At the beginning of this episode, we hear a clip from Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld about strategic uncertainty on February 12, 2002, as the Bush administration falsely argued that the United States was compelled to go to war in Iraq to seize weapons of mass destruction.
Protesters march to the Pentagon on March 21, 2009 as part of an anti-war march and rally in Washington, D.C. Photo credit: Rena Schild/Shutterstock
Show notes:
Jeremy discusses the movement against the War on Terror as a moral obligation, one that he participated in, but which he could not fully understand the dimensions of at the time.
Claire mentions the role that the War Resisters League, founded in 1923, played in the antiwar movement.
Jeremy and Claire discuss the significant participation of women, many of whom had extensive social movement experience, in the resistance to the war on terror.
Code Pink was a particularly effective and energetic feminist anti-war group that devoted itself to international civil society activism and highlighting the ways women’s experience in war provides a broader lens into the harms of state violence.
Jeremy points to Hillary Clinton’s support for the war, which was dismaying to many feminist organizations. You can read more about women’s participation in the War on Terror here.
The extreme violence of the War on Terror was, in some ways, epitomized by the sexualized torture and brutality inflicted on Iraqi prisoners by American men and women at the Abu Ghraib prison.
Claire and Jeremy discuss the violence of President Trump’s deportation agenda, and the administration’s assertions that ICE agent have absolute immunity, as a domestic extension of the War on Terror.
Jeremy outlines how the movement to stop the first Gulf War set the stage for strategies and groups that would oppose the War on Terror.
In a conversation about the moral injuries of war, Jeremy discusses the many ways in which soldiers suffer for their participation in war.
In a conversation about the forms of fellowship, friendship, and community in pease movements, Jeremy mentions Benjamin Heim Shepard’s book, On Activism, Friendships, and Fighting: Oral Histories, Strategies and Conflicts (Common Notions Press, 2025).
Your host:
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.
Short takes:
It’s called “Blaxit”(short for Black Exit): Black Americans leaving the United States in higher than usual numbers. Historically, African Americans have often felt safer and freer abroad, but the trend of Black professionals seeking out relocation experts is growing. “This modern migration is seeing Black expatriates settle in countries like Thailand, Dubai, Ghana, Portugal, South Africa, Costa Rica, Mexico, Colombia, and more,” Karen Juanita Carillo writes. Predictably, MAGA hates dual citizenship. “In December 2025, Ohio Senator Bernie Moreno,” an immigrant from Colombia, “introduced the Exclusive Citizenship Act of 2025, which aims to prohibit dual citizenship. It requires Americans with multiple nationalities to renounce their foreign citizenship(s) within one year or face automatic revocation of their U.S. citizenship.” (January 15, 2026)
Can prediction markets change history—or allow insiders to profit from political decisions? Democrat Ritchie Torres (NY-15) says yes. “Hours before U.S. Army Delta Force commandos captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife during a nighttime raid in Caracas, an anonymous trader, using a newly created account on the prediction market Polymarket, wagered more than $30,000 that Maduro would be out of office by Jan. 31, 2026. The trader walked away with more than $400,000 in profit,” Torres writes in The Washington Post about government insiders finding yet another way to profit from the Trump presidency. “On Jan. 7, traders wagered on whether the White House press briefing would last longer than 65 minutes. The market assigned a 98 percent probability that it would. Then, with seconds to spare, the briefing was abruptly ended — delivering massive, near-instant payouts to those betting against the odds.” (January 15, 2026)
Former Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema has been named as a correspondent in a divorce proceeding. “In a complaint filed in North Carolina, the ex-wife of Matthew Ammel, who worked on Ms. Sinema’s staff for two years, accused the former senator of seducing him and breaking up their marriage,” Anni Karni reports at The New York Times. Heather Ammel asserts that Sinema sent her husband Matthew, her bodyguard, “suggestive photographs on Signal, the encrypted messaging app; chose him to accompany her on trips to Napa Valley and to the Sphere, an events venue, in Las Vegas; paid for him to enter psychedelic treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder and other issues; encouraged him to bring drugs on work trips so she could guide him through a psychedelic trip; showered him with gifts and concert tickets; and eventually entered into a sexual relationship with him that caused him to leave his family.” Sinema has been divorced since 1999, left the Senate in 2024 about a year after the affair with Ammel allegedly began, and is openly bisexual. (January 15, 2026)
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