Impolitic with John Heilemann

John is joined by Lawrence Wright, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11,” to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Wright explains what we understand today about 9/11 that we didn't understand at the time, and what we still don’t know; how the war on terror waged in its aftermath changed America, the world, and us; and the terrible possibility that, in the end, Osama bin Laden achieved more of his goals than we care to admit.

John is joined by publisher of The Bulwark and apostate Republican strategist Sarah Longwell to discuss the midterm elections, 2028, and her new book, “How to Eat an Elephant: One Voter at a Time.” Longwell explains how large an albatross Donald Trump has become for GOP candidates up and down the ballot; why Democrats’ strong position in the polls may not be a summertime “sugar high;” and why Gavin Newsom is merely engaging in “performance art” while Jon Ossoff is “president-maxxing." She also lays out what she's learned about the electorate from conducting more than 400 focus groups in the past decade—and how it informs her new book's argument about how to permanently dismantle MAGA.

John is joined by combative California union boss Dave Regan to discuss Proposition 40, his state’s controversial ballot measure to levy a one-time, 5 percent wealth tax on its resident billionaires. Regan, Prop 40's principal architect and advocate, explains its economic benefits, political challenges, and prospects for passage. He also disses the initiative's opponents—from Silicon Valley billionaires such as Sergey Brin to Governor Gavin Newsom and his likely successor, Xavier Becerra—arguing that “they think the rest of us are stupid.”

John is joined by two first-time Democratic office-seekers — Adam Hamilton, the party’s Senate candidate in Kansas, and Denise Powell, its House candidate in NE-02 — to discuss their upstart campaigns. Hamilton, a Methodist minister who runs his state’s largest mega-church, debunks charges from the right that he’s “too woke for Kansas,” and explains why GOP incumbent Roger Marshall resembles the Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Cowardly Lion from “The Wizard of Oz” all rolled into one. Powell, a self-styled “pissed-off baseball mom,” describes the fury of Omaha voters at Trump’s mockery of "affordability" and her plan to win one of only a handful of congressional districts that voted for Kamala Harris and a Republican House member in 2024.

John is joined by Democracy Forward CEO Skye Perryman to discuss Donald Trump, Todd Blanche, and the threats they pose to America’s elections and the rule of law. Perryman explains why, for all Trump’s talk about federalizing or even canceling the midterms, he has no legal authority to do anything of the kind; why Blanche is such a dangerous deviation from past Attorneys General; and the lasting damage being done to the Justice Department by Trump 2.0. She also talks about her new book, “Ordinary People, Extraordinary Times: How to Reclaim Your Power, Fight for Freedom, and Reimagine Democracy,” which lays out practical steps citizens can take to beat back the authoritarian tide.