Eye on Congress:The Big Story

The Mueller Report might animate members of Congress and political operatives, but when it comes to drawing people to the bar in D.C., it's no contest: They'd rather be watching The Bachelorette. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Why does President Donald Trump attack his opponents so viciously, sometimes using racist tropes? Because it’s effective. And Republicans know that. Our conversation with Shadi Hamid of the Brookings Institution is about Trumpism, norms and how it all fits into a political strategy. “I think you’ll have Trumpism without Trump to some extent at least, even if Trump is voted out of office in 2020," Hamid tells host Jason Dick. “Why? Because Trumpism is effective. And Republicans see that. And that’s why they’re so afraid, I think, to really stand up against Trump because they feel something intuitively and instinctively that the Republican base is changing. And this is what in part the Republican base wants and what they respond to." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Harry Reid might have retired from the Senate in 2017 and started battling cancer in 2018, but the former Democratic leader doesn’t seem to be the retiring type, especially when it comes to Nevada politics. “I’m a political junkie to say the least,” he tells CQ Roll Call's Niels Lesniewski in a wide-ranging interview in Las Vegas that we've excerpted for this edition of the Political Theater Podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The new film “Mike Wallace is Here,” shows how legendary journalist Mike Wallace shaped modern journalism and politics. But this world is one where journalists are in danger and their credibility is in question. What happened? Director Avi Belkin discusses the arc of Wallace’s career, and where things started to shift. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A North Carolina House race is dividing the GOP in Washington, D.C., reports CQ Roll Call's senior political reporter Simone Pathé. And Clyde McCrady talks about the emotional House hearing on reparations and why it was a significant moment in U.S. history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As the Senate starts to debate one of the most consequential policy bills, the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the chairman of the committee that is managing the Pentagon policy bill, Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma,  talks to Political Theater about working with Democrats, throws shade on some lawmakers on his committee and provides his take on Iran. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It was on when Beto O'Rourke, center fielder for the Los Diablitos de El Paso, jumped up on hay bale when filmmaker David Modigliani, first baseman for the Texas Playboys Baseball Club, knew he could make a movie about the 2018 Texas Senate candidate and now one of nearly two dozen Democrats running for president in 2020. "I was playing first base, he got a single and he was, like, 'Hey, I am running for Senate,' '' recalled Modigliani while talking about making "Running with Beto" on the latest Political Theater podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is a successful politician without being a typical one. He's proudly uncharismatic, relatively unpopular in his home state of Kentucky and embraces his self-styled role as the Grim Reaper of legislation. So why does he keep winning? In this episode, senior Senate reporter Niels Lesniewski explains how McConnell uses his negatives to win.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Everything about Werner Herzog becomes theater. His documentary “Meeting Gorbachev” combines his iconic narrative style, never-before-seen footage of the last days of Soviet rule and the personal side of the last Soviet president, Mikhail Gorbachev. In this podcast, Herzog muses on how "deeply involved in all these events" he himself was and how “I never would have dreamt I would have spoken to Gorbachev himself." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For pure Political Theater, it will be hard to beat Pennsylvania during the 2020 campaign. The Keystone State will be, well, key to an Electoral College victory. President Donald Trump knows it. That may be why he has visited it six times since taking office, including to Montoursville in the north central part of the state on May 20. He won’t be alone, though, because the current Democratic frontrunner, former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., was born in Scranton, represented neighboring Delaware in the Senate for decades and opened his official campaign headquarters in Philadelphia on May 18. Pennsylvania has long been a swing state in presidential politics, and Democrats’ ability to flip several Republican seats in 2018 paved the way for them retaking the majority in the House. CQ Roll Call’s White House reporter John Bennett was on the road at the president’s rally, interviewing voters, taking the temperature of a Republican friendly party of the state.  A little later on in, we’ll switch gears for

