Stress Test, from Mother Jones

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The midterms aren't just a horse race. They're a stress test, a referendum on where the country is headed, assuming the guy in the White House lets voters weigh in at all. Stress Test, from Mother Jones, is a pop-up video podcast tracking the fight, the money, and the lies—and hunting hard for hope—all the way through Election Day. Washington Bureau Chief David Corn and Video Correspondent Garrison Hayes connect the day's headlines to our newsroom's deeply reported coverage. We'll dig into the real threat of election interference; a crop of extreme, scandal-soaked candidates; immigration enforcement and its fallout; the remaking of Washington, physically and ideologically; the backlash against data centers; the war in Iran; a desperate president whose numbers are cratering; and what opposition politics could look like once the votes are counted. Tune in every Wednesday and Friday.

  1. 5h ago

    The Last Days of MAGA: The Scramble to Dump Trump

    The country is only hours into a stunning new reality: Democrats will now control both houses of Congress after voters staged a nationwide rout of the Republican Party. We’re still digging into the ramifications of the earthquake that hit last night—a change that David Corn calls “a political revolution... done through the ballot box.” On this day-after episode of Stress Test, Garrison Hayes and David unpack what this mandate means and what happens next. They focus on a new, deeply diverse batch of Democratic talent that has been catapulted into power. With its message of faith, healing, and inclusion, this new coalition forged a fierce repudiation of Trump's politics of grievance. "These leaders, they're young... and they're talking about how to bring America, all of America, into the future,” David notes, pointing to their rejection of the MAGA "us versus them" playbook. As Garrison observes, "We're not trying to go back... we're trying to go forward." Meanwhile, the GOP fallout has quickly turned vicious, as the jockeying for 2028 began. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is openly calling the GOP wipe out an “extinction-level event” and criticizing Trump policies and actions for causing it. And JD Vance is frantically trying to distance himself from Trump blaming his boss’ disastrous war in Iran for the Republican implosion. "Welcome to the GOP circular firing squad,” David says, noting that it’s more accurately described asa "snake pit" of ambitious Republicans "with their fangs out, fighting over the scraps of a dying political empire." But will Trump allow Vance to separate himself from the failures of this White House and accept such disloyalty? Not likely. “We've all watched many a mob movie, and of course, The Sopranos," David points out. "The mob boss doesn't just let you leave and walk out." National Correspondent Tim Murphy also drops in to dive deeper into why the issue of corruption finally broke through with the American electorate. “Affordability provided all of the data points, but corruption provided the plot,” Tim explains, noting that voters connected their own economic pain to Washington's grift and graft. Finally, David and Garrison offer a stark reality check for the incoming majority. Amid the celebrations, Garrison warnsDemocrats, "You cannot have power and not use it." Campaigns are hard, they note, but quite soon the tough task of governing will begin. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

    The Last Days of MAGA: The Scramble to Dump Trump

  2. 1d ago

    America to Trump: You're a Loser

    Tonight was a massive repudiation of Trump, his rampant corruption and his politics of fear, bigotry, and division. Across the map, Democrats defeated Republicans in race after race, gaining control of both the House and Senate. As they recorded this special election night episode, Stress Test cohosts David Corn and Garrison Hayes analyzed this historic moment, shaped by surprising upsets in South Carolina, Ohio, Texas, and elsewhere.  “I’m calling this the Trump hangover election,” David said. “It’s as if voters woke up, it’s the morning after. They made a bad decision the night before, and now they’re correcting that. This is buyer’s remorse.” For Garrison, the night’s meaning was captured by Keisha Lance Bottoms, the newly elected Democratic governor of Georgia, who will become the first Black woman to lead any state. “Black women have experienced, over the last decade, a kind of psychological injury, a kind of pummeling,” he said. “Tonight is a really significant moment, not just with Keisha Lance Bottoms in Georgia, but Juliana Stratton in Illinois, the first Black woman elected to the Senate from that state.” What’s more, this Democratic victory occurred in the face of maximum Republican gerrymandering,“They thought they were so darn clever,” David said. “And yet the best-laid plans of mice and men, and racist Republicans often go astray.” Mother Jones voting rights correspondent Ari Berman joined the show, to document the backlash to GOP map-rigging. “They’re not lowering gas prices, they’re not ending the war, they’re not making anything more affordable. What are they doing? They’re rigging the districts to try to choose their own electorate,” Ari said. “I think it just pissed people off.” And the night’s larger lesson, in David’s telling, is that Trump has always fared well as a performative candidate, when he’s pretending to be the big daddy nationalist hero. But when the question is his performance as president, voters say, no, no, no, no, no. That’s not what we want.” We’ll be back with more analysis soon, as we unpack the tectonic implications of this historic night. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

