Author: Slate Podcasts

Winning November’s presidential election will likely mean turning out a whole host of people who have never voted before. In our new series, First-Timers, we speak with voters from around the country and across the political spectrum to ask them what’s bringing them to the ballot box for the first time.

Guest: Dewayne Comer, a formerly incarcerated first-time voter from Syracuse, New York.

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A spike in COVID cases this fall led to new restrictions in several parts of New York. Many of these locations were home to Orthodox Jewish communities which were hard hit early on in the pandemic.

Feeling singled out by these new rules, Orthodox communities across the city rebelled and began protesting by burning masks and flouting social distancing guidelines. That anger has given rise to a new political figure whose openly squaring off with the mayor, the governor, and the media.

Guest: Jacob Kornbluh, national reporter at Jewish Insider.

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Two years ago, Mark Zuckerberg held up Holocaust denial as an example of the type of speech that would be protected on Facebook. The company wouldn’t take down content simply because it was incorrect. This week, Facebook reversed that stance. Is this decision the first step toward a new way of policing speech on the social network?

Guest: Evelyn Douek, Lecturer at Harvard Law School and affiliate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society

Host

Lizzie O’Leary

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Olivia Troye spent nearly two years in Trump’s White House. In that time, she sat in on meetings about natural disasters, border security - and the coronavirus task force.

In July, she announced she had resigned. The White House says she was fired. One way or another, she’s speaking out about what she saw, why she stayed, and what ultimately pushed her out the door.

Guest: Olivia Troye, former Homeland Security, Counterterrorism, and Coronavirus Task Force advisor to Vice President Mike Pence.

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The White House, Senate Republicans and the House Democrats are all on completely separate pages about another coronavirus relief package. With the election just three weeks away, is now the best time to strike a deal? And what would it look like? 

Guest: Jordan Weissmann, Slate senior economic and business correspondent.

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Earlier this summer, Senator Kelly Loeffler leaned into a war of words with the WNBA. She may have underestimated her opponents. 

Guest: Amira Rose Davis, assistant professor at Penn State and cohost of the Burn It All Down podcast. 

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Over the last decade, born from the chaos of the 2008 financial crisis, automated tenant screening has grown into a billion-dollar industry. Now, nine out of 10 landlords rely on automated tenant-screening reports, scraped from eviction history, criminal background records, and terror watchlists, to decide if they can trust potential renters. The problem? Often, the reports contain major errors, mistaken identities, and criminal records that are supposed to be expunged. Can these reports really be trusted?

Guest: Lauren Kirchner, investigative reporter at The Markup

Original reporting with Matthew Goldstein, reporter at The New York Times 

Host

Celeste Headlee

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Who will be able to cast a vote in Texas? And will Texans be able to figure that out before election day -- or after?

Guest: Emma Platoff, justice and politics reporter for the Texas Tribune. 

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