The New Realist Podcast

Jeanne Sheehan Zaino
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A REALIST'S VIEW OF DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA AND AROUND THE WORLD jeannesheehanzaino.substack.com

  1. 15h ago

    Limited Discomfort With Bigotry

    With more than 55 million early ballots cast, upwards of $12-13 billion in spending, months of campaigning, and lots of political drama, the 2026 Midterm is finally just hours away. Speaking of drama, we got enough to last a lifetime this weekend when Representative Haley Stevens (MI) switched her endorsement in the all-important Senate race from fellow Democrat, Abdul El-Sayed, to his Republican opponent, Mike Rogers. In response almost half her staff resigned in protest and El Sayed’s campaign was met with an outpouring of donations, raising more than $2.4 million in just one day. Late Sunday night, during an appearance on CNN, Anderson Cooper asked Stevens how she could square her endorsement of Rogers with her warning just a few months ago that a vote for him would, “be another rubber stamp for Donald Trump’s dangerous agenda”? A fair question that Stevens was unable to answer. What is also hard to square is how Stevens can argue that standing up for one religious minority requires her to endorse a candidate whose campaign has a record of engaging in some of the worst types of discrimination, hate, bigotry and Islamophobic attacks we have seen in modern American politics. This includes… * Rogers attempting to tie El-Sayed, without evidence, to the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas and Hezbollah. Something that he admitted to on Meet the Press recently when he denied attacking El-Sayed’s faith, by saying “This is not about Islam. It’s not about how he prays. It is about his adherence to this radical Islamic agenda.” * President Trump who during a rally for Rogers in late October, called El-Sayed a “jihadist terrorist,” a “jihadist Muslim Brotherhood member,” and “Abdul Ramadan.” He also stated that he is “here to keep a jihadist Muslim brotherhood member from becoming a United States senator," before going on to say, "Michigan does not need a senator who is on the side of the terrorists, we need a senator who's really 100, 1,000% on the side of America." * Vice President JD Vance who likewise described El-Sayed as a “Muslim radical” who has engaged in “anti-white racial hate.” When asked if he agrees with Trump that El-Sayed is a “jihadist,” Vance responded that he “has a lot of weird friends.” * Senator Ted Cruz who also took to the trail on behalf of Rogers and noted during one campaign stop that El-Sayed is a “theocratic zealot” and a “jihadist leprechaun,” who would share national security secrets with terrorist networks. * Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. who while campaigning for Rogers in Grand Rapids made multiple disparaging comments about Arabs, including, “There’s 500 million Arabs in the world and yet they don’t produce science. They don’t win the Nobel Prize... They don’t produce literature.” Stevens endorsement of Rogers suggests her discomfort with bigotry has its limits; an unfortunate realization for many of her supporters in the hard fought Democratic primary where she captured almost 50% of the vote. Thanks for reading The New Realist! This post is public so feel free to share it. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jeannesheehanzaino.substack.com/subscribe

  2. Oct 22

    A Whole Nother Level

    This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit jeannesheehanzaino.substack.com The New Realist is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. There are negative ads and then there is the 60-second spot Ohio Republican Gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy released which features his opponent, Amy Acton’s, mother. If you haven’t seen it yet, count yourself …