    America to Trump: You're a Loser

  3. 2d ago

    "Despicable Betrayal”: The Wild Final Hours Before America Votes

    It’s almost over, and on this special Election Eve edition of Stress Test, David Corn and Garrison Hayes deconstruct the manic final moments before America votes. The big last-minute surprise was the 11th-hour bombshell out of Michigan. Defeated Democratic primary contender Haley Stevens sent shockwaves through the political world on Sunday when she rescinded her support for Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed and endorsed Republican nominee Mike Rogers—a move that drew fierce condemnation from Democratic leadership and praise from Donald Trump.  What was especially odd was that Stevens could not clearly explain her rationale for this decision. But she claimed she felt “hurt” by El-Sayed. It was like a soap opera might determine control of the Senate. "American democracy may hinge on who wins the Senate," David observes, "and who wins the Senate may hinge on this little personal vendetta." Garrison highlights the bitter irony of Stevens—who spent years cultivating a reputation as an "Obama-adjacent Black voter whisperer"—rolling out her GOP endorsement inside a Detroit Black church, leaving local Black voters feeling deeply blindsided and betrayed. From there, the hosts examine the limits of late-stage polling and the preemptive legal battles being waged by the Trump administration over ballots in California and Alaska. Garrison points out, "If confidence is to be measured by the way the Trump administration has been handling elections before votes have even really been counted, I don't know if they're showing very much confidence." The early legal maneuvering may well be a prelude to the post-election fights to come. Next, reporter Noah Lanard calls in from a car in upstate New York after trailing Vice President JD Vance's last-minute rally for GOP sticker-magnate-turned-candidate Anthony Constantino, who has dumped $17 million of his own fortune into a House race. Why is the GOP dispatching the veep to a deep-red district that Trump carried by 21 points? As Noah says, "If you told me a year ago this is where I would be on election eve, I would kind of do a spit take and immediately say, okay, something has gone horribly wrong for Republicans." Noah describes the surreal scene of Constantino lambasting reporters as not the “fake news” but as the "evil news" who should be "deleted," before riding off on a mobility scooter alongside an elderly veteran across an airplane hangar. Before signing off, David and Garrison examine key races to watch on election night, including a bellwether House contest in Kentucky’s 6th congressional district, where polls will close at 6:00 p.m. ET, as well as  high-stakes showdowns in Pennsylvania, Kansas, Georgia, and Tennessee. Stress Test will be back for an Election Night special to break down the returns in real time. Until then, as David notes, "Every time American voters have had a chance to judge Trump's performance in office... they've wanted to throw the bum out." The midterms will show if that pattern holds. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

