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Los Angeles has been organized to defend migrants all year: in a February protests, marchers wave Mexican flags and pronounce Donald Trump “El Criminal.” Photo credit: Ringo Chiu/Shutterstock
Our episode begins with a clip from Gavin Newsom’s June 10, 2025, speech to the people of California—and perhaps to 2028 Democratic primary voters as well?
In the News:
Democratic Senator Alex Padilla was wrestled out of the room, thrown to the ground, and briefly handcuffed for trying to ask Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem a question at her Los Angeles press conference on Thursday.
David Hogg, the 25-year-old anti-gun activist, influencer, and Vice Chair of the Democratic Party is making good on his promise to shake things up. Hogg’s Leaders We Deserve PAC puts money behind primary challengers to older Democratic officeholders. This put him is conflict with DNC Chair Ken Martin and as of late Wednesday, Hogg is out. We also learned on Wednesday that 89-year-old Eleanor Holmes Norton, a civil rights warrior and the Representative from the District of Columbia, plans to run again despite visible decline.
Sexual harasser and former governor Andrew Cuomo seems set to hammer progressive Zohran Mamdani in the June 24 New York City mayoral primary. On Wednesday, Cuomo scored an endorsement from former mayor Michael Bloomberg. Whether he wins or not, Cuomo says he plans to run on the “Fight and Deliver” party line—a party he created for himself.
On June 14, as Donald Trump assembles a $45 million military parade in Washington to celebrate
himselfthe Army, activists will celebrate No Kings Day with nonviolent protests around the country. You can find the nearest one here; the Craig’s list ad asking for “seat fillers” is here. In response,Trump has said that protesters will be greeted with “very big force.” It would also be terrible if the people who signed up for free tickets just didn’t show up.This week we lost Brian Wilson, the musical heart of The Beach Boys and a pathbreaking composer, at 82.
Your hosts:
Claire Potter is a historian of politics and media, a writer, a podcaster, and the sole author and editor of the Political Junkie Substack. Her most recent book is Political Junkies: From Talk Radio to Twitter, How Alternative Media Hooked Us on Politics and Broke Our Democracy (Basic Books, 2020), and she is currently writing a biography of feminist journalist Susan Brownmiller.
Neil J. Young is a historian of religion and politics, a journalist, and a former co-host of the Past Present podcast. His most recent book is Coming Out Republican: A History of the Gay Right (University of Chicago Press, 2024).
News focus:
Thursday, Congress seemed to want to dress the anti-immigrant raids up in the cloak of legality by bringing in Governors Kathy Hochul (New York), Tim Walz (Minnesota), and J. B. Pritzker (Illinois) in for a turn in the GOP’s barrel. You can see “Sanctuary State City Governors” (Minnesota is not a sanctuary state.)
Jonathan Van Last asks: Are anti-immigration protests a good thing? Hint: it’s hard to know. (June 9, 2025)
Journalist Michael Tomasky speculated that, unlike advisors in the first administration, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth would not dissuade Trump from giving an order to fire on Americans with live ammo or calling up citizen militias. (The New Republic, June 9, 2025)
The troop deployment to LA will cost $134 million. (The Hill, June 10, 2025)
The battle between citizens and police in Los Angeles immediately became the object of fake news and conspiracy theories. (June 10, 2025)
Taylor Lorenz explains why protesters in LA are burning their beloved Waymos. (June 9, 2025)
Seth Masket interviews a political science professor arrested in Los Angeles,despite asking repeatedly to leave. (June 12, 2025)
Molly Jong-Fast argues that the show of military might in Los Angeles, and in Washington on Saturday, are accumulating evidence that the Trump administration is failing. (Vanity Fair, June 10, 2025)
Jill Filipovic asks: are the protests are a turning point, and if so, for whom? (June 11.2025)
Let’s go back to Gavin Newsom: what are the opportunities and risks for him going up against Trump?
What we want to go viral:
Neil is excited about Sierra Crane Murdoch, Yellow Bird: Oil, Murder, and a Woman's Search for Justice in Indian Country ( Random House, 2021), a true story of a murder on an Indian reservation, and the unforgettable Arikara woman who becomes obsessed with solving it.
Claire wants you to read Molly Jong-Fast’s memoir about her mother, Erica Jong, How to Lose Your Mother: A Daughter’s Memoir (Viking, 2025)
Short takes:
President Donald Trump has been very public that he and President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador are partners in the United States deportation project. But, as T. Christian Miller and Sebastian Rotella report at ProPublica, if the United States has an MS-13 problem, Bukele is implicated. “A long-running U.S. investigation of MS-13 has uncovered evidence at odds with Bukele’s reputation as a crime fighter,” Miller and Rotella write. “The inquiry, which began as an effort to dismantle the gang’s leadership, expanded to focus on whether the Bukele government cut a secret deal with MS-13 in the early years of his presidency.” It gets worse. “Bukele’s allies secretly blocked extraditions of gang leaders whom U.S. agents viewed as potential witnesses to the negotiations and persecuted Salvadoran law enforcement officials who helped the task force, according to exclusive interviews with current and former U.S. and Salvadoran officials, newly obtained internal documents and court records from both countries.” There are also allegations that U.S. humanitarian aid to El Salvador ended up in the gang’s coffers. (June 12, 2025)
Trumpist attacks on universities and cultural institutions seem to be driving an escalation in state-level culture wars too. “In a chilling meeting of the Florida State Board of Education last week, a school district superintendent was publicly browbeaten and repeatedly threatened with criminal prosecution,” Judd Legum writes at Popular Information. The crime? Not removing 55 books designated as pornography from Hillsborough County Schools, despite the fact that none are pornographic, and they are classic YA literature no parent has complained about. “Kelly Garcia, who was appointed to the State Board by Governor Ron DeSantis (R) in 2023, suggested that librarians in Hillsborough County were illiterate and told [Hillsborough School Superintendent Van] Ayres they lacked a `single shred of decency,’” Legum reports. “She described the librarians as `child abusers’ and asked if Ayres had considered firing all of them.” (June 12, 2025)
A deep dive into his family tree gives new meaning to the joke: Is the Pope catholic—and please note I am using the small c. “Go back to our 12th great grandparents, and everyone has a whopping 32,766 forebears,” Henry Louis Gates, Jr., reminds us in a New York Times story about Pope Leo XIV’s genealogy, which includes Black people and minor Spanish nobility, colonizers and freedom fighters. “The initial finding about the pope’s Black ancestry looked back three generations,” Gates continues. “In collaboration with the genealogists at American Ancestors and the Cuban Genealogy Club of Miami, we were able to identify more than 100 people going back 15 generations and discovered a wealth of fascinating stories. We all agreed that, after more than a decade of doing this kind of genealogical work, the pope’s roots make for one of the most diverse family trees we have ever created.” (June 11, 2025)
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