Five Democratic freshmen, all women with military or intelligence backgrounds, are banding together to help each other fundraise for their 2020 races. They all flipped Republican districts in 2018, and they know winning districts like theirs is the key to holding and expanding the House majority in 2020. After a few months in Congress, they've figured out who are the "workhorses" and who are the "show ponies," in the words of Michigan Rep. Elissa Slotkin, and they're tired of the latter getting all the attention. Along with Slotkin, Reps. Elaine Luria and Abigail Spanberger of Virginia, Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey and Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania are fighting to hold the majority. CQ Roll Call's senior political reporter Simone Pathé tells us how they are trying to get re-elected in this Political Theater podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A documentary about the late Notre Dame president Fr. Theodore Hesburgh, a real life "Forrest Gump" who challenged presidents and popes in the last half-century, resonates in today's turbulent times, the director of the film tells CQ Magazine managing editor Mike Magner, who grew up hearing about Father Ted's work and causes. The film, directed by Patrick Creadon, explores the challenges Father Ted faced with Republican and Democratic administrations in advancing civil rights.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Political gerrymandering is losing friends fast, at least in the courts. Ohio and Michigan recently got smacked by federal judges for rigging the maps in favor of Republicans and states like Maryland are under court order to draw more politically neutral lines. Almost of all these fights end up in the same place, the Supreme Court. And a divided set of justices could decide by next month whether the high court is willing to shake things up by defining what exactly constitutes an unconstitutional gerrymander. CQ Roll Call campaign reporters Simone Pathé and Stephanie Akin are our guides through the maze of maps on the latest Political Theater podcast.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Penny Lane’s documentary “Hail Satan?” is among the most entertaining civics lessons to come around in a long time. Chronicling in jaunty manner the origins and growth of the Satanic Temple, which the IRS just recently recognized as a bona fide church, Lane’s movie shows how the Temple has enforced the First Amendment’s separation of church and state across the country. Lane, the director of “Our Nixon,” and “Nuts,” discussed her new movie, the underlying issues and just how much resonance it has in our religiously charged times. (Anyone catch that National Prayer Day at the White House?)      Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Anytime Attorney General William Barr talks about the Mueller report it’s a big deal. It's a bigger deal in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Add a leaked letter, a bunch of presidential candidates on the committee and all kinds of almost Shakespearean context, and you've got a lot of political theater. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you listen to this podcast, you know Jason Dick loves movies, especially if they relate to politics. So on occasion, we’re going to bring you conversations with directors and actors — and even some movie reviews — for all the political movie-lovers out there. In this episode, we talk with Rachel Lears, director of the Netflix documentary “Knock Down the House,” which profiles four congressional challengers in 2018 and how they fared (spoiler alert: one of them is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez). Lears and one of the candidates, Amy Vilela, discuss the movie, how campaigns work and the relationships that developed along the way in this bonus episode of Political Theater. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  Democrats continue to throw their hats into the 2020 presidential race, and veteran strategist Rodell Mollineau thinks that’s a healthy way to work out the party’s message during a “once in a generation time” for them. “I’m all for this,” he says. Mollineau, a founder of American Bridge and Rokk Solutions, and previously a staffer for Senate majority leaders Tom Daschle and Harry Reid, discusses with Jason Dick and Nathan Gonzales the burgeoning field, what an ideal ticket would look like and learning from 2016’s mistakes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Before the late Sen. Ernest “Fritz” Hollings was elected to what would become a distinguished congressional career, the South Carolina Democrat reversed himself on the defining issue in Southern politics: segregation.  Running for governor in 1958, Hollings opposed integration of public schools, a keystone battle in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision desegregating public schools. But by the end of his term, he said it was time for the South to change, taking a step out of line with many of his Democratic colleagues in the region.  “He had made the turn, and to his credit, [in] 1962 in the South,” Kirk Victor, co-author of Hollings’ book “Making Government Work,” says in the latest Political Theater podcast. “The Legislature would’ve followed him either way. Any which way he went.” Hollings, who died on April 6, was laid to rest in his native South Carolina on April 16.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Washington might be Hollywood for ugly people, but every once in a while Hollywood pretties the place up. That was certainly the case when the cast of “Queer Eye” came to the Capitol to advocate for the Equality Act, to the delight of many staffers, members and tourists. Jennifer Shutt discusses how the celebrity advocates used their powers for policy purposes.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Senate has changed its rules again and it will result in less debate on many judicial and executive nominations. Who cares? The public should, if it wants a responsive government at least. James Wallner of the R Street Institute and CQ Roll Call's Niels Lesniewski discuss the ramifications. "No one can be bothered to care about the rules, '' Wallner laments. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices