. But if you’re just scrolling. You are alone with this little box of horrors. If your instinct after you see something, is to reach out on your phone to your community, okay great. I would argue that’s not sufficient, but it’s a great start. But, if you’re just sitting there ingesting horror after horror after horror, then that is your whole universe.

I had norovirus over the weekend and we were snowed in and this horrific shooting happened in Minneapolis. So even I, as somebody who works in the field, was just sitting there doomscrolling on my phone for hours.

You can feel the despair build up in your body. You can feel this feeling of despair and inevitability and it is really hard to fight that. It takes some amount of conscious effort to step away and take breaks. Again, choose to channel that despair into action. That could be in your local community, donating to mutual aid, or reaching out to other people to think about what you could be doing.

I don’t mean to keep beating the drumbeat of community and belonging, but that’s really at the core of what is necessary. I can’t say from a research perspective what the likelihood of people radicalizing the violence based on these incidents because they’re sitting alone with their phones is, but it’s absolutely a possibility.

I think as we come back to the concept of prevention, again. If you’re getting upstream of this, there’s several layers of prevention: primordial (which is society, legislation, things like that), primary (which is at the community level and where PERIL mostly operates), secondary (which is immediate intervention when someone might already be down the road of radicalization to violence or starting to make effort towards that), and tertiary (which is where someone has commited an act of violence or tried to and we work on bringing them back into the fold).

PERIL operates mostly at that primary level. At the primary level is where you do community training, community awareness raising, and community support. If you’re thinking about a person who’s doing doom scrolling, what resilience has already been built into them to know they need to put the phone down and walk away, or need to take that broken-hearted feeling and channel it into something good for their family or the community? How do we build in those support structures, those protective factors at that community level so that folks have resilience to draw on in these moments? That’s really the question that prevention is trying to ask.

It’s based on the same science that has been working on other forms of violence prevention for years. It’s based on a public health model that the CDC had worked on for 30 years, had been working on for 30 years before all of those people at the Injury and Violence Prevention Center got fired. There’s a ton of research into the efficacy here.

This is not a one-to-one correlation, but I think it works. If you want someone when presented with drugs to not take the drugs, what have you had to do prior to that moment of encountering the drugs to teach them that they shouldn’t? You have to build in the resilience against it and to give them all of the capacity to say no.

Again, it’s not a perfect one-to-one, but it is similar in terms of violence prevention. This goes back to your question about your when your son is presented with Andrew Tate content or whatever. When you are presented with these events, when you are encountering these things, what has already been built up inside of you? Do you have the resilience to not go down a road?

Beth Silvers: I think that’s all really helpful. It’s nice to know that the instincts we have to say, “Hey, you are doing your work by building your community” are backed up by a lot of research. Thank you so much for sharing your insights and your expertise with us. I really appreciate it.

Hala Furst: Thank you for giving us this opportunity to share it.

One final note: several states had state-wide targeted violence prevention strategies either in place or in the process of being developed when the Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships was disbanded. Because of the funding and programing vaccuum left by the federal government, states (supported by research and intervention organizations like PERIL) are really taking the lead on violence prevention now, which means constituents are even closer to the levers of power over this issue. If preventing targeted violence in your community is important to you, please call your governor or your state legislators and ask what prevention strategies they are considering. Ask what funding is available to support community programs that bolster protective factors and reduce risk factors. I want folks to know that this violence is not inevitable; it is preventable, and everyone has a role to play- whether that be through policy, direct support of individuals, sharing information, or something in between. A public health approach to violence prevention empowers rather than panics, and right now that is what we most need.

I hope that folks will go to the website and look at our resources. They’re all free on there: our resources for parents, caregivers, educators, administrators, leaders, a whole panel of folks. So, please, if you’re struggling with these issues, take a look, reach out. We want to help.

Further Listening:

• When the Pitchforks Come for You (Pantsuit Politics conversation with Abby Cox and Joanna Lydgate)

• More to Say About DOGE & Violence Prevention (More to Say)

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If you haven’t listened to our episode on the SAVE (Safeguarding American Voter Eligibility) Act, which requires proof of citizenship to register to vote, here’s what Natalie is reacting to:

I said, “I think it’s a bad strategy politically to go to the American public and say, ‘this thing that polls really high, this idea that you need to show proof of citizenship to vote is wrong.’ I think that’s not a good strategy. I think it’s a particularly bad strategy to talk about it as like the new Jim Crow. I think it’s disrespectful to what voters have experienced in the past, and I think it’s just not going to meet a lot of people where they are today.”

I went on to talk about my preferred strategy, which is to say, “if the government wants us to prove we’re citizens to vote, the government should make it easier to prove we’re citizens.” Right now, getting your paperwork together, especially if you’ve ever changed your name for any reason, is a pain. Ordering official documents can be expensive and time-consuming. If you live in a rural area, it might require a long drive to a government office and crossing your fingers that you went to the correct one. We could do a lot about that instead of burdening citizens with new requirements under the dated, inefficient, fragmented status quo.

To get back to Natalie’s points, let’s do a little historical review.

Is it historically accurate to compare the SAVE America Act to Jim Crow?

Between 1877 and the mid-1960s, there was an entire cultural and legal effort to relegate Black people to an inferior status. Laws excluded Black people from public transportation and facilities. Black people could not serve on juries. They could not live in certain neighborhoods. They could not be hired for certain jobs.

Voting restrictions were one piece of these laws. Here’s how the Jim Crow Museum explains it: “Black people were denied the right to vote by poll taxes (fees charged to poor black people), white primaries (only Democrats could vote, only white people could be Democrats), and literacy tests (‘Name all the Vice Presidents and Supreme Court Justices throughout America’s history’).

But Jim Crow laws and so-called “etiquette” touched every part of living in some states. In that sense, I think comparing the SAVE America Act to these laws is reductive.

Additionally, Jim Crow was specifically about degrading Black people. It was inarguably racist, inarguably intended to cement racism as fundamental to American culture. I do not think that every person who believes you should have to show proof of citizenship to vote is racist, nor do I believe the SAVE America Act, as written, is a racist law. I think it’s unnecessary, unwise, irresponsible, and overall bad policy (I’m with Nonprofit Vote: “The SAVE Act is the Wrong Solution for a Non-Problem), but not inherently racist.

If the SAVE America Act passed, would it represent a poll tax?

Most of our laws have origins in English history, and a poll tax is no exception. In English history, a poll tax is “a tax of uniform amount levied on each individual.” The most famous was levied in 1380, which led to the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381. In the late 1800s, Democrats were competing for power with the Populists, a party for poor farmers. When Democrats won, they amended state constitutions to impose poll taxes as prerequisites to voting, which excluded impoverished Black and some poor white Americans (although some states granted exemptions for poor white men). The 24th Amendment and the Voting Rights Act made poll taxes illegal in all states. Federal law now says explicitly that the requirement of the payment of a poll tax as a precondition to voting denies or abridges the rights of citizens to vote.