  4. 5d ago

    The Final Countdown: MAGA’s Racist Blitz and Trump’s Next Big Lie

    “Let’s start off by saying, Garrison, this is all lies. It’s ludicrous. I mean, they’re saying things that are just not true.” That’s Stress Test host David Corn, describing to his co-host Garrison Hayes the barrage of Islamophobic attacks from Republicans desperate to hold on to Congress. As this episode shows, the GOP—from Donald Trump to JD Vance to Cabinet secretaries to senators and representatives—has made hateful bigotry a central element of its final midterms push.Those assaults have primarily targeted Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, with Vance calling him a “cancer” with “zero attachment” to America’s land or history; Sen. Ted Cruz falsely labeling El-Sayed a “theocratic zealot” and lifelong Muslim Brotherhood supporter; and Ohio Sen. Bernie Moreno declaring El-Sayed doesn’t belong in Washington, DC, because he doesn’t believe “Jesus came here for our salvation”. Pointing out that Moreno appeared to be establishing a religious test for service in Congress, David says, “That’s not what the Constitution says. That is what Christian nationalists say.” The race-baiting doesn’t stop there: Donald Trump warned that El-Sayed and Democrats will invite “hordes of jihadists” until Americans “cannot even have a Christmas. What does all this bode for Tuesday? That’s one of the themes of this episode, as David points out that this divide-and-conquer racism and white nationalism has been building within the GOP for years: “They really have been heading toward—I should say, maybe galloping toward—this view that there are different types of Americans, and white Christians are the only true Americans out there. “But this election is gonna tell us whether motivating the far-right base is enough for Republicans to win, even in red states.” To that end, Garrison and David bring in Mother Jones national voting rights correspondent Ari Berman, who has been on the ground in Alabama reporting on the backlash to the Supreme Court’s Louisiana v. Callais decision, which gutted the Voting Rights Act and allowed Republican legislatures across the South to gerrymander to dismantle majority-Black congressional districts.  “This Callais decision has really resonated,” Ari reports. “This is the Dobbs decision of 2026,” referring to the 2022  ruling that abolished the constitutional right to an abortion. “It has motivated Black voters like the Dobbs decision motivated women voters in the last midterm election.”Black voters are acutely aware of why their rights are being targeted, Ari says: “They kept saying to me, ‘If our votes didn’t matter, why are they trying so hard to dilute our power, to gerrymander us out of representation?’” The resulting surge in early voting may be one reason why Trump appears to be on the defensive, forced to spend critical campaign days shoring up deep-red strongholds like Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi. Still, another threat looms after the votes are cast, when Trump’s election-interference schemes might kick into gear. The good news, according to Ari, “is that you can’t nullify an election through Truth Social, okay?” Even so, Republican legal challenges are already underway, and “what I worry about,” Ari says, “is what happens after the legal process has played out, ’cause I think that’s where things went crazy in 2020.”The MAGA playbook at this point is clear: suppress the vote, stoke the base, then cry foul. Whether that strategy prevails will be determined by voters on Tuesday. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

  5. Oct 28

    "Creepy, Weird": MAGA Flops Abroad and Flails at Home

    With the midterms less than a week away, the closing stretch of the campaign is full of bad omens for MAGA abroad and peak weirdness at home. In Serbia and Brazil, Trump allies suffered stinging and surprising defeats driven in part by energized voter turnout. An anti-corruption youth movement spearheaded the surge in Serbia, while Brazil saw a dramatic comeback for President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who defeated staunch Trump ally Flávio Bolsonaro.  “Both of the losing candidates, Bolsonaro in Brazil and Vučić in Serbia, wrapped themselves around Donald Trump,” co-host David Corn says on this episode of Stress Test. “So we see in Serbia and Hungary authoritarian figures who try to emulate and ride the Trump wave being tossed out of office. And in [South America], where we've seen a right-wing tide… they beat it back” in Brazil. There’s a growing sense that voters worldwide are fed up with government grift. As David puts it: “Corruption seems to be the point of the spear.” Meanwhile, the Israeli election—where the final results are still uncertain—also was something of a referendum on Trump, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attempting to retain power by promoting his close ties to Trump.  Back home, former President Barack Obama and Trump were each on the campaign trail in closing sprints. Obama is getting spicy, hitting Trump on his tacky taste and alleged corruption. Trump, meanwhile, has been obsessively commenting on physical anatomy—specifically “asses”—in one of the stranger closing arguments in modern American political history. “This has to be like the definition of being off message,” co-host Garrison Hayes observes. “Like, definitionally off message.”   Trump’s fixation on rear-ends extended to rapper Nicki Minaj, who appeared at a rally, where Trump asked her to stand and extolled her derriere, fueling the silly rumor she might be named press secretary after the brief tenure of Katie “Half a Scaramucci” Zacharia.“It reminds me of what happened in 2016 when Trump was campaigning and he would say, ‘Hey, where’s my Black friend?’” David recalls. For Garrison, the gambit is all-too familiar: “Here we are in the closing moments of this midterm election, and the way that the Trump administration has decided to utilize a Black person in order to, I imagine, appeal to Black voters is offensive. It’s almost a caricature of the kind of racism that has become emblematic of this administration.” All of this unfolds against an unprecedented deluge of generative AI “slop” and grotesque attack ads. David and Garrison run through the best and worst of the midterms’ campaign ads, , They also unpack how the White House has weaponized viral memes for crude attacks—including altering footage from Charlie Wilson’s NPR Tiny Desk performance of the 1982 Gap Band hit “Outstanding” to include top Democrats, including  House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries in a sombrero—a callback to a racist tropeTrump’s crew hasdeployed before. “This feels like the slop election in some ways, right?” Garrison says. “Incoherent is the name of the game.” Other ads have been total cringe, notably an ad from California Republican gubernatorial hopeful Steve Hilton that bizarrely equates voting GOP with experimenting with lesbian sex. (Yes, you read that right.) “Creepy, creepy, weird,” David says. What else can one say? There are only a few more shows left before Election Night next Tuesday, when we’ll bring the biggest news of the day straight to your feed as soon as we can. Make sure to hit subscribe so you don’t miss an episode. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

