Punching Up with Maya May

Trump has no mandate. Full stop. Does he want to pretend he does? You bet! But it’s a bad bet for Trump and he is way overplaying a bad hand. His sinking numbers with the American people on everything from the economy to Elon tell the story. Lisa Senecal, executive editor of Resolute Square, joins Maya May to punch up at a very deserving bully, Donald John Trump, the POTUS Who Cried Mandate. They discuss why Trump’s attempt to show strength in Tuesday's Castro-esque rant before the joint session of Congress was really a huge tell of where he knows he’s weak and failing.

Our institutions are falling like dominoes and our global influence is literally coming. To. An. End. And yet, there are those pundits on the left calling for the Democrats to hit pause on their attacks against fascism. Hit pause? Nothing says you’re getting the shit kicked out of you like desperately begging for a time out. A time out ain't coming. But that begs the question - how in the hell do we fight back? And how do we keep that fight going for the next four years? It’s only been a month for God’s sake! Maya welcomes Santiago Mayer, the Executive Director of Voters of Tomorrow, to talk about running this marathon to win it. He’s spent the last four years organizing, strategizing, and building an army of Gen Z activists who will fight for their futures until the end. They’re the Zelenskies of American opposition politics, and we need to take notice.

Kristin Brey and Maya May ask "What will it take for us to survive the next four years?" Asking yourself the same question? Catch up now on their conversation about the broligarchy, Wisconsin's hugely consequential upcoming Supreme Court election, and why the SAFE Act proposes to do anything but keep women in America safe.

Pete Hegseth. Russell Vought. White Christian Nationalism has found its way to the halls of power, and it’s darker than we imagined. They’re coming after Obergefell. They want to repeal the 19th amendment. They want to take access to power from women, people of color, the LGBTQ community, and place it in the hands of - you guessed it - white Christian men. Don’t believe it? Tim Whitaker has seen it all firsthand. He is the founder of The New Evangelicals, a growing community dedicated to rethinking and reforming evangelical Christianity. He says that while the white Christian nationalists have a hold on our government and designs on a dystopian America, we’ve still got a shot. But it’s going to take all of us.

We’re all happy the Democrats seem to be waking up, but if we’re being honest, they’re two years behind the curve. Now is the time to fight back with everything we’ve got, but to also prepare ourselves for life under this regime while we fight. Because…it’s here, and it’s not going to be easy to make ground. Dems are going to use the law to try to stop a man who is lawless. We are going to protest against people without any shame or the ability to reflect on their behavior. Do we still need to do those things? Absolutely. Spoke with the amazing Elizabeth Booker Houston - lawyer, comedian, and public health advocate. She’s in the fight for social justice, reproductive rights, and all the stuff we need but are quickly losing.

We’ve seen the world coming down around us, and the democrats - who are supposed to be our opposition leaders - are basically silent, with a few notable exceptions. It can feel like we’re just screaming into the void, and the void is like, “Mailbox full.” So the people we expect to represent us - to guide us through this hellscape - are gone. But that doesn’t mean we’re alone. There are leaders out there who come with receipts. Black. Women. Black women have always voted overwhelmingly on the right side. To everyone else, MAGA bullshit looks like a smokescreen. Totally inscrutable. But black women can read it like the Rosetta Stone, and they’ve been trying to tell you for DECADES. Maya's guest, Reecie Colbert, knows how to fight. They talk about how to pick a fight & how to win it.

How do we manage the non-stop real and manufactured political, social, and environmental crises we're living through? Maya May's guest crisis expert Juliette Kayyem says we need to break it all down into categories of "What? So What? and What Now?" She and Maya broke it down on tonights show - catch up now!

Prepare to be inspired! The MAGA response to the California fires reinforces a really hard truth - we're going to have to save ourselves. They want to argue about bathrooms and genders and debate how many rounds can fit in a standard issue magazine. But they are not here to solve real problems. Tonight, Maya welcomed Alfredo Morales - and we are all better for it. Alfredo fought fires in California for two years while incarcerated. His work - and the work of some 3,000 other inmates involved in California fire suppression each year - saves countless lives and huge swaths of land and property. In a world where the powerful spend their time placing blame and sucking up as much wealth as possible, it’s Americans like us - and Alfredo - who are going to have to step into the breach and solve problems.

It’s January, so it’s time for everyone’s annual commitment to become healthier and more fit in the new year…and then be radicalized and become a Christian Nationalist? It’s 2025, so yes, that’s a thing. Tonight, Maya May and her guest Judah Elias (werewolffbarmitzvah) are talking about the health and fitness to far-right radical pipeline.

Maya is joined by Matthew D. Taylor, expert on Christian Nationalism and Independent Charismatic Christianity, and Jeremy Alder, comedian and survivor of a fundamentalist missionary upbringing. Can we punch up at Christian Nationalism - oh Hell yes and we had better start doing so NOW!

Yeah, hate and Donald Trump won. Hope and Kamala Harris lost, but that's not the end of America's story. It’s time to get to work earning the hearts, heads and trust of Gen Z by talking to them now - not just before the next election. The good news? It was a perception election we have the power to shift those perceptions. Maya's guest Victor Shi has a lot of good news and hope that you won't want to miss!

It’s an open question if Trump and his Project 2025 minions have hearts, but they do understand that hearts and minds are won in our schools and universities—places, Jason Stanley explains, that democratic societies across the world are now ill-prepared to defend against the fascist assault currently underway. How do we punch back at those trying to erase our history to change the future? Maya and Jason talked how to punch up and back!