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  • Power Struggle: Energy, Climate, and the Future

    Power Struggle: Energy, Climate, and the Future
    2026/07/04
    In April 1977, Jimmy Carter told the country that solving its energy crisis would take sacrifice — that the alternative might be, in his words, a national catastrophe. Nearly fifty years later, the crisis looks different. The gas lines are gone. In their place: climate change, an aging power grid, and data centers that are starting to draw more electricity than entire cities. But the underlying argument hasn't moved an inch. Who decides what America builds? Who pays for it? And who has the authority to make that call — Washington, the states, or nobody at all? The Constitution says almost nothing about energy. The founders could not have imagined a national electric grid, let alone artificial intelligence data centers competing with homes and hospitals for power. And yet nearly every major energy decision in American history — who builds what, who pays for it, who bears the cost when it goes wrong — traces back to questions about the proper role of government that the country has never fully settled. The fight is about electricity. But it is also about something larger: federal power versus state authority, private property versus the public interest, and whether government should plan a transition or simply get out of the way. It is a country where the grid was built one boondoggle, one monopoly, and one act of Congress at a time — and where the same argument that played out over canals and pipelines in the nineteenth century is now playing out over data centers and solar farms in the twenty-first. The modern energy debate has three inflection points. In 1937, Franklin Roosevelt dedicated the Bonneville Dam and defended the federal government's role in bringing electricity to communities private utilities wouldn't serve — over the objections of those who saw it as government overreach. In 1977, Jimmy Carter told Americans that solving the country's energy crisis would require sacrifice, framing it as "the moral equivalent of war." And in 1981, Ronald Reagan reversed course, decontrolling oil prices and arguing that government should step back and let markets work. Each president left behind a piece of the system Americans still live with today: a grid built around monopoly utilities, a patchwork of federal and state authority, and an unresolved argument about who should be in charge. In this episode of America at 250: Due Diligence, three guests take on the energy debate from three very different vantage points. A historian of energy infrastructure explains why the pipelines, canals, and transmission lines built over two centuries didn't just meet America's demand for power — they created it, and locked in decisions that last for generations. The longest-serving chairman in the history of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission describes a grid under real strain from extreme weather and an unprecedented surge in demand from data centers, and argues that consumers — not just utilities — have to become active participants in fixing it. And a free-market energy economist at the Cato Institute makes the case that government's job is mostly to get out of the way, warning that decades of political whiplash on energy policy, and the temptation to let planning become monopoly protection, have left the country's biggest questions about affordability and reliability unresolved. Power in both senses of the word. Who builds it. Who controls it. Who pays for it. Hosts Steve Herman Steve Herman is a veteran journalist and former White House Bureau Chief for Voice of America. He brings decades of reporting experience to America at 250: Due Diligence, helping guide the series through the historical, political, and institutional questions that have shaped the United States. • Website: Steve Herman • X: @newsguyUSA Bill Bernardoni Bill Bernardoni is the founder of Bernardoni Media & Marketing and co-host of America at 250: Due Diligence. His work focuses on building, producing, and distributing podcasts and radio programs that bring serious conversations to broad audiences. • Website: Bernardoni Media & Marketing • Blog: The Bernardoni Brief • X: @BillBernardoni Guests Featured in This Episode Professor Christopher F. Jones Christopher F. Jones is an associate professor of history at Arizona State University, where he studies the intersections of energy, technology, and the environment. He is the author of Routes of Power: Energy and Modern America (Harvard University Press, 2014). • Personal site: christopherfjones.com • X: @EnergyHistorian Jon Wellinghoff Jon Wellinghoff is the CEO and founder of GridPolicy, Inc. He was appointed to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission by President George W. Bush in 2006 and named chairman by President Barack Obama in 2009, serving until 2013 — the longest tenure of any chairman in the agency's history. • GridPolicy: gridpolicy.com Travis Fisher Travis Fisher is the director of ...
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    59 分
  • The First Shot: 27 Words, 230 Years, and a Fight That Isn't Over