  3. Oct 22

    A Whole Nother Level of Deplorable

    There are negative ads and then there is the 60-second spot Ohio Republican Gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy released which features his opponent, Amy Acton’s, mother. If you haven’t seen it yet, count yourself lucky. While we have seen ads with family members speaking out against their relatives (i.e., Representative Paul Gosar’s (R-AZ) six siblings and almost all of Robert F Kennedy’s extended family) this ad takes negative campaigning to a whole new and disgusting level. In it, Acton’s mother, Donna Arthur, calls her daughter a liar, saying she has “lied her entire life,” and urging Ohioans not to vote for her. Left out of the difficult-to-watch spot is the fact that Arthur’s husband and Acton’s step-father, Cledith, was charged with sexually abusing Acton when she was a child. In 1978, when she was just 12 years old, Acton was removed from the home along with her younger brother. She has not spoken with her mother since. Cledith Arthur was arrested, but never prosecuted, because before he could be brought to justice, he and his wife fled the state. Philip Stearns, Acton’s younger brother, who was just nine when he was removed from the home along with his sister, slammed Ramaswamy for the ugly attempt to exploit their childhood trauma for political gain. As Stearns said, “It’s not surprising that Vivek Ramaswamy has stooped to such a despicable low as to attempt to turn the sexual abuse Amy endured at 12 years old from our birth mother’s husband into a political talking point.” Stearns is just one of many to condemn the ad. This includes Republicans such as Senator Jon Husted, who is currently in a tight race for Senate in Ohio, Dan Hauser, political strategist for Republican Senator Mike Lee of Utah, conservative commentator Meghan McCain, and former presidential candidate Nikki Haley who described Ramaswamy as a “a bad guy,” adding, “it’s a shame he continues to get away with it.” Someone who was likewise offended, albeit for an entirely different reason, was the Vice President of the U.S., J.D. Vance. Instead of condemning the ad as divisive, cruel, a disgusting effort to exploit childhood abuse for political gain, and a tactic that is beneath the office Ramaswamy is seeking, Vance, the father of four young children himself, chastised Republicans who denounced the spot. He was clearly offended, although not by the ad, but rather by those Republicans who dared to speak out against it. To them he had just one message which he delivered during a campaign stop in Ohio yesterday, stop “whining… politics is a tough business.” “I have to admit,” Vance told reporters, “that I’m a little bit disgusted when I see Republicans across the country who are whining more about that advertisement than they are about what the congressional Democrats and other Democrats want to do to the United States of America.” The ad can be seen as a Hail Mary, a last ditch effort from a candidate who the polls suggest is down by 7 points. It can be explained as a strategic blunder from a candidate who has never been very good on the stump and a campaign that is floundering and unable to find a message. It can be described as counter-productive, after all, any Ohioan who sees it and looks into the charges, even a little, is likely to end up feeling more empathetic towards Acton. What the ad should not be, however, is dismissed. Yes Mr. Vice-President, politics is a tough business. And yes, we’ve all seen negative ads, but this is not that. This is the weaponization of childhood sexual assault and trauma for political gain and that’s a whole nother level of deplorable. The New Realist is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jeannesheehanzaino.substack.com/subscribe

