Stress Test, from Mother Jones
by Mother Jones
The midterms aren't just a horse race. They're a stress test, a referendum on where the country is headed, assuming the guy in the White House lets voters weigh in at all. Stress Test, from Mother Jones, is a pop-up video podcast tracking the fight, the money, and the lies—and hunting hard for hope—all the way through Election Day. Washington Bureau Chief David Corn and Video Correspondent Garrison Hayes connect the day's headlines to our newsroom's deeply reported coverage. We'll dig into the real threat of election interference; a crop of extreme, scandal-soaked candidates; immigration enforcement and its fallout; the remaking of Washington, physically and ideologically; the backlash against data centers; the war in Iran; a desperate president whose numbers are cratering; and what opposition politics could look like once the votes are counted. Tune in every Wednesday and Friday.
Episodes
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October 28, 2026
With the midterms less than a week away, the closing stretch of the campaign is full of bad omens for MAGA abroad and peak weirdness at home. In Serbia and Brazil, Trump allies suffered stinging and surprising defeats driven in part by energized voter turnout. An anti-corruption youth movement...
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Mamdani on Trump, Floods, and the Fight Over Data Centers
His name might not be on the ballot this November, but New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is undoubtedly one of the most influential figures in American politics right now. After his barrier-breaking victory late last year, Mamdani has emerged as the face of the no-holds-barred progressive…
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Meet the Trump-Backed Candidates Drowning in Scandal
A candidate for governor in Colorado said living together without getting married leads to demonic possession. A Senate candidate in Georgia featured in his campaign materials his son-in-law, who has promoted white nationalist and antisemitic content online. And then there’s a new ad in the Ohio...
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Panic Attack: Inside Musk's Midterm Disinformation Blitz
Election Day is less than three weeks away, and panic is setting in for the GOP. “We see Republican groups pulling money away from House incumbents,” says host David Corn on the latest episode of Stress Test. “They’re cutting them off. They’re saying, ‘So long, Charlie! We don’t think you’re…
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Whose Jesus? The Left and Right Fight Over Faith in the Midterms
Christian nationalism—the idea that strict adherence to Christian theology should govern American political life, separation of church and state be damned—has been on the rise in America for years. Some vanguard elements of this revolutionary movement believe adherents are called to wage a...
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The Midterm Spending Bonanza Is Threatening Democracy Like Never Before
Big money has long dominated American politics, with wealthy donors, corporations, and special interests dumping tons of cash into presidential and congressional elections. This year is no exception. But what’s different is that the quid pro quo of campaign money for preferential government...
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"The Single Most Toxic Issue in the Midterms": How America Turned on Data Centers
America is hopelessly divided along party lines. That's a stubborn fact, we're told, and the polling bears it out: Democrats dislike Republicans and Republicans dislike Democrats, in almost precisely the same proportions. But every election produces surprising coalitions that defy entrenched...
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"Cheat Like Hell": Can Trump Actually Rig the 2026 Midterms?
He tried really, really hard in 2020. With his souring presidency on the line, he's intensifying his efforts again. You know what we’re talking about: Trump's election meddling. "After 2020, I think one of the lessons that some of us learned—but unfortunately not everybody—is that our democracy…
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Introducing “Stress Test”: The Midterms Will Test Democracy. We'll Help You Through It.
It's only a few weeks away. It feels like an eternity. The midterm elections have officially entered their looming phase. Worriers of all stripes (doomscrollers, political junkies, fuel tank fillers), we get it. There's a war, an unpopular president, a MAGA capture of Congress, and a bunch of...
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A Special Announcement
Things have been a bit quiet around these parts lately, huh? After a few months bringing you some of our best feature investigations read aloud, in partnership with Audm, we’re going through some behind-the-scenes newsroom changes that will impact how we best serve you, our listener. We’re going…
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Today It’s Critical Race Theory. 200 Years Ago It Was Abolitionist Literature.
We bet you’ve heard one phrase more and more this year than ever before: Critical Race Theory. It’s an obsession on Fox News, and it’s the topic, along with anti-mask protests, raging at school board hearings across the country—a new frontier in a roiling culture war. But what is Critical Race...
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Are These Black Leaders on the Cusp of a New National Movement?
