Welcome to the beat. I am Ari Melbert. Susan Rice has served at the highest levels for President

Obama and Biden. Today, she is touting this White House breakthrough on student debt, and she is our

guest later tonight. We also have Bill Nye, the science guy coming up, so consider it a kind of a hot

bill summer and stay with us for that. Also making a beat debut is one of the few live witnesses from the

January 6th committee hearings, an expert who stuck to the facts about Donald Trump's loss

and found that telling the truth can become something of a radical act in the MAGA universe.

So all of that is coming up here. But our top story right now is about democracy. And I like to clearly tell

you what we're trying to do around here. So let me tell you up front right now, this is a little

different than our typical start to this news program on the beat. Right now, I'm going to try to

walk through the broader path of how democracy is in danger,

even beyond how that point itself has become a kind of rhetorical refrain in Washington,

a refrain that is also true.

So we're going to go through that right now, me and you together,

and then turn to a special expert on this a little later.

The midterm elections, they occur on one day in November, and we know that, of course, is election day. But these primaries for who can win

on that day, who even will be in a position as a major party nominee to win, they keep playing

out pretty randomly because every state just sets its own dates.

And right now, some of the primaries may matter even more than Election Day because there are more people running to seize power to try to end democracy,

to try to corrupt our system of government so your vote won't matter. More people running to do that

than at any point in modern history. So these primaries are something of a checkpoint. But those figures

keep winning Republican primaries with signs of an extreme post-insurrection slate of candidates that are

even more militantly anti-democracy

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