A number of organizations and politician are describing the SAVE America Act as a poll tax because so many Americans do not have documents proving their citizenship. Here’s Representative Jennifer McClellan’s (D-Va.) argument: “Every document this bill demands cost money—and whether it’s the $2.12 poll tax my father paid in 1947, a $130 passport, or a $1,385 certificate of citizenship, even a cent is too much. The SAVE America Act is a modern-day poll tax that exploits that reality by requiring voters to navigate a costly and time-consuming process just to exercise their constitutional right.”

I respect that argument. I’m not sure how a federal court would receive it. My instinct is that the conservatives on the U.S. Supreme Court would look to that English definition and disagree.

Are these arguments persuasive to people who are persuadable?

Reasonable people can disagree about everything I’ve written, and especially this part. From where I sit, people who pay less attention to politics than probably everyone who reads this note do hear “you have to show proof of citizenship to register to vote,” and think “that sounds like common sense.” It is very, very hard to talk people out of what they believe to be common sense. It is especially hard to open someone’s perspective if you counter, “it’s not common sense; it’s racist.”

There are actors in this administration who I believe are genuinely racist, and there are policies that I believe have been enacted and enforced in genuinely racist ways. It’s possible that there are states or officials in states who would implement the SAVE America Act in racist ways. I’m not trying to avoid talking about race and racism. I’m trying to be precise about it when I do.

The best arguments against the SAVE America Act are universal. All Americans have experience with government bureaucracy. Just about everyone can relate to the experience of showing up at a government office for a license or permit or to pay something and not having exactly what is required to take care of that already-annoying task. If you’ve changed your name (for any of MANY reasons), written your name inconsistently on government forms, or entered your name into a government form with a typo, you know what a pain it can be to straighten that out. If you’ve ever waited for something “in the mail” from a government, you know that when it will come, how it will come, and if it will come can feel like a gamble. Maybe it’s common sense to show proof of citizenship. Common sense also says it should be easy to show proof of citizenship, and it’s not today. Fix that first, members of Congress, then we’ll talk about the burden on citizens when we elect you.

I don’t think it will pass. I think the votes are not there in the Senate. Here’s Fox News: “The Safeguarding American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) America Act has earned the backing of 50 Senate Republicans, including Thune, which is enough to break through a key procedural hurdle. Whether it can pass from the Senate to President Donald Trump’s desk is, for now, an unlikely scenario if lawmakers take the traditional path in the upper chamber.” If Fox News is setting this expectation, I think it’s very unlikely to pass.

At the same time, I think it’s very unlikely to go away. There are members of Congress who have convinced themselves that this law is good, necessary, and popular. They’ll keep trying, so I think it’s really important to talk about this precisely and persuasively.

Jennifer wrote to point out that, in most states, Real IDs do not qualify as proof of citizenship. Social security cards also do not qualify as proof of citizenship. She said, correctly, “For most people, only a passport or a birth certificate will qualify—and as you discussed, there are a lot of issues with birth certificates as the act also doesn’t specify a remedy for a mismatch of names between a birth certificate and other identification, instead leaving it up to the states to resolve.”

That’s correct. In describing this requirement, I spoke imprecisely, drawing on my personal experience of getting a Real ID, when I presented a driver’s license, passport, birth certificate, social security card, and marriage license and still had to make a trip to a social security office to get a new social security card that used my married name before Kentucky would issue a Real ID to me. All to say again: this law will cause so much hassle and prevent so little fraud — it’s a bad idea.

We plan to answer more listener questions in posts like this one. Email hello@pantsuitpoliticsshow.com to share a question or prompt.

Leave a comment

Further Listening:

• The SAVE Act and National Voter ID: A Quick Explainer (Crash Course with Casey Burgat)

Dear Pantsuit Politics,

As a starting point, this isn’t normal. The government (whether it’s the federal government or state or local authorities) investigates a potential violation of law and then acts (charges a person with a crime, starts a civil lawsuit, etc.) or doesn’t based on its conclusion. It doesn’t announce to the world that it investigated and what it collected in the process. That’s good! We don’t want the government using its enormous powers to collect information and share it with the public outside of official processes managed by a court of law.

We are only talking about releasing the Epstein files because the public at large reasonably believes the government has failed in its responsibilities.

To understand why, here’s a very quick review:

At least as early as 2005, police in Palm Beach, Florida, began investigating Epstein. He was first charged with crimes by a grand jury in July 2006. The police who investigated this case believed the county prosecutor gave Epstein special treatment by charging a lesser offense than they felt they could prove. At this point, the federal government, through the FBI, began investigating Epstein.

Sometime in 2007, Epstein’s lawyers worked with a federal prosecutor, Alex Acosta, on a deal that would allow Epstein to avoid being charged with federal crimes in exchange for pleading guilty to two counts of soliciting prostitution in the state of Florida. Epstein again received unusual treatment in a variety of ways:

1. He made this secret deal with federal prosecutors, the details of which we still don’t know

2. He was charged with lesser offenses than the evidence might have warranted

3. He served most of that sentence out of jail. That sentence ended in July 2009.

Meanwhile, some of Epstein’s victims began to speak out about the extent of his crimes. In November 2018, the Miami Herald published Julie K. Brown’s reporting about how Epstein’s case was handled. Her reporting was especially salient at the time because Alex Acosta was serving in the cabinet as President Trump’s Secretary of Labor. The reporting prompted federal prosecutors in New York to open a new investigation into Epstein.

Epstein was arrested on federal sex trafficking charges in July 2019. Alex Acosta resigned. Epstein died in jail in New York in August 2019.

There’s obviously a lot more to this story than those facts. And that’s why “the Epstein files” as a phrase contains so much. There are multiple Epstein stories: each individual victim’s story, the story of Ghislaine Maxwell, the story of wealthy and powerful people in Epstein’s orbit, the story of all of the people who facilitated his crimes, and the story of crimes that he facilitated. In my view, all of those stories are important, but none of them justify the extraordinary step of the government releasing documents it collected in the course of an investigation.

The justification for that extraordinary step is the government’s failures and potential complicity in the Epstein crimes. The government has lost the public’s trust around Jeffrey Epstein, and that means the government needs to act differently in order to make amends and regain its footing as a suitable entity to investigate and prosecute crimes. The government’s power comes from the people, and the people are saying, in a variety of ways, that its handling of this matter has been unacceptable. The most potent way is through Congress’s passage of the Epstein Files Transparency Act championed by Reps. Ro Khanna and Thomas Massie.

Right now, the government is doing the opposite of making amends and regaining trust. Just this week, Attorney General Pam Bondi refused to candidly answer questions from members of Congress about the Department of Justice’s handling of the Epstein matter (that is the most neutral way I can write that sentence; my opinion is that Bondi’s behavior was disgraceful at best). Just this week, members of Congress gained access to view the Epstein files in their entirety, and those members are raising more questions than answers about the government’s handling of this matter. Some members also report that the Department of Justice is monitoring their document review. They essentially feel tracked and spied on by the Department of Justice as they’re conducting oversight. The latest release of files remains inadequate under the terms of the Epstein Files Transparency Act and violated the law by improperly redacting some information and improperly failing to redact information about Epstein’s victims. It’s one failure after another, and all of these failures add to the public’s reasonable frustration and lack of trust.

