Maggie Gelson Burnett's Instagram bio says pregnant in Trump's America, and this episode is about what that actually means. She is 26 weeks along, she is having a girl, and she has been watching this country come apart in real time while her body builds a human being inside of it.
We start in Alabama, where the fight over the Public Service Commission just took a serious hit. The people killed the first bill, Alabama Power came back with a different one, passed it through both chambers, and handed agenda-setting power to an unelected energy secretary appointed by the governor. Four of the seven commission seats will be appointed, not elected, through 2031, which means the three people Alabamians elect in November will be outvoted by people the governor put there. The lesson Alabama Power keeps teaching is that they do not stop — they just get more creative.
From there the conversation moves to what is happening at the federal level, because the same logic is running through all of it. Trump uses primetime addresses not to inform the public but to tell his base how to feel, the women in his administration are being pushed out first, and the federal government is spending eleven thousand dollars a second on an illegal war while standing at a podium saying it cannot afford daycare. Delivery drivers are cutting time with their kids because gas is four dollars a gallon, Uber drivers have no idea what their passengers paid, and the student loan emails that went out sent people into full-blown panic attacks.
The SAVE Act, the voter roll purges in Georgia, TSA showing up at airports, and the executive order on mail-in ballots can each be explained away individually, but together they are a strategy, and it is not subtle once you see it.
Maggie brings all of it back to what it actually feels like to be pregnant right now, to be carrying a daughter inside a country that is actively debating whether women should be allowed to vote, and to have made the deliberate choice to bring a child into this moment anyway.
This episode covers:
Why Trump's primetime speeches are about feeling, not information The Alabama Public Service Commission and Alabama Power The Illegal war in Iran and how much it is costing the American tax-payer The SAVE Act, voter roll purges, and ICE in airports What it actually means to be pregnant and progressive in Trump's America
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Maggie on Insta: https://www.instagram.com/itsmaggieburnett/ Maggie on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@itsmaggieburnett Maggie on Substack: https://substack.com/@itsmaggieburnett Pretty Furious: https://prettyfuriouspod.substack.com/
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