Kamala Harris is up against a whole lot. As the presumptive Democratic nominee, she’s fighting against years of political malaise among her own voters, while competing against a man who has a cult-like following within his base. But these challenges, as Hillary Clinton learned herself in 2016, hardly get at the biggest question mark: Is America finally ready for a woman in the White House? That’s the subject of this week’s episode of Inside the Hive, which features NBC News Capitol Hill Correspondent Ali Vitali, who unpacks the long-standing gender inequities of performing on the national stage, the unique challenges faced by the vice president, and what a Harris victory might mean in the decades to come. “The more Black people, the more women who you see in positions of power, the more you realize, ‘Hey, this is normal. Of course, when they run, they can win,’” Vitali says. “And that's partly why we’re seeing this coalescing around Kamala Harris right now.”

Love thy neighbor: It’s one of the most commonly uttered Biblical verses in the Christian faith. But when it comes to Christian nationalism, the movement doesn’t always practice what it preaches. Such is the subject of Inside the Hive’s latest episode featuring Katherine Stewart and Sam Perry, two experts on the religious right who discuss why Christian nationalists are now “much more ideological than theological,” how Donald Trump has wielded them as a political voting bloc, and why the former president’s failed assassination only reinforces his messiah-like mythology. “Everybody's saying it’s providence, he was saved by God,” says Stewart. “We’ve had eight or more years of this…A sector of the movement has, frankly, consistently framed the contemporary political landscape as being one of spiritual warfare.”

What would America actually look like under a second Trump term? Few resources paint a clearer picture than the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, the right’s blueprint for a vast overhaul of the federal bureaucracy, as well as a playbook of immediate executive actions that could annihilate decades of Democratic progress in days. This week, the former president sought to disown the document, but Vanity Fair’s Molly Jong-Fast and Jeff Sharlet, are more than a little skeptical. And, on the latest episode of Inside the Hive, the two discuss precisely what voters should fear most in the 900-page plan—from mass deportations to crackdowns on reproductive rights—and whether the country truly condones or even wants a fascist MAGA makeover. “The majority will accept fascism,” says Sharlet. “I’ve never seen a country where that wasn’t true.”

Chris Hayes of MSNBC’s “All In with Chris Hayes" joins Inside the Hive host Brian Stelter for a special episode—unplanned on a holiday break, but here we are. As President Biden's disastrous debate performance and the "catastrophe" of the SCOTUS immunity ruling converge in an existential question about America's future, Stelter and Hayes—who recently launched a series called The Stakes in his Why Is This Happening? podcast feed—parse the crush of headlines, and offer new behind-the-scenes details from the debate that has become an inflection point for the history books.

On this recent episode of The Political Scene, hosts Susan B. Glasser, Jane Mayer, and Evan Osnos discuss the unusual and dangerous aspects of Donald Trump’s reëlection campaign, from his quid-pro-quo offer to oil executives to his daughter-in-law Laura’s new leadership position on the Republican National Committee.

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This episode originally aired on May 17th, 2024

We’re all feeling it: The exhaustion. The malaise. The discontent. The nagging suspicion that U.S. politics are futile. But if there is any year to resist the temptation of tuning out, say Jon Favreau and Tommy Vietor, it’s 2024. The two co-hosts of their popular “no bullshit” podcast Pod Save America join Inside the Hive to discuss the enduring appeal of Donald Trump, the palliative power of seeing comedy in political tragedy, and why voters should view themselves as change agents come November. “Your vote is not about rewarding or punishing Joe Biden or Donald Trump or any candidate,” says Favreau. “Your vote is about yourself and your future and what kind of country you want…The only way forward is to be involved and to try to make things better.”

It’s not easy to stay in Donald Trump’s good graces. But throughout the years, Steve Bannon, host of the popular right-wing War Room podcast, has continued to prove an indispensable voice for the former president, saturating the airwaves with pro-MAGA propaganda while galvanizing Trump’s base into action. On the latest episode of inside the Inside the Hive, Puck National Correspondent Tina Nguyen and Washington Post National Political Reporter Isaac Arnsdorf discuss how the infamous and canny GOP strategist helped Trump come out of his post-election hibernation, whether Bannon is more bark than bite, and why his impending time behind bars could burnish his MAGA bona fides. “It’s amazing clout,” Nyugen says of Bannon's prison sentence, “for someone in the MAGA world in these MAGA times with a MAGA audience.”

Ever since the rise of social media, news publishers have always been playing an unwinnable game of catch-up, chasing the changes in Big Tech’s byzantine algorithms to ensure the clicks keep coming. But with AI now in the picture, the playing field is about to get even more lopsided, according to Wired editor in chief Katie Drummond and Axios Senior Media Reporter Sara Fischer. Joining Brian Stelter on the latest episode of Inside the Hive, the two media mavens discuss how tech companies like OpenAI have painted outlets into a corner by offering lucrative licensing deals that could later come back to bite them. “If you strike a deal, you get to experiment with the top technology in generative AI while your competitors do not,” says Fischer, but you “don’t fully understand…the risk of what you're giving up and how valuable it could be.”