With everything going on these days—we’ll spare you the list of existential crises we’re currently living through—now seems like the perfect time to hear from two leaders who have a revolutionary vision of what this country could be. Last week, in a special livestream event, Mother Jones reporter...
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The Nightmare of Getting an Abortion in the South
A week ago, thousands of people turned out for Women's March rallies across the country, galvanized by Texas' recent six-week abortion ban and the very real fear that Roe v. Wade could soon be overturned, as challenges to the Texas law and another law in Mississippi wend their way to the Supreme...
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Ammon Bundy Is Running to Be Idaho’s Next Governor
Mother Jones reporter Stephanie Mencimer has been following Ammon Bundy for years. He's the guy you'll remember who became a kind of folk hero on the far-right after he joined his father, rancher Cliven Bundy, in leading an armed standoff against the Bureau of Land Management in Nevada in 2014.…
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How Flint Closed the Gap Between Black and White Suffering Under COVID
As the Delta variant upended hope of returning to normal this summer, Mother Jones reporter Edwin Rios published a deeply reported story on Flint, Michigan, recounting how residents of this predominantly Black city have battled COVID-19 in spite of government distrust, neglect, and environmental...
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The Afghan Refugee Crisis Has Only Just Begun
Towards the end of 2020, Mother Jones’s editorial director Ian Gordon wrote a deeply reported story about how then-President Donald Trump took a broken asylum system and turned it into a machine of unchecked cruelty. America’s system for processing refugees and asylum seekers was effectively…
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The Metamorphosis of Kyrsten Sinema
Every time you read the news lately, there she is: in conversations about bipartisanship, the infrastructure deal, the filibuster, even the fate of Joe Biden's presidency itself. But who is Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona? And what does she want to accomplish with her outsized influence on the passage…
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CNN’s Jake Tapper Says the Media Must Confront Republicans’ Big Lie
Jake Tapper has drawn a line: no “Big Lie” proponents on-air. The CNN anchor and chief Washington correspondent won’t book Republican politicians touting the conspiracy theory that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from former President Donald Trump. But when he’s not in front of the...
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Escape From the Billionaire Meme Mogul
Sergey Grishin is a well-connected, billionaire mogul. Last August, he made headlines when he sold his lavish estate to Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. Grishin’s multiple US-based businesses include a social media company in California with more than 300 million Instagram followers, called 421...
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Everything You're Getting Wrong About the Culture Wars
Everywhere you turned in the aftermath of the 2020 election, someone was arguing a hard line on cultural issues as an explanation for the outcome. The point was made by different commentators of at least outwardly different political persuasions, with different code words and different...
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Garry Trudeau on Lampooning Trump and Other Lessons from 5 Decades of Doonesbury
For five decades, Garry Trudeau has been writing what is one of the most important—and entertaining—comic strips in American history: Doonesbury. He started the strip in October, 1970 as a student at Yale. With its sharp-witted look at American politics and American life, it quickly became a...
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Can America’s Problems Be Fixed By a President Who Loves Jon Meacham?
Jon Meacham is a Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer who has spent the last two decades pounding out bestselling accounts of American presidents such as Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, and George H.W. Bush. In June 2019, Joe Biden invited Meacham to Newark, Delaware, for a conversation about the...
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A Special Summer Announcement from the Podcast Team
After three years of weekly episodes—that’s 181 shows, if you’re counting—the Mother Jones Podcast team has decided to switch things up for the next couple of months, as we, like you, emerge from a year that has thrown up enormous challenges, journalistically, politically, and personally. It’s…
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The Insurrection Was a Giant Recruitment Exercise for Extremists
The deadly insurrection at the US Capitol wasn’t the start of something, nor was it the end. What happened on January 6 had been planned for weeks, and the ideology behind it, brewing for years. That day’s chaos was the moment in which a dangerous mix of far-right factions came together in a way...
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Doctor, Lawyer, Insurrectionist: The Radicalization of Simone Gold
As we approach the five-month anniversary of the January 6 insurrection, the Republican Party has made one thing clear: They want to forget all about it—holding Trump and his big lie closer than ever. In the House, the party just kicked out a top leader, Rep. Liz Cheney, for calling out Trump’s...
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Leaked Video: How a Dark Money Group Is Trying to Rig Our Elections
The right-wing dark money group Heritage Action for America claims to be the mastermind behind the recent fire hose of state-level voter suppression laws, a new Mother Jones scoop reveals. Mother Jones voting rights reporter Ari Berman joins Jamilah King to walk through the explosive video he...
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“We’re Torn Apart”: Inside India’s Worsening COVID Nightmare
A Mother Jones investigation has found that hundreds of visa workers are stuck in India with no way to get back to their families in the United States. India is the in the midst of a shocking COVID-19 crisis. Health officials are reporting approximately 400,000 new cases a day. Hospitals are...
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“Queen Sugar” Author Natalie Baszile: Black Farmers Can Help Save the Planet
Natalie Baszile knew she was onto something when she got the call from Oprah’s people. A novelist and food justice activist, Baszile had been working for years on a semi-autobiographical novel about a Los Angeles-based Black woman who is unexpectedly faced with reviving an inherited family farm…
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The Black Farmer Movement Battling History to Return to the Land
Agriculture was once a major source of wealth among the Black middle class in America. But over the course of a century, Black-owned farmland, and the corresponding wealth, has diminished almost to the point of near extinction; only 1.7 percent of farms were owned by Black farmers in 2017. The...
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The Oscar-Nominated Writers of Judas and the Black Messiah Make History
Judas and the Black Messiah, a ground-breaking film about the life of Black Panther leader Fred Hampton, has been hailed as one of the best films of the year. The film is up for five Oscars, including Best Picture. It’s a historic haul for a movie made by an all-Black team of producers. It’s also…
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Derek Chauvin Is Guilty. The Fight for Real Justice Is Far From Over.
Late Tuesday afternoon, the jury in the trial of Derek Chauvin delivered its verdict: guilty on all three counts in the killing of George Floyd. The 12 jurors—six of whom are white, four Black, and two multiracial—heard three weeks of testimony and deliberated for about 10 hours. Chauvin, a…
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How America's Super-Rich Tax Evaders Are Hurting Everyone
Money. You’re probably thinking a lot about it these days. From a global pandemic that’s tanked the global economy, to President Joe Biden’s $2 trillion infrastructure bill, to workers once again trying (and failing) to unionize at Amazon, who gets what and how is the recurring theme of so many...
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The Hidden Influence of Lady Bird Johnson
Lady Bird Johnson always fit the mold of a certain old-fashioned, stereotypical presidential wife: self-effacing, devoted to her generally unfaithful domineering husband, not particularly chic, and, being a traditional first lady one who needed a public cause, and found hers it in planting lots…
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Hope and Fear: The Dangerous New COVID Phase, Explained
Earlier this week, CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky went off-script during a news conference to issue an emotional warning: a fourth coronavirus surge could be on its way. She described a “recurring feeling I have of impending doom,” saying that while there was “so much to look forward to,” the...
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Stop the COVID Shaming!
For many people who contract the coronavirus, shame is an underreported side-effect. Its symptoms are intense bewilderment about the cause of infection, reluctance to engage with healthcare systems, and discomfort disclosing the diagnosis to friends and family. The internal dynamic is likely...
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A Post-Trump Guide to Stopping the Lies and Healing Our Politics
Cass Sunstein is a public intellectual and provocateur—and he has been pondering a timely issue: public lying. A longtime Harvard law professor and an expert on behavioral economics, Sunstein has written a slew of books, including volumes on cost-benefit analysis, conspiracy theories, animal...
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What Happened in Jackson, Mississippi, Was a Catastrophe—and a Warning Sign
Boiling water to drink and bathe. Collecting rainwater to flush toilets. Using bottled water distributed by the National Guard to take care of basic hygiene. For four weeks, tens of thousands of people in Jackson, Mississippi, did not have access to clean water. Freezing winter storms wreaked…
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All Hail Pop Queen Selena, Who Showed Us How to Belong
Anything for Selena is more than a podcast about the iconic 1990s superstar Selena Quintanilla. It’s a nine-part series about belonging itself. Journalist Maria Garcia documents her own journey as she discovers what it means to love and mourn Selena, and what her legacy can teach us about pop...
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Stacey Abrams Is Hellbent on Stopping the GOP's "Jim Crow 2.0"
Stacey Abrams has a name for the series of bills that just passed the Georgia state legislature: “Jim Crow in a suit and tie.” Abrams joins the Mother Jones Podcast to explain why your right to vote is once again under attack—perhaps more so now than it has been in generations. Donald Trump’s big...
