Bedrock, USA

Aug 11 2024 15 ep. 26 mins 514
Bedrock, USA Podcast artwork

Bedrock, USA is a podcast about political extremism, small town life and the fight for democracy, hosted by Laura Bliss, a reporter at Bloomberg CityLab. 

In a super-divided, pandemic-era America awash in conspiracies and misinformation, it’s about a group of people who didn’t like what they saw happening in their local governments, and decided to get involved - whether that meant holding a rally, running for office, recalling an official or storming their government with bullhorns and threats. 

Their stories show how far-right ideologies enter into local politics - sometimes quietly, other times at full volume - and what it takes for regular people to fight back. They show the beauty as well as the risks, struggles and pitfalls of being an active participant in democracy today. And together they create a human-level portrait of a democracy that is fracturing, and the role that extremist ideologies are playing. (And they’re not going away.)

Where do their stories point us as a country? 

  Society & Culture  Government  News
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Listen Now: Misconception

Aug 11 2024 1 mins  
Reality TV stars are freezing their eggs on camera. Lawmakers in DC are debating federal protection for IVF. Hundreds of millions of dollars are being invested in slick startups that market fertility treatments for all. But this rapid growth has revealed cracks in the system. Misconception, a new series from Bloomberg’s Prognosis, follows reporter Kristen V. Brown on her own inti

The School Board Queen: Chapter 3

Jan 18 2023 30 mins  
In the final chapter of “The School Board Queen” we dig in with Bridget Ziegler. Her opponents have called her names – transphobic and racist. But she says she’ll take “the arrows of being called whatever” for what she believes in. She’s a champion of the Florida Parental Rights in Education Act – that’s the so-called Don’t Say Gay bill, which critics call unsup

The School Board Queen: Chapter 2

Jan 18 2023 29 mins  
Bridget Ziegler is against the teaching of CRT and gender identity. She believes parents should have ultimate control over their children’s education. In chapter two of “The School Board Queen” we explore where these stances come from. We hear from a Republican woman who fought against communism in her kids’ schools in the 1950s. We hear some of the first instructional vide

The School Board Queen: Chapter 1

Jan 18 2023 23 mins  
Ever since the pandemic saw school boards explode into shouting matches over mask mandates, nothing has been the same. And Florida has been the epicenter of some of those battles. Leading the charge is Bridget Ziegler, mother of three, and chair of the Sarasota school board. She is against the teaching of CRT and gender identity, but she is pro protecting the rights of parents. And

Why School Boards Had the Toughest Political Races

Nov 09 2022 18 mins  
This week on Bedrock, USA, hosts Kathleen Quillian and Samantha Storey speak to Doug Kronaizl, a senior staff writer for Ballotpedia, a nonprofit that tracks elections and ballot measures. Kronaizl studies conflicts on school board elections. For this episode, he breaks down what the education landscape looks like in the wake of pandemic mandates. He describes how conservatives are

How Secure Are America’s Midterm Elections?

Nov 02 2022 31 mins  
Bedrock, USA returns with an interview about election security. New hosts Kathleen Quillian and Samantha Storey talk to the editorial director of VoteBeat, Jessica Huseman, about what to expect at the polls. Going into the midterms, cybersecurity is top of mind, so is physical security for both the paper ballots and the people handling them. Huseman breaks down why the American ele

What’s On Your Mind Ahead of the US Midterms?

Oct 08 2022 2 mins  
There are five more episodes of “Bedrock, USA” in the works — and we want to hear from you. With the midterm elections coming up, we're wondering, what’s at stake in your town? Are you getting politically involved? What are you worried about? Do you have questions about how local politics work? Please go to bloomberg.com/bedrockusa and send us your stories and questions. O

Election Day

Aug 31 2022 32 mins  
Election day in Sequim. The Good Governance League wins by a landslide. A new mayor will be installed. However, down south in Shasta, the future is uncertain. We go back to the far-right activists who are trying to install more of their candidates into elected office. Will their takeover be successful? In both Shasta and Sequim, some residents have awakened to the importance of loc

Good Governance

Aug 24 2022 41 mins  
With their beloved city manager Charlie Bush gone, a group of Sequim residents unites to fight the intrusion of partisan politics in their local government. They call themselves the Good Governance League and mount a campaign for an upcoming city election. Their plan? To get their own candidates into office, and to vote out the QAnon mayor. But it’s not easy. It turns out the may

Not In My Backyard

Aug 17 2022 34 mins  
We leave Shasta for now. We will come back in a later episode to find out the election results. Meanwhile, we return to Sequim, where Mayor Armacost reveals his love of QAnon on live radio and later forces his city manager Charlie Bush to resign, in what some residents see as an act of troubling partisan bias. It turns out the beef between Armacost and Bush has roots in a controver