If you work hard in the United States, there is no limit to the possibility of what you might achieve. That’s the American Dream. But the reality is that America today increasingly resembles aristocratic societies of the past, which were characterized by little social mobility and dramatic inequality perpetuated in part by the passage of enormous f…

Rebekah Mercer may be the most powerful woman in conservative politics today, and she’s never held--and probably will never run for--elected office. Since 2004, Rebekah Mercer has been the director of the Mercer Family Foundation, which means for nearly twenty years she has been one of the key people who is in charge of how her father Robert Mercer…

Mayor Pete is now Secretary Buttigieg, which means that the former Mayor of South Bend, Indiana, is now a member of the Biden Administration. A surprisingly popular presidential candidate in 2020, Buttigieg has an unusual story, and in just a few years, he’s gone from planning bike lanes and roundabouts to overseeing the nation’s highways, airports…

In 2020, Andrew Yang ran for president, and although he never really had a serious chance, he became a familiar name, and a familiar face. In 2021, he’s running for Mayor of New York City, and this time, he might win. If he does, Yang will face an enormous challenge: navigating one of the world’s most important cities through an uncertain recovery.…

Unless you’re lucky enough to live on another planet, you’ve probably heard about the climate crisis. It’s a problem we must address if we want humanity--and the rest of the Earth’s animal and plant population--to continue to survive and thrive. But in order for that surviving and thriving to happen, we must immediately and definitively cut emissio…

Americans aren’t in agreement about much these days, but there does appear to be one thing that they overwhelmingly support: legalizing the medical and recreational use of cannabis. Across the country, cannabis is winning at the ballot box and in the statehouse, and whether you partake or not, legalization has major implications for civil rights an…

In 1851, then Secretary of the Interior Alexander H.H. Stuart wrote the following: “What is to become of the aboriginal race? … A temporary system can no longer be pursued. The policy of removal, except under peculiar circumstances, must necessarily be abandoned; and the only alternatives left are, to civilize or exterminate them.” In 2021, Congres…

Does the nuclear command authority of the United States protect the world from an ill-considered strike by the Commander in Chief? Short answer: No. Before 2020 and the COVID-19 pandemic, many people may have thought that existential risk was the stuff of science fiction. Not anymore. Joan Rohlfing has been working on managing existential risk for …

In 2012, hundreds of fast-food workers in New York City walked off the job to demand higher wages and the right to unionize, in what would mark the beginning of the “Fight for $15.” In 2021, raising the minimum wage to $15-an-hour nearly made it into the American Rescue Plan, the enormous COVID-19 relief package which President Biden signed in Marc…

Do you eat food? If you answered yes, you are impacted by the United States Department of Agriculture, and the person who is currently in charge of it: former Governor of Iowa Tom Vilsack. And it’s not just food: from environmental justice, to economic justice, to racial justice, to climate justice, agriculture sits at the nexus of many of the crit…

Politicians have been trying to “fix” health care in the United States for nearly a century, and they really never manage to do it. Why? It has everything to do with money, and the moneyed interests--from health insurers to hospitals to pharmaceuticals--which have basically built the system we have today, and which spend more on lobbying to keep it…

In 2020, Arizona and Georgia, two traditionally red states, turned blue. And while Stacey Abrams has received a lot of credit and media attention for the organizing that led to Georgia turning blue, what happened in Arizona? Is there a Stacey Abrams of Arizona? To find out, Sean Morrow spoke with some of the observers who saw it coming and one of t…

One of the defining characteristics of the modern nation state is that the state has a monopoly on the use of force. In the United States, police officers are a manifestation of this agreement, to which we are all parties--whether we like it or not--and that is perhaps one reason among many why the apparent lack of accountability that seemingly per…

On April 19th, 1995, Timothy McVeigh detonated a bomb in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City; 168 people were killed, and hundreds more injured, in what remains the deadliest incident of domestic terrorism in the United States. Twenty five years later, in 2020, FBI Director Christopher Wray told Congress that the United …

Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is one of the most powerful and one of the most enigmatic people in the world. Often positioned as a primary global antagonist of the United States, Khamenei and his regime have endured five American presidents, and his story reveals, among other things, the consequences of Ame…

Ronald Reagan, a man who was first elected President more than forty years ago, remains one of the most impactful and influential conservative politicians in American history. Reagan, who made it in Hollywood before he made it to the White House, was a towering statesman, a favorite of Republicans and Democrats alike, and a man whose image recalls …

"Who Is?," an original podcast from NowThis News that explores the lives of the powerful, is back for a third season. On "Who Is?," host and NowThis correspondent Sean Morrow dives deep into the stories and backstories of the politicians, donors, media moguls, movements, and ideas that shape our lives, from Ronald Reagan to Inherited Wealth, and Do…

