Americans don’t talk about state attorney generals very much. Technically it’s “attorneys general”—like “sisters-in-law” instead of “sister-in-laws”—but don’t get hung up on the wording. It’s what AGs actually do that matters so much.

A state attorney general is basically the top legal expert in their state; they’re also known as The People’s Lawyers because they fight for us, their constituents, against bad actors who don’t have our best interests in mind. That can mean prosecuting companies that are polluting waterways or landlords who are illegally raising rent prices or banks that are selling people’s private data. Sometimes state AGs band together on lawsuits, like a recent case against Purdue Pharma for aggressively pushing medications like OxyContin and contributing to the opioid crisis we’re facing in this country.

Unfortunately, we also have a lot of examples of the harm that a corrupt or extremist attorney general can do. (Ken Paxton, for example) But the good news is, we the people have the power to elect them. In all but seven states (AK, HI, NH, NJ, WY, TN, & ME), voters choose their AG at the ballot box. Most attorneys general are up for election in 2026 or 2028, and in one pivotal state, Virginia, voters will get to elect a new attorney general in just a couple of months.

This November, Jay Jones—a lawyer and former member of the Virginia House of Delegates—will square off against the current Virginia Attorney General, Jason Miyares. Miyares is a Republican and a supporter of Donald Trump, campaigning for him and supporting his policies.

If you live in Virginia, be sure you come to the polls in November prepared to vote for attorney general. And if you don’t live in Virginia, chances are you’ll have the chance to vote for your own AG very soon! It’s not just about rejecting extremism. It’s about choosing a “People’s Lawyer” who actually works for the people.

For a transcript of this episode, please email comms@redwine.blue.

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Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Secretary of Health and Human Services, recently announced that he’d be “revealing” the “cause of autism” this month. It’s true that rates of diagnosis have gone up over the past 20 years — from 1 in 150 kids to 1 in 31 — but autism advocates are worried that Kennedy’s mission will do more harm than good.

In the past, RFK Jr. has spread disinformation about vaccines, including exhaustively disproven links to autism. (Seriously, we’re talking thousands of studies on millions of patients. Vaccines do not cause autism!) Now the Wall Street Journal has reported that his new theory is about the use of Tylenol in pregnancy. But just last year, the Journal of the American Medical Association published a huge study proving that Tylenol isn’t linked to autism or ADHD.

Most doctors believe that autism is caused by genetics, and kids with a sibling or parent who’s autistic are more likely to be diagnosed themselves. A study published in 2019 estimated the heritability of autism at about 80%, about the same as the heritability of height. So then… what’s causing the spike in autism? The answer is simple: we’re getting better at diagnosing it.

Doctors have especially made strides in diagnosing women and girls. Autistic girls often struggle more internally than externally and their response may look like shyness, which our society finds more acceptable in girls than in boys. Across all genders and ages, no two people with autism are exactly the same. If RFK Jr. actually talked to anyone with autism, he might realize that he’s pushing stereotypes and disinformation.

And on top of all that, RFK Jr. and Trump have actually cut more than 50 federal research projects on autism, firing scientists who have been working on this for years. If they really wanted to help people with autism, why would they cut that funding?

In this week’s episode of Okay, But Why, we’re exploring what we do and don’t know about autism, busting myths and disinformation, and hearing from actual autistic people in their own words.

For a transcript of this episode, please email comms@redwine.blue.

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When people think of romance novels, the first thing that comes to mind is shirtless Dukes with windswept hair on the covers of mass-market paperbacks. The damsel in distress main character who is waiting for a love interest to come and save her from the clutches of evil. They’re a thing for girls. It isn’t ‘real’ reading, because they are stories typically written by women, for women, and starring women.

But what if we told you that romance books, even the most quote-unquote “raunchy” of the genre, are deeply political?

