CQ Roll Call Policy and Politics CQ Roll Call

This has been a momentous week for politics. Jury selection started in the criminal trial of former President Donald Trump. The Senate dispensed with impeachment articles against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. And the House considers a foreign aid package that has made Speaker Mike Johnson a target of his unhappy colleagues. But beyond those headlines: FEC filings show us who raised how much for 2024's election; runoffs in Alabama and another trial that could affect New Jersey races. Roll Call campaigns editor Herb Jackson walks joins the podcast to discuss.
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Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., faces pressure from all sides after promising to take up an aid bill for Israel this week that may or may not include money for Ukraine. CQ Roll Call's David Lerman and Peter Cohn assess the embattled speaker's options on a national security supplemental spending package.

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If it’s an election year, expect crime to be an issue. Candidates and parties draw conclusions with every headline, and exchange rhetoric that sheds more heat than light. But the history and reality of America’s criminal justice system is more complicated than a “tough on crime” slogan would indicate. The just published “Excessive Punishment: How the Justice System Creates Mass Incarceration” offers essays by scholars, advocates, those who have experienced incarceration and former law enforcement who make the case that public safety, justice, and fairness are not only compatible as goals, but they can and must be achieved together. Lauren-Brooke Eisen, the book’s editor, is the senior director of the Brennan Center’s Justice Program, where she leads the organization’s work to reduce America’s reliance on incarceration, is the author of Inside Private Prisons (Columbia, 2017) and a former prosecutor. She joins Equal Time to talk about why the book is especially timely in the present political climate.
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People feel so passionately about food that perhaps it is not a surprise it has yielded that rarest of things: A sequel to a documentary. The makers of 2008’s “Food, Inc.,” are, as the new movie’s tagline goes, back for seconds with “Food, Inc. 2,” a multi-layered look at the food industry, its farmers, workers, scientists, journalists and more. Co-directors Robert Kenner and Melissa Robledo are here to talk about it, from soup to nuts.
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Final fiscal 2024 appropriations came nearly six months late, left Republicans divided and bitter, triggered the ouster of a House speaker, and put a new speaker on notice that his own ouster could come next. CQ Roll Call's David Lerman and Aidan Quigley recap the drama of the just-completed appropriations cycle and assess what it means politically for a Ukraine aid package and fiscal 2025.
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President Joe Biden's fiscal 2025 budget request offers up election-year domestic initiatives from child care to affordable housing while promising to reduce deficits from projected levels over the coming decade. CQ Roll Call's David Lerman, Aidan Quigley, Caitlin Reilly and Paul M. Krawzak dissect the budget request and its prospects in Congress in a webinar presentation for CQ subscribers.
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