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Civic strategist Caitie Whelan's professional mission is to level the playing field of public policy. As she puts it on her website, "If regular folks don’t know how to have a voice in policymaking, lobbyists do. And they are very good at shaping it for their special interests." Caitie's work helping clients climb the learning curve of policy change advocacy made her a great guest for the podcast.

As she guides clients along the advocacy learning curve, Catie focuses on three core questions:

• Who has the power to do what the advocates want?
• What's a narrative that could spur those political decision makers to take the desired action?
• How do you sustain the effort for years to come?

Caitie says she's been especially impressed by the passionate care of the people she works with—the kind of commitment and determination that's crucial for sustaining the work over time. Caitie looks at public policy through a lens of human needs and human emotions, which is probably why she calls her excellent newsletter Policy is for Lovers. In that vein, it was interesting to hear Caitie talk about empathy for politicians and the importance of looking at the issues from their perspective.

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The Intelligence Project of the Southern Poverty Law Center is well known for tracking and exposing the activities of hate and extremist groups. So it was great to have one of their researchers, Hannah Gais, as a guest on the podcast. Discussing her work on White nationalist and Neo-Nazi groups, Hannah told me about the extremist voices and ideas that the MAGA Republicans have welcomed into their Party. As one example, Hannah gave the back story on the Holocaust-denier who appeared recently on Sean Hannity's show, arguing that America was on the wrong side of World War Two.

The conversation was a sobering reminder of the authoritarianism poisoning our politics and society—and the stakes of the upcoming election. Hannah talked about an authoritarian strategy called entryism, which focuses on reshaping institutions to serve autocratic purposes. It sounded a lot like Project 2025.

In a discussion of how women feature in white nationalist narratives, I mentioned a pair of historians. Kathleen Belew's Bring the War Home is about the emergence of the American white nationalist movement in the 1970s-1990s, and Tim Snyder's Road to Unfreedom similarly traces how Vladimir Putin cemented his position as Russia's strongman. Both accounts talk about the narrative of the need to protect women from sexual violence or perversion.

Looking beyond the dangers posed by Donald Trump as a chief executive or nominee, there is the larger problem of millions of Americans abandoning democratic principles in favor of authoritarianism. To help grapple with this difficult problem, Hannah and I listened to a clip from the classic post-WWII US government propaganda film Don't Be a Sucker.

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It is often noted that the last time Congress enacted comprehensive immigration reform was in the 1980s. Charles Kamasaki was not only deeply involved in shaping that legislation as an advocate, but he's also written an authoritative history of the effort titled Immigration Reform: The Corpse That Will Not Die. Kamasaki has for several decades guided the work of the nation’s largest Hispanic civil rights and advocacy organization, Unidos US, formerly known as the National Council of La Raza. The Migration Policy Institute has been the sponsor and outlet for much of Charles' research, including his book.

With the MAGA movement having stoked fear and made immigration a hot-button issue, this episode was a chance to explore the challenges of one of the most vexed issues in US politics. Charles and I traced the issue’s political roots back to basic questions of what it means to be an American. As the country becomes more diverse, how will we hang onto a national identity based on ideals rather than race or ancestral lineage?

Drawing on the history of the 1980s reform law, comparisons with healthcare reform and Obamacare, and Charles' extensive experience, we discussed key fundamentals of advocacy such as:

• Battles over narrative
• Bipartisan cooperation
• Splits within coalitions
• Keys to legislative success

Charles argued that achieving reform isn't as impossible as it seems, but will require a reckoning with political realities. He makes an interesting case for advocates to battle as well as reach out to opponents, expand their approach to narrative, and accept some splintering of their coalition.