Trump wants you Dumb & Mean: A Conversation with Ben Sheehan

Summary

The PoliticsGirl Podcast: "Trump Wants You Dumb & Mean: A Conversation with Ben Sheehan"

Release Date: August 12, 2025

Overview

In this compelling episode of The PoliticsGirl Podcast, host Leigh McGowan engages in a deep-dive conversation with Ben Sheehan, the author of "OMG WTF Does the Constitution Actually Say?" and the host of PBS’s new show Civics Made Easy. The discussion centers around the recent funding cuts to public broadcasting by the Republican-controlled Congress, the long-term implications for American democracy, and the vital role of public media in fostering an informed electorate.

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Funding Cuts to Public Broadcasting

Leigh McGowan begins the conversation by highlighting a significant development: the Republican Congress's decision to slash $1.1 billion from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, effectively eliminating federal funding for public media over the next two years. McGowan emphasizes the broader impact of these cuts, noting that local NPR and PBS affiliates, which provide essential local news and public services, will bear the brunt of this decision.

Leigh McGowan [04:21]: "They're basically changing American values and what we fund and what we believe in on the fly."

Ben Sheehan responds by contextualizing these cuts within a decades-long Republican strategy aimed at dismantling public media infrastructure. He draws parallels to other long-term political agendas, such as the attempts to overturn Roe vs. Wade, illustrating a consistent pattern of undermining democratic institutions.

Ben Sheehan [04:21]: "Since 1973, there's been a campaign to try to get the Supreme Court to overturn this. There's been a campaign for many decades to get rid of PBS and NPR funding."

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Impact on Local Communities and Public Services

Sheehan underscores the indispensable role that local public media plays in communities across the United States. He highlights that over 70% of public funding supports local affiliates, which deliver crucial information tailored to specific regions—from municipal decisions to emergency alerts.

Ben Sheehan [06:09]: "They're talking about what your city council is doing, they're talking about what your mayor is doing... they're providing a crucial public service."

McGowan adds that while national programs like Sesame Street are often cited, the everyday essential services—such as weather alerts and local news—are what truly benefit communities, especially in areas with limited internet access.

Leigh McGowan [08:04]: "People are getting lifesaving alerts... public broadcasting was kind of one of the last places that facts didn't have to compete with profit."

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Economic Arguments and Government Spending

The conversation shifts to the economic rationale behind the funding cuts. Ben Sheehan argues that the cuts represent a negligible portion of the federal budget compared to the soaring national debt, which exceeds $36 trillion. He contends that targeting public broadcasting is not an effective measure for addressing fiscal issues.

Ben Sheehan [09:15]: "We're talking about less than, if my math serves me correctly, less than a hundredth of a percent of the federal budget. It's nothing."

McGowan concurs, pointing out that these cuts are part of a broader trend of shrinking government services while simultaneously increasing expenditures in non-essential areas, such as retrofitting luxury items for political figures.

Leigh McGowan [10:21]: "We're cutting childhood cancer research, and yet we just heard that we're going to be spending almost a billion dollars to retrofit Donald Trump's Qatari plane."

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Political Bias and Media Control

A significant portion of the discussion addresses the alleged bias in mainstream media and the Republicans’ attack on public broadcasting's impartiality. McGowan criticizes the narrative that public media is inherently left-leaning, arguing instead that mainstream media is dominated by right-wing billionaires who control the vast majority of media outlets.

Leigh McGowan [05:07]: "There are nothing liberal biases about mainstream media. We've got six corporations that own almost 90% of all mainstream media... public broadcasting was kind of one of the last places that facts didn't have to compete with profit."

Sheehan adds that public media's focus on local issues makes it a bastion of unbiased reporting, contrasting it with national media's tendency to prioritize profit over factual accuracy.

Ben Sheehan [06:09]: "These are not organizations that are parroting left wing, you know, national news. They're talking about what your city council is doing... providing a crucial public service."

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Call to Action and Preservation of Public Media

As the episode concludes, both McGowan and Sheehan stress the urgency of supporting public broadcasting. They highlight the insufficiency of private donations in offsetting the substantial federal cuts and advocate for listeners to contribute to their local PBS or NPR stations to ensure the continuance of vital public services.

Leigh McGowan [52:09]: "In the meantime, let's help public broadcasting stay on the air. Please consider donating to your local PBS or NPR station and offsetting the damage this administration is doing to our country and the truth."

Sheehan echoes this sentiment, emphasizing the reliance on philanthropic contributions in the wake of governmental austerity.

Ben Sheehan [48:25]: "Now we're just relying on anyone who has the means to donate to support these services to keep them going."

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Conclusion

This episode of The PoliticsGirl Podcast serves as a clarion call to action against the erosion of public media funding. Through an informed and passionate dialogue, Leigh McGowan and Ben Sheehan illuminate the critical role of public broadcasting in maintaining an informed and engaged citizenry, essential for the preservation of American democracy.

Notable Quotes:

• Leigh McGowan [04:21]: "They're basically changing American values and what we fund and what we believe in on the fly."

• Ben Sheehan [06:09]: "They're talking about what your city council is doing... providing a crucial public service."

• Leigh McGowan [10:21]: "We're cutting childhood cancer research, and yet we just heard that we're going to be spending almost a billion dollars to retrofit Donald Trump's Qatari plane."

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Further Engagement

Listeners interested in supporting public media and expanding their understanding of American governance are encouraged to explore Ben Sheehan's work on Civics Made Easy and his book on the Constitution, as well as to donate to their local PBS or NPR stations.

Transcript

[Lee McGowan]