Who gets to be the hero or the heroine matters. Romance, as a genre, has seen major shifts in recent years, evolving from stories focused on white, heterosexual protagonists to a more diverse range of characters, lives, and themes. LGBTQ+ characters and relationships have entire shelves dedicated to them in bookstores. Black female characters now receive the same fairytale endings that they’ve always deserved.

By centering these stories, romance novels assert that marginalized voices belong at the center of the narrative, not just the margins. And that’s more important than ever as Trump and his allies work to silence these voices.

So the next time you hear someone make fun of romance novels, just know that they have no idea what they’re talking about. They likely view the genre as frivolous or even intellectually inferior, but this opinion completely misses the critical political commentary and diverse storytelling that define the books that so many of us love.

For a transcript of this episode, please email comms@redwine.blue.

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In June of 2015, the Supreme Court made history by ruling that Jim Obergefell and other same-sex couples deserve the right to have their marriages legally recognized — not just in a few states, but across the country.

It’s strange to think that only happened ten years ago. Gay couples across the country have only had the right to marry the person they love since the year of Jurassic World and the first run of Hamilton and that dress on the internet that nobody could agree was blue and black or white and gold. And it was only eleven years before that, in 2004, that the very first legal gay wedding was held anywhere in the country.

As we saw with Roe v Wade, though, Supreme Court cases can be overturned and rights can be taken away. Right now, there’s real concern that the Supreme Court will re-examine Obergefell in the next year. In 2022, after Roe v Wade was struck down, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote that the Court should turn their attention to other cases of equal rights… like Obergefell.

And now, he might get his chance. Kentucky country clerk Kim Davis filed an official petition this month asking the Supreme Court to re-examine the case.

Yes, that Kim Davis. The one who went to jail for 5 days in 2015 for refusing to sign marriage licenses for gay couples. Doesn’t she have better things to do than work this hard to take away other people’s rights?

We have more than a decade of studies now that prove how much of a difference the right to marry has made for gay couples across the country. Married same-sex couples report better life satisfaction, better physical health, and higher rates of homeownership than unmarried same-sex couples. Once married, they can get on each other’s health insurance, file taxes jointly, and act as legal next of kin in cases of life or death.

By contrast, not a single study has been able to prove any negative effects. Divorce rates across the board have fallen for all types of married couples and children of same-sex couples have the same educational and health outcomes as those in a household with a mother and father.

The majority of Americans believe in marriage equality and the separation of church and state. But for hundreds of thousands of gay couples across the country, the right to get married isn’t abstract — it affects their daily lives, their finances, their health, and their family.

For a transcript of this episode, please email comms@redwine.blue.

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Artificial Intelligence, or AI, is everywhere these days. Some people think it’s the solution to all of humanity’s problems and some think it’s going to bring about the end of life as we know it. The truth, as usual, is somewhere in between. But with so many different opinions and so many ways that AI can be used, it’s hard to know exactly what to believe.

There’s no denying that AI has enabled some incredible scientific breakthroughs, like new tests for cancer and new tools to communicate with whales. But it often makes factual mistakes, inventing information that never existed. AI developers call these “hallucinations,” and according to tests done by the company OpenAI, the hallucination rates of newer AI systems were as high as 79%. That’s a 79% chance that a piece of information given to you by AI is just fully made up.

It’s having a huge impact on education and our already-low literacy rates. Teachers say that an increasing number of students are using ChatGPT to complete their assignments. They’re even using AI for friendship and therapy, sometimes with tragic results. Adults are using AI too to write emails, summarize articles, or just help them bake a cake — harmless enough until we, like the women at the start of this video, can’t function without help from our “best friend who is also a robot.”

And this isn’t even to mention the enormous environmental toll of AI data processing centers. The carbon emissions from Google alone have risen 65% in the past 5 years because of the increased demand for AI.

People have dreamed of the day that machines can take over our mundane and mindless tasks, but instead, right now AI is taking over the things that make us the most human: learning, communicating with each other, art, and friendship. It’s especially concerning when those changes are happening to our kids, who don’t have the experience or wisdom to know when to use AI and when to use their own brain.

