The Electorette Podcast

The Electorette Podcast

The Electorette is one of the longest running feminist podcasts, and offers analyses and solutions to the world's biggest political and social challenges, all through the lens of women. Hosted by Jennifer Taylor-Skinner, The Electorette regularly features award-winning authors, politicians, academics, activists, and organizers like the founder of Mom's Demand Action, Shannon Watts, Congresswoman Barbara Lee, and author and MacArthur 'Genius Grant' Fellow, Nicole Fleetwood. The Electorette is independently owned and operated—please support us by subscribing to the podcast on your favorite platform!

Episodes

Free & Fair? Rebekah Caruthers on the Real Barriers to the Ballot

October 21, 2025 • 45 mins
What’s really keeping Americans from the ballot box? In this urgent conversation, Rebekah Caruthers, President and CEO of the Fair Elections Center, breaks down the invisible “friction” that pushes voters out of the process—confusing and state-by-state registration rules, ID and signature hurdles (especially for Gen Z without DMV records), voter roll purges, and a rising climate of fear fed by mis- and disinformation. We go inside...
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Can the Voting Rights Act Survive This Supreme Court Term?

October 7, 2025 • 35 mins
Sophia Lin Lakin on How the Supreme Court Could Dismantle the Law Protecting Voters The U.S. Supreme Court is once again preparing to rule on a case that could further dismantle the Voting Rights Act — Callais v. Landry. At the center of this case is Section 2, one of the last remaining protections against racial discrimination in voting. After Louisiana courts ruled that the state’s congressional map illegally diluted Black voti...
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The Conservative Backlash Against Ballot Measures: A Conversation with Kelly Hall

September 24, 2025 • 42 mins
Ballot measures have given voters the power to pass life-changing policies that lawmakers often won’t — from raising the minimum wage and expanding healthcare access, to protecting reproductive rights and curbing predatory payday lending. But now, the process itself is under threat. New Report: ATTACKS ON DIRECT DEMOCRACY DOUBLED IN 2025 Ballot Measure Rescue Campaign In this episode, I speak with Kelly Hall, Executive...
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Without Fear: Black Women and the Making of Human Rights with Dr. Keisha Blain

September 16, 2025 • 47 mins
Historian and scholar, Dr. Keisha Blain joins The Electorette to discuss her groundbreaking new book, Without Fear: Black Women and the Making of Human Rights. This vital chronicle reframes the history of Black women’s activism—not only as a fight for civil rights in the U.S., but as a global human rights struggle that continues to shape our world today. From Ida B. Wells’s anti-lynching crusade that called out America on the worl...
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The Double Tax: Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman on the Hidden Costs Women of Color Pay

September 15, 2025 • 64 mins
In the past three months, more than 300,000 Black women have left the labor force. Economist and author Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman calls this the double tax—the compounded burden of being both a woman and a person of color in an economy designed to take more and give less. From higher prices for haircare and beauty products, to childcare that consumes a larger share of income, to systemic barriers in jobs, salaries, housing, and wea...
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Ballot Power: How Voters Are Advancing Progressive Change in Red States

September 3, 2025 • 29 mins
In a time when U.S. politics feels gridlocked and bleak, ballot initiatives are offering a surprising source of hope. In some of the reddest states—places that handed Trump overwhelming victories—voters are quietly embracing progressive policies like paid sick leave, higher minimum wages, and Medicaid expansion. In this episode, Jen Taylor-Skinner speaks with Chris Melody Fields Figueredo, Executive Director of the Ballot Initiati...
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The Human Cost of Failed Immigration Reform — A Conversation with Jessica Orozco Guttlein

August 20, 2025 • 37 mins
Decades of failed immigration reform and political half-measures have left millions of immigrants in the U.S. without a path to legal status. Instead, families are being torn apart by harsh deportation policies, asylum seekers are forced into the shadows, and U.S. citizen children live in daily fear of losing their parents. In this episode, I speak with Jessica Orozco Guttlein, Senior Vice President for Policy and Communications a...
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Things Do Not Have to Be This Way: Dismantling American Patriarchy with Anna Malaika Tubbs

August 6, 2025 • 46 mins
Author and scholar Anna Malaika Tubbs joins The Electorette to discuss her powerful new book, Erased: What American Patriarchy Has Hidden from Us—a sweeping, incisive examination of how American patriarchy was built to exclude, erase, and control. In this conversation, Anna unpacks the nation’s gendered social order, from its origins in the Constitution to its modern-day consequences in law, politics, motherhood, and racial injusti...
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Are Governors The New Power Players in U.S. Politics? A Conversation with Ofirah Yheskel

July 31, 2025 • 20 mins
In this episode of The Electorette, I’m joined by Ofirah Yheskel, Director of External Affairs for the Democratic Governors Association, to unpack the growing national influence of Democratic governors—especially in the face of Republican extremism and Trump-aligned policymaking. We discuss two high-stakes gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey, where Democratic candidates Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill are stepping...
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Diplomacy vs. Disaster: Sara Haghdoosti on Building a Progressive Foreign Policy