I’m trying to write all of this without color or hyperbole. I worry that the depravity of details related to Epstein obscures the main thing: the government has a duty to the public, and it failed in that duty. It failed to prevent a known sexual predator from harming more victims. Its ongoing failures are deepening victims’ pain. It has caused people to fill in gaps with their assumptions and imaginations. These are all wild understatements.

I was late to understanding the enormity of governmental failure in this story, and I am deeply sorry about that. I’m so grateful for Julie K. Brown’s essential journalism, fearlessness, and integrity in upholding the dignity of the very real people who are part of these stories. I can’t recommend her reporting enough, and I watch her posts on X closely to see what she makes of ongoing developments.

Thank you, Lacey, for the question.

We plan to answer more listener questions in posts like this one. Email hello@pantsuitpoliticsshow.com to share a question or prompt.

Leave a comment

Further Listening:

• More to Say About Jeffrey Epstein (More to Say by Pantsuit Politics)

• 1,000 Victims and No Accountability: Julie K. Brown on the Epstein Files (Pantsuit Politics)

• Rep Ro Khanna joined us to talk about the Epstein Files in this episode

Unusually, almost every comment on that episode conveyed the same sentiment: “I had no idea this is happening.” Billions of dollars are flowing through prediction markets with no signs of abating. The main players in the industry, Kalshi and Polymarket, are signing deals with major news organizations, giving away groceries to New Yorkers, and blanketing the subway with ads (as the one and only Norma Stary documented and sent our way).

It’s all very weird. Take these headlines, which came up this morning in a quick Google news search.

“The prediction market is partnering with an AI engine that tracks social media data to create markets about cultural relevance” is a sentence that makes me want to join a nice off-the-grid commune.

As much as I don’t like any of this, and I very much do not, it’s important to understand it. So, here’s a short overview of prediction markets and what you need to know as they gobble up ever more money and attention.

Prediction markets are gambling but without all the regulation

Prediction markets involve placing bets, but in a different format from traditional gambling. There’s no house setting odds. In a prediction market, buyers and sellers enter into contracts where they bet on the outcome of events. If lots of people believe an event will happen, “yes” gets more expensive and “no” gets cheaper. Bet correctly, and you win $1 for each contract you bought. Bet incorrectly and lose the money.

That’s gambling, and it has similar outcomes. As Kyla Scanlon writes in the New York Times, “Cheap contracts betting on unlikely events lose money at catastrophic rates, often 60% or more, while expensive contracts betting on likely events earn small positive returns.” Because these contracts are structured like financial derivatives, they’re regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, an independent federal agency that regulates futures contracts. This agency was built to regulate agricultural futures markets. Now, it’s charged with regulating entities that pose questions like “will Cardi B. perform at the Super Bowl?”

States and casinos are frustrated

Because the CFTC regulates prediction markets, they are not subject to state regulation in the way that traditional casinos and sports betting are. States that reluctantly permitted sports betting in exchange for a new public revenue source aren’t getting a cut of the action on Kalshi and Polymarket, and they’re watching sports betting migrate from the sources they can regulate to the Wild West of the prediction markets. A number of gaming associations are pushing for greater regulation of prediction markets, and I imagine their pressure on legislators to do something about prediction markets will intensify. It’s a rare moment when I find myself rooting for casinos.

You can bet on absolutely anything

Prediction markets currently have no real guardrails around them. You can bet on an event occurring—yes, a sex toy will be thrown onto the court during a women’s basketball game—then go to the game, throw a sex toy on the floor, and collect your earnings. My interest in this topic tripled when I learned that an anonymous trader opened a brand new Polymarket account to bet that Nicolas Maduro would be out of power by January 31 and made over $400,000. There was a minor internet controversy about Karoline Leavitt abruptly ending a press briefing 30 seconds before an event contract said she might. When you can place a bet on anything, it’s easy for the internet to believe that every single action—however large or small—is financially motivated.

It’s not hard to imagine these markets leading us to dark places. Alex Goldenberg has written a chilling piece about the national security implications for War on the Rocks. Saahil Desai has written an equally chilling piece about how prediction markets could impact our elections for The Atlantic. If we want to avoid these outcomes, Congress will have to act. The markets won’t regulate themselves. Kalshi’s co-founder has explained the company’s long-term vision as “financializing everything—creating a tradable asset out of any difference in opinion.”

Rep. Ritchie Torres has proposed legislation that would place some limits on government officials using inside information to place bets on prediction markets. It’s a good first step, but I think much more is needed. As listener Liz said in a comment on a recent Pantsuit Politics episode, “we’re all pretty in agreement that some things shouldn’t be for sale.” If we mean that, we need to act because right now, it sure looks like everything is up for sale.

Prediction markets are now news, and news is now prediction markets

A key aspect of the prediction market business is selling data. Both Polymarket and Kalshi are “partnering” with all sorts of companies to offer access to the market’s thoughts as expressed through bets. There are deals to allow New York Stock Exchange customers access to Polymarket data to inform their trading strategies. The Wall Street Journal, CNN, and CNBC all have partnerships with prediction markets. As Scanlon put it, “The news is now read alongside people betting on the news.”

In a world awash in AI-generated slop, it’s hard enough to know what’s real. I don’t think taking in “the market’s thoughts” about what might happen alongside actual reporting is helping.

The Trump family is interested

I’m not holding my breath for the current administration to act. The CFTC slashed its enforcement office to non-existence, and its last remaining attorney just resigned. Its chair has signaled that this administration will look to minimize regulations and maximize innovation.

And why not? The Trump family sees prediction markets as yet another business opportunity. Donald Trump, Jr.’s venture capital firm, 1789 Capital, heavily invested in Polymarket, and he is an advisor to both Polymarket and Kalshi. Trump Media and Technology Group has announced plans to launch its own market: Truth Predict.

The President himself is Trump Media and Technology Group’s majority shareholder.

We’ve met Rebekah. We’ve seen her voting photos. We’ve read and thought long and hard about her comments. She is a part of us, and we will miss her.

Please join us in lighting a candle for Rebekah. Her family and friends have told us that the best way we can honor her is to continue the work of community and justice that she believed in and work for until her very last days. Call your representatives because that’s what she would have done. Serve your community because that’s what she did. Love your friends’ kids and littles because it takes a village.

Her husband, Ben, shared "Rebekah would never want things to be all about her, but if her story and passion can help ignite others, she would accept that"

Let us light a candle and ignite our passions.

Many thanks to Ben, Heather, and Denise, and those of your who made sure we knew this sad news and letting us hold them in our hearts this week as they say goodbye to their wife, sister, mom, and friend, so that we can commemorate Rebekah’s life together here. We are blessed by the many ways you all create and keep building a loving community here. Rebekah was an architect of that, too, and we will always be grateful to her. -Beth

In our age of AI, I (Maggie, Director of Community Engagement here at Pantsuit Politics) thought about getting something to summarize our survey responses. But then I thought, “you are real people, and I want to be as human as I can this year.” So, I’ve read through your comments with my actual human eyes.

And what a treat it was:

Sometimes I tap out of political news sources because of how stressful it all is. When I return to Pantsuit Politics, I’m always reminded how your content lessens my stress rather than increasing it. I need this tattooed on my forearm.

When my kids were in HS and we’d drive to school they would say “can we listen to that indignant lady!”

I really like that you all give action-oriented solutions and make me believe that there will be another day that the news cycle isn’t the only thing to pay attention to. Even when everything is going wrong, I still feel hopeful when I listen to you all, not because you sugarcoat anything, but because you take a broader perspective than what is happening in the moment.

It’s rare to have a podcast that forces you to think, take in multiple perspectives, and follows you on your journey of forming your opinion.

Your voices are a reminder that thoughtfulness is not weakness, that empathy is not naïveté, and that democratic values are sustained through care and persistence, not just outrage. You remind me that it’s still possible to be thoughtful when everyone around us is shouting, to care deeply without hardening, and to stay connected to our values without losing our humanity. That’s no small thing, especially right now.

I promise that it’s not all an amen chorus, as one of you said, “If I’m only hear for the echo chamber - I got other places for that.”

Also, some of you asked for help, and I wanted to share a few resources that you may have missed and that we’re working on for you:

Using Substack:

• We’re working on building out a customized help document for Pantsuit Politics for our community. The Substack help center is pretty helpful, but we wanted to create a resource for our Pantsuit Politics specific needs. This is a work in progress, but please know that we are here to help you navigate this platform.

• I really am willing to hang in with you and help through any issues at maggie@pantsuitpoliticsshow.com

• If you’re an elder millennial1: You may have better luck navigating and finding what you’re looking for (especially Good Morning and More to Say) on the desktop/web version of Substack. You can visit us at www.pantsuitpoliticsshow.com. If you’re already subscribed, you can choose to ‘read without subscribing’ and then log in to your account, and the site is a little easier to navigate.

Content Archive: We have a library of almost everything we’ve ever made at Pantsuit Politics (free episodes, premium episodes, and many many issues of our newsletter) using a spreadsheet software called Airtable. You can search by topic, access transcripts, and links to episodes in our archive. It’s a great place to search “have Sarah and Beth talked about this?”

Episode Transcripts: If you prefer to read through a transcript of our episodes, we post them by noon most days on our episode page. You can find all of our episodes on this page of our website. You can also access auto-generated transcripts of Good Morning and More to Say on the desktop version of Substack.

Listening to Premium Episodes in Your Podcast Feed: If you’d like to listen to Good Morning, More to Say, and our Spicy Bonus episodes in a podcast player, there are instructions on how to do that here (specifically: you can listen to Premium Content on Spotify)

• p.s. Sarah started recording Good Morning in her podcast studio late last year and the audio is SO MUCH BETTER than it used to be.

Merch: We use a print-on-demand service most of the time for our merchandise shop. That means if something is missing that you like need (I get it), please feel free to ask and we’ll work on getting a design up for you.

Plus - we also just added a collection of designs from our listener Lauren that you might love as much as we do.

Talking to People Who Disagree with You: We’ll definitely talk about this more throughout this year, but Sarah and Beth have written two books about talking through political disagreement generally and specifically in the context of our relationships. (Shameless plug: the audio books are like an extra-long podcast with Sarah and Beth).

• I Think You’re Wrong (But I’m Listening): A Guide to Grace-Filled Political Conversations

• Now What?! How To Move Forward When We’re Divided (About Basically Everything)

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What We’re Reading This Week

• Sarah: Lessons from My Me Too (Brooke Nevils | The Cut)

• Beth: I just finished Nicole Baart’s novel Where He Left Me, which I really enjoyed. And she has written the account of a young man who was detained by ICE that is a must-read.

This Stays Here

Because I'm Black

Another US citizen was murdered by ICE on Saturday…

Read more

3 months ago · 161 likes · 59 comments · Nicole Baart

• Alise: Bruno, Chief of Police by Martin Walker

• Maggie: Astronauts Are Going Back to the Moon For the First Time in Half a Century (Time)

Next Week on Pantsuit Politics: while we’re on retreat next week, we’ll share Sarah and Beth’s recent conversation with Jane Perlez, a long-time reporter about the relationship between the US and China. She joined us for a conversation last year, and we’re excited to share the follow up with you next week.

I’ve been listening and processing. I’m naturally inclined to change my mind when I get new information. I’ve pivoted so often and apologized so frequently that it’s almost comfortable. Being human and fallible costs me nothing and sets me free. If I feel I’ve made a mistake, I want to say so with my entire voice.

This time, I don’t feel it.

With everything going on, who cares?

This is hardly the most important topic to unpack. But I feel compelled to share my reflections because it’s an election year. I don’t think anyone is genuinely arguing that, if only more commentators signed on to #TheResistance, we’d live in a fundamentally different world right now. The argument is over how to effectively oppose the darkest excesses of Trumpism. That question couldn’t be more relevant or urgent.

Help, I’m thinking about Joe Rogan again

For the past year, things have been tense here at Pantsuit Politics. We’ve been counter-cultural. The podcasting world, such as it is, is currently dominated by pleasant celebrity chats. Drop in on the most popular podcasts, especially for women, and you’ll hear a version of:

Host: You’re amazing!

Guest: Not as amazing as you!

Host: Ok, now tell me about your favorite dental floss, because this is such a funny story…

Of course, I’m being flippant, but this isn’t really criticism. I get it. It’s fun to listen to people having fun! The deep moments that really grab people in these celebrity shows go down smoothly because they are couched so gently. They are wrapped in a warm blanket of easy relationship.

This is also why Joe Rogan is such a juggernaut. He likes people, and he’s having a good time. He sits down with a wide range of guests he thinks are interesting and simply…expresses his interest in them. Sometimes they trash other people, but that’s just man-gossip, which is also fun. I don’t make the rules; we are wired for this kind of human connection.

Our show, meanwhile, has been tense because we’ve been soul-searching, for ourselves and for the Democratic Party. The driving question in most of our shows last year could best be expressed in a visceral and prolonged scream: Trump again? How? Why? What do we do to prevent this from continuing? Trying to answer those questions has created conflict within us, between us, among us, and with our audience. Sustained conflict is tough to experience. It’s tough to listen to, especially while you’re driving to work, folding laundry, or hitting the elliptical. I appreciate that you have stayed with us through it.

Help, I’m also still thinking about Gavin Newsom

A significant source of conflict for me over the past year arose as I took in punditry and analysis that advocated for the Democratic Party to moderate its positions. You’d think that would be speaking my language. Instead, it has hit me wrong at every turn.

It was wild to watch Governor Gavin Newsom pondering the musings of Steve Bannon. Sarah admired Governor Newsom’s quest. I’ve found it completely off-putting. That’s just one example of a tension I struggled to put words around all year. We’ve built this podcast around the value of listening to contrary views, making room at the table for everyone, having a sense of civic grace toward each other. Why has it felt so awful to me to hear leading Democrats say a version of, “but maybe those guys have a point?”

