If you’re feeling cranky about politics, please know this: You’re not alone. Public polling shows a remarkably wide swath of Americans with historically poor views of politics and politicians. Granted, polls are snapshots, not oil paintings, so to speak. But the body politic does seem to be in a pretty rough patch. Here to discuss the political climate and what it might mean as we gear up for another election is Nathan L. Gonzales, Roll Call’s campaign analyst and publisher of Inside Elections.

In previous work, Anne Case and Angus Deaton of Princeton described a disturbing trend, the now-widely recognized rise in “deaths of despair” – suicides, drug overdoses, and alcohol-related liver disease – since the mid-1990s. For a time, this phenomenon was hidden in overall mortality figures because of improvements in treating heart disease, but that progress stalled around 2010 for those without a bachelor’s degree.

What if confronting a societal scourge means focusing on its opposite?

That’s the approach taken by Shadi Pourkashef, a Southern California composer, conductor, and piano teacher who also combats school bullying – which affects 2 in 10 children ages 12 to 18, by one account – with kindness.

In recent weeks, America got a preview of how the new Republican House majority would wield its power. In attempting to perform a basic function of government — electing a speaker — a coalition of 20 House members caused Kevin McCarthy to lose 14 rounds of votes, decreasing his power with each compromise and successive vote.

This is not normal. Party unity ebbs and flows, but the G.O.P. in recent decades has come apart at the seams. Nicole Hemmer is the director of the Carolyn T. and Robert M. Rogers Center for...

THE SUPREME COURT is changing America. In its last term, it eliminated the constitutional right to abortion, loosened gun laws and eroded the separation of church and state. Host Jon Fasman asks Eric Segall, professor of law at Georgia State University, what will happen in the upcoming term and whether the court could be reformed. They also discuss the role of “originalism”, the judicial philosophy that interprets the constitution precisely as it was written by its authors. Runtime: 31 min

Esther Cash is a liberal college student at Biola, a conservative Christian university in California. As a program associate for Braver Angels, she helps coordinate our debates program in communities and colleges across the country.

Across the board— from voter access to questions of race and gender, and views of the economy— the gap between Republicans and Democrats has grown wider in recent years. According to recent polling, a rising share of Americans say that having political conversations with those they disagree with is “stressful and frustrating”.

Political polarization and the recent actions of party leaders have prevented compromise and resolution of critical problems.

Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer is retiring after 27 years on the nation’s highest court, giving President Biden his first chance to nominate a justice to the bench. He’s expected to announce his pick by the end of February, and has vowed to nominate a Black woman.

So, who’s the right person for the job? Will the fight to hold down the liberal wing of the court fall along ideological lines? And when did Supreme Court nominations become tit for tat?

Jason Eberl, board member for Association of Bioethics Program Directors and professor at St. Louis University, joins Roger Severino, senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center to debate government mandated vaccines.

This year the federal government is expected to collect more than $3.5 trillion in taxes— a vast amount of money by any measure. One of the key functions of Congress is to pass a budget. But often that seems close to impossible.

Lack of agreement over federal spending regularly threatens to bring about government shutdowns that have a negative impact on millions of Americans. Yet few of us can even begin to understand the byzantine budget process.