This ain't your daddy's federalism. Heather Gerkin of Yale Law School tries to convince Jimmy that even though federalism (or states' rights) was used in the past to keep segregation in place, today it can be used to knock down discriminatory laws.By The Scripps Washington Bureau

People really don't like Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. But will that matter come election time? Probably not. Are voters ditching the parties in droves to declare themselves independents? Not really.Take everything you think you know about this election cycle and throw it out the window, says Alan Abramowitz, a professor of political science at…

Every campaign season has its winners and its losers - but there are some people who win no matter what happens. Political consultants are considered a necessity in today's elections, and about half of all money spent in campaigns is going through consultants, whether their candidate wins or loses. Adam Sheingate, a professor at Johns Hopkins Unive…

Nearly a year after the Supreme Court made marriage equality the law of the land, the main plaintiff in the case, Jim Obergefell, has released a new book called ‘Love Wins.’ On the latest DecodeDC podcast, host Jimmy Williams talks with Obergefell about the book, his relationship and marriage, the legal road to the Supreme Court and other plaintiff…

Bernie Sanders isn't giving up. The Vermont senator is vying for a contested convention in Philadelphia this July, even as Hillary Clinton has reportedly reached the golden number of delegates to win the Democratic nomination.As is par for the course this election cycle, the convention this summer could be full of surprise, drama and who knows what…

Can you feel the Bern yet? With the California primary less than a week away, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders continues to battle erstwhile frontrunner Hillary Clinton despite a clear deficit in delegates. The longtime independent has staked his campaign on grassroots support from middle and working class voters, but it's a different electorate that…

One grew up the daughter of a Navy petty officer in 1950s suburban Chicago, the other spent formative years in Indonesia before being raised by his grandparents in Hawaii. Their experiences couldn’t have been more different but over the last eight years, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have become the twin pillars of the Democratic Party. Once riv…

Dick Durbin is a four-term senator and the Democratic whip, whose job is to keep the party together. So what does he make of the fact that the GOP has its presidential nominee while the Democrats are still fractured? ”It’s a split that can help us,” he says. This week on the podcast, we speak with the senator about the biggest lesson he’s learned f…

Quick, what do these things have in common: Cocoa Pebbles and Winston cigarettes? One answer might be that Fred Flintstone is their biggest fan. Another might be that they’re highly addictive.And that’s not the only thing they share. When former dentist Cristin Kearns was told at a conference that sugary sweet tea was a healthy choice, she went sea…

And then there was one. Following the Indiana primary earlier this week, Ted Cruz made the inevitable but shocking decision to suspended his presidential campaign. Less than 24-hours later, John Kasich followed suit. That makes real estate developer and reality tv star Donald Trump the presumptive Republican nominee.But the one remaining candidate …

In 1942, Norman Mineta and his family were forced from their home in San Jose, California and into an internment camp in Wyoming. The Minetas were among tens of thousands of Japanese-Americans subjected to internment in the aftermath of Pearl HarborMineta left the camp in 1945 and went on to become the first non-white mayor of San Jose. Then, as a …

More than 70 years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a decision often regarded as one of the worst in its long history.In Korematsu v. United States, the court validated putting American citizens in internment camps during wartime, based on their race or ethnicity. The decision came in the wake of President Franklin Roosevelt’s Executive Orde…

She’s made millions of dollars, achieved world-wide fame and yet, former world number one tennis pro Martina Navratilova likes to spend her days tweeting about...politics.The tennis legend is a self-identified liberal, and two major events affected her politics and how she sees the world. At age 18, she defected from the then-Communist country of C…

When Ronald Reagan signed the 1986 Tax Reform Act into law, the Republican president hoped that the law would simplify the tax code and close loopholes. Reforming the tax code had been Reagan’s number one domestic priority during his campaign and it took him more than two years of wrangling members of Congress, even pushing past a blockade by House…

When Hillary Clinton first ran for president in 2008, forecasters and prognosticators quickly seized on what they perceived as a concerted effort to project an image of strength, in part by de-emphasizing her gender. But eight years later, her 2016 campaign seems to be embracing her potentially historic election as the country's first female presid…

The 2016 presidential election is on track to becoming the most expensive campaign in U.S. history. But the the Federal Election Commission, charged with regulating how that campaign money is raised and spent, may be the least understood and most ineffective agency of them all.On the latest DecodeDC podcast, host Jimmy Williams sits down with three…

On the latest DecodeDC podcast, host Jimmy Williams sits down with Scripps Investigative Reporter Mark Greenblatt about his 6-month-long investigation into problems at the Cincinnati VA. Greenblatt teamed up with WCPO reporter Dan Monk, who together connected with more than 30 whistleblowers. They discovered that a new solution created to solve the…

The status of the Supreme Court in American government has ebbed and flowed since the Constitution was ratified. But starting in the 1950s, the Court has had a long and unchallenged reign of extraordinary power and authority as the final guardian of the Constitution. In the sweep of history, this is a great aberration, not the norm.This week on the…

Madeleine Albright describes herself as a late bloomer but boy, has she made something of that late push. After starting her political career as a Senate staffer at the age of 39, Albright went on to the National Security Council, before serving as UN ambassador and the country’s first female secretary of state.On the latest DecodeDC podcast, host …

Superdelegates. Maybe you’ve heard something about them, but might not know how they came to be, how they work, who they are and why they matter. But if you want to make sense of the delegate math in this year’s Democratic contest, you need to understand what a superdelegate is.Bob Shrum was there when superdelegates were created. The long time Dem…

Long ago in South Carolina, an unholy alliance was made to keep the races separate. In the second episode of our two-part series on the politics of race in the Palmetto State, we introduce you to two of the people who keep that pact going. And they hate it.So while all the talking heads and politicians turn their attention to this Saturday’s Democr…

Right now, a battle is being waged between Apple and the government over encryption. A federal court has ordered the tech giant to unlock an iPhone used by one of the attackers in the San Bernardino shooting that left 14 people dead. Apple is fighting the order, and a huge public debate is going on about privacy and protection.A few months ago, rig…

From 2010-2014, more than 200,000 people moved to South Carolina. The South is the fastest growing region of the county but unlike its neighbors, the Palmetto state seems to be stuck in time.South Carolina’s schools rank 43rd in the nation. The median income in South Carolina is $44,000 dollars a year. That's nearly $10,000 dollars less than the na…

Today Americans view privacy as a fundamental civil liberty, a right that puts a boundary on what the government can do. Our ‘right to privacy’ has become part of the essential contract Americans make with their government, a system that protects individuals from the government’s ability to intrude into the private sphere.But it wasn’t so long ago …

Adams, Bush, Clinton, Kennedy. Somehow the same family names keep popping up in American politics. And that raises the question: Why, in a proudly democratic country, do we wind up with something that doesn’t feel very democratic?This week on the podcast, guest host Michelle Cottle speaks with historian Stephen Hess about our obsession with politic…

Beyoncé had it right. Who runs the world? Girls.Just ask Jay Newtown-Small, a Time magazine correspondent and author of the new book, “Broad Influence: How Women Are Changing the Way America Works.”This week on the podcast, Newton-Small speaks with host Jimmy Williams about her experience reporting her book and it’s key takeaway: once women make up…

From the outside looking in, Brian Sims seems to have it all. He’s young, energetic, well liked, and his political career’s on the rise. After becoming one of the first openly gay college football players in NCAA history, Sims went on to law school and embarked on a career as an LGBT activist before becoming the first openly gay candidate elected t…

We thought you might enjoy a look at Scripps News' newest podcast, TrailMix 2016 - a weekly conversation about the state of the campaign.This week’s topics include: Is it time to take Bernie Sanders seriously? What about Bill Clinton and women? Do endorsements make a difference? And, what does Nickelback have to do with the campaign?Join Scripps po…

Jeremy Frimer, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Winnipeg, teamed up with some other researchers in Canada and Germany and tried to answer this question: Why do the American people seem to hate Congress so much? And what they found was that it’s all about what Congress says, not what it does.…

From members of Congress jockeying for the best tv spot, to constant interruptions of applause, the State of the Union address has become a primetime spectacle.On our latest podcast, former Capitol Hill staffer and current lobbyist Steve Moffitt offers up some advice on how to fix the State of the Union.…

Jimmy Williams is a veteran of Washington, D.C.'s political scene, engaging in nearly every facet of American politics, as a congressional staffer then lobbyist and now, as DecodeDC's new host.Podcasting is new to Jimmy, so he sought ought the advice of some experienced pros, including Gimlet Media CEO and Start-Up host Alex Blumberg , the Daily Ca…

It's been a big year in politics - and an even bigger one is on its way. Before we dive into the coming year of campaigns, candidates, and conventions, host Jimmy Williams sits down with DecodeDC's producers and editors to talk about some of our best moments from the last year.From our deep dive into America's prison problem, to our explorations of…

Tis the season of year-end lists – and so we offer our second annual Lie of the Year podcast thanks to our friends from PolitiFact, the fact-checking Website.PolitiFact Editor Angie Drobnic-Holan talks us through this year’s top 10.By The Scripps Washington Bureau

