Women belong in the House Wonder Media Network

We’re bringing you an episode of a new podcast we think you’ll love: The Amendment. A new podcast about gender, politics, and power from The 19th News and Wonder Media Network, The Amendment is hosted by award-winning journalist and 19th editor-at-large Errin Haines.

Each week, Errin sits down with people who have fresh perspectives on the state of our country – and asks questions that center the voices of women, queer folks, and people of color. The Amendment adds much needed asterisks to America’s most pressing political conversations – and gets clear on the unfinished work of our democracy.

In this episode, we hear from Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones on what role the free press should play in ensuring the survival of our democracy.

Nikole Hannah-Jones is the creator of the 1619 Project, Knight Chair in Race and Journalism at Howard University, and a leading voice on the vital role of journalism in our democracy today. In the inaugural episode of The Amendment, Errin and Nikole discuss the current state of journalism, the high stakes of this presidential election, the importance of historical context in our political moment, the challenges faced by Black women in journalism and more. 

When it comes to the failure of the 1971 Comprehensive Childcare Development Act, it's easy to point a finger at conservatives. But that's not the whole story.

This week, join host Julie as she dives into the battle between care feminism and career feminism, and how the winner of that match up has impacted women's right advocacy for the last 50 years.

Although the Build Back Better Act could not deliver on all the care economy issues, there is still reason for hope. With a bipartisan oriented strategy, some of these issues can still get through the House and the Senate – universal pre-k being one of those. On our final episode of the series, Jenny and Julie are joined by Representative Kathy Manning to discuss the importance of universal pre-k and what the future holds for care infrastructure.

This week, Julie dives deep into the economic ideology that arose alongside social conservatism and prevented public investments in care.

We’ll break down what “neoliberalism” is and what the rise of it has meant for family life -- how the mix of low taxes, deregulation, and privatization has made family life more economically precarious for the vast majority of Americans.

The American child care system is full of contradiction. For individual families, care costs keep rising. But many caregivers are barely paid a living wage. The Build Back Better Act would have been the first federal intervention in this sector in fifty years. Without it, this broken cycle continues. On today’s episode, Jenny and Julie are joined by Assistant Speaker Katherine Clark to discuss the precarious state of our care economy.

How did the U.S. become a society that treats caregiving as a private family responsibility rather than a public good?

In this episode, Julie explores the longstanding and continued role racism has played in preventing investments in public goods that would benefit everyone, including caregiving. We’ll also do a deep dive into the 1970s when the U.S. nearly invested in universal childcare -- and how fear was deployed to block it.