“Nobody would be fighting this hard to suppress the vote—the lie about voter fraud—if the vote was not powerful.” - Reverend Doctor William Barber II Bonus episode! If you listened to “Who Is Electoral College,” you heard from Reverend Doctor William Barber II. Reverend Doctor Barber is a major civil rights leader, organizer, and also a certified g…

In 2000 and 2016, the candidate who lost the popular vote was elected president. Somehow, that’s democracy at work, and it’s thanks to a baroque institution called the Electoral College. Born out of the same contentious negotiations in 1787 that gave America the Three-fifths Compromise and the structure of the Senate, which bestows equal representa…

After a lifetime of firsts--from San Francisco District Attorney to California Attorney General to the Senate--Kamala Harris could become the first woman to serve as Vice President. Born in Oakland, California, and raised in Berkeley, Harris’s groundbreaking career in law enforcement has opened up space for women like Chicago’s Kimberly M. Foxx and…

What do John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh have in common? They made it onto the Supreme Court of the United States in part as a result of the activity of Leonard Leo, the de facto head of the conservative legal movement. Leo, who until recently led the Federalist Society, is a masterful conductor of a network of nonprofi…

Andrew Wheeler, the current Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, is the most important member of the Trump Administration that you’ve never heard of. Extremely effective, Wheeler has systematically rolled back landmark federal regulation designed to address the climate crisis, and meticulously dismantled longstanding rules that pro…

It’s one thing to believe that a powerful elite exerts an outsize influence on American democracy. But it’s another thing to believe that this elite is involved in an organized conspiracy of Satanic worship and pedophilia, and further, that the only person who can save the children--and America--is President Donald J. Trump. This is the general the…

Russian President Vladimir Putin is one of the wealthiest and most powerful people on the planet. And yet, much of his story remains a mystery. Born in St. Petersburg, when it was still known as Leningrad, Putin’s childhood unfolded on the streets of a city recovering from a devastating, years-long siege during World War II. Today, Putin is the lon…

In the United States, political power is allocated when Americans go to the polls and vote for the candidates whom they believe will best represent their interests in government. For that reason, access to the ballot has been restricted--and contested--since the early days of democracy, with each expansion of the electorate met by measures to suppr…

On February 26, 2012, 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was shot and killed by George Zimmerman in Sanford, Florida. On July 13, 2013, Zimmerman was acquitted of all charges in the case of Martin’s death. In response to Zimmerman’s acquittal, Alicia Garza, an Oakland-based organizer, wrote a post on Facebook which contained the phrase “Black Lives Matter.…

In 1993, Jeff Bezos noticed that use of something called “the web” was up 2300 percent. So, he moved to Seattle and started a company: Amazon. Nearly thirty years later, Bezos, the wealthiest human being on the planet, is on track to become humanity’s first trillionaire, and Amazon has grown into one of the largest and most valuable companies in th…

On the first season of “Who Is?,” Sean Morrow explored Secretary of Defense Mark Esper and the military industrial complex. But what about the meat industrial complex? Whether it’s beef, chicken, or pork, most of the meat that winds up on your dinner plate is the ultimate result of an industrial food system controlled by a handful of powerful multi…

There are more than 7 billion people on the planet, and as of this year, nearly 3 billion of them use Facebook or one of the platforms it owns: Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp. As a result, the company is massively profitable, which has made Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s co-founder and CEO, one of the most wealthy and powerful human beings in the …

In some ways, George Soros, the billionaire philanthropist who turns 90 this week, is the sum of the worst horrors and greatest triumphs of the twentieth century. A survivor of World War II who narrowly escaped Nazi concentration camps, Soros would escape totalitarianism twice, making his way to London on the eve of the Soviet occupation of his hom…

On Who Is?, Sean Morrow talks a lot about the system--and the powerful financial interests that exert a profound influence on it. But who are these check-writing billionaires, where do they make their money, and how do they spend it in order to influence our democracy? One of them, Paul Singer, runs a hedge fund, Elliott Management, whose business …

How did Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, the son of Abraham Schumer, an exterminator, and Selma Schumer, a homemaker, become the most powerful Democrat in the Senate? Schumer’s path to power is, on the one hand, a case study in the American meritocracy elevating one of its best and brightest: a hardworking, public school graduate who worked hi…

After serving as United States Ambassador to the United Nations in the Trump Administration, former Governor of South Carolina Nikki Haley, the first woman to lead the state, has fast become one of the most prominent and powerful politicians in the contemporary Republican Party. Haley, the daughter of Punjabi Sikh immigrants, grew up in rural South…