I was looking at a White House spokesperson recently and he was talking to Entertainment Weekly about some random comment that one of the women on the View made about Trump being jealous of Obama and his swag. Right? Like it was like very kind of throwaway comment. And this White House spokesperson said, and I'm going to quote, Joy Behr is an irrelevant loser suffering from a severe case of Trump Derangement syndrome who should self reflect on her own jealousy of President Trump's historic popularity before her show is the next to be pulled off the air. And I was like, bro, hello and welcome to the Politics Girl Podcast. I'm your host Lee McGowan. Let's get into it. We've had Ben Sheehan on the show before. He is the author of the incredible book OMG WTF does the Constitution Actually Say? And the two of us have gone through all of the amendments in the Constitution piece by piece of if you haven't listened to those episodes, I highly recommend you go back and check them out. They are deeply educational but also really fun and you will come out of them feeling smarter and more aware of the constitutional rights that are currently being ripped away from us right now. I think it's important to have a real understanding of what it is that we're really fighting for. Which is probably one of the reasons Ben created his new show on pbs, Civics Made Easy, because, in his words, he was looking to break down the complex world of American government and civic participation. Every episode takes something complicated and makes it easy because we both believe you cannot fix anything if you don't understand how it works. As a reminder, Ben Sheehan is a former award winning executive producer at Funny or Die and the founder of omgwtf, which stood for Ohio, Michigan, Georgia, Wisconsin, Texas, Florida, a group he created to teach voters about state executive races. During the 2018 midterms, the Hollywood Reporter named Ben one of entertainment's 35 rising executives under 35 and Ben helped register over 50,000 voters back in 2016 through digital videos as the Executive director of Save the Day. His book OMG WTF does the Constitution actually say? A Non Boring guide to how our Democracy is Supposed to Work was a modern day breakdown of our founding documents to better explain things that we should have learned in school but probably didn't. As Cat Calvin, the founder of Spread the Vote, said, every election, millions of people don't vote because they don't understand how government works. And Ben believes we can do better than that because look where we are. So without further ado, please welcome Back my guest, author of the brilliant book OMG WTF does the Constitution actually say? And host of PBS's new show Civics Made Easy, Ben Sheehan. Welcome back, Ben.

[Ben Sheehan]

I'm excited to be here.

[Lee McGowan]

Well, thank you for coming, my friend. I mean, what's it like to get a super important, necessary show to teach American civics just to have our own government cut your funding?

[Ben Sheehan]

It's the perfect time. Yeah, exactly how I would have wanted this to go down. Been working on the show for five to six years and it's been at multiple producers, multiple networks, and finally found a home. Right. As the government cuts the funding. So what is, I guess, nice about the show, at least, is that it's fully shot, it's produced, it's funded. But obviously with the funding cuts, it's going to be seriously harmful to really, the local affiliates, the local NPR stations in your community, the local PBS stations, those are the ones that provide local news and also do programming from the national PBS and NPR brands. But those local affiliates will be affected pretty heavily.

[Lee McGowan]

Oh, for sure. And in case people don't know, the Republican Congress recently approved a funding cut for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting that will affect public radio, television stations like NPR, PBS, all their affiliates. The cuts are totaling about $1.1 billion and they eliminate all federal funding for public broadcasting for the next two years. And the cuts are part of a larger package where this administration is actually clawing back money that was already appropriated by Congress for things like public broadcasting and foreign aid and that kind of thing. They're basically changing American values and what we fund and what we believe in on the fly.

[Ben Sheehan]

I think it's important to point out that this has been a 40, 50 year plan, you know, not unlike what happened with Roe vs Wade. Since 1973, there's been a campaign to try to get the Supreme Court to overturn this. There's been a campaign for many decades to get rid of PBS and NPR funding. And I wrote an op ed about this for the Daily Beast, but this hits kind of close to home to me because my mom used to work in the United States Senate for a Republican Senator, Mark Hadfield, who was a back then a Republican who supported public media. But she and the senator would go toe to toe with so many people who were trying to cut public funding. And so this has been something that is not new. It's been decades in the making for Congress and Republicans in Congress to try to get rid of all, you know, funding for public media.

[Lee McGowan]

Yeah, I mean, let's be really clear. It's been a major priority for Republicans in Congress for decades because their argument is that programs like NPR and PBS have a liberal bias. Right. But these are the same people who say the mainstream media has a liberal bias. And as someone who goes on mainstream media to give the truth a fighting chance, I can tell you that they are paying people like right wing propagandists, say Scott Jennings, right, They're paying him almost a million dollars a year and people like me who go on it nothing, Right? So I'm pretty sure there aren't there, you know, hoping that leftists will support the truth. They are paying the right wing propagandist. There is nothing, nothing liberal biases about mainstream media. We've got six corporations that own almost 90% of all mainstream media. We've got right wing billionaires buying up most of our major newspapers and local television stations. So public broadcasting was kind of one of the last places that facts didn't have to compete with profit. And now they've defunded that.

[Ben Sheehan]

Well, I'm sure that part of the reason is because organizations like cnn, maybe because of the president's attacks, have felt like they need to put out there that they're more biased or more balanced. And so they're paying people like Scott Jennings to be on there sort of as to give the, give the other side. But again, I just want to come back to this point that, you know, Congress, about 1 to 15% of the main sort of national PBS and national NPR companies get money from the government. And that comes through various ways. Sometimes it's through the affiliates paying the national organizations, but the local affiliates, there are hundreds across the country. I think there's a total of 1600 total PBS and NPR affiliates nationally. Those are the ones that receive the vast majority. More than 70% of the public funding goes to local, the ones in Anchorage, at Baton Rouge, in Detroit, in Charlotte, in Sacramento, wherever it is. So these are not organizations that are parroting left wing, you know, national news. They're talking about what your city council is doing, they're talking about what your mayor is doing, your county executive, your school board. And so they're one of the last bastions of local news newsrooms in our communities that have, are getting this funding and be able to provide a crucial public service. And so that is where the money goes. And so that's what people are going to lose. And not just information about their local government, they're also going to lose life saving alerts. Lisa Murkowski in the US Senate said that the reason she supported this bill, she was one of the two Republicans, along with Susan Collins, who voted to maintain public funding, is because in Alaska, people were getting lifesaving alerts about winter storms, about natural disasters. And, you know, PBS and NPR, local affiliates reach saturation 99% of the country. That's an unbelievable number. And so some people don't have, you know, there are 26 million people in the United States who don't have access to quality Internet service and broadband. And so these local affiliates actually are providing a vital public service. And I think that gets lost in the debate about partisanship and public media.

[Lee McGowan]

People kind of focus down on Sesame street, which is important, but they don't realize that people are getting like, hey, this hurricane is coming, or, or there's going to be a flood. And that's in places that get no other local news. You know, it doesn't help you if you're the Inland Empire and you're getting news coming out of la. Right? That's not going to help you if there's a big storm, that kind of thing. I mean, public broadcasters are trying to assure their audiences that they're going to keep running, that they're going to be using private funds, that they're going to take more donations. And there has been a serious influx of private money coming in since the funding cuts. But they're going to need a lot more if these local television radio stations are going to be able to stay in business. I know that I was looking at a recent New York Times article and they were saying that PBS has about 120,000 new donors who have contributed about $20 million. But since the federal government has cut $535 million a year, that's clearly not going to be enough. Right. And apparently we can spend $100,000 a year for an ICE agent salary or add trillions of dollars to our debt to people tax cuts. But paying for local news or radio stations or like I said, Sesame street, like, no can do, right?

[Ben Sheehan]

I mean, we're talking about less than, if my math serves me correctly, less than a hundredth of a percent of the federal budget. That's. It's nothing. It's not like some grand austerity measure. Like if, if our government, if our Congress were really serious about limiting how much money the federal government is spending, which I think they should do. I really do think that now that we're past $36 trillion in total debt in our deficit is close to $2 trillion. I mean, we're really. And this has Been spiraling out of control, really, in the past decade, decade and a half since the financial crisis. I mean, it's just exploded. So I think it is smart for Congress to really look at what we're spending money on and say we're getting to a place where we're almost having to pay a trillion dollars just on interest on our debt every year. This is a problem. This is a problem now. It's a problem for future generations. But then they're like, cutting a fraction of a penny. That's not. That's not where the problem is. That's not an expenditure that is driving us into this debt crisis.

[Lee McGowan]

No, absolutely not. It's an. You're seeing a lot of these cuts that you're like, we're not even saving any money here. And in fact, people are going to suffer because of it. It's not just public broadcasting. It's public health. It's food health. It's testing the water to make sure what we're drinking doesn't have lead levels in it, like, those kind of things. We're cutting childhood cancer research, and yet we just heard that we're going to be spending almost a billion dollars to retrofit Donald Trump's Qatari plane.

[Ben Sheehan]

Thanks. I was hoping for that.

[Lee McGowan]

I was really hoping so he could really cruise around in luxury and like, that is bananas. And people should be saying that all the time. It doesn't matter if you're a liberal or a conservative or you don't vote at all. You have to be like, well, that's a colossal waste of money. Right? I heard someone say it and tell me what you think about this, because I think it's brilliant. They said major advertisers have a real opportunity here, that they should be taking the money that they would be spending on things like ad buys for Paramount after they canceled the Colbert show. Like, if you are someone who advertised on Colbert and you know that show is being cut, you're like, okay, let's take our ad budget from what we would have spent on Colbert and move it over to PBS or npr, right? Like, use that same money. Because traditional advertising doesn't even work that well anymore. It doesn't really reach people the way it used to, right? So taking that money and putting it on something that would have such great public response that people would really feed back on it. It would get so much earned media on socials that they had made that change that I think they would probably end up doing better. Their advertising would end up doing better. If I was like, well, listen, you know, GEICO has moved all of their money to pbs and I, everyone would talk about that. And I feel like major advertisers really have an opportunity here to use their money smartly and actually get some major earned media for their services.

[Ben Sheehan]

I completely agree. And I really hope that all the Fortune 500 CEOs that are going to be watching this broadcast today. There will be, because we'll be sending that to all of them, will be using that money to do exactly that. Because that's a really smart point. You know, you're going to be generating earned media that's going to have a ripple effect and that's going to encourage other people to donate. And again, these provide a crucial public service. It is not propaganda, it's not indoctrination. Is it true that a lot of the people that work at these national organizations, npr, are left of center? Yes, it is. But that doesn't mean that your local affiliate in Charlottesville is parroting some, you know, national story. No, they're giving you news that you can use for you and your family's daily life.

[Lee McGowan]

Yeah, well, also facts have become what people think are left leaning. Like, just because you're using the facts. I think we also have to remember that the media deals and the public stock trades now all have to be approved by Trump because every government agency from the FCCC and the SEC to the FBI and the flipping Justice Department now seem to have to answer directly to him. Which is why CBS made the choice to pay him $16 million in a settlement for a lawsuit that they would have won over the 60 Minutes editing of the Kamala Harris interview. Because they wanted to please him, because they were going into a merger that they wanted him to approve. Right? Then you have people like we were talking about Colbert and the entire Late Night show staff being fired and this new Paramount Skydance merger coming with Donald Trump putting major strings on it, namely that he gets to have a bias monitor on CBS for the next two years, that he chooses who will decide what is news and what isn't news, what is fair and what isn't fair, what has bias and what doesn't have bias. And I feel like, geez, what are we even doing here, Ben? Like, the President is shutting down public media while insisting that he gets to approve everything that goes on mainstream media.

[Ben Sheehan]

I mean, it's obviously diet authoritarianism moving toward full sugar authoritarianism. And I think that, you know, if you look at it sort of in the larger picture, zoom out slightly, you look at what's happening with university funding that get, you know, they still get money from the federal government. You look at public media, you look at him being able to squeeze law firms, the executive order is saying that they can't enter government buildings to cut them off at the knees, which is a huge amount of business that they do is arguing cases inside a government building. If they can't enter the building, then they can't do their job. So he, he is, you know, he's good at finding leverage points, if you look at it like that. Like, strategically, he's able to find these leverage points to extract things from private law firms, from media companies, from universities that in totality with. It's been, what, six months since he's been in office. So it's pretty disturbing how many he's gotten to sort of bend the knee in a short amount of time.

[Lee McGowan]

Yeah, no, it's actually quite stunning, actually, how many people have just sort of capitulated to him thinking it's going to serve them. And I keep thinking about, like, Columbia, like, they were the first university to kind of bow to him. And then immediately he still hit them up with, we're cutting $500 million from your endowments. You know what I mean? Like, it's. It doesn't serve yourself to capitulate to a person like this because you will always end up on the wrong end of the stick. Anyway, so my dog Chips is getting older, and I want to be sure I'm taking the very best care of him to make sure he is with us for as long as possible. So it is very important to me that Chips eats well. Chips has always been a picky eater, and it's something we've accepted, but it's also one of the reasons I am crazy about Sundays for dogs. Chips goes in and out on foods, but he has a sensitive tummy. So even when I tried the handmade from scratch dog food, he likes it for a couple of days and then rejects it. Or I buy the really expensive, the best dog food and we go through five poop bags on a walk because it just doesn't sit well in his tummy. Needless to say, we have wasted a lot of time and money over the years trying to find something that Chips would both eat and tolerate, which is why Sundays for dogs is so terrific. Sundays is a fresh, healthy dog food that's easy to store and serve. I always keep a bag of food in my office, so if Chips isn't hungry at breakfast, I will wait until he comes to me midday. And Sunday's is just ready to pour and serve. Sundaes is a fresh made dog food made from a short list of human grade ingredients co founded by practicing veterinarian who tests and formulates every version of each recipe. Sundaes contains 100% all natural meat and superfoods and 0% synthetic nutrients or artificial ingredients. Dog parents report noticeable health improvements in their dogs like softer fur, fresher breath and better poops. And unlike other fresh dog foods, Sundaes doesn't require refrigeration or preparation because of their air drying process. So you literally just have it when you need it. You can travel with it if you want. Plus Sundaes is delivered right to your home so you never have to worry about running out of dog food again. And if your dog doesn't like it, you can cancel or pause your subscription anytime with their 14 day money back guarantee. So why not give Sundays for dogs a try? Get 40% off your first order of Sundays by going to sundaysfordogs.com politicsgirl or using the code politicsgirl at checkout. That's sundaysfordogs.com politicsGirl and use the code politicsgirl at checkout for 40% off. I can tell you you will not be disappointed. This episode is brought to you by IQ Bar, our exclusive snack sponsor. IQ Bar is the better for you. Plant protein based snack made with brain boosting nutrients to refuel, nourish and satisfy your hunger without a sugar crash. IQ Bars are gluten free and dairy free with no soy, GMOs or artificial sweeteners. They come in a variety of flavors including mint chocolate chip, chocolate, sea salt, banana nut, toasted coconut chip, Lemon blueberry and Peanut butter cup. Along with their brain boosting bars, they also have hydration mixes and mushroom coffees for my boys who really are protein bar aficionados. They told me it was the flavors that made these bars stand out that they really tasted like the real thing. Like the bar actually tastes like blueberry, not some blueberry flavor. You can actually taste real banana, not just some synthetic idea of the fruit. There is a reason that IQ Bar has over 20,000 five star reviews and right now IQ Bar is offering our special podcast listeners 20% off all IQ Bar products plus get free shipping to get your 20% off. Text PG to 64,000 text PG to 64000 that's PG to 64,000. Message and data rates may apply. See Terms for Detail. It doesn't serve yourself to capitulate to a person like this because you will always end up on the Wrong end of the stick. Anyway.

