Scheer Intelligence

Women are more visible in public life than ever before. They lead corporations, run for president, dominate popular culture and shape public debate. Yet according to media scholar Allison Butler, visibility is not the same as power—and it is certainly not the same as being heard.
In this wide-ranging conversation with Joshua Scheer, Butler discusses the themes of her book Judgment of Gender: Analyzing the Silencing of Women, examining how patriarchy, capitalism, media narratives and political power continue to shape whose voices matter and whose stories are ignored. From Roe v. Wade and reproductive rights to Hillary Clinton, Kamala Harris, transgender inclusion, critical media literacy and the enduring legacy of misogyny, Butler argues that many of the structures limiting women's autonomy have not disappeared—they have simply adapted to new cultural realities.
At the center of the discussion is a challenging question: How can women be increasingly visible in politics, media and popular culture while simultaneously remaining marginalized, controlled and silenced? Butler contends that answering that question requires looking beyond individual personalities and toward the systems that determine which stories are told, who gets to tell them and who benefits from the status quo.
The conversation is ultimately a call for critical inquiry—not only into media narratives, but into the economic, political and cultural structures that shape modern life. As Butler argues, meaningful change begins when people become willing to question what has been normalized and confront the power behind it.

As millions of Americans struggle with soaring rents, crushing childcare costs, stagnant wages and a political system increasingly captured by wealth, a new political force has emerged from New York City. In this episode of Scheer Intelligence, Robert Scheer speaks with journalist and author Ted Hamm about the remarkable rise of Mayor Zohran Mamdani — a self-described democratic socialist whose message of affordability, economic justice and political independence has transformed him from insurgent candidate to one of the most closely watched political figures in America.
Drawing on his new book Meet Mayor Mamdani, Hamm traces how Mamdani built a coalition around issues that cut across traditional political divides: housing, transit, childcare, inequality and the growing sense that the American economic model no longer works for ordinary people. The conversation explores whether Mamdani represents a revival of New Deal-style politics, why his success has rattled Democratic Party leaders, and how his outspoken support for Palestinian rights has reshaped political debate far beyond New York.
At a moment when both major parties face deep public distrust, Scheer and Hamm examine whether Mamdani's rise is an isolated phenomenon—or the leading edge of a broader political realignment. Can a movement built around affordability and economic democracy challenge the power of billionaires, corporate interests and party insiders? Or will the forces that have long dominated American politics ultimately absorb or defeat it? The answers may help determine not only the future of New York City, but the future direction of American politics itself.

On this episode of Scheer Intelligence, host Robert Scheer speaks with media scholar Robin Andersen about her explosive new book The Complicit Lens: U.S. Media Coverage of Israel’s Genocide in Gaza. Andersen argues that corporate and legacy media did not merely fail to report the destruction of Gaza honestly — they actively distorted it through censorship, euphemism, and the suppression of historical context. From banned words like “occupation” and “genocide” to newsroom pressure campaigns and attacks on academic freedom, the conversation exposes how media institutions helped manufacture public consent while silencing dissent. What emerges is not simply a critique of journalism, but a warning about the collapse of democratic discourse itself.

A tenured professor can spend decades building a career, win awards, earn lifetime recognition, and still be discarded the moment political speech crosses an invisible line. That is what happened to Dr. Sang-hae Kil after she supported Palestinian protest on campus. Her teaching record was untouched, her scholarship praised, and a faculty panel ruled unanimously against punishment — yet San José State University fired her anyway. The message is unmistakable: on many campuses, academic freedom survives only until it collides with Palestine.

The newly released Epstein files don’t just implicate a handful of powerful men—they expose an entire architecture of American power built on impunity, secrecy, and the quiet expectation that the rules apply only to everyone else. As Robert Scheer and Nolan Higdon dig into this week’s revelations, the picture that emerges is not simply one of individual crimes but of a political and financial aristocracy that treats the law as a suggestion, democracy as theater, and vulnerable people as expendable. From Harvard boardrooms to Clinton‑era fundraisers to Trump’s Justice Department slow‑walking disclosures, the documents reveal a culture where fixing, hiding, and protecting the powerful is the real bipartisan consensus. What’s breaking open now is not just a scandal—it’s a portrait of a system that was never meant to be fair in the first place.