It’s hitting me in January 2026 (I’m not always a quick study, friends!). It felt awful because it’s the same thing in a new package. It is still a desire for one right answer to every question. It’s “we had the wrong answer for the electorate about trans athletes! Let’s get the right answer and repeat it everywhere!” and “we had the wrong answer about inflation! Let’s get the right answer and hammer away at it!”

This is a worldview that says, pragmatically and with mostly good intentions: politics has become campaigning, and campaigning has become straight-up advertising, and advertising requires a simple message repeated constantly.

But politics is how we live in community, and believing that you have one right answer for everything is not very communal.

Which brings me (at last!) to the “resistance libs.” In principle, I’ve had few substantive disagreements with people who’ve predicted the absolute worst about a Trump presidency. I’ve never said or believed that members of Congress should acquiesce to President Trump. The risks of authoritarianism, fascism, and patrimonialism have been clear and obvious since he announced his first candidacy.

I’ve disagreed with the posture, with the sense of inevitability: “if America elects Trump, all is lost.” The risks were clear and obvious, but the outcomes are not predetermined. We are living a version of the resistance libs’ predictions, not through fate, but through a series of choices.

Our courts have constrained the President, but not enough. Federalism is a massive brake on executive power, but too many Republican legislatures and governors decided to cast their electoral lot with MAGA. Our Constitution was up for the job. Impeachment, removal, and prohibition on seeking office again are right there in the text. Congress hasn’t lived up to its responsibilities, and the American public at large haven’t persistently demanded that the first branch of government wake up.

I use words carefully because I believe in our ongoing power to choose otherwise.

People who disagree with my posture urge me to use my platform. They think it’s been irresponsible to exercise any amount of patience or restraint in calling him out. Here again is the theory: “If more people had said that Trump is a fascist from the beginning, he wouldn’t be in office having his personal paramilitary force occupy American cities.”

Respectfully, I disagree. The world has not been lacking for strong, authoritative voices pronouncing Donald Trump a dictator and laying out the worst-case scenarios for his tenure. Those voices are important. They are, in many ways, effective. They are genuine, and I respect them.

It’s also effective for some of us to hold our powder. Being careful influences another set of people. This week, I’ve heard a lot of versions of “okay, if you are saying it’s this bad, then I know it’s this bad.” That’s a different form of effectiveness. There’s room for both and more. One is not more moral than the other. One is not more serious than the other. We need everyone in every lane doing what they can authentically do.

What’s moderate anyway?

The kind of moderation I value isn’t actually centrism. It’s plurality. Keep it nuanced, because it always is.

My views about President Trump are not actually centrist. I would never trade democratic norms for a stronger economy. I don’t tolerate his lies because I think an orderly southern border is important. I hate the self-interested foreign policy, even when it leads to a positive short-term outcome.

Like most Americans, I’m a walking pluralist, a set of inherent contradictions and policy mixtures. My views on criminal justice are interpreted as “extreme left.” The more complete story is that those views are born both of my bleeding heart and my libertarian sensibilities about government power. The same is true about my immigration views. I believe in a very welcoming immigration policy because of my compassion for others and my sense that moving around this earth is a fundamental human right that governments should restrain with restraint.

I’m a moderate because it’s ok with me if you disagree. If I were a member of Congress and so were you, I’d be willing to compromise on most of my views. This is a big country with a lot of diverging philosophies. Purity accomplishes little and often leads to tyranny.

I would like the Democratic Party to moderate. I don’t mean: become more centrist on certain policies in order to appeal to a fictional median voter in a particular Wisconsin district. I mean be more pluralistic in its ethos. Democrats in Congress have done this pretty well during my lifetime. The “brand” has failed because it’s worked so hard to be a brand.

Help, I’m back to Joe Rogan

Politicians who captivate the public are pluralists. They are often surprising. People wanted to have a beer with George W. Bush in large part because of that “compassionate conservatism” he touted. Bill Clinton and Barack Obama talked surprisingly tough on a range of issues. These presidents were both genuine leaders of their parties and genuine disruptors of the public conception of those parties, at least for a moment, for long enough to win, twice. Donald Trump’s hostile takeover of the Republican party succeeded by abandoning most Republican orthodoxy. People like variety because, as we say all the time, they contain multitudes.

This brings me back to Joe Rogan’s appeal. He’s a pluralist. He’s surprising. He’s malleable. He’s listening. He makes room for everyone from MAHA influencers to James Talarico.

Please don’t misunderstand me -- I don’t think Rogan is the hero our times need. I think there are things to learn from his popularity for a party that badly needs to be more popular in order to effectively oppose the darkest excesses of Trumpism.

The Democratic Party, broadly, comes across as scolding, the HR department, fill in your preferred insult, because it is searching for one correct answer. Because too many Democratic leaders show up for every conversation with a hard thesis then spend the conversation hammering away at that thesis. They give no ground. They don’t seem curious or humble or willing to rethink a point

It pisses Democrats off to hear this given the fealty of Republicans to Donald Trump. I get that. Still, I have to honestly acknowledge that there’s real pluralism in the MAGA tent. Every disagreement is tolerable as long as you ultimately think Trump is awesome and worth compromising for. It’s a low bar for belonging. As Maggie says, all you need is a red hat. The bar on the other side of the aisle has been exceptionally high.

I hate where we are as a country right now. For most of January, I’ve felt physically ill. If marching in lockstep with anyone who feels the same way would help, I’d do it. But I think that’s exactly the wrong prescription for this moment.

I believe Democrats winning in November is imperative--not because I think Democrats are all great or have all the answers, and not because I think all Republicans are terrible. I think a Democratic wave in the midterms is the only language this administration will understand. To win, I think some Democrats should remain resistance libs because that’s who they are. Others should focus on completely local issues. I love that Mary Peltola talks about fish as her first priority. That’s who she is and what her state needs. Other Democrats should be centrists because that’s who they are. Still others should hammer away at the billionaire class because that’s who they are. The message from the party should be as pluralist as possible because America is all of it.

And because it needs to be appealing, popular, sticky, they and we and everyone should have as much fun as possible Gossip a little. Sandwich in some “oh my God, you’re amazing, no, you are.” God knows we need to wrap ourselves in some easy relationships.

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Me: Who loves you more than me?

Them: Nobody!

Occasionally, the littlest (who is what one would call a rascal) would answer with my mother’s name but overall my indoctrination was successful.

So, seeing a son very publicly come out and say that his mother is the worst and his wife is the only one he loves (paraphrasing) sends me into a mild panic that is hard to describe.

In case you do not follow celebrity gossip (and to that I say WHY!?!), Brooklyn Beckham, the eldest son of Victoria and David Beckham, released a statement explaining he doesn’t want to reconcile with his family after many months of rumors of a riff. He also accused them of trying to control him all the while spreading rumors that it was wife billionaire heiress Nicola Peltz who was the controlling one.

Confused? It’s ok. You’re not the only one. Lots of unanswered questions after Brooklyn’s statement that hilariously ends in a call for privacy. Questions like “What do you mean your mother danced on you at your wedding?” “Why does your account of the wedding dress debacle here differ from the one you told Vogue?” “How could you sign away control of your name!?!”