[Ben Sheehan]

And again, the same thing with universities is similar to public media in the sense that that money doesn't go to indoctrination. It goes to research projects. It goes to scientific and medical trials. You know, I'm somebody, I've talked about this. Who suffers from long Covid. These universities are doing in trials and research to try to find cures for long Covid and treatments for other sorts of diseases and conditions. So this is. These are pub. These are viru. Vital services that benefit all Americans. It's not, you know, propaganda being shoved down our throats.

[Lee McGowan]

Yeah, but it also just comes back to, what does the strongman want? Because to me, this is classic authoritarian strongman behavior. It's the kind of stuff you see in China or Russia or North Korea or Hungary. When you start saying, this is what you can say, this is what you can't say. You can't criticize the leader. Everything he does is perfect. We will tell you what the truth is. You know, that kind of thing. I mean, I was looking at a White House spokesperson recently, and he was talking to Entertainment Weekly about some random comment that one of the women on the View made about Trump being jealous of Obama and his swag, right? Like, it was like very kind of throwaway comment. And this White House spokesperson said, and I'm going to quote, Joy Behr is an irrelevant loser suffering from a severe case of Trump derangement syndrome, who should self reflect on her own jealousy of President Trump's historic popularity before her show is the next to be pulled off the air. And I was like, bro, that is classic Putin, Xi Jinping kind of stuff. And I keep thinking about, like, look at China, right? Like, if people don't know in China you cannot even see a picture of Winnie the Pooh because someone once said that Xi Jinping looked like him. So he canceled any image that the Chinese people can see of Winnie the Pooh. You can't talk about Winnie the Pooh on any website or any television station because the leader doesn't like it. I think about a million Russians having died in this war in Ukraine, but most Russians don't even know that many people have died because Putin controls all the media. We're told Putin's approval rating is 80%. When people protest, even silently, they disappear. And I feel like if Americans don't understand that this is what we are looking at, they're tricking themselves. And I'm curious to see how long south park lasts after that episode. Right, because the creators just signed a 50 episode deal with Paramount. But if that season premiere taught us anything, I'm not sure how long that bias monitor is going to like where it's going.

[Ben Sheehan]

Well, you also have, you know, someone who has ultimate control over all of this is a guy named Larry Ellison, who's the founder and CEO of Oracle. He's one of the, I believe he's the second richest person in the country, if not the world. He owns an entire island in Hawaii, which is not something I knew people could do. But he also, his son, David Ellison, controls Skydance. And so he's been, he's a very close friend of the President's and he's been very involved. And so, so the President now has one of his close friends overseeing this. So it's a very easy call over there to say, hey, I don't like this, or you're violating this terms of our agreement, or this is. Even if it's something that's objectively true, that's a criticism or just basic news coverage, there is that very shorthand relationship where the President could lodge a complaint or control the narrative in some way. I hope not, but it is possible.

[Lee McGowan]

Well, he wants an ombuds person watching every single thing. And that will just be like, don't say anything bad about Trump person. I think we should just remind people that anytime the leader of a country gets to dictate what media people have access to, what media people are allowed to say as soon as comedians and other voices are silenced, it really is terrible for the people. And I remember growing up when the Ayatollah Khomeini called for Salman Rushdie's death because of his book the Satanic Verses. And if you are young, this is a book that was written that the Ayatollah felt was blasphemous to the Iranian government. And so the author had to go into hiding and he literally had to move around the world and go into hiding because they wanted him dead. It was only a couple of years ago that Jamel Khashoggi, which was an American journalist of Saudi descent, was murdered at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul for being critical of the Saudi regime. The Trump family themselves seemingly signed off on that. You know, after that killing happened. And people like, this is the stuff that happens in these nations where the dictators or the controlling factor of that country has full control. And then you look at Jared Kushner getting a $2 billion investment into one of his companies from the Saudis after that happened to an American journalist. And I feel like if we don't wake up. That's the direction we're heading.

[Ben Sheehan]

I think that's right. I think that we need to sort of look at history as a guide and really understand how our government works and understand if we've been close to something like this before, looking at other countries. So I think historians who critique this moment and offer these sort of large picture analyses of where we are is a vital thing that I think people should be, you know, reading and absorbing.

[Lee McGowan]

Yeah. And it's probably why people like Timothy Snyder and those guys all moved to the University of Toronto out of Yale, so they could be as critical as possible without being the first to be taken away. Okay, so that's freaking depressing. And now that we've talked about an.

[Ben Sheehan]

Uplifting episode so far, I think we can reintegrate.

[Lee McGowan]

Now that we've talked about that, let's pivot. Right. Let's talk about your show, because if it's not being canceled, let's talk about what we're learning. Because if we want to know about history, if we want to know where we sit in the world, if we want to understand our government, you can't fix anything you don't understand. You can tell me the carburetor in my car is broken, and I'm like, that's cool. Which one's the carburetor? Like, you can't fix the country unless you know how it works. And you are teaching us civics, which was taken out of schools almost everywhere, quite frankly. So you have an entire generations of people who don't even understand how the government works. And then they go, well, why is the government like this? And you're like, let's back it up. Let's learn about that. So tell me about civics made easy.

