We opened with a clip from former Vermont Governor Howard Dean announcing his bid for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination in Burlington, Vermont on June 23, 2003.
Today’s theme music is “Go, Go, Go,” by Roy Orbison and the Teen Kings, copyrighted music licensed through Likd. Neil and I are off until after Labor Day—but there will be plenty of bonus content in August!
Back in the spring of 2007, I was teaching at Wesleyan University when a student in one of my lecture classes dropped in to ask if I would advise his senior honors thesis in American Studies. When I asked what he planned to write about, Ryan McLaren answered: “Something about the history of Vermont. I love Vermont!”
Who could resist such a request? This was also an ambitious guy. Most members of the football team didn’t write an honors thesis. The time they devoted to the sport, even at a Division III school, made it hard to fit a rigorous independent study—one that required intense research focus in the fall—into their schedules.
Ryan graduated with honors in American Studies in the spring of 2008, and I learned a lot about the history of Vermont, and that state’s distinctive place in our democracy. Get acquainted with Vermont’s commitment to civic excellence and it won’t surprise you that it is one of four states to have produced two presidents, Chester Arthur and Calvin Coolidge; that it has supported a Senator, Bernie Sanders, who has reshaped the Democratic Party; or a presidential candidate, Howard Dean, whose investment in a digital strategy, revolutionized how campaigns are run, something I discuss in my book Political Junkie.
After he graduated from Wesleyan, Ryan devoted himself to contributing to his state. I’ll let him tell you his story, but that path included AmeriCorps, coaching, working on schools and Democratic Party politics—working for Governor Peter Shumlin, and as a staffer for Senator Peter Welch. That upward trajectory was interrupted by a 2017 catastrophic spinal injury which left Ryan disabled in body but not in spirit. He’s still that same sunny guy I met back in 2007, still an athlete, and still devoted to public service—so much so that on Tuesday, August 11, he will be on the ballot for Lieutenant Governor of Vermont.
Photo courtesy of Ryan McLaren for Vermont
You can read more about where that campaign stands here, and an in-depth interview with Ryan here.
Short takes:
“We’ve been living under the penumbra of Trump for so long that it can feel as if we will never escape it,” Lydia Polgreen writes at The New York Times. “But the battle over who will succeed Trump as the Republican nominee in 2028 is well underway.” One of those aspirants is billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy, currently running for Governor of Ohio. What could give him a chance? That he left the second Trump administration almost before it began. In fact, Ramaswamy seems to want to pretend that MAGA is already over—and maybe never happened. In a recent appearance, “he steered clear of culture war topics altogether. Indeed, far from leaning into Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda, he emphasized his immigrant roots as emblematic of the American ideal. And though he praised the success of other Republican states, Ramaswamy had little to say about the Trump administration’s record. He hardly mentioned Trump, and only in passing.” (July 31, 2026)
If you know someone in New York City who owns a condo or co-op worth more than $1 million (and believe me, that isn’t hard) or a townhouse worth more than $5 million (a heavier lift), you know someone who is pissed at Mayor Mamdani. “The ownership of every property in New York City is public and searchable through a funky website that takes a minute to master,” Adriane Quinlan of Curbed wrote about the preliminary, and flawed, rollout of the city’s pied à terre tax. Problem? Of the thousands of properties on the list, many are primary residences. “The residential properties on the list that could be hit by the tax included a bunch of media catnip, too: Anna Wintour’s Manhattan house was included, for example, and she certainly seems to live there. Councilmember Gale Brewer found her own home on it, the one she’s lived in since 1994.” (July 31, 2026)
At The Forward, Alyssa Katz reminds us that charges of antisemitism in the New York City Mayor’s office aren’t new. During the 1968 Ocean Hill-Brownsville conflict between a largely Jewish teachers’ union and a Black community demanding Black teachers, “Mayor John Lindsay’s attempt at making peace was an utter disaster: He had to flee East Midwood Jewish Center into his limo, with a jeering mob behind him.” Hiring Black teachers in significant meant firing Jewish union members from jobs they had held for years, however. “Jewish alarm in the face of such provocation — not to mention dismissals without cause, something out of a Soviet Union purge — was certainly warranted. Conflicts between the community-control school board and teachers escalated inside school buildings, prompting Jewish teachers to file complaints that prompted grand jury indictments and to seek police protection.” (July 30, 2026)
