Rachel Maddow Presents: Déjà News

An authoritarian ruler moves to invade a smaller country and take it for himself. People around the world rally to that country’s defense. European and American leaders grapple with how to stop the invasion and prevent a wider war. But this isn’t Russia and Ukraine in 2022. It’s Italy and Ethiopia in 1935. Rachel Maddow and Isaac-Davy Aronson explore what we can learn from the very different choices made decades ago, when the world faced a similar challenge.

As conservative governors try to score political points by depositing busloads and planeloads of migrants in liberal cities, it can seem like an unprecedented exercise in cruelty. But it’s a page ripped from an earlier playbook in U.S. politics, one that was forgotten for decades for a very good reason. Rachel Maddow and Isaac-Davy Aronson revisit the racist Reverse Freedom Rides of the 1960s.

A new president with authoritarian tendencies packs the nation’s highest court, which then outlaws abortion – sparking not just a backlash, but a new coalition for democracy and the rule of the law. Rachel Maddow and Isaac-Davy Aronson explore how events abroad in just the last few years might help us understand what is happening now in the United States.

In 1973, in the throes of the Watergate scandal, three young federal prosecutors uncovered a separate criminal scheme being run inside the White House — the sitting vice president, Spiro Agnew, was taking envelopes stuffed with cash in exchange for official acts as an elected official. If Nixon left office, Agnew would be the next President. And so, what would happen if the President was charged with a federal crime? Worse yet, what if he was convicted? Now that Donald Trump has been charged with 37 federal crimes – as he runs again for president — Rachel Maddow and Bag Man executive producer Mike Yarvitz talk with the three Spiro Agnew prosecutors who have the only experience in our nation’s history with a situation like this.

Republicans claim the election was stolen. They use those claims to justify suppressing people’s right to vote. All of it happening amid a national reckoning on race. Rachel Maddow and Isaac-Davy Aronson tell the story of a time uncannily similar to our own – in the early 1960s. And how it’s both a parallel to our present moment and the origin of conflicts playing out today.

Long before Governor Ron DeSantis declared a new war on wokeness, Florida lawmakers in the 1950s and 60s tried going after the NAACP, suspected communists and gay people in Florida schools and universities. The lawmakers upended life for countless numbers of their fellow Floridians before being upended themselves by their own zeal for the cause. Now that DeSantis is bringing this playbook to a presidential campaign, Rachel Maddow and Isaac-Davy Aronson ask what we can learn from the last time Florida went down this path.

A violent right-wing mob interrupts lawmakers formalizing the transfer of power to a new leader. But this isn’t Washington, D.C., on January 6, 2021, but rather Paris on February 6, 1934. Rachel Maddow and Isaac-Davy Aronson explore that earlier event, the way it reverberates to this day and how it could help us understand what January 6 will mean for the U.S.

Rachel Maddow, host of the #1 hits “Bag Man” and “Rachel Maddow Presents: Ultra,” is back at the mic with a new original series, “Rachel Maddow Presents: Déjà News.” In each episode, Rachel and co-host Isaac-Davy Aronson seek a deeper understanding of a story in today's headlines by asking: Has anything like this ever happened before? Would knowing that help us grapple with what’s happening now… and what might happen next? Follow now and listen to the first episode on June 12.