Conservative media has gone through surprising changes in recent years, not that many people outside that orbit have noticed. There is a world of talk radio, podcasts and websites far bigger, a new breed like the commentator Steve Deace, who are more conservative and, surprisingly, more hostile to the Republican party than Fox News and Rush Limbaug…

In today’s political atmosphere of partisan bickering and congressional dysfunction, there’s something reassuring about reflecting on a time when things actually worked on Capitol Hill.On the latest DecodeDC podcast, we’re traveling back to the 1940s to tell you a story about Congress at its very best. It’s a story about a little known senator name…

This week on DecodeDC, Dick Meyer and Dr. Anthony King discuss American elections and how they're viewed abroad. King is a British professor of comparative government and the author of "Running Scared: Why America’s Politicians Campaign Too Much and Govern Too Little," He questions some of the fundamental assumptions Americans make about what an el…

As you sit around the dining room table this week with family and friends, giving thanks and enjoying roasted turkey, creamy mashed potatoes and warm stuffing, here’s something to keep in mind: Some of that food you’re chowing down might have originated in a military lab.Every once in awhile we like to re-run one of our more popular episodes, and t…

In the wake of the terrorist attacks in Paris, the battle between privacy versus public safety has become ever more relevant. Law enforcement agencies maintain that the same encryption you use on your cell phone to keep your private information safe has become a tool for criminals and terrorists.Scripps News and the Toronto Star teamed up over the …

At this point, the Washington federal budget cycle is pretty well established. A stalemated federal government leads to the predictable standoff. Cue the shutdown clocks on cable news, ignore the threats lobbed between members of Congress and await the prospect of “closed’ signs at federal agencies and national parks.On the latest DecodeDC podcast,…

The Electoral College - it's something we have to deal with during every presidential election. But should we? This week on the podcast, we look at how and why the Electoral College system came to be.We also talk with Dr. John Koza, chairman of the National Popular Vote, a movement dedicated to changing the presidential election process entirely. I…

Capitol Hill can be horrifying…On this bonus episode of DecodeDC, we focus on the spookier aspects of Capitol Hill during a ghost tour with ScaryDC. Long-dead Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase comes back to walk us through the stories of haunted architects, spectral spies, and General Logan’s stuffed horse.…

Things are pretty weird in the House of Representatives right now. Paul Ryan was just chosen to be the next speaker of the House, a position he never wanted, after a fractured Republican Party united behind him.Republicans have the largest majority of seats in the House since 1920, so it should be a golden time to move their agenda forward. Instead…

It’s a bizarre question at first: Is our capacity for meaningful, soul-nourishing conversation something that can go away? Sherry Turkle, professor of psychology at MIT, and author of “Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in the Digital Age”, says yes, emphatically.On this episode of DecodeDC, Dick Meyer has a long conversation with Turkle ab…

If it seems impossible to talk about poverty in the U.S. without talking about race and culture, that's thanks in large part to one man: Daniel Patrick Moynihan. In 1965, Moynihan wrote a government memo that changed the way we think about poverty. In this episode, writers Peter-Christian Aigner and Stephanie Coontz weigh in on the report's legacy,…

Nestled in the woods just outside of Boston sits the U.S. Army Natick Soldier Systems Center. The base does research on the necessities soldiers need on the frontline, such as clothing, shoes, body armor and food.Part of Natick’s mandate is to get the food science it uses in producing military combat rations onto grocery store shelves and into your…

DecodeDC reporter Miranda Green and producer Eric Krupke recently took a trip to the frontlines of the 2016 battlefield -- a rally for Sanders in North Carolina and one for Trump in Texas. And what they learned was surprising. While visibly different on the surface, the events had one clear similarity: supporters, on both sides of the political spe…

Less than 24 hours after touching down on U.S. soil for the very first time, Pope Francis made quite clear his stance on issues such as immigration and climate change.Confronting major global disputes with forceful words is nothing new for Pope Francis. He has used the worldwide papacy platform to speak out on issues both inside and outside the chu…

Antoine Lynch is having a hard time finding an affordable place to live. That is, until the DC government provided him with a housing voucher that guaranteed partial payment of his monthly rent. But, when he called around to housing complexes where he wanted to live - apartments that were in neighborhoods with grocery stores, good schools, and low …

We think our cities look a certain way because of people’s choices and preferences, but it turns out, the government has had a huge hand in keeping neighborhoods separate and unequal. This week on DecodeDC, we tackle the question that’s been vexing the country for more than half a century, how much can, and should, the government do to right its pa…

This week’s podcast challenges a political sacred cow. In fact, it might be the mother of all sacred cows. It is the belief that foreign terrorism is one of the most serious threats to the safety of Americans and the security of what since 9/11 we have called the “homeland.”That belief is deep. The facts supporting it are thin. But it is a premise …