Author: Slate Podcasts

In border towns across the country, high school students are participating in an after school program run by the U.S. Border Patrol. When journalist Morley Musick first encountered the Border Patrol Explorers, he saw it as another example of the contradictions of life on the border.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Homelessness in Los Angeles isn’t a new problem. But it has become a bigger problem. And it’s gotten really easy to see. 

Guests: Theo Henderson, host of the We the Unhoused podcast. Emily Alpert Reyes, City Hall reporter for the Los Angeles Times. 

Slate Plus members get bonus segments and ad-free podcast feeds. Sign up now.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On Monday, the Iowa caucuses went off the rails. As the hours stretched into days, and still the results remained unclear, a new piece of election technology was identified as a central cause of the delay.

An app designed to make the election process speedier and more secure had the opposite effect. And its failure is symptomatic of deep-rooted issues in the way the Democratic Party develops and deploys election technology.

So, what exactly went wrong on Monday? And what does it say about the party’s effort to regain its digital edge in 2020?

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Michael Bloomberg has toyed with running for president many times. He has the money and the political clout, but 2020 is the first time he’s thrown all his weight behind a White House bid. It might also be the only year where his abnormal approach to politics could actually pay off. 

Guest: Edward-Isaac Dovere, reporter for The Atlantic.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Iowa caucuses on Monday were a mess. Only 71 percent of precincts were reporting by late Tuesday night. Rick Hasen says, we’re just lucky this disaster happened early on. That means that election officials in other states have time to get it right. 

Guest: Rick Hasen, author of “Election Meltdown” 

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode originally aired in October 2019.

Growing up in D.C. during the civil rights era made the fight for D.C. statehood deeply personal for civil rights advocate Wade Henderson. He’s said that being unable to secure a voting representative in Congress is one of his greatest disappointments. Christina Cauterucci speaks with Henderson about the fight for statehood and why he still has hope for the movement.

This episode is a part of Slate’s Who Counts initiative. In the run-up to the 2020 election, Slate will be investigating who counts in the voting booth, who counts as an American, whose money counts in the democratic process, and whose doesn’t. And we need your help. Your support will let us assign more stories, travel to overlooked places, commission special podcast projects, and pay for reporting we otherwise would not be able to do. To learn more about this project and how to support our work, please go to slate.com/whocounts.

Guest: Wade Henderson, former head of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights

Slate Plus members get bonus segments and ad-free podcast feeds. Sign up now.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On Friday, Senate Republicans blocked efforts to hear new witnesses and evidence in the impeachment trial of President Trump. The decision signals an unwillingness to challenge the executive branch, despite several Republican lawmakers conceding that Trump was wrong to launch a pressure campaign against Ukraine. And even though the Senate trial is drawing to a close, we may be headed for unending impeachment-related investigations.

Guest: Dahlia Lithwick writes about law and the courts for Slate and hosts the podcast Amicus.

Slate Plus members get bonus segments and ad-free podcast feeds. Sign up now.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices