Engaged Citizen is a podcast with Holly and Josh, a couple of ordinary people interested in helping you stay informed in a thoughtful and truthful way. We are saturated with news, so we will take three to four issues each week and discuss why they matter. We’ll end with a bright spot because people still show courage, compassion, and love!
If we are being honest, I think we all know what’s going on here. The overt corruption carried out by the Trump administration—from the billions pocketed by his family from cryptocurrency, social media, and presidential merch to stripping away human rights and launching an unprovoked war—is so blatant. If we ignore or wave it away at this point, we are responsible for enabling it. While I think some are weirdly excited by a strong-man, balls-to-the-wall approach to the presidency, it seems the majority of us are not. So it is truly on us to stand up for the rights we have left before any remnants of democracy completely fall by the wayside.
Specifically, if you are a White voter, it is your moral obligation to be an ally and protect the rights of Black and Brown voters, who are the ones most squeezed by newly gerrymandered maps. If you are a male voter, it is your moral obligation to stand up for your female family members’ right to vote. They are coming for those, too. We’ve said before that Trump telegraphs his every move. We should not be surprised but utterly sober and awake to what is happening.
12 May 2026
Episode 49 | Gutting the Right to Vote
The conservative Supreme Court has once again sliced up the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Regardless of whether you identify as Conservative or Liberal, Democrat or Republican, or somewhere in between, we should all be horrified by the efforts to manipulate and deny individuals’ right to vote. There is no doubt that Trump and his buddies are feeling their unpopularity and trying to do everything to hang on to power. Too many people have fought long and hard to win their right to vote. It is an insult ot democracy to erase the political power of the voting populace. Hopefully, we will use this alone as motivation to vote—perhaps not simply along party lines, but in favor of preserving whatever remnants of democracy we have left to work with.
It will take years to rebuild and improve upon what has been broken in the last 19 months, but the only way we can recalibrate is to show up at the polls.
11 May 2026
Episode 48 | Violence begets More of the Same
Let it be said very clearly that political violence does not belong in a functioning democracy. Let it also be said that if our democracy were functioning, it would neither be fomented nor tolerated.
What happened at the White House Correspondent’s dinner was wrong. And how might we examine it as a shadow aspect of what happens when unchecked anger guides our behavior? James Baldwin once wrote, “To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a state of rage almost all of the time.” How that applies today is that if we are relatively conscious, we likely feel some rage at what is happening in our country. Anger can be informative and activating, but as we have seen, it can also be dangerous.
It feels more important than ever to greet our anger with curiosity and compassion, to let it fuel desires for positive change rather than destructive ones.
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Podcast Authority Score: 37 / 100
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YouTube
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Engagement
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