[Ben Sheehan]

Sure. So, you know, just to put it in perspective, seven states today require at least a year of civics at some point between kindergarten and 12th grade. And there are a number of states that don't offer any civics or government education. And there's a number of states that only offer half a year. We're talking about at most 6 to 12 months. Really less between kindergarten and 12th grade. Now, once upon a time, we used to teach a lot more than that. Coming out of World War II, between 1945 and 1960, we had tons of civics and government and history classes in our schools. Foundations of democracy. This is a huge part of our public education system. And ironically, it's kind of what our founders wanted our public education system to be. Thomas Jefferson thought that we should have a public education system that teaches us all to be good, involved citizens. Core to that was understanding the government that he and his friends had set up for us. George Washington in 1796 wanted to create a national university to teach everybody civics and government. Congress didn't end up appropriating it and signing off on it, but they understood that this is, like, the most important subject in terms of being able to operate the country that we, the people, ultimately preside over. And yes, there are flaws in our democracy. Yes, we don't control everything directly, but this was ultimately a democratic republic. And so we need to know how to operate that. And I think one way to keep people in the dark is to take away the information of how the system works, to hide the operating manual, so to speak, to hide the toolkit so that we don't have the ability to run the thing that we're supposed to run. And so what I wanted the show to be is that toolkit. And I wanted it to be simple, and I wanted it to be to the point and have every episode be everything you need to know about one topic, whether it's how we tax and spend, whether it's why we have U.S. territories, whether it's the electoral college, it's the filibuster, it's political donations, it's who runs our elections. And just to really understand all of these things, but also know where the pressure points are, where the levers are that can be pulled to influence them. And one big barrier that has always been a pet peeve of mine is that people feel stupid for not knowing how government works. There's a level of shame and a level of embarrassment that comes with it. But unless you got robust civics education or you had family members who worked in the government who took the time to tutor you from a young age like I did, purely because of luck, then you don't have that information and you don't have that education. And so it is not your fault. That's like, the biggest thing I want to convey is that it is not your fault for not knowing how the government works, because it is not a priority anymore in our schools. And so that is what I hope this show can be. We can all get caught up together. We can all raise our hands and say, I don't know, the thing that I feel stupid about. Put that shame and embarrassment away, Leave it at the door. We all have blind spots in our knowledge, and so let's just get caught up together and do the job that we were meant to do.

[Lee McGowan]

Yeah, and listen, I mean, it's pretty shocking how little Americans know about how our own government works. I think that is clearly why you wrote your book on the Constitution. It's why I added the America 101 section to the front of my book. Because I was like, listen, if you don't know how the government works, don't feel bad. Like you're saying, don't feel shame because that was done deliberately. What have we been told to not talk about our whole lives? Politics and religion. And what are the two things that cause us the most problems? Politics and religion. Right. So like it was done deliberately in many ways. If we don't know how it works, it allows the people who do to take advantage of us, which is what is happening when you're talking about this 40 to 50 year plan that we're seeing come to fruition with PBS or come to fruition with Roe v. Wade or come, you know, like we don't understand the importance of who you elect as president will dictate who's on the Supreme Court. You know, like people just don't put those things together because they didn't learn it. And they shouldn't feel bad about that because honestly, that was done deliberately. Keeping us in the dark is very effective if you are in power. That's why I think so many people don't vote.

[Ben Sheehan]

I'm glad you made that last point because I look at, you know, if you look at voting as a. Not to be a super nerd, but if you look at voting as a supply chain, this is a super nerd saying, this is going to get real nerdy, this is going to get wonky, but I promise I'm going somewhere. So if you look at voting as a supply chain, right. The very end of it is gerrymandering. After you cast a ballot, there's a way to make your vote not count. There's the stuff in the middle, right? If you're trying to vote, making, moving polling places, cutting staff and machines available at polling places, or kicking people off voter rolls, there's the registration point of it. You know, we talk about voter suppression really in sort of that middle to end part. But if you look at it in the beginning, what's the most insidious form of voter suppression? It's not teaching people why they should care in the first place, convincing them that they don't have power, convincing them that none of this actually affects them. By making people disinterested. You don't have to kick them off the voting rolls. You don't have to gerrymander the districts because they're not out there trying to make themselves heard and trying to influence. So I really look at this as the most sinister way to suppress the vote, by not giving people the tools they need and by not teaching them why they should care and how this stuff affects them.

[Lee McGowan]

Yeah, absolutely. Because it really does. If you look at the voting, even in the last election, in 2024, the biggest voting block was non voters. It was people that didn't vote.

[Ben Sheehan]

90 million people.

[Lee McGowan]

Yeah. More people didn't vote than voted for either candidate. And I think we have to keep that in mind. Like when people say, oh, Donald Trump has, you know, he has a mandate and the majority of the country wants this, you're like, absolutely not. Like, the majority of the country didn't even vote. And I think that that's really essential that people understand not only how it works, but why their participation in it is so essential. And it's hard to care about stuff like this if you don't understand it. I think it just goes over people's head. I often say, when you learn a new word and then it suddenly feels like everyone's using that word, you're like, like, did we all just start saying plethora? And you're like, no, now you know what plethora means. So you hearing it right? So, like, if I'm listening to the radio and you're talking about gerrymandering, but I don't know what gerrymandering is, it's going to go right past me if I know that. It's a way of strategically drawing the districts to keep certain voters out of that district so that they can rig it so only one party wins. And then I hear Texas is going to redraw their map so they can gerrymander and get Donald Trump five more seats, I know exactly what they're talking about. And then I go, well, holy that I care about that. That sucks. And then when you hear someone like Gavin Newsom saying, well, if you're going to do it, then we're going to do it, because the whole goal would be no gerrymandering. But if you say we, you gerrymander Texas, we're going to gerrymander California, and then we're balanced. And at the end of the day, we hope that we could pass a law that says, let's nobody gerrymander. Let's draw safe, even districts that give all the voters in those districts the ability to choose the candidate they want. But right now, we don't have that. And we can't allow one party to just continue to do it while the other party plays by the rules. It's absolutely foolish in the world we live in right now.

[Ben Sheehan]

And we also have, you know, Congress could end this tomorrow, right? They could pass a bill to outlaw gerrymandering for U.S. house seats.

[Lee McGowan]

It's been written the for the People's Act. It's already there. JOHN lewis, Voter Rights act it's already there. They could pass them now, but they won't.