The specifics are a fun distraction from the deluge of horribles happening in Davos and across the globe, but I don’t think that’s the only reason this story has gone viral. Celebrity gossip is always about us. So, if you have a mother or a son or a mother-in-law or a controlling family member or a daughter-in-law, then this is going to hit, and it’s going to give you an opportunity to express how you really feel about that situation.

And Brooklyn and his billionairess can take it? So, get it off your chest. I would like to express my deep and abiding fear that my sons will fall in love with a woman who convinces them to go no contact with me.

WHICH brings me to my next point. Some of this (i.e., the conflict between mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law) has a ring of the eternal to it, and some of this has a distinctly modern relevance. The percentage of young people who have gone no contact with their families continues to rise, and it would be foolish not to see at least some of this as a cultural trend. #ToxicFamily has 1.9 billion views on TikTok, and I don’t even remember hearing the term “no contact” until three years ago. It has become such a cultural situation that some of the families have started to fight back using the same algorithmic media they blame for the problem.

So, we’ve got a fundamentally human issue and an algorithmically fueled social trend. What else could we add?

How about a dash of nepo baby!?

After all, we’re talking about the 26-year-old son of two of the most famous people in the entire world who has hopped from project to project since adolescence. Much has been made of his hilariously awful photography book, which he was amazingly able to publish at the ripe old age of 18.

But I would also like to add Brooklyn’s hot sauce, which, attendees of our live show can attest, I’ve been obsessed with for a while. Not only is it named after his father’s jersey number, BUT it has the weirdest bottles for hot sauce I’ve ever seen. They look like Victorian shampoo and conditioner.

I’m not saying it hasn’t been hard being their kid. I’m sure they are incredibly controlling of their brand, but not so controlling that they didn’t let a teenager use it to launch a photography book AND hot sauce company.

There are trade-offs in the life of nepobaby is what I’m saying.

There are also trade-offs in a marriage and in a family and in life.

Mainly, all I see here is a really young guy with limited life experience and an unearned platform trying to solve a complicated family dynamic with a post … when what it most likely will take is a whole lot of time.

Now, if you don’t mind, I need to go ask my sons a simple question.

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What We’re Reading This Week

• Sarah: America250 Book Club (By Plane or By Page)

• Beth: How Prediction Markets Turned the World Into a Casino (Bloomberg)

• Alise: One and Only: The Freedom of Having an Only Child, and the Joy of Being One by Lauren Sandler

• Maggie: The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman

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• Trump Heckles Europe Before Heading to Davos

• European Leaders Push Back as Trump Reinforces Greenland Threats

• Greenland’s prime minister says he cannot rule out a U.S. attack

• Canada’s prime minister says there has been a ‘rupture’ in the world order

• U.S. stocks and bonds fall as Trump ramps up his threats over Greenland

• With Threats to Greenland, Trump Sets America on the Road to Conquest

Back on January 8, 2025, I made an episode of More to Say about Greenland and what I described as Trump’s “patently ridiculous” talks about purchasing it. Since information helps me cope with stress, I wanted to revisit that research today and share it in a different format.

Greenland’s Geography

• Greenland is the world’s largest island. In terms of land, it’s more than three times the size of Texas. It’s larger than Alaska by a lot.

• Two-thirds of Greenland lies in the Arctic Circle. The northern part of Greenland is less than 500 miles from the North Pole.

• Four-fifths of Greenland is an ice sheet that’s bigger than any ice sheet outside of Antarctica. The base of it is melting, fast. It is gorgeous and mysterious and hugely consequential.

• The remainder of Greenland is coasts and highlands — also gorgeous.

Greenland’s People

• About 57,000 people live in Greenland — fewer people than live in any U.S. state and slightly more than live in American Samoa.

• Ninety percent of Greenland’s population are Inuit, the indigenous people of the Arctic and subarctic regions. West Greenlanders identify as Kalaallit. East Greenlanders are Iit. The people of the Thule district are Inugguit.

• Ten percent of Greenland’s population are Danish. It’s believed that the Inuit crossed into Greenland from North America over a long period of time. When Erik the Red was banished from Iceland for manslaughter in 982, he settled in Greenland. He told everyone in Iceland how amazing Greenland was and organized an expedition that resulted in two settlements there. In 1721, Hans Egede founded a trading company in Greenland with the permission of the United Kingdom of Denmark-Norway. Greenland remained a Danish colony for more than 200 years.

Greenland’s Governance and Economy

• Greenland came under the protection of the United States during World War II, when Germany occupied Denmark. It was returned to Denmark in 1945.

• The people of Greenland advocated fiercely for reforms in Denmark’s administration, and Denmark granted home rule to Greenland in 1979. It is now an autonomous Danish colony.

  • The people of Greenland have accused the Danish government of genocide related to an involuntary birth control campaign launched in the 1960s.

  • Denmark has also publicly apologized for a 1950s experiment in which children from Greenland were taken to Denmark.

• Denmark controls Greenland’s foreign affairs and contributes two-thirds of Greenland’s budget revenue.

• The remaining revenue comes from fishing, canning, and freezing sea life.

• Greenland has tried to diversify its economy by focusing on tourism.

• Nearly half of Greenland’s workforce works for its government.

What Interests the Trump administration in Greenland

• Greenland is mineral-rich, but it has limited mining out of concern for the environment.

  • As sea ice is melting, it’s opening up tracts of land for exploitation.

  • In 2021, Greenland banned all new oil and gas exploration in its territories.

  • Greenland has deposits of iron, uranium, copper, diamonds, and 25 of 34 minerals referred to as “critical raw materials.”

• President Truman wanted to buy Greenland. In 1946, he offered $100 million in gold for it.

• China and Russia are both making inroads in the Arctic because of shipping lanes and mining. As the polar ice caps melt, new potential shipping lanes are opening up that could speed up international commerce.

  • China has declared itself a “near Arctic State” and has tried to promote itself as a responsible major country in the Arctic. It has icebreaker vessels and research stations in Iceland and Norway, and the Pentagon worries that civilian research will lead to a stronger Chinese military presence in the Arctic Ocean.

What Now?

Truly, I have no idea. I count nothing out of the realm of possibility with this administration.

I’m trying to put the very real people who live in Greenland at the center of my thinking. We know that they unequivocally do not want to be part of the United States. A strong majority of them would prefer to be independent from Denmark, too. Independence from Denmark was already complicated because of Greenland’s financial reliance on Denmark. The United States is making that independence calculation even more complicated. Denmark and its European allies certainly look more respectful and reliable partners than the United States at this moment in history.

My hope and prayer is that the American people, through our Congressional representatives, make very clear that we respect the dignity and autonomy of the very real people who have inhabited and cared for Greenland for centuries.

We’re probably going to wear you out on America250 this year. I think Sarah and I are excited about it for (characteristically) different reasons. For me, celebrating America’s anniversary right now, in this environment, provokes a question: can we be better?

We discuss Thomas Paine’s pamphlet, Common Sense, in today’s new episode. I was really struck by Paine’s observation that nations do their best work early. Once commerce is established, we get lazy.