July 29, 2025 • 35 mins
What does a truly progressive foreign policy look like—and what happens when we abandon it? Foreign policy often feels like a conversation for elites. But in this episode, Sara Haghdoosti, Executive Director of Win Without War, argues otherwise. She joins Jen Taylor-Skinner to unpack how the collapse of diplomacy between the U.S. and Iran—and Israel’s recent strikes—have pushed the world dangerously close to a wider war. Together...
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Beyond Protest: Kelly Hall on the Power of Ballot Measures When Democracy Fails

July 16, 2025 • 46 mins
In this episode of The Electorette, host Jen Taylor-Skinner is joined by Kelly Hall, Executive Director of The Fairness Project, to discuss how ballot measures are transforming the political landscape. As congressional dysfunction deepens and the so-called "Big Beautiful Bill" threatens vital programs like Medicaid, direct democracy offers a bold and effective workaround. Kelly breaks down the Fairness Project’s 2024 wins—where vo...
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The Big Beautiful Lie: Jessica Fulton on What the 2025 Budget Bill Really Means for Black Households

June 20, 2025 • 42 mins
In this episode of The Electorette, host Jen Taylor-Skinner speaks with Jessica Fulton, senior fellow with the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, about the 2025 budget bill—rebranded by conservatives as the "Big Beautiful Bill"—and the devastating consequences it could have for Black households. Rooted in the Joint Center’s policy brief, Centering Black Households in the 2025 Tax Debate, the conversation exposes how ...
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More Than a Seat: Amanda Edwards on Legacy, Leadership, and the Fight for Texas’s 18th Congressional District

June 12, 2025 • 44 mins
In this episode of The Electorette, Amanda Edwards, candidate for Texas’s 18th Congressional District, joins host Jennifer Taylor-Skinner for a powerful conversation about legacy, leadership, and what it means to truly serve. A native of Houston’s 18th District, Edwards shares her deep personal ties to the community and reflects on the seat’s profound history—once held by trailblazers like Barbara Jordan and Sheila Jackson Lee. Ed...
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The Sisterhood of Ravensbrück: Inside Hitler’s All-Female Concentration Camp

June 10, 2025 • 41 mins
In this episode, Jen Taylor-Skinner speaks with bestselling author Lynne Olson about her powerful new book, The Sisterhood of Ravensbrück. The conversation unearths the little-known history of French women—many from the resistance—who were captured and sent to Ravensbrück, the Nazis’ only all-female concentration camp. Though they faced starvation, disease, forced labor, and the constant threat of execution, these women refused to...
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Sarah Kate Ellis on the Slingshot Effect: Fighting Back with Joy and Power

May 27, 2025 • 37 mins
GLAAD President and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis joins The Electorette to talk about how we push forward in a moment of backlash. From corporate rollbacks on DEI to the rise of hate-fueled content online, we explore the forces working to dismantle progress—and how collective power, storytelling, and unapologetic joy can be our sharpest tools for resistance. Sarah Kate shares her “slingshot theory” of progress, and offers a rallying cry to ...
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Before the 14th: Black Activists and the Battle for Citizenship

May 16, 2025 • 45 mins
In light of this week's Supreme Court hearing that could redefine birthright citizenship in the United States, we’re revisiting one of our most insightful episodes from 2019. Historian and legal scholar Martha S. Jones joins The Electorette to discuss her groundbreaking book, Birthright Citizens: A History of Race and Rights in Antebellum America. In this conversation, Professor Jones traces the legal and political battles waged b...
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The ACLU vs. Trump’s Executive Order: A Legal Fight to Protect the Vote

May 6, 2025 • 27 mins
In this episode of The Electorette, host Jen Taylor-Skinner is joined by Sophia Lin Lakin, Director of the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project, to discuss the organization’s leading legal challenge against a dangerous new executive order from Donald Trump. While the SAVE Act has stalled in the Senate, this executive order picks up where it left off—imposing a proof-of-citizenship requirement for voter registration and threatening to disen...
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Who Gets to Choose Your Doctor? The Supreme Court Case That Could Reshape Medicaid

April 30, 2025 • 30 mins
What happens when states gain the power to decide which healthcare providers Medicaid recipients can access? In this episode, host Jen Taylor-Skinner is joined by Elizabeth Taylor, Executive Director of the National Health Law Program, to break down the high-stakes Supreme Court case Medina v. South Atlantic. At its core, the case challenges whether individuals have the right to choose their own healthcare provider under Medicaid—a...
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Economic Chaos, by Design: Why economic instability is a feature, not a bug, of Trump-era policy

April 16, 2025 • 32 mins
Tariffs, Tax Cuts & the Corporate Scam Economy In this episode of The Electorette, host Jen Taylor-Skinner sits down with Lindsay Owens, Executive Director of Groundwork Collaborative, to dissect the chaos of Trump’s economic policies—and the hidden logic behind them. From erratic tariff announcements to the looming extension of the 2017 tax cuts for the wealthy, Lindsay reveals how economic “whiplash” is not just confusing—it’s c...
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The Digital Green Book: Fighting Disinformation and Reclaiming Our Digital Power

April 8, 2025 • 26 mins
What happens when disinformation meets cutting-edge AI—and Black communities are caught in the crosshairs? In this powerful episode of The Electorette, host Jen Taylor-Skinner speaks with Esosa Osa, Founder and CEO of Onyx Impact, about the alarming rise in AI-generated political disinformation targeting Black voters. Together, they unpack how misinformation campaigns are designed to exploit emotions like anger and disappointment—...
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