I’ve been a big fan of the Crooked Media organisation’s stable of podcasts for a few years now.

Crooked was set up in 2017 by former Obama staffers Jon Favreau, Dan Pfeiffer and Tommy Vietor in the wake of Trump’s victory to provide a progressive media outlet that encouraged activism to restore the Democrats’ fortunes. Its growing team and stable of podcasts informs and entertains about all aspects of US politics. Its Hysteria podcast, hosted by journalist Erin Ryan and former White House Head of Scheduling and Advance Alyssa Mastromonaco aired the day Justice Anthony Kennedy retired from the Supreme Court, paving the way for last month’s overturning of abortion rights and had to be re-recorded.

If you haven’t already, you might like to listen to their perspective on the events leading up to Boris Johnson’s long overdue resignation in the Boris Johnson Brexits edition of their Pod Save the World podcast presented by former national security spokesman Tommy Vietor and foreign policy adviser Ben Rhodes. They have an interview with David Lammy who is their go-to Labour person. They could do with a go-to Lib Dem as well but Lammy pretty much covers all the bases on this one.

I’d strongly recommend dipping in to the Crooked stable in the run-up to what look to be very interesting midterm elections in the US in November. It had looked as though the Republicans would win both House and Senate, making it even more difficult for Joe Biden to pass any sort of progressive legislation. However, the Supreme Court’s bombshell on Roe vs Wade might well change that. In a way it annoys me that the Democrats are jumping on this to give themselves an electoral advantage when they have been particularly weak over decades at dealing with the threat to abortion rights, but the quickest way to re-establish them is to have a Democratic Congress prepared to codify them. It’s a big ask to get the 60 votes needed in the Senate to stop Republicans blocking legislation, but when the Court has just removed the rights to safe and legal abortion to half the population and made it clear that it’s going after contraception, same sex relationships and same sex marriage as well, all bets have to be off.

* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings. You can find her on Bluesky at caronmlindsay.bsky.social