I think we can all agree, regardless of place or party, that America has really, really done commerce. We excel at commerce.

Can we still be better?

It’s easy for me to say “it’s probably going to get worse before it gets better” when I consider all-of-this. But that’s a lazy, passive way to look at this country. I think Thomas Paine would be appalled by that kind of thinking.

“Want a better country?” I imagine Thomas saying, “make it.”

There will be many hard ways that we work toward a more perfect union this year. There are people in the street, at protests, at hearings, in non-profits doing grueling, dangerous work. There will be more of that work to do.

There will be elections, which bring their own kind of work, which require the frenetic work of knocking doors and hosting town halls and the patient work of influence.

In the midst of all this, there is the necessity of building community, enjoying the benefits of citizenship, maintaining an active and disciplined hope. So I made us a citizen’s bingo card. It includes things I know I’ll do, things I already have plans to do, and some stretch goals.

I recognize how inadequate these activities seem in the face of out-of-control ICE operations, America’s international recklessness, and the lawlessness of this administration. It is diametrically opposed to the mood right now. I think that’s why it feels important to me. I diametrically oppose the majority of this administration’s action, and I diametrically oppose its mood, the mood it seeks to impose on us.

I’d love to see your bingos as the year goes on. I’d love to see what you take pictures of, what you write down, what you bake and share and hear and learn. I’d love for this to be a community of cover-all cards. I believe in us. I believe in what we’re trying to do and be. And I believe in loving the country that we’re still making. - Beth

What would you add to the BINGO card? Join us in the comments.

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This week on Pantsuit Premium, Beth started a 5-part series on Special Education in America that we’ll air on Wednesdays. She did focus groups with 80 members of the Spice Cabinet - parents, administrators, therapists, School Board representatives - to discuss their experiences and what the dismantling of the Department of Education means for our most vulnerable students.

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What We’re Reading (or into) this Week

• Sarah: Cargo Cults and the Disorganization of America

  By James McElroy (American Affairs)

• Beth: Young men want to get big. For some, it’s becoming an obsession (NPR)

• Alise: Do I Like It? Reflecting on Divergent After 15 Years (Veronica Roth Newsletter)

• Maggie: Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie

Copyright (C) 2026 Pantsuit Politics. All rights reserved.

Show of hands (ok…show of clicks, but know that I imagine all of us hanging out in my living room discussing): how do you tend to approach the new year?

I’ve tried a number of approaches, including Susannah Conway’s excellent Unravel Your Year and the YearCompass. I like all of the things. I like resolutions. I like choosing a word. I like setting concrete goals. This year, I also feel inspired by an approach that’s a little looser, a little freer, a little more fun: the Bingo card.

I made a “date night” bingo card for Chad as a Christmas gift, and I love that I’ve already thought through fun, easy ways for us to spend time together. I also love that he asked: “what do I get when I win?” I told him I’d have to think about bingo prizes. He said, “nah, I’m going for a cover-all obviously.”

This weekend, I’m going to hole up with a couple of friends, my pajamas, a basket of craft supplies, and some great food to make my Bingo card. I’ll report back. - Beth

I have several New Year practices. (Please contain your surprise.) One I had let fall by the wayside is the set of goals we made as a family. For several years, we set hard-and-fast goals for travel and hospitality that I would turn into a poster and hang in our kitchen.

I’m not sure when we stopped or why, but when I hung up a poster of the seven virtues (a theme I’d like to spend time with this year as a family), Griffin requested we do the poster again because it seemed “more fun” than the virtues poster. And, you know what? Fair.

So, we sat down as a family and worked on our goals around reading, family viewing, travel, and experiences. It was fun to do this after thinking them all up myself when they were little. Now that the boys are older, they have so many fun ideas and are so much more contributive. Once we had our goal, I knew I was going to go to Gemini’s Nano Banana tool because, as fun as it was lining up all those dice myself one by one, I’ve found that using A.I. has positively revolutionized creating images like this.

This was the exact prompt I entered: I want an infograph for a poster 2700 x 3600pixels. It’s going to be a fun graphic of The Holland Family Goals for 2026. The first section will be our family reading goals which are 26 family reading evenings then our individual goals Mom 70 books, Dad 25, Griffin 30, Amos 25, Felix 50. Then we have viewing goals. We want to finish Freaks and Geeks, Long Story Short, and watch Mad Men. We want to have 5 family movie nights. We want to go on three camping trips, do 3 scratch off activities, and visit 1 far away theme park. We want to make raclette sandwiches, sushi and do 4 family pizza nights. We also want to have the goal of being on time for church. Please make this softer tones - nothing too bright but with plenty of visual interest and maybe ways to mark off as we complete our goals.

That’s it. Seconds later, I had my image and was uploading it for printing at my local Office Depot! It’s already on the wall, and we have our first movie-and-pizza night planned for Saturday! -Sarah

How are you thinking about the new year? Join us in the comments.

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This week, we dove straight into the headlines with the US Government’s Arrest of Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro and the Shooting of Nicole Good in Minnesota in today’s new episode.

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What We’re Reading (or into) this Week

• Sarah: The Stand by Stephen King

  Slow Read: The Stand

  SLOW READ: The Stand (Chapters 1 - 4)

  SLOW READ: The Stand reading schedule…

  Listen now

  4 months ago · 47 likes · 42 comments · Laura Tremaine and Sarah Stewart Holland

• Beth: The Friend-Group Fallacy: Many people yearn for a crew, but having one is not actually the norm (The Atlantic)

• Alise: The Stand by Stephen King

• Maggie: James Monroe: A Life by Tim McGrath

Copyright (C) 2026 Pantsuit Politics. All rights reserved.

No particular disrespect to 2025. I always feel this way at the end of the year. I want to move on, but first, I need to sort and categorize. I need to make a little bit of meaning of what was. Alise’s metaphor is exactly what I crave at year end: boxes and shelves. So, I sat down with my remarkable to organize the chaos. It helped me thank 2025 through gritted teeth and send it on its way. I’m thankful for all of you and excited to see you back here in January.

-Beth

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This Week’s Low Stakes Controversy

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We would love for your Pantsuit Politics subscription to come with you into 2026. We had a week of treats for our Premium Community this week:

• Beth’s More to Say Finale The Life of a Showboy (Beth’s Version)

• Sarah’s Good News from 2025

• Together: Spicy Live Ask Us Anything (outside of politics)

If you’d like to get these extras from Sarah and Beth, and give yourself space to digest the news, challenge your perspective, and do the work of citizenship together in 2026, the Spice Cabinet is for you.

Right now, we’re offering our best deal of the year on our subscription. You can lock in a monthly or annual discount and get 2 months free! Offer ends December 311.