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Roxane Gay Says Cancel Culture Does Not Exist
Roxane Gay is one of the most prolific and versatile writers of our generation. She’s written a best-selling collection of essays (Bad Feminist), a blockbuster memoir (Hunger), Black Panther comics, and countless essays of cultural criticism. That’s not to mention her New York Times advice…
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The Vaccine Rollout Is Racist. We Can Do Something About That.
A new coronavirus vaccine from Johnson & Johnson has been approved. A new coronavirus variant in New York City has been identified—and is spreading. New data shows structural and racial disparities in who is receiving the vaccine, and who is still waiting in line. As the one year anniversary of…
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Biden Can't Make Trump's Immigration Cruelty Vanish Overnight
Overflowing ICE detention centers. Families separated at the border. A multi-billion-dollar border wall. Over the course of his four-year presidency, Donald Trump used executive power to wage war on the United States’ immigration system–leaving millions of immigrants and asylum seekers in...
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What the Hell Is “Truth and Reconciliation”, Anyway?
House impeachment manager Jamie Raskin delivered a speech during Trump’s impeachment trial last week in which he made a direct appeal to reality: “Democracy needs a ground to stand upon,” he said. “And that ground is the truth." There’s a lot of demand for reckoning in America right now. Cities...
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Impeachment Trial Day One: The Damning Case Against Donald Trump
Tears on the Senate floor. Shocking footage of the insurrection. A bumbling and widely panned performance by Donald Trump’s legal team. The former president’s second impeachment has now moved to trial, and House Democrats came prepared. A little over one month after a riotous mob laid siege to…
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Biden Confronts Our Climate Crisis Head On
Stopping climate change is back on the White House agenda. President Biden came into with the most ambitious climate change plans of any administration to date. He not only promised to reverse the Trump administration's regressive climate policies, including regulatory rollbacks and a withdrawal...
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Dr. Seema Yasmin Grew Up Believing Conspiracies. Now She Fights Them.
Trump is gone. But assessing the wreckage wrought by his lies has only just begun. Emerging, battered, from a year advising the former president, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, and Dr. Deborah Birx, the former coronavirus taskforce coordinator, both agree: Trump’s...
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The Post-Trump Era Is Here: Inside Joe Biden's Historic Inauguration
Today, Joe Biden was inaugurated as the 46th president of the United States. Two weeks after an armed mob stormed the Capitol, the new president painted a picture of hope and collective effort in his inaugural address. His message sharply contrasted with former president Donald Trump’s dystopian...
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Twice Impeached: Trump’s Name Will Live Forever in Shame and Infamy
Today, President Donald Trump became the first president in US history to be impeached twice. A majority of the US House of Representatives—including 10 Republican members—voted to impeach Trump following last week’s violent attack by right-wing extremists on the US Capitol. “Donald Trump will go...
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Trump's Terror Tactics and America's History of Racist Violence
The January 6 attack on the US Capitol by a mob of extremist Trump supporters was shocking and scary—but not surprising. Incendiary rhetoric and racist dog whistles have been centerpieces of President Trump’s politics since he first ran for office. Trump has encouraged his supporters to bully...
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I Watched the Capitol Siege Begin. I Was Threatened For Being a Reporter.
On Wednesday, a mob of Trump supporters surged towards the US Capitol as the Senate was debating certification of Joe Biden’s election win. “No one gets out alive, not today!” a man brandishing a Trump flag shouted, according to MoJo reporter Matt Cohen, who was there when the barricades fell and...
About this show
The midterms aren't just a horse race. They're a stress test, a referendum on where the country is headed, assuming the guy in the White House lets voters weigh in at all. Stress Test, from Mother Jones, is a pop-up video podcast tracking the fight, the money, and the lies—and hunting hard for hope—all the way through Election Day. Washington Bureau Chief David Corn and Video Correspondent Garrison Hayes connect the day's headlines to our newsroom's deeply reported coverage. We'll dig into the real threat of election interference; a crop of extreme, scandal-soaked candidates; immigration enforcement and its fallout; the remaking of Washington, physically and ideologically; the backlash against data centers; the war in Iran; a desperate president whose numbers are cratering; and what opposition politics could look like once the votes are counted. Tune in every Wednesday and Friday.
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