We can’t stop the forward march of progress, but we need to be very mindful of the world we’re creating. Genuine connection is the most valuable thing we have. It’s what makes us human. Let’s make sure we don’t lose it.

For a transcript of this episode, please email comms@redwine.blue.

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Gerrymandering is one of those things that makes people tune out of politics. It doesn’t just sound technical and complicated, it feels so far outside our control. But it’s important to understand because we all deserve to have our votes count. Gerrymandering is basically politicians picking their voters, instead of the other way around. And in Texas, Democratic reps like Ann Johnson are standing up for voters.

Both parties have been known to participate in gerrymandering, but over the past few decades, it’s mostly been Republicans manipulating the maps. That’s not political speculation — many Republican leaders have come right out and said so. They even have an official project, named Operation REDMAP, which stands for Republican Redistricting Majority Project. And unfortunately, so far the project has been extremely successful.

You may wonder… how is this even legal?

Racial gerrymandering has been outlawed since the Voting Rights Act of 1965, but the Supreme Court keeps ruling that partisan gerrymandering is fine. So what’s happening in Texas, where President Trump asked Republican reps to redraw district lines to favor himself, may be wrong and anti-democratic but it’s not illegal. As Rep. Mitch Little said in an interview, “we’re doing it because we can.”

We’re grateful to Democratic representatives like Ann Johnson who are fighting back against gerrymandering. And we’re very excited that she’ll be joining Red Wine & Blue on Monday to talk about what’s going on in Texas! You can sign up for our Don’t Mess With Texas virtual event here.

For a transcript of this episode, please email comms@redwine.blue.

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For nearly a century, the suburbs have been a cornerstone of the American Dream. But for almost as long, some people have criticized the suburbs for being too conformist, too dependent on cars, and to be blunt, too… white.

We know that the suburbs have been diversifying over the past few decades, and today “suburban woman” isn’t just code for “white woman” — no matter how much the media tries to simplify us. But there’s no denying that the suburbs have excluded families who weren’t white for most of their history, and if we’re not careful, they will again in the future.

President Trump has long tried to win over suburban women by scaring us, telling us that low-income housing (or immigrants, or Black people, or whoever is on his mind that day) will plunge the suburbs into crime and chaos. But not only is there no evidence for his claims, suburban women love their neighbors. We know that our diversity is our strength.

Trump wants to take us back in time to the days of “whites-only” suburbs by ending fair housing rules and investigations of discrimination. It’s up to us to say no way.

For a transcript of this episode, please email comms@redwine.blue.

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The Supreme Court gets to make decisions that affect our most fundamental rights. When it ruled on Roe vs Wade in 1973 and then overturned that ruling in 2022, it determined our ability to access reproductive care. And in 2015, their ruling on Obergefell vs Hodges gave same-sex couples the right to marry the person they love. Just last year, they ruled that Trump has absolute immunity for “official acts” he commits as President.

It’s concerning enough to think that they’re ruling along party lines, since there are currently six Justices appointed by Republican presidents and only three appointed by Democrats. But the Supreme Court also has no official standards of ethics. Just think — the highest court in the country, making these incredibly important decisions, with nothing stopping them from ruling according to extremist ideology or even greed.

Justice Clarence Thomas, for instance, has accepted millions of dollars of gifts from Republican megadonor Harlan Crow. And his wife Ginni is a far-right extremist who pushed for Republicans to overturn the results of the 2020 election. How could we possibly trust him to rule fairly on a case like Trump vs The United States?

Congress has the power to change the way that the Supreme Court works — from rules about ethics, to how many Justices there are, to whether they should have lifetime appointments. So talk to the people in your life about the Supreme Court. We deserve to know if these decisions are being inspired by a deep understanding of the Constitution… or a million-dollar vacation to Bali.

For a transcript of this episode, please email comms@redwine.blue.

You can learn more about us at www.redwine.blue or follow us on social media!

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