[Ben Sheehan]

And we all know that they won't because they currently benefit from because, because people who are currently in Congress benefit from districts being drawn a certain way. You know, it makes elections not competitive. And so what really, the only real path to ending this is on a state by state basis. And many states have moved to, you know, drawing independent redistricting commissions in the last decade, which is an independent group of some Republicans, some Democrats, some independent voters, by the way. Voters, ordinary people, not politicians drawing the districts to make them more fair. And we've seen that that actually does net a more fair result than the people currently in office drawing their own state legislative seats members, people who your state lawmakers. In most states, they draw their own seats. They literally get to pick not, not for their friends in Congress. I mean, they do that too in many states, but they draw their own districts. So they could say, I want this person to vote for me. They can do down to the House in the street.

[Lee McGowan]

Yeah. They can say ignore this entire ignore this entire section by the lake because they're not going to vote for me. Let's put them over here. Let's cut these people up because they will vote for me and make sure that they on my team. Let's I mean, it's actually just insidious and we have allowed it for so long because most people didn't know it was happening. I mean, your episodes for civics made easy, which air I believe every other Thursday so far have included the electoral college, political donations, third parties, election oversight, because we're mid August right now. What are the other ones coming up? What are you excited about? People learning so I am perpetually chilly. I wear sweaters when it's hot. I sit in the car when it's been heated up in the sun like a little cat. And because I have to sleep with my air conditioning on every night for my breathing, I often have to put a blanket on over top of my duvet just to feel warm enough. In fact, I have blankets in every room of my house. And you can see them. So I try to have nice blankets and I'm not sure there is a nicer blanket than Lola Blankets. I was so psyched when Lola Blankets reached out to be a sponsor because they have been called the world's number one blanket for good reason. Their blankets are made with ultra soft luxury vegan faux fur that is machine washable, double hemmed and won't pillar shed after repeated washings. And this blanket is sick. It looks amazing but it feels like a dream. I have never in my life this blanket is strip all your clothes off and wrap yourself in the soft but it's also beautiful. It looks expensive and I totally understand why they have over 10,000 5 star reviews and designers keep dropping collabs with them. Lola Blankets are next level. I have the blanket in a large but it comes in a whole range of sizes. The XL is legitimately massive. I think they call it the biggest blanket on the Internet. Lola also makes weighted blankets and blankets with matching pillows, so don't forget to look at those if you want to bundle. For a limited time, our listeners are getting 35% off their entire order at Lola blankets.com by using the Code Politics Girl at checkout. Just head to Lola blankets.com and use the code politicsgirl for 35% off. After you purchase, they're gonna ask you where you heard about them. Please support the show and tell them that we sent you. It really does make a difference. Wrap yourself in luxury with Lola Blank Blankets so I'm traveling right now and it occurred to me that I should be adding an ad to this podcast. When you're traveling, one of the hardest things to do is when you're changing beds and you change locations or you're changing time zones is to sleep. Which is why I'm such a devoted fan of Calm. Calm is the number one app for sleep and meditation that gives you the power to calm your mind and change your life. And it really does change your life. I have become completely Pavlovian when it comes to the their sleep stories. Over time, I have picked the ones that I like the best currently the Taurus Express and the Glacier Express because I really like the train stories. But as soon as I hear the narrator's voice, it's almost like an immediate reaction to just go right to sleep. It doesn't matter where I am, I just go. I'm also a big fan of Calm for Naps. The app has a number of terrific meditations that allow you to take the perfect amount of time for a nap, which is like 28 minutes and it wakes you up with birdsong. So if you're feeling overwhelmed in the middle of the day, you can take a quick less than half hour nap and be back and ready to go. It works so well, I don't even have to set an alarm. The summer is kind of a good time to do a reset. So why not make Calm one of those resets and add to your life something that will make it better all year. As I said, I use the sleep stories the most, but they also have sleep meditations, calming music, white noise, green noise, brown noise. They have guided meditations, expert LED talks and different topics, and grounding exercises that help you relax when you're feeling overwhelmed. There's a reason calm has over 2 million 5 star reviews and it's because they help you stress less and sleep more and sleep better. And Calm has an exclusive offer just for the listeners of our show. You can get 40% off a Calm Premium subscription at calm.com politicsgirl I will tell you, as someone that has been paying for this app for well over seven years, this is an amazing value. You just go to see c a l m.com politicsgirl for 40% off, unlimited access to CALM's entire library. That's c a l m com.com politicsgirl and tell CALM that you heard about them from me. What are you excited about people learning?

[Ben Sheehan]

There's one on the history of voting rights, which I think is. It's episode five, which I'm really excited about. It fills in the gaps in a lot of our American history, stories that we've been told and things we may not realize. The moments where suffrage went up, suffrage went down, that sort of thing. It kind of covers reconstruction, which I think is something that gets overlooked in a lot of our public education. I am excited for the filibuster episode. I tried to spend an entire day, 24 hours and 18 minutes awake in New York City to be as long as the longest filibuster from strom Thurmond in 1957, which was for a really bad reason, which was to try to filibuster the Civil Rights Act. First Civil Rights act in like 80 years.

[Lee McGowan]

Hasn't he been beaten now by Cory Booker?

[Ben Sheehan]

And some people say yes, some people say no, because technically it wasn't a filibuster because it wasn't opposing a specific thing, it wasn't delaying a specific bill.

[Lee McGowan]

Right.

[Ben Sheehan]

Some people say it was. So there is controversy over whether or not Cory Booker's speech, which was longer, was actually a filibuster but if we're talking to the purist, it is still 24 hours and 18 minutes, and I needed that extra hour of sleep, so I'm glad that that didn't count. But I talked to a lot of experts. I talked to a guy, former senator from New York, Alphonse d', Amato, who is the person responsible, aside from Cory Booker, of the longest filibuster of any living senator, current or former Republican or Democrat, and why he did it in the. In the 1980s. I'm excited for the final couple episodes, which are about the Constitution and our founding documents, specifically one which is whether we could have another Constitutional Convention again, because there is a movement to call a new one to rewrite the Constitution, and they're more than halfway there. There's also an episode on how we amend the Constitution. Aside from that, the final episode is whether our founding documents even still matter. Right? Do they matter? Do they actually still hold power over our lives? People adhere to them. Do people not adhere to them? What are the values that they talked about? Are we consistent with those values? And then the budget episode I'm really excited for, which is basically looking at how much money the government spends each year, how the process works, and whether or not America is even good with money.

[Lee McGowan]

I'm gonna go with no.

[Ben Sheehan]

I would. I would go with that, too. And I know what's in the episode.