  4. Oct 20

    Trump Threatens to Jail Election Officials

    With two weeks to go until Election Day and early in person voting beginning in many states, all eyes are on those charged with ensuring the integrity of our vote, and by extension our democracy. This includes Georgia’s Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger, who during an interview on Bloomberg’s Balance of Power yesterday, expressed confidence in the state’s electoral process. He also pushed back on claims President Trump made as recently as Friday when he stated, without evidence, that the 2020 election was “fraudulent” and Senator Jon Ossoff, “was never elected.” Trump’s comments came during a rally in Dalton, Georgia while he was stumping for Ossoff’s opponent, Representative Mike Collins and Republican gubernatorial candidate Rick Jackson. They also came the same day that the Department of Justice (DOJ) took the unprecedented step of sending a letter to the California Secretary of State and Los Angeles County Registrar threatening criminal charges against them if they “process or tabulate ballots submitted by noncitizen voters.” As the letter warns, “If persons: knowingly tabulate ballots cast by individuals identified by federal agencies as noncitizens, they risk becoming aiders and abettors: to a federal crime.” On Friday evening, Trump posted the letter on Truth Social along with the following threat: “They will all go to jail for a long period of time!!!” This is not the first time the Trump administration has threatened to bring criminal charges against election workers. In July, Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin warned: “If the election officials, once we gave them the information they need to secure their elections, and they chose not to, then those individuals can also be held accountable by fines, by penalties, and even depending on how far it goes, prison time.” California is one of just several states the Trump administration has targeted in this effort. Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Nevada, have also been subject to the unsubstantiated charge that they have thousands of non-citizens on their voter rolls. In the case of Nevada, the state reviewed a list of 185 individuals DHS claimed were non-citizens only to find that “every individual on the list was a lawful citizen.” Perhaps no election official in the country has been more publicly subject to the president’s attempts at election intimidation and interference than Raffensperger who, after the 2020 election, was the recipient of the now infamous phone call demanding he “find” the 11,780 votes Trump needed to win the state. Despite the president’s efforts to cajole and then brow beat him, Raffensperger - a long time and dedicated Republican - stood firm and rejected the president’s pressure campaign. In the six years since, Trump’s obsession with the 2020 election overall, and in Georgia specifically, has only intensified. Months ago, in a bid to salvage her job as Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard took the unprecedented step of traveling to Fulton County to oversee a FBI raid and seizure of 2020 voting records. If non-citizen voting or mail-in voting fraud were problems - even small problems - scholars, researchers, election officials, people like Raffensperger and the thousands of others across the country who manage our vote at the local and state levels, would be the first to say so; and to call for reform. As all the research shows, however, they are not even “infinitesimal” problems. To the contrary, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, a person is more likely to be struck by lightning than commit mail-in voter fraud. Likewise, the Brookings Institution has determined mail voting fraud is so rare that it accounts for “only 0.000043% of total mail ballots cast” or “about four cases out of every 10 million mail votes.” None of this, however, has stopped the president from taking extraordinary steps to exert control over the nation’s elections. Since returning to office less than two years ago, Trump and members of his administration have: * flirted openly with putting ICE Agents and national guardsmen and women at polling sites * continued to make baseless claims (like those he made on Friday in Georgia) about the 2020 election and the sanctity of our elections * pushed for mid-decade redistricting * threatened to withhold funding to states that do not abide by his approved voting rules * gutted the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), dismantled the Office of the DNI’s Foreign Malign Influence Center and taken other steps to cut budgets and scale back support for offices charged with securing our elections * filed a lawsuit claiming California violated the Supremacy Clause by “knowingly sending vote-by-mail ballots to likely noncitizens and ultimately counting those ballots” * sent the DNI to Georgia to oversee the seizure of 2020 voting records * signed an Executive Order (E.O.) in March imposing restrictions on mail-in balloting * Disinvited international election observers from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) from coming to the U.S. to observe our election, something they have done for over 20 years This list is not exhaustive. And in the weeks and months ahead, it is likely to grow even longer; making it more important than ever that we give Election officials and workers our unbridled support and gratitude for their work on the frontlines of democracy. The New Realist is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jeannesheehanzaino.substack.com/subscribe

  5. Oct 14

    We Can't Eat Road Salt

    “We can’t eat road salt.” This line, which is my nominee for the most effective of the midterm debates so far, came from an unlikely source. Troy Jackson was a late addition to the Democratic ticket in Maine. He became the nominee only after Graham Platner withdrew because of a series of controversies and allegations of sexual assault. A logger by trade who has served in both the Maine House and Senate, including six years as President of the upper chamber, Jackson was no stranger to state politics. Nevertheless, there was some concern about his nomination. Not only had he finished third in the Democratic primary for Governor just months earlier, but he had never run in a statewide general election. Moreover, as even his supporters conceded Jackson lacks the “charisma” of his predecessor. Perhaps the kindest way to put it is he is at best “a bit of an uneven campaigner.” None of this was news to Jackson, as he told a local radio station “I know I’m not a polished speaker, and I don’t pretend to be. I’m just an everyday person and I don’t put on airs like I’m some highfalutin person. I’m OK with that.” Suffice it to say, expectations for Jackson during his first of four debates with Sen. Susan Collins (Republican of Maine) were low. Those betting on Kalshi or another one of those prediction markets might have gone so far as to bet that Jackson would not only stumble but fall flat on his feet. To the surprise of many, however, he did not. Instead, the consensus of observers was that he did what he needed to do, passed the threshold test, surpassed expectations, and “held his own against a five-term senator.” It wasn’t a perfect debate by any measure, but in addition to showing he could take on this titan of the Senate, Jackson also gets my vote for the best line of the debate season (and potentially the midterm overall). And this is no small trick considering we have heard from some very strong candidates, including the incumbent Senator from Georgia, Jon Osoff, whose rhetorical flourish has catapulted him to the top of many short lists of candidates for the Democratic nomination for president in 2028. Despite Osoff’s viral, “you’ve hired half the Third Reich,” which he directed at his opponent, Representative Mike Collins (Republican), during their October 8 debate, my vote still goes to Jackson and here’s why. Susan Collins is asking the voters of Maine to give her a sixth term in the Senate based on her seniority and her ability to ‘deliver’ for the people of the state. She consistently reminds Mainers that she cannot only ‘bring home the bacon’ but because she has the president’s ear, she can also curtail his worst impulses. When it comes to everything from ICE to tariffs, she argues not unlike Jack Nicholson’s character in “A Few Good Men,” ‘you need me on that wall’ - or in her case, someone like her in the room to nudge Trump and the GOP. As proof, she has repeatedly pointed to her opposition to the president’s tariff war on Canada (a huge issue for Mainers) and how she successfully lobbied him to remove road salt from the list of tariffed items. As she said in the first debate, “I’ve also been working behind the scenes. Troy mocked it, but I was successful in getting concrete, pulp and road salt removed from the tariff list. And if you ask towns in northern Maine and eastern Maine, they get all of their road salt from Canada.” To which Jackson responded“: “I didn’t mock the fact that she got road salt back, I mocked the fact that: What about everything else? I mean, we can’t eat road salt.” “We can’t eat road salt,” crystallizes the issue for Maine as it juxtaposes Collins argument that they need her in that room to cajole Trump into giving the people of the state something, even small wins versus Jackson’s message that like Marie Antoinette, all the president has given Mainers is crumbs. Moreover, ‘we can’t eat road salt’ brings us back to a classic line, “You Can’t Eat Democracy,” which was the title of an article by David Cohn published in The Atlantic in 1946. Whether Cohn originated the phrase is not clear, but the maxim is widely used to explain why people suffering around the world from a lack of basic essentials (food, water, shelter, medical care, etc.) are not nearly as concerned about democracy or liberty as those of means. “Men are guided by their minds,” Cohn wrote, “they are moved by their bellies. You can’t eat democracy.” The phrase was repeated more recently by the President of Zambia, Hakainde Hichilema, in an op-ed where he argued that, “human rights may sustain the spirit, but not the body. Particularly in young democracies like mine, governments must deliver economically if they are to retain the people’s consent.” For decades we were fortunate that this phrase did not resonate widely with most Americans. Today, however, it does; with far too many in Maine and across the country. The New Realist is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jeannesheehanzaino.substack.com/subscribe