    "Creepy, Weird": MAGA Flops Abroad and Flails at Home

  6. Oct 23

    Mamdani on Trump, Floods, and the Fight Over Data Centers

    His name might not be on the ballot this November, but New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is undoubtedly one of the most influential figures in American politics right now. After his barrier-breaking victory late last year, Mamdani has emerged as the face of the no-holds-barred progressive movement and has spent the season leveraging his rising capital to shape races with a string of endorsements. In this episode of Stress Test, co-host Garrison Hayes sits down one-on-one with Mayor Mamdani in front of a live audience at The New School’s Tishman Auditorium during Climate Week NYC last month—for an event co-presented by Mother Jones, Capital B, and the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.With the midterms looming, Mamdani dives into an issue rapidly redefining the political landscape: the nationwide AI data center building boom. He breaks down why the surging demand for energy and resources it creates isn’t just a tech story but an urgent, kitchen-table climate issue motivating voters across party lines. And, naturally, any chat with Mamdani manages to find its way to New York’s basketball heroes, the Knicks.  But with an unexpected, headline-grabbing guest visiting Gracie Mansion just days before the event, there was only one place Garrison could start: Why does Donald Trump like him so much?“ The conversations that we have are not just those of a mayor and a president,” the mayor said after quelling laughter from the audience, “but also of two New Yorkers—two New Yorkers who have many differences of opinion, but two New Yorkers who also do love this city.”“As long as someone can help the city, I’ll talk to him,” he added. Climate change has been an almost daily stressor, the mayor told the audience. “We’ve been in office for close to ten months. And in that time, one out of three days, we have been in a flash flood emergency. One out of three days. And that is staggering to me, because it is a distillation of the fact that the climate crisis is fundamentally changing our day-to-day realities.” Mamdani sees a sea change in climate messaging that can connect with the voting public. “For too long it has felt like the way that climate is treated in public discourse is almost as if it’s a concern that some can afford to have, while others have to deal with more immediate crises,” he told Garrison, pointing to real-world impacts like rising insurance rates and aging flood infrastructure. “This is not a luxury concern.” In particular, Mamdani sees hope in the way data centers have galvanized local resistance across the country. “I think there are a lot of people who care about data centers who might not even understand that care is a climate concern,” he explained. “When you look at data centers and you look at the opposition to it, it goes beyond one party. It is one of the most bipartisan issues in this country right now. And that also shows that that, too, could be the coalition against the climate crisis.” Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

    Mamdani on Trump, Floods, and the Fight Over Data Centers

  7. Oct 21

    Meet the Trump-Backed Candidates Drowning in Scandal

    A candidate for governor in Colorado said living together without getting married leads to demonic possession. A Senate candidate in Georgia featured in his campaign materials his son-in-law, who has promoted white nationalist and antisemitic content online. And then there’s a new ad in the Ohio governor race, weaponizing the childhood trauma of his Democratic rival.“ There are some bat crap crazy Republicans on the ballot,” says David Corn on this episode of Stress Test. Across the country, many Trump-endorsed candidates are now mired in self-inflicted scandals or displaying the kind of extremism normalized by MAGA’s takeover of the GOP. These candidates, win or lose, will be part of Trump’s legacy, David predicts. Even though the Republicans are “heading for a major drubbing on Election Day,” David says, “there’s still gonna be a tremendous amount of right-wing extremism within the GOP.” David and co-host Garrison Hayes detail the unsavory allegations hitting GOP midterm candidates—spotlighting, in particular, investigations broken by Mother Jones reporters Abby Vesoulis and Noah Lanard. Abby reviewed thousands of pages of filings involving Ohio Rep. Max Miller, whose ex-wife—the daughter of Sen. Bernie Moreno—told investigators Miller threw hot water at her, held a gun to her head, and shoved her against a wall. Authorities also investigated their toddler’s broken collarbone. Their finding was inconclusive, and Miller has denied abusing anyone. But Cook Political Report soon shifted his once-safe seat to a toss-up, and Abby kept surfacing details from the custody battle—including text messages indicating Miller repeatedly withheld his daughter’s beloved blue bunny. Meanwhile, Noah has spent weeks digging into David Flippo, a Trump-backed Republican running for an open Reno-area seat, discovering a Bronze Star with valor he never received, four required financial disclosures he never filed, and more than $2.5 million he says he poured into his campaigns while apparently borrowing money to redo his floors. “If I’m a Republican congressional candidate and I get a phone call from you,” David jokes to Noah, “I should start to worry.” Garrison wonders what it might take for voters to push back against extremism: “What we’re seeing here is that even for some voters who are loyal to the Republican Party, racism is not a deal-breaker. Antisemitism is not a deal-breaker,” he says. “White nationalism, neo-Nazism—this stuff is not a deal-breaker for them.”  We’ll know for sure in just under two weeks. Producer: HyoJung Kim Assistant producer: Sonel Cutler Senior Editor: David RitsherExecutive editor: James West Hosts: David Corn, Garrison Hayes Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