[Lee McGowan]

But I also. I think that's fascinating because I think these are such important topics to discuss if you want to be not only a, you know, a good American citizen who understands how your. Your system works, but also just to be like, holy hell, is that ever broken? Like, why are we doing it like that? Like, this concept of do our founding documents even hold weight anymore? I mean, under this current administration. No, they don't. They're picking and choosing. They're saying, ah, 14th amendment doesn't matter, Birthright, citizen doesn't exist. We're going to round people up without their Fourth Amendment rights to due process. We're going to, like, they're just picking and choosing which parts of the Constitution they even want to pay attention to. And I think what we often forget is a government is, you know, they only have their power based on the powers instilled in them by the Constitution. So if you ignore the Constitution, where does your source of power really come from? You know what I mean? You've sworn to uphold the Constitution, then you don't uphold the Constitution. Why are we listening to you? These are good questions to even consider. And I Love that you're bringing guests on because you yourself could easily explain this stuff, but you seem to have just a cross section of guests to help fill in those blanks. From US Senators to the former chair of the fec to like experts on the Constitution and professors and law experts. I think that must be very helpful to kind of fill in these episodes and really give people a full picture.

[Ben Sheehan]

Yeah. And I really wanted it to be people that are not the obvious choices. You know, obviously being pbs, they didn't want me to interview current members of, of any political party who are in office. Former members were okay. But I did interview, for the political party episode, I did interview Senator Angus King, who's the only member of Congress currently serving, who has never won any seat as a member of a party or has never run for any seat as member of a party. Both of his gubernatorial wins in Maine and both of his Senate wins, U.S. senate wins in Maine, every time was as an independent candidate. That's really interesting that. Why is this one guy keep getting elected? Why does he keep beating Democratic challengers and Republican challengers? What is it about Maine that is leading to this result? But also it was great to look at the two party system through his eyes and what he thinks about it. There are so many great guests and experts like you said, professors and former politicians and also people outside the political space. I interviewed a friend of mine who's an accountant here in Los Angeles. He took a look at America's books and let me know if he thought it was going well or not going well. I interviewed people on the street across the country, many of whom knew a lot about how our government works. So that gave me a lot of encouragement. And I will also say that when you isolate a lot of these issues and take away the partisanship from them and you present them to people, there's broad agreement. There's broad agreement that billionaires shouldn't be able to have unlimited sway over our elections. Whether the people on the street I was talking to Republican or Democrat, everyone thought that that was a bad idea. In fact, in 2024, Maine passed a ballot measurement with 75% of the vote. Again, Maine is a state that does its electoral votes a little bit differently. Right. The person who wins Maine for president gets two electoral votes. Whoever wins each of Maine's two congressional districts, they get one vote per congressional district they win. So Maine often gets split. So it's not like a solid blue state because Trump has won a single electoral vote from Maine more than once. That ballot measure, which was to limit the amount of money an individual could donate to a super pac. They can't limit how much a super PAC can spend, but the money going into a super PAC. Maine tried to cap it at $5,000. It passed with 75% support. They immediately got sued and the case is playing out. But I just think that it's an example of there are these issues where when you isolate them and when you don't have any partisan messaging or arguments or talking points that cloud it, you just present the issue simply to people. More often than not, you're going to get a wide set of agreement. And I just think that that gave me a lot of encouragement.

[Lee McGowan]

I think it also should give representatives, particularly Democratic representatives, because the Republicans are doing whatever they're told to do right now. But about how we should pass more laws rather than these giant ombus bus bills that are single individual topics. We're seeing it a lot with the executive orders. Like everything is standalone, right. So you can kind of understand what they're trying to do. Often when we pass laws in Congress, it's an a thousand page bill that very few people have read that they've jammed a bunch of stuff into. And I keep thinking like pass a thing that says you can't, you know, gerrymander in any state in America. That's what it is. That's the whole bill. Right. And people will understand it conceptually, they can agree with it. If you are a billionaire, you, you, your taxes can be raised by X amount. Simple things that people could get behind. Everyone will get blank. But right now we don't even know what's in half these bills. We get something like the big beautiful bill and we're like, what did this have? I'm sorry, what? Like they had things in there that were, you know, AI can't be regulated for 10 years was just jammed in and that was taken out. And then Donald Trump passed it as an executive order. Right. So I think these smaller bills, because you're saying when you get down to individual issues, more people agree than disagree, but you don't even know where they are the way Congress has learned to make bills. So there's so much in them that we can't even keep track. And I think these are important things for us to know because I do think it's possible. You're saying you have an accountant on the show that went over America's books and that reminds me of that old movie, Dave. I don't know if anyone's seen that movie. Dave. I love that Movie Dave with Kevin Klein. But he basically has his friend who's an accountant come in and he's trying to find a certain amount of money to keep a program. And his friend is going through the blinds and he's like, we're spending $500 million on an ad campaign to convince people that they should feel proud that they bought an American car. And he's like, what? You know, we're doing these things where it's like, we're going to spend $500 million to make people feel good about something they already did. Like, that's. We could save money over here. And a regular person goes through it. I think most of us realize that the government has become bloated, the government has become ridiculous. We know that we need to save more money, but it shouldn't be from places like PBS that were cutting it. It should be from. From arbitrary things like spending $500 million to do an ad campaign for something that no one needs, or, you know, retrofitting a ridiculous plane that the man should never have accepted. Now, people can watch your show on PBS.org the PBS app and YouTube. Is there somewhere else?

[Ben Sheehan]

Those are all the. All the places. There are clips on social media across any platform. But the main full episodes can be seen anywhere on the PBS app, including if you have a smart tv, if you have the PBS app on your Roku or your Amazon Fire or your Apple TV or wherever. So anywhere on anywhere that carries the PBS app, anywhere that you can get Internet access and get to PBS.org and on PBS's YouTube channel.

[Lee McGowan]

That's amazing. And it's also something you could watch with your kids. I know that when I used to do Civics lessons on YouTube way back in the day, before I started what I do now, people said that they watched my show often with. With their kids, because I was talking about why we have the Iowa Caucus or why the Supreme Court matters, and they were like, I didn't know most of this. Then I started having my son watch it with me, that kind of thing. Because people do need to know this stuff. And I think it's really important for people to remember that public media places like pbs, they're supposed to be for all Americans. PBS and NPR are a service model. They are not a for profit model, much like government itself. We keep hearing that government should be run like a business, but government isn't a business. It's a public service. They take our money, they pay themselves and our institutions, but ultimately to help us. It's not there to make A profit. It is not a business. We're not supposed to go into debt either. Right, but no one seems to be.

[Ben Sheehan]

At least not at that level. A little debt is okay, 36 trillion, maybe not.