  6. Oct 12

    Emerging Oligarchy

    The numbers are astounding. The wealthiest person in the world and, arguably the wealthiest individual to ever walk the earth, has broken all records when it comes to spending in an election. According to a report in the New York Times today, Elon Musk has spent $366 million on this midterm cycle, far exceeding the $290 million he spent to help Republicans and President Trump in 2024. While this is less than a drop in the bucket for Musk (.037% of his estimated $1 Trillion net worth), it makes him the single largest donor of this or any other election cycle. This is not just a case of pay-for-play, political influence, or access-buying. It is, to Senator Bernie Sanders (Independent -Vermont) point, the clearest sign to date that we are living in the midst of an emerging oligarchy. In late September, Sanders spoke at Riverside Church in New York arguing that “oligarchy is ascending, working families are struggling to stay alive and democracy is in retreat.” At the time, Sanders noted that Musk was “spending some $200 million more to help Republicans keep control over the Congress” in the midterm. Little did Senator Sanders know at the time, but the actual amount of spending by Musk is nearly double that. Nevertheless, Sanders is correct to say that what we are witnessing in the U.S. today is the very definition of an oligarchy. After all what is an oligarchy but a form of government in which a very minuscule number of extremely wealthy people, such as Musk, exert an inordinate amount of economic, political, social, governmental, and technological, power. The Times revelation regarding Musk’s spending comes just a few days after a new poll found that “most young people” in the United States feel the “system is tilted toward Billionaires.” Among other things the researchers found that: * In terms of who holds power in Washington D.C., young Americans rank voters dead last and Billionaires first * The Concern about money in politics is widespread and bipartisan. * 83% of young Americans describe money in politics as a big problem (58% say it is “very big”), and just 2% say it is not a problem at all * most young Americans believe Congress and the states should be able to reasonably regulate and limit money in campaigns and elections. * Many see money as a threat to elections. Despite the focus in the Times piece on Musk, the problem is much bigger than any one individual or party. It is widespread, it permeates both parties and all aspects of our politics. It is also not enough to cast aspersions towards groups, parties, or individuals who play by the rules and follow the law. The problem is not them, but rather the law itself. To quote Michael Kinsley, “the scandal isn’t what’s illegal; the scandal is what’s legal.” That is what needs to be changed, the laws, the system and rules of the game by which we conduct our political lives. This starts with overturning the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (FEC) (2010) which reinforced the major finding in Buckley v Valeo (1976) that money spent in campaigns to influence voters is ‘free speech.’ The result was not unlike what we saw in the heyday of the conservative court in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries when the Justices consistently struck down most efforts by states and the federal government to regulate the economy. The major difference is instead of striking down attempts to regulate the economy, they have been busy striking down attempts to regulate campaign spending. We saw this most recently just a few months ago when by a vote of 6-3, the Court struck down federal limits on how much parties can spend in conjunction with candidates (National Republican Senatorial Committee v. FEC (2026)). There are solutions. The non-profit, American Promise, which sponsored the poll referenced previously is, for example, working to overturn these Court rulings by amending the Constitution to ensure that Congress and the States, are able to “reasonably” regulate and limit “contributions and spending in campaigns, elections, or ballot measures.” To date they report that 25 states “have already called on Congress to propose an amendment solution.” Amendments are, however, notoriously difficult to pass. How difficult? The last time an amendment was ratified was in 1992. That amendment, #27, was written and proposed, 200 years earlier; and its’ author was none other than James Madison. As Justice Antonin Scalia once quipped, ‘it ought to be hard, but not that hard.’ With that in mind, there are additional remedies or partial solutions that can be considered in the interim. In the short term, voters casting ballots in November should do so with the understanding that whoever they elect to the Senate will be asked to confirm new justices to the lower federal bench and potentially the Supreme Court. Whoever they choose is likely to have a say in whether efforts by Congress and state legislatures to regulate money in politics are deemed constitutional or not. The New Realist is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jeannesheehanzaino.substack.com/subscribe

