The Electorette

Dr. James Peterson of WURD Radio on the political legacy of 9/11, the GOP’s unusual midterm convention, Trump’s $5,000 promise, and the road to November.

Twenty-five years after 9/11, what does this moment mean to an electorate increasingly too young to remember it?

This week on The Margin, Jen Taylor-Skinner is joined by Dr. James Peterson, host of Evening WURDs on WURD Radio, to break down some of the biggest political stories shaping the midterms. They reflect on their own memories of September 11 and the policies and political realignment that followed — including what it means to teach 9/11 to a generation with no living memory of the attacks.

Then they turn to the Republican Party's unusual midterm convention, Donald Trump's attempt to put himself at the center of an election in which he isn't on the ballot, his promise of a $5,000 “dividend” if Republicans win, and why some Republican candidates appear reluctant to tie themselves to him heading into November.

The conversation also gets into Tim Scott's role at the convention and Peterson's argument about why Republicans want prominent Black surrogates while pursuing policies he describes as anti-Black.
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ACLU Deputy Director Ming-Qi Chu on the Trump administration’s latest effort to gut Head Start—and the larger agenda behind it.

The Trump administration is taking aim at Head Start, the 60-year-old program that provides early education, healthcare, nutrition, and other critical services to low-income children and their families.

Jen talks with Ming-Qi Chu, deputy director of the ACLU’s Women’s Rights Project, about a proposed rule that would eliminate roughly 90% of Head Start’s performance standards, weaken health and developmental screening requirements, reduce services for children with disabilities, impose English-only instruction, and make enrollment more difficult for some of the country’s most vulnerable families.

They also examine the larger agenda behind the attack: the Project 2025 vision of traditional gender roles, the dismantling of America’s care infrastructure, and why weakening childcare ultimately threatens women’s ability to work and remain economically independent.

Plus, Jen shares her own connection to Head Start—and why the program mattered to her family.
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Skye Perryman on reclaiming our power ahead of the midterms

In this episode of The Margin, a special midterm election series from The Electorette and URL Media, Jen Taylor-Skinner speaks with Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward and author of Ordinary People, Extraordinary Times.

Perryman discusses the erosion of democratic guardrails, why Americans need “information sobriety” in an overwhelming news environment, and what history teaches us about the power of ordinary people to protect and expand democracy. With the midterms approaching, she explains why voting matters—but why the work of defending democracy cannot begin or end on Election Day.
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Daniella Mestyanek Young grew up in the Children of God, left at fifteen, and went on to become a U.S. Army intelligence officer. She has spent her career since studying how high-control groups are built — and arguing that the tactics are the same whether the group is a commune, a military unit, or a political movement.

In this conversation she and Jen Taylor-Skinner examine what separates a political movement from a cult, and why the distinction matters less than the tactics being used. They discuss the role race has played in American cults from the 1960s onward, the "validity mascot" — the woman brought in to make a leader look normal — and why cult leaders become fixated on birth rates and gender roles. Young explains what she calls trance talk: the deliberate cadence cult leaders use, and a simple test for hearing past it.

They also discuss what it takes to leave. Young is direct about the limits: there is no reliable, ethical way to pull someone out of a cult, and the deprogramming of the 1970s amounted to soft torture. What works, she argues, is waiting for the crack — and knowing what to ask when it appears.

Daniella Mestyanek Young is the author of The Culting of America and Uncultured.
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ICE raids often make headlines. But what happens after an arrest receives far less attention.

In this episode, LA Public Press reporter Martín Macías, Jr. takes listeners inside what advocates describe as the "hidden" side of the deportation system: immigration courtrooms, where volunteer observers say due process is increasingly difficult to access and deportation cases are moving at an accelerated pace.

The conversation explores the recruitment of new immigration judges, conditions inside Southern California detention facilities, hunger strikes over alleged mistreatment, and what election officials are doing to prepare amid concerns that federal immigration enforcement could have a chilling effect on voters during the 2026 midterms.

Martín Macías, Jr.⁠ also discusses why ICE has become less visible in national headlines—even as arrests continue—and what that shift may mean for the future of immigration enforcement.
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