Episodes

The world’s attention is focused on the Middle East this week as a fragile ceasefire takes hold in Israel’s two-year long war in Gaza. Split-screen images show joyous reunions as Palestinians and Israelis who had been held captive greet their families, alongside scenes of shocking devastation in the Gaza Strip. For Mohsen Mahdawi, this story is personal. In April, Mahdawi sat in a Vermont jail cell for more than two weeks fighting for his freedom. Mahdawi is a Palestinian-born student at Columb...

Chuck Collins, the heir to the Oscar Mayer fortune, gave away his millions to progressive political causes when he was in his twenties. Ever since, the resident of Guilford has fought to expose how the rich make themselves richer at everyone else’s expense. In his new book, "Burned by Billionaires: How Concentrated Wealth and Power are Ruining Our Lives and Planet," Collins shows how the actions of the top .01% have dire consequences for everyone else. He argues that when the system is rigged t...

The assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk is the latest in a growing list of incidents of political violence. There have been 150 politically motivated attacks just this year, and a 2000% increase in targeted violent plots over the past two decades. What explains this surge in political violence? Extremism expert Cynthia Miller-Idriss confirms that this is “the worst moment of political violence since the 1970s,” adding, "We are in an era of mass shootings." She argues that risi...

Jeffrey Amestoy, chief justice of the Vermont Supreme Court from 1997 to 2004, is best known for authoring the 1999 decision in Baker vs. Vermont that legalized same-sex civil unions. That case laid the groundwork for the legalization of same sex marriage in Vermont a decade later and ultimately led to the U.S. Supreme Court legalizing same sex marriage in 2015. At the age of 79, Amestoy is still a prolific writer, but in a different genre. His latest book is a true crime legal thriller that he...

Democratic and Republican political leaders have universally condemned the killing of prominent conservative activist Charlie Kirk. But President Donald Trump lashed out at Democrats and other political opponents, charging without evidence that their “rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we're seeing in our country today.” Trump and other top officials are now promising a broad crackdown on the free speech of his opponents. U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi announced that she w...

As President Trump’s immigration crackdown intensifies, many immigrants who have lived, worked and paid taxes in the United States for years are getting snatched by masked agents and disappeared into a vast network of jails across the country. In Vermont, a small but growing group of young attorneys have thrown themselves into the fight to defend the immigrants’ rights. Newly minted lawyers, including recent graduates of Vermont Law and Graduate School, are now going head to head with lawyers f...

The Centers for Disease Control, the nation’s top public health agency, is in chaos following the firing of its director by President Donald Trump and the resignations of its top leaders last week. Nine former CDC directors wrote in the New York Times this week that Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, who spearhead the purge of the CDC and is a longtime leader of the anti-vaccine movement, is “endangering every American’s health.” States are increasingly spurning Kennedy and ...

Bill McKibben is one of the world’s leading writers and organizers on the issue of climate change. He admits that his message about the perils of a warming planet can leave some people in despair. Now, with the U.S. at an authoritarian tipping point, McKibben has chosen an improbable time to offer hope. McKibben has a new book, “Here Comes the Sun: A Last Chance for the Climate and a Fresh Chance for Civilization.” He takes readers on a far-flung journey to show how solar and wind energy have s...

As President Trump orders federal troops into the streets of Washington, D.C. to “do whatever the hell they want” to stop crime, Sen. Peter Welch is traveling across Vermont to share what he insists is the real news that Trump is trying to divert attention from. Welch has tallied the impact of President Trump’s economic policies and determined that they will cost families in Vermont an average of $2,120 each year. He says that 99.5% of all Vermont families will lose money as a result of Trump’s...

From the moment that Wilmer Chavarria was pulled out of line by immigration agents at an airport in Houston on July 21, he sensed that he was a marked man. Chavarria is the superintendent of schools in Winooski. He was returning with his husband from Nicaragua where they were visiting family — a trip they take every summer. Chavarria grew up in Nicaragua, then received scholarships to attend high school in Canada and Earlham College in the U.S. He became a U.S. citizen in 2018, after marrying h...

“Eighty years ago this week,” writes Vermont journalist Garrett Graff, “a group of physicists and military leaders changed warfare — and the world — forever.” August 6 marks the 80th anniversary of the United States atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Japan, which was followed three days later by the atomic bombing of Nagasaki. These two bombings are estimated to have killed over 200,000 people. Graff recounts the scientific and political backstory of the dawn of the nuclear age in his latest book, “...

Vermonters overwhelmingly voted to enshrine reproductive rights in the state constitution in 2022. But what if those rights – to abortion, birth control and other reproductive health services – are nearly impossible to access? Putting care out of reach appears to be the strategy behind the Trump administration’s relentless assault on Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest provider of reproductive health care. President Trump’s “big beautiful bill” that he signed into law on July 4 includes a ...