  7. Oct 9

    Shameful

    The New Realist is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. It was not the fact that yesterday after school an ICE agent approached a car containing a 5 year old boy and shot into it seven times hitting his father under the ear that DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin found shameful. Instead it was NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s response that he was aggrieved by. It is “shameful,” an outraged Mullin told reporters, “that you have a mayor that goes out there and puts criminals over law-abiding citizens.” Mullin went on not only to defend what happened, but describe Mamdani’s comments as “dangerous” and “political theater.” It’s an interesting choice of words from a person in a position of authority, but back to shame, let’s consider what is really shameful. * It’s shameful that on a beautiful fall afternoon, as parents in Marble Hill went to pick up their children from school and take them to after school activities, out for ice cream, play dates or the park, they, their children, teachers, neighbors, and shopkeepers were forced instead to watch in horror as a group of men with construction vests and masks (and no way to reasonably identify them as Federal agents) descended on a man trying to park his car. * It’s shameful that with his 5 year old son sitting in the back, they proceeded to spray the car with bullets. * It’s shameful that ICE agents would ever shoot into a moving or parked vehicle when there is not a law enforcement agency in the country that does that because it is well known that it ends up putting the community, not to mention the people in the car and the officers themselves, in more danger. * It’s shameful that we have ICE agents on the streets who, by many accounts, have not been properly trained because the administration is in a rush to get them into the field. A recent whistle-blower who trained new ICE recruits before he resigned, described the training program as “deficient, defective and broken.” * It’s shameful that despite using over $30m of tax payer money to purchase body cameras, we still have not seen footage of the incident in NYC yesterday. * It’s shameful that the body camera footage ICE agents are supposed to be wearing and which we paid for, is not required to be released to the public. * It’s shameful that Mullin has NOT used his discretion to release the body camera footage of this incident (if indeed there is any which remains unclear). * It’s shameful that the video we have seen of the incident recorded by onlookers and the body cameras of NYPD officers who arrived after the shooting, show the victim, 28-year-old Oscar Belgal, lying on the street bleeding while an ICE agent in street clothing, sporting a construction vest, is brandishing a modified AR-15-style rifle. * It’s shameful that Mullin did not express horror over what happened, as well as care and empathy for all the victims and the community. In addition to promising to investigate the incident thoroughly, hold anyone engaged in wrong doing responsible, and assure all Americans steps will be taken to make sure this never happens again. * It’s shameful that instead of doing any of that, Mullin chose to defend what happened yesterday on the streets of an American city. * It’s shameful that Mullin is more concerned about the comments of the Mayor than the well being of the citizens of the country he is sworn to serve. * It’s shameful that Mullin is more intent on bringing Belgal’s criminal record to light and describing him in the most abhorrent terms, rather than focusing on the shooting itself [For the record, Mullin described Belgal as “the worst of the worst” and “a threat to our community.”]. * It’s shameful that Mullin did not learn from the equally despicable response of his predecessor to the killings of two innocent Americans at the hands of ICE agents on the streets of Minneapolis several months ago. * It’s shameful that even after two hours of phone calls with Mamdani last night, Mullin and President Trump refused to release Belgal to the custody of NYC officials. * It’s shameful that ICE whisked Belgal out of state quickly last night presumably to a detention center in New Jersey (although his exact location is still unclear). * It’s shameful that a federal judge had to order the government not to deport Belgal out of the country (as they have done to so many before him) or move him from a detention facility outside of NY or NJ (as they have likewise done multiple times to others similarly situated) until he has his petition for habeas corpus is heard by a court. * It’s shameful that despite the judges order, it is still unclear if Belgal has already been moved. * It’s shameful that since Trump assumed office again in 2025, ICE has shot 24 resulting in at least 6 deaths (including American citizens Alex Jeffrey Pretti, Renee Good, and Ruben Ray Martinez). This is according to the New York Times as of July 2026, others have the count slightly different, for instance Reuters (October 2026) has the number at 21 shot and 7 dead. * It’s shameful that the government has not been clear on the number of ICE related shootings and the number dead at the hands of ICE agents over the last 18 months. * It’s shameful that the Trump administration recently issued a directive to ICE agents that they need to increase the number of daily arrests they are making from 2,000 to 3,000 per day. Quotas which have only served to incentivize the type of chaos and violence we saw play out on the streets of NYC yesterday. * It’s shameful that as part of its “Expansion Blitz” the Trump administration plans on putting 5,000 more ICE agents on American streets by the end of the year. * It’s shameful that as this was playing out in NYC, outrage was growing in the neighboring state of New Jersey regarding a video that captured the violent detention of man by masked federal immigration agents. The video shows a women holding a baby and a young boy trying to hold on to the handcuffed man while federal agents are pushing him in an unmarked vehicle and bystanders are calling out for them to be careful of the woman, baby, and children. * It’s shameful that this also happened on the day that the family of Silverio Villegas González, the 38 year old, unarmed, father of two, with no criminal record who was killed by an ICE agent in Chicago last year, filed a lawsuit against DHS and the FBI. His lawyers noted: “Silverio was a loving father, brother, and son. He worked hard to raise his sons and to protect them. His life was cut short senselessly and unnecessarily by our government. His death shattered a family and has caused untold trauma that will last a lifetime.” * It’s shameful that while the vast majority of Americans support common sense immigration reform, we instead have agents stalking the streets of our cities and towns and, in our name, roughing up some people, scaring others, killing some people, injuring others, deporting some people to authoritarian countries they never heard of and detaining others in conditions so horrendous that the reports are difficult to read. * It’s shameful that in February of 2024 when a bipartisan immigration bill that even the Wall Street Journal backed and urged Republicans to get behind came up for a vote, Trump and many others in the GOP refused to support it because they did not want to give the Democrats a win during an election year This is just a start, as there is undoubtedly much more that can be added to this list of shame. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jeannesheehanzaino.substack.com/subscribe