In 2018, after defeating a powerful corporate Democrat in one of the biggest political upsets in American history, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez became the most prominent progressive in the United States. In office, Rep. Ocasio-Cortez has proposed visionary policy, like the Green New Deal, and become famous for her willingness to challeng…

"Who Is?," an original podcast from NowThis News that explores the lives of the powerful, is back. On "Who Is?," host and NowThis correspondent Sean Morrow dives deep into the stories and backstories of the politicians, donors, media moguls and movements that shape our lives, from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to Mark Zuckerberg, and #BlackLivesMatter t…

A billionaire among billionaires, Charles Koch is one of the most powerful men in the world. By all accounts a brilliant businessman, Charles inherited his father’s company when Lyndon B. Johnson was in the White House, and, over decades, has transformed privately held Koch Industries into a massive multinational conglomerate with annual revenues o…

Vice President Mike Pence, who has described himself as “a Christian, a conservative, and a Republican, in that order,” for decades, was born a Catholic Democrat, but rose to prominence as an Evangelical conservative. Once elected to Congress, his friendly attitude toward big business attracted the attention of billionaire donors like Charles Koch.…

Arkansas is one of America’s poorest states. Today, it’s also one of its reddest, and the politicians it sends to Washington, like its star senator, Tom Cotton, aim to cut the government assistance programs that many Arkansans depend on. But the state was once solidly democratic, and elected charismatic democratic politicians like former President …

As Democrats nationwide consider who their party will nominate to challenge President Trump in November, Republicans look ahead -- to 2024. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, after a meteoric rise through Kansas politics to leading the CIA and the State Department, is widely believed to be preparing to run for higher office. A businessman; a veteran; …

Who is Stephen Miller? One of three Senior Advisors to the President--along with Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump--Miller is arguably the person who has had the greatest impact on the most people. Policy that Miller has devised, and, thanks to a conservative-leaning Supreme Court, by in large been able to enact, has changed how immigration works in t…

Jared Kushner, husband of Ivanka Trump, is probably the most powerful person in the United States who we know the least about. The grandchild of immigrants who escaped the Holocaust, Kushner is the beneficiary of his family’s meteoric rise, and the quintessential rich kid: before his donation-based admission to Harvard, Kushner hobnobbed with polit…

How did Saudi Arabia get away with the brutal murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, the kidnapping and alleged torture of Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri, and even 9/11? How does it get away with war in Yemen and human rights violations at home? Oil, and the wealth that oil has brought about. On the first international episode o…

In the United States, war is big business. The Department of Defense, led by Secretary Mark Esper since 2019, has a budget of $738 billion this year. And while many of those dollars pay for those who serve in the armed forces and the maintenance of a nuclear arsenal, a significant portion of that budget will go to the military-industrial complex, w…

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is the most powerful woman in the United States. The first woman to lead the House of Representatives--and third in line to the presidency--she’s passed landmark legislation like the Affordable Care Act; has been the legislative partner, or adversary, of three presidents; and is playing a decisive role in the impea…

On this episode of Who Is, host Sean Morrow explores the backstory of Fox News and its founders: media savant Roger Ailes and Australian billionaire Rupert Murdoch. A sophisticated mix of media and politics, what we know as Fox News is the result of a decades-long conservative effort, and has become a defining force in American politics and preside…

Sen. Bernie Sanders is America’s most prominent self-described democratic socialist, and he’s running for president--as a democrat. Born in Brooklyn, Sanders arrived in Vermont via Chicago, where he was first elected Mayor of Burlington in 1981 by a margin of 10 votes. And from the climate crisis to income inequality to his Medicare For All plan, S…

Former Vice President Joe Biden has been in politics for like, ever. Elected to the Senate nearly fifty years ago in 1973, Biden was Obama’s Vice President and is now running for president himself (and not for the first time). He’s been praised for his public service, criticized for his record on race, and noticed for his sunglass selection. On thi…

Sen. Elizabeth Warren is running for president. A mother who had her first child at 22, Warren vaulted from Oklahoma to the halls of Harvard and on to the Senate. On this episode of Who Is, host Sean Morrow takes you beyond the 2020 hype for the stories that you need to know about the woman who wants to take on President Trump. GUESTS: Sheelah Kolh…

Who Is the most powerful person in America? Perhaps Chief Justice of the Supreme Court John Roberts. Appointed for life, Justice Roberts could cast the decisive vote—defining the law of the land—when it comes to issues like abortion, gun control, LGBTQ rights, and things you don’t even realize touch your everyday life. Presidents and Senate power b…

Billionaire and Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos and Erik Prince, founder of Blackwater are siblings whose decisions have shaped America’s youth and defense systems. Are they genius strategists like the Lannisters, or bungling buffoons like the Bluths? On this episode of Who Is, find out how these powerful siblings obtained the positions they hav…