What explains the fierce loyalty of Donald Trump’s base, even when he enacts laws that hurt them? Arlie Russell Hochschild has searched for answers in the heart of Trump country. She is one of America’s most thoughtful writers about right wing movements, whose insights are informed by her deep relationships with people on the right. Hochschild is a renowned professor emerita of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. Her latest book, “Stolen Pride: Loss, Shame, and the Rise of the...

This week marks the 25th anniversary of civil unions, which were the most sweeping grant of rights to gay couples in the nation when they became law on July 1, 2000. Civil unions grew out of a lawsuit filed by three gay and lesbian couples who had been denied marriage licenses in Vermont. The lawsuit was known as Baker v. Vermont. In December 1999, the Vermont Supreme Court ruled unanimously that gay and lesbian couples were entitled to the same benefits of marriage as heterosexual couples. The...

Just five months after being sworn in as president, Donald Trump has embroiled the U.S. in a shooting war in the Middle East, a trade war with our allies and neighbors, and a culture war with those who oppose his policies. Trump has deployed the National Guard and the U.S. Marines into the streets of a major American city over the objections of a mayor and a governor, and unleashed masked agents to snatch unsuspecting immigrants off the streets and ship them off to foreign prisons. This seemed...

What do Nazis, fascists, incels, skinheads, misogynists, insurrectionists and Proud Boys all have in common? Many of them confide in reporter Elle Reeve. It was around 2015 and Reeve was reporting for Vice News about the rise of the “alt right,” a term coined by its leader, Richard Spencer. She spent time on internet message boards like 4chan and 8chan where far right activists communicated, trolled liberals, and began to coalesce as a movement. These were often ordinary people who increasingly...

Hunger stalks the Green Mountains like a silent and stealthy predator. Two out of five people in Vermont experience hunger, according to Hunger Free Vermont. And the problem may soon get much worse. The Trump administration has proposed sweeping cuts to SNAP, formerly known as food stamps, the nation’s largest food assistance program. The Senate is currently considering a budget reconciliation bill passed by the House that includes billions of dollars in cuts to SNAP and Medicaid. Up to 13,000 ...

In 2010, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange released a secret video of a U.S. helicopter attack on Iraqi civilians. U.S. authorities charged him with disclosing state secrets and demanded his extradition to the U.S. Assange took refuge inside the Ecuadorean embassy in London and spent a dozen years first inside the embassy and later jailed in the U.K.’s high security Belmarsh Prison. He was released last year after pleading guilty to a single charge under the Espionage Act and now lives in Austral...

In 1998, brothers Mateo and Andy Kehler bought a piece of land in the Northeast Kingdom town of Greensboro that would become home to Jasper Hill Farm. Within a few years, the brothers were producing award-winning cheeses and had created an iconic Vermont brand. Among the numerous accolades received by Jasper Hill are Best American Cheese from the World Cheese Awards, gold medals from the International Cheese Awards and Best of Show from the American Cheese Society. Today, Jasper Hill, the large...

Karen Kevra was passionate about playing the flute as a child. But in college, she became disillusioned and walked away from classical music. Her long and winding journey brought her back to music, and in the process, transformed the music scene in Vermont. Karen Kevra is founder and artistic director of Capital City Concerts (CCC), which is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year. It has become one of Vermont’s premier and most beloved chamber music series, holding concerts in Montpelier an...

Mohsen Mahdawi is a free man. That has not come easily. It has taken a national human rights campaign to free Mahdawi and keep him free. He is among the first people in the country to be freed from detention under President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown. Mohsen Mahdawi is a Columbia University student and Palestinian activist who was arrested in Vermont by immigration agents last month at what he was told would be a citizenship interview. Mahdawi, 34, grew up in a refugee camp in the Isr...

Vermont Attorney General Charity Clark recently filed her fourth lawsuit in two weeks against the Trump administration, this one to stop Health and Human Services secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., from dismantling the health agency. It is the 13th lawsuit that Clark has filed against the Trump administration in its first 100 days (see VTDigger’s online tracker of Clark’s actions). These are multistate lawsuits brought in conjunction with other Democratic attorneys general. Clark's lawsuits inc...

This week marks the 25th anniversary of the historic passage of the civil unions law in Vermont. On April 25, 2000, after a remarkable four-month marathon of public hearings, legislative maneuvering, protests, counter-demonstrations and statewide soul-searching, the Vermont House of Representatives voted 79-68 to pass the civil unions bill, the most sweeping grant of rights to gay couples in the nation. The law allowed same sex couples to form civil unions, the legal equivalent of heterosexual...

Jeff Sharlet spends a lot of time going where most people fear to tread: into the heart of militant right-wing movements, where he comes back with unforgettable stories and personal insights about conspiracy theorists and people who want to shatter modern society and remake it in a Christian nationalist image. Sharlet is a professor of writing at Dartmouth College, a contributing editor to Vanity Fair, and the New York Times bestselling author or editor of eight books. His 2023 book, “The Under...