    Meet the Trump-Backed Candidates Drowning in Scandal

  8. Oct 16

    Panic Attack: Inside Musk's Midterm Disinformation Blitz

    Election Day is less than three weeks away, and panic is setting in for the GOP. “We see Republican groups pulling money away from House incumbents,” says host David Corn on the latest episode of Stress Test. “They’re cutting them off. They’re saying, ‘So long, Charlie! We don’t think you’re going to survive this blue tsunami.’” The one lifeline Republicans have right now is big money—and nothing gets bigger than Elon Musk, who has poured $366 million into this election cycle in an attempt to rescue at-riskRepublicans, making him the biggest known political donor in midterms history. But David warns, “It’s not just money with Elon Musk. It’s also disinformation.” On this episode, David and fellow host Garrison Hayes check the state of the race as we hurtle toward November. They’re joined by senior reporter Anna Merlan, who has been tracking Musk-amplified disinformation attacks on Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico, who’s been the target of a MAGA operation that falsely claimed he left the campaign trail for a secret stay in an Ohio mental hospital—as well as a homophobic smear from Vice President JD Vance. “This new stuff about him being gay and mentally ill—that’s an escalation,” Anna says. And she’s watching for more: “What tends to happen on X.com these days, especially after Elon Musk took it over, is that there is a lot of disinformation in October leading up to elections—purported leaks of consequential information.” Meanwhile, Garrison and David discuss the epic fall of Kimberly Guilfoyle, ousted as U.S. ambassador to Greece after a report that she asked a donor to pay off a $100,000 Amex bill in return for providing him access to administration officials, and the shocking DHS raid on Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar’s Washington, DC., home. They explore the Trump administration’s pattern of targeting prominent Black women and what David dubs Trump’s “personal vendetta” against Omar. You’d think a president staring down lame-duck status would have bigger worries than settling scores. After all, reality on the campaign trail is biting hard: “Trump is running around the country trying to shore up Republicans in states where he should not need to be campaigning,” David says. All that, and your audience questions answered, on this Friday edition of “Stress Test,” our special midterms video podcast. Producer: HyoJung Kim Assistant producer: Sonel Cutler Executive editor: James West Hosts: David Corn, Garrison Hayes Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

    Panic Attack: Inside Musk's Midterm Disinformation Blitz
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The midterms aren't just a horse race. They're a stress test, a referendum on where the country is headed, assuming the guy in the White House lets voters weigh in at all. Stress Test, from Mother Jones, is a pop-up video podcast tracking the fight, the money, and the lies—and hunting hard for hope—all the way through Election Day. Washington Bureau Chief David Corn and Video Correspondent Garrison Hayes connect the day's headlines to our newsroom's deeply reported coverage. We'll dig into the real threat of election interference; a crop of extreme, scandal-soaked candidates; immigration enforcement and its fallout; the remaking of Washington, physically and ideologically; the backlash against data centers; the war in Iran; a desperate president whose numbers are cratering; and what opposition politics could look like once the votes are counted. Tune in every Wednesday and Friday.

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  • Creator
    Mother Jones
  • Years Active
    2018 - 2026
  • Episodes
    207
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Center for Investigative Reporting
  • Show Website
    Stress Test, from Mother Jones

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