I'm Sarah Kensier, the author of the best-selling books, The View from Flyover Country, and Hiding in Plain Sight.

I'm Andrea Chalupa, a journalist and filmmaker, and the writer and producer of the journalistic thriller, Mr. Jones, about Stalin's genocide famine in Ukraine.

And this is Gaslit Nation, a podcast covering corruption in the United States and rising autocracy around the world.

And we're joined today with a very special guest, Ari Berman.

Welcome Ari to Gaslit Nation.

Thank you, guys.

Great to talk to you.

Ari is a senior reporter at Mother Jones covering voting rights.

He's the author of Give Us the Ballot, the Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America,

and the author of Herding Donkeys, The Fight to Build the Democratic

Party and Reshape American Politics. Obviously, he has a very important front row seat to a

historic level of voter suppression, legal warfare being carried out by the increasingly authoritarian

GOP. So he's here to

explain to us what is going on, how it's all happening, and what to do about it. All right. So the first

question for you, Ari, if you could walk us through, what is the current landscape of the

Republican assault on voting rights like? Oh, wow. Where do I start? So first off, I want to say,

this podcast is probably going to be depressing as shit, but I am very excited to talk to both of you.

Oh, that's our standard. So you're right at home. I feel like all three of us have had this

experience where we've been shouting into the wind about what's been happening to our democracy.

And slowly everyone else is catching up, which is like a nice feeling, but also like a deeply

unsettling one. Like people are only catching up because things are getting so terrible that

it's impossible to ignore. So I imagine you guys can relate to that.

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