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What We’re Reading (or into) this Week

• Sarah: Eye of the Hurricane: Susie Wiles, JD Vance, and the “Junkyard Dogs”: The White House Chief of Staff On Trump’s Second Term (Part 1 of 2) and Susie Wiles Talks Epstein Files, Pete Hegseth’s War Tactics, Retribution, and More (Part 2 of 2) (Vanity Fair)2

• Beth: ‘Commuting Is Bad’—Particularly for Women (The Atlantic)

• Alise: Black Woods, Blue Sky by Eowyn Ivey

• Maggie: Survivor 49: Season Finale (CBS)

Thank you for reading and being a part of our community every week. We’ll be taking a rest for the next two weeks, and will be back in your inboxes on January 9th3.

Until we’re back together, we hope you have the very best holiday available to you!

Copyright (C) 2025 Pantsuit Politics. All rights reserved.

It took listening at 1.5x speed on long road trips, breaking up episodes for lunch time viewing on my iPad, and several long evenings in front of the television but I have finally completed all six episodes (12 hours total!) of Ken Burns’ documentary The American Revolution. Like most Americans, I knew the basics of our founding story—the tea party, the midnight ride, the Declaration. But Burns does what Burns does best: he takes familiar history and makes it feel urgent, intimate, and surprisingly relevant.

Here are five things that stuck with me:

1. Benedict Arnold Was a Badass Before He Was a Traitor

We remember Arnold as the ultimate betrayer, the name synonymous with treason. But before his betrayal, Arnold was arguably the Revolution’s most daring military commander. His leadership during the brutal march to Quebec (also didn’t know we tried to take a huge swath of Canada!), his naval tactics on Lake Champlain, and his heroics at Saratoga were nothing short of extraordinary. The man was fearless, tactical and one of Washington’s most trusted commanders. Which makes his eventual betrayal all the more devastating—and complicated. Burns doesn’t excuse Arnold’s treason, but he does force us to reckon with the fact that this wasn’t a simple villain. He was a hero who felt slighted, passed over, disrespected…and then fell in love with a loyalist. His story is a reminder that history-making betrayals often have a very human origin - the festering wound of resentment.

2. This Was a Civil War, and It Was Brutal

We call it the Revolutionary War, but Burns shows us it was really a civil war—neighbor against neighbor, brother against brother, communities torn apart from within. If I was being honest, I thought most all of the colonists were patriots with a few British officers here and there. Not the case. Loyalists weren’t some distant enemy; they were your cousin, your business partner, the family down the road. And Patriots weren’t always noble freedom fighters. They tarred and feathered loyalists, burned their homes, seized their property, drove them into exile. Families fractured permanently over which side to choose. Ben Franklin’s own son remained loyal to the Crown! They never reconciled. The violence wasn’t clean or distant—it was intimate and often cruel. Burns doesn’t romanticize the Patriot cause, and that’s what makes the documentary so powerful. Our founding wasn’t a tidy tale of good versus evil. It was messy, personal, and left deep wounds that didn’t heal with the Treaty of Paris. Our unity has a nation has always been built on the shaky foundation of regional differences, deep personal disagreements, and conflicting values.

3. Slavery Was Everywhere—And the Revolution’s Relationship to It Was Messier Than We Want to Admit

Burns doesn’t let us look away from slavery’s presence in every corner of Revolutionary America. It was there in the fields, in the founding fathers’ households, in the economy that funded the war. The documentary makes clear that slavery wasn’t some peripheral issue—it shaped the revolution’s reality at every turn. But here’s what Burns also shows: the Revolution wasn’t primarily about slavery in the way some historians have recently argued. The colonists weren’t rebelling to protect the institution from British abolition. Instead, what we get is something more uncomfortable: a revolution genuinely animated by ideas of liberty and self-governance, fought by people who simultaneously enslaved others. The founders weren’t cartoon villains or pure hypocrites—they were people living within a brutal system, some troubled by it, some profiting from it, most doing both. Burns also brings incredible complexity to the experience of black Americans both enslaved and free by showing the ways they made different and deeply personal calculuses. Some in fighting with the British. Some in joining the Revolution. Burns forces us to hold two truths at once: the revolution’s ideals were real and revolutionary, AND those ideals coexisted with grotesque injustice. That tension doesn’t resolve neatly, and maybe it shouldn’t. Similar tensions exist today. There are all manner of injustices that are a part of our lives in 2025 that will perhaps be inconceivable to future generations. Watching the founding generation try and fail around their own was deeply humanizing and humbling.

4. There’d Be No America Without George Washington

One moment of the documentary really stood out to me. A historian is arguing against the great man theory of history right before he admits that George Washington is basically the exception. Not because Washington was a military genius (he wasn’t, really), but because of something harder to quantify: his moral authority, his steadfastness, his refusal to grasp for power when he could have. After the war, when his officers were practically begging him to become king, Washington said no. When he could have served as president indefinitely, he stepped down after two terms. The Revolutionary period is full of brilliant minds—Jefferson, Hamilton, Adams, Franklin—but Washington was the indispensable man not because of his intellect, but because of his character. He held the whole fragile experiment - and the Continental Army in particular - together through the sheer force of his personal integrity. There are so many miraculous moments over the course of the war and almost all of them involve George Washington.

5. We Changed the World—And There’s No Way Around It

Here’s the thing Burns makes undeniable: for all our failures, all our hypocrisies, all the ways we fell short of our own ideals—we actually did something truly world-changing. We broke the old order wide open. For millennia, human beings organized themselves under kings, emperors, aristocrats, hierarchies of birth and blood. Then a bunch of colonial upstarts said: what if we didn’t? What if we governed ourselves? What if power came from the consent of the governed, not from divine right or inherited title?

The idea was electric. It didn’t stay contained to thirteen colonies on the edge of the Atlantic. Within years, it sparked the French Revolution. It inspired liberation movements across South America. It echoed through Africa and Asia over the next century. The American experiment—flawed, incomplete, hypocritical as it was—fundamentally shifted what human beings believed was possible about how to organize society.

Burns doesn’t ask us to ignore our treatment of enslaved people or Native Americans. The documentary is unflinching about those betrayals. It is also sincerely celebratory when it comes to the ordinary patriots who sacrificed everything - including their own lives - in pursuit of liberty. Burns doesn’t let us downplay what actually happened: a new form of government was born, one that would eventually—painfully, incrementally—expand to include more and more people in its promise of self-governance and human dignity. The revolution’s ideals were bigger than the revolutionaries themselves and they are ideals we still grapple with, that we fail to achieve, that we keep striving for 250 years later.

And I, for one, can’t wait to celebrate the revolution, the nation, and those ideals next year.

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This Week’s Low Stakes Controversy

On Tuesday’s episode, Sarah and Beth discussed the box office hits of 2025 and how so many of them are remakes and sequels. From the top1 (and anticipated) franchises of 2025, what is your favorite?

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What We’re Reading this Week

• Sarah: More Teens Are Taking Antidepressants. It Could Disrupt Their Sex Lives for Years. (The New York Times | Gift Link)

• Beth: sorry about your cookies (Hot Dish with Sohla)

• Alise: Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler

• Maggie: Sarah’s Holiday Favorites (Spotify Playlist)

p.s. if you missed out on our limited run merch partnership with Christi Matthews, she reopened the shop this week only with extra inventory. The shop closes next Wednesday 12/17 (or when everything is gone)

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