[Lee McGowan]

But I think shows like yours, they're not supposed to be big money makers. Right? Like I look at pbs, there's a show on PBS called Learn with Me and, and it is huge. It's a Spanish English show. It teaches people language. It's a huge thing. But without the federal grants, shows like that, shows like yours, they'll be gone because they're looking at it like, well, we can't make money, so let's not do it. But we look at what happens with mainstream media when you prioritize money. You get the paid propagandists on there because it keeps the, the fire going and it keeps the clicks happening. But it's not a service to the public in any way. We barely learn civics in school. So it is essential that a show like yours is able to stay on the air.

[Ben Sheehan]

Well, you know, the other side of this coin is like PBS gets a lot of money from foundations, from, you know, wealthy individuals. And so, you know, I, it's making me sad to say this, but it seems like as the government cuts more and more services and much and more spending things that are helping people. Now we're just relying on kind billionaires to fund this stuff, to fund medical research, to fund public media, to fund these things. And so that's sort of what we're relying on. And like the government was supposed to be doing this stuff, it's supposed to be helping people, it's supposed to be providing a public service like you said. And so, you know, I'm not trying to say all billionaires are bad, but you know, it is. We're finding ourselves in a weird situation where as the government shrinks and starts spending more and more on services for the general public, we're just, just relying on anyone who has the means to donate to support these services to keep them going.

[Lee McGowan]

Yeah, no, I've always said we shouldn't have to be reliant on the benevolence of billionaires. It shouldn't be up to someone like Mark Zuckerberg to say, I've given you $500 million for Universal Pre K. I'm like, well, why don't we just tax you at a higher rate and we could afford universal pre K, you know what I mean? Like, it shouldn't be that we have to wait with our hands out like Oliver, you know, like, please, sir, can we have some more? When we could actually tax them at a level that it was taxed back in the day when people say America was great, we had these higher tax levels and we could afford to build interstate railroads and highways and create a middle class and have the GI Bill and the things that we used to be able to pay for by taxing major corporations, high wealth, individuals having higher inheritance taxes, these kind of things. I don't think anyone thinks that if you've made it in America, if you are rich in America, we want to take everything from you. But there is a way to say this is too much. If you are able to. We're not talking anymore about buying mansions. We're talking about buying governments, about buying countries, about buying Hawaiian islands, about merging giant media corporations so you can tell people what the truth is. That's not capitalism. That's some sort of bastardization of capitalism where we get poorer and poorer and you get so extraordinarily rich that you've lost perspective with the people that even live in your own country. You look at the way people are blowing back on. On Mamdani in New York. Like, every billionaire is going to leave New York if this man comes in because he's a socialist. You're like, he's just saying, hey, man, the rents are too high and it would be okay if public transportation was free so people could get around the city. And they're losing their minds. Like, that's the worst thing they've ever heard in the world. And I think we've really lost perspective. And I think it's really essential we pull back a little and we say, hey, government is not supposed to run like a business because it's actually a service to all the people who pay for it.

[Ben Sheehan]

Yeah, I think that people would be really surprised to know what the tax rates were in the 1950s. When, you know, we go back, I mean, like 80, 90%.

[Lee McGowan]

Like, yeah, 70 to 92%.

[Ben Sheehan]

Crazy, crazy high. And that was a period that, you know, the civil rights, you know, gaps aside, you know, there was a lot of growth in the United States. And today, you know, we have. Our marginal top rate is way, way less. Less than half of them.

[Lee McGowan]

I think if they have it at 22% or 23%, like, it's extraordinarily low.

[Ben Sheehan]

It's very, very low.

[Lee McGowan]

Even if they took it up to when Obama was president or Bush was president, if it was at like 31.

[Ben Sheehan]

23, I think, yeah, I think that's for corporations. I think individuals still have somewhere in the 30s, but it's still less than half of what it used to be. And so there's, you know, if you're a billionaire, it's a great time to be alive in the United States right now. Now, I mean, I guess it's always a good time, but especially now.

[Lee McGowan]

It's always good to be a billionaire. But. Yeah, no, somebody said once that we shouldn't have billionaires. If you get to $999 million, you should get a trophy for winning capitalism. And we name a dog park after you. And then we tax you at 100%, you know what I mean? Like anything over $999 million, we're going to tax you at 100%.

[Ben Sheehan]

I'm glad. That means there will be four to 500 new dog parks, I think, in the United States.

[Lee McGowan]

Thank you, sir. Well, listen, defunded but not defeated is the new motto of pbs. And I hope that's exactly how you feel because that's exactly what we need. It's pretty easy for people, including yourself probably, to feel defeated these days. And so I'm so glad that you're still out here trying to teach us about how we can be better, how we can still grow, that we are, you know, not defeated, even though it feels like a defeatist moment and that we're still willing to fight back. So thank you so much for joining us today, Ben. Please tell us how we can follow your work moving forward and what we can do to help with your project because I'm assuming a donation to PBS wouldn't be out of the question.

[Ben Sheehan]

Donate to a local PBS or NPR affiliate if you have the means, because again, that's who's gonna be really effective with the funding. If you wanna follow my work, you can watch my show like I mentioned, on PBS's YouTube or app or website. You can also subscribe to my substack, which is called Politics Made Easy. And you can follow me on social media just en Sheehan, Wonderful.

[Lee McGowan]

Thanks so much for joining me and thank you for doing this. It is a true public service that you are offering.

[Ben Sheehan]

Thank you, Lee. I feel the same about your work, too.

[Lee McGowan]

So that was Ben Sheehan reminding us not to feel bad if you don't know how the government works, that that's not your fault. It was by design. Civics Made Easy is doing what 43 other states aren't and offering us the kind of knowledge we should have. But don't. As Ben says, let's get caught up together because we can't fix something if we don't know how it works. In the meantime, let's help public broadcasting stay on the air. Please consider donating to your local PBS or NPR station and offsetting the damage this administration is doing to our country and the truth. I want to thank Ben for joining us today and you for caring enough about democracy to be here now. Check out Civics Made Easy In a time when where education is so undermined in this nation, I think Ben is out here doing essential work until next week. PG out before you go, I just want to thank the premium members of this podcast and encourage you, if you're not a member, to consider supporting my work. With mainstream media in the sway of a handful of billionaires and public stations being defunded, independent media is more important than ever. If you see worth in what I'm doing here, please consider becoming a member of Politics Girl Premium by going to politicsgirl.com and signing up up. You'll get this podcast ad free along with my rants sent directly to your inbox. So even if my work is silenced on social media, you will still get access to the truth. There is a link to sign up in the bio of this episode, but [e-mail] and as always, please like and share this podcast so we can grow the audience. Because the more people who have access to real information, the faster we can change the collective consciousness to something better. As always, thank you for your time and support. The Politics Girl Podcast is written and performed by me, Lee McGowan and produced and edited by Happy Warrior Entertainment. All rights reserved.