  8. Oct 6

    8 Years to the Day

    The New Realist is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Today is 8 years to the day since Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) stood on the Senate floor and announced she was voting to confirm then Supreme Court nominee (now Justice) Brett Kavanaugh. She justified her decision by praising his qualifications, noting that Christine Blasey Ford’s allegations of sexual misconduct against him could not be corroborated and most importantly, explaining he had assured her that he viewed Roe v Wade (1973) as “settled law” and a “precedent” that should not be overruled. Four years later, however, he did just that. In 2022 the Court issued its ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022) overturning Roe and decades of precedent. It was a 5-4 ruling, with Kavanaugh joining the four conservatives in the majority to cast the all-important tie breaking vote which ended the right to choose. Tonight Collins will stand before the people of Maine for the first time since she cast that vote for Kavanaugh and defend her decision in a debate with Troy Jackson, her Democratic opponent. Jackson has been pressing her on this issue for some time and he should continue. She should also be asked about her continuing support for the Trump administration’s broader agenda on everything from tariffs and immigration to healthcare and foreign policy; including the fact that her major breaks from this pattern seem suspiciously well timed to coincide with campaign season. As Chair of Senate Appropriations and someone who has, in her many years in office, “brought home the bacon” for Mainers, she should be asked to account for whether that “bacon” is enough to make up for her support for economic policies and legislation that has led to an increase in the cost of living, rent, mortgages, gas, groceries, etc.? Finally, she should be asked to explain the explosive allegation made recently in ProPublica where it is alleged that in 2024, the FBI began “a sweeping pay-to-play investigation examining interactions between Sen. Susan Collins and a top donor.” Collins has denied the charges, but skirted the details contained in the story. This is the first of four debates between the two and since it is the anniversary of her decision to confirm Kavanaugh, Jackson should lean into that as much as possible. This week also marks the start of the new Supreme Court term and just the other day, Justice Sam Alito noted he considers resigning every year. He since clarified that he has no intention of resigning in the lame duck even if the Democrats win Congress. But even the discussion of a Justice potentially resigning is a reminder as to how much is at stake as the people of Maine, and around the country, cast their votes for Senate this November. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jeannesheehanzaino.substack.com/subscribe

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A REALIST'S VIEW OF DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA AND AROUND THE WORLD jeannesheehanzaino.substack.com

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  • Creator
    Jeanne Sheehan Zaino
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    156
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Jeanne Sheehan Zaino
  • Show Website
    The New Realist Podcast