This podcast is supported in part by the New England Innovation Academy in Marlborough, Massachusetts,

where today's students become tomorrow's innovators by discovering their passions and purpose while preparing for what's next,

reimagining education with a future-focused curriculum, entrepreneurial mindset, and real-world application,

currently enrolling grade 6 through 12, day and boarding students.

Learn more at NEI Academy.org. Corrine Jean-Pierre has spent most of her career as a Democrat,

working on four presidential campaigns and serving in the Obama and Biden administrations.

But her days as a member of the Democratic Party are over, and that is the focus of

her new book, Independent. We spoke recently, and I asked her why she's leaving the party.

When I left the administration on January 20th with the president, I was surprised by the amount

of people who were coming up to me, and I say this in the book, who were very worried

about the state of America and the country

and where we were going.

And my thinking was, I had thought about becoming an independent,

I kind of lay that out in the book.

And my thinking was, OK, if I put out a book with a roadmap

and really lay out my own process and where I am today with the

party, my hope is that it would start a conversation that I believe is needed right now.

In this time that we're in, we need to have a conversation about what happened in 2024.

How do we move forward? How do we

protect our democracy? And there is something fundamentally wrong with the system that were

this political system. We need a two-party system in order to protect our democracy,

in order to exercise democracy. And I feel like the two-party system isn't working. And I'm not the

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