    The First Shot: 27 Words, 230 Years, and a Fight That Isn't Over
    2026/06/27
    Twenty-seven words. That is the entire text of the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution. A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. And for more than two centuries, Americans have been arguing about what those twenty-seven words mean — in courtrooms, in statehouses, in campaign ads, and in the streets. The fight is about guns. But it is also about something larger: liberty and public safety, individual rights and democratic government, what the Constitution meant in 1791 and what it can mean in a country the founders could not have imagined. A country with more than 400 million firearms in civilian hands. A country where gun violence is now the leading cause of death among children and teenagers. A country still working out, case by case and law by law, where one of its foundational rights ends and the government's interest in safety begins. The modern legal landscape begins with District of Columbia v. Heller in 2008, when the Supreme Court ruled 5–4 that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms for self-defense — overturning nearly two centuries of jurisprudence that had centered the right on the organized militia. Fourteen years later, New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen raised the stakes further, instructing courts to evaluate the constitutionality of gun laws not by weighing their public safety benefits, but by asking whether they are consistent with the nation's historical tradition of firearms regulation. And in 2026, Virginia became the latest front in that fight, enacting one of the most significant state-level assault weapons bans in the country — drawing immediate legal challenges from gun rights groups and setting up a confrontation that may reach the Supreme Court. In this episode of America at 250: Due Diligence, three guests take on the Second Amendment from three very different vantage points. A constitutional scholar walks through the legal architecture from the founding era through Heller and Bruen, including the uncomfortable racial history embedded in originalist jurisprudence. A Virginia state delegate and combat veteran who spent seven years pushing an assault weapons ban explains what it took to get it done — and what his time under fire in Iraq and Afghanistan taught him about the weapons at the center of this debate. And a constitutional attorney who has argued Second Amendment cases before the Supreme Court makes the case that the Virginia law, like every other assault weapons ban, is unconstitutional — and that the most popular rifle in America is firmly on the protected side of the line Congress drew in 1934. Twenty-seven words. Two hundred and thirty years. And the argument persists. Hosts Steve Herman Steve Herman is a veteran journalist and former White House Bureau Chief for Voice of America. He brings decades of reporting experience to America at 250: Due Diligence, helping guide the series through the historical, political, and institutional questions that have shaped the United States. • Website: Steve Herman • X: @newsguyUSA Bill Bernardoni Bill Bernardoni is the founder of Bernardoni Media & Marketing and co-host of America at 250: Due Diligence. His work focuses on building, producing, and distributing podcasts and radio programs that bring serious conversations to broad audiences. • Website: Bernardoni Media & Marketing • Blog: The Bernardoni Brief • X: @BillBernardoni Guests Featured in This Episode Professor Joseph Blocher Joseph Blocher is the Lanty L. Smith '67 Distinguished Professor of Law at Duke University School of Law and the Co-Founder and Faculty Director of the Duke Center for Firearms Law. His scholarship on gun rights and regulation has been cited by the Supreme Court and nearly every federal court of appeals. He is the co-author of The Positive Second Amendment: Rights, Regulation, and the Future of Heller (Cambridge University Press, 2018), one of the most widely cited works in the field, as well as The Second Amendment: Gun Rights and Regulation (Foundation Press, 2025). He has testified before House and Senate committees and written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, and other major publications. • Duke Law faculty page: Joseph Blocher • Duke Center for Firearms Law: firearmslaw.duke.edu Delegate Dan Helmer Dan Helmer represents Virginia's 10th District in the House of Delegates. A graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point and a Rhodes Scholar (Wolfson College, Oxford), he served as an Army Intelligence and Armor Officer with combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan and continues to serve as a Lieutenant Colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve. He was the chief patron of the Virginia House Companion Bill for the Commonwealth's 2026 assault weapons ban — legislation ...
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    56 分
  • The State of Control: Federalism and the Limits of Federal Power

    The State of Control: Federalism and the Limits of Federal Power
    2026/06/20
    As America approaches its 250th anniversary, America at 250: Due Diligence turns to one of the oldest unsettled arguments in American life—not whether to have a national government, but how much of one. Where should power actually live: close to the people, in the states and towns where most Americans spend their lives, or at the center, in Washington? The argument was there before the ink was dry. Inside the Constitutional Convention of 1787, James Madison pushed for what became known as the "federal negative"—a congressional veto over state laws—and lost. The states were too protective of their authority and too wary of a powerful national government to surrender that kind of control. What emerged instead was what Madison called a "compound republic": a national government strong enough to provide for defense, regulate trade and raise its own revenue, layered over states that retained broad responsibility for the everyday business of governing. It was a balance built through compromise—including compromises that preserved slavery and embedded protections for it within the constitutional order. That balance has been renegotiated ever since, almost always under pressure. In 1937, after the Supreme Court struck down several New Deal programs, Franklin Roosevelt proposed adding as many as six justices to the Court. His plan failed, but during the same period the Court began upholding major economic regulations and federal programs, helping establish a much broader understanding of national power. In 1962, federal marshals and troops enforced a court order allowing James Meredith to become the first Black student to enroll at the University of Mississippi. In 1965, Lyndon Johnson urged Congress to pass the Voting Rights Act, providing the strongest federal enforcement of the Fifteenth Amendment since Reconstruction. And in 1981, Ronald Reagan stood on the inaugural platform and declared that the federal government did not create the states—the states created the federal government. Today, the same argument is live again: in clashes over immigration enforcement and the deployment of federal forces within states; in disputes over who controls election administration; in mid-decade redistricting and gerrymandering battles; and in the narrowing reach of federal voting-rights protections after Shelby County v. Holder and subsequent Supreme Court rulings. To trace the original architecture, where it has been tested and where it stands now, this episode brings together three very different voices: a constitutional law scholar who argues that most domestic governing was designed to remain close to home; a political scientist who examines what has happened when fundamental rights were left to the states to protect; and a constitutional lawyer who contends that the federal government has moved far beyond the limited, enumerated powers the Constitution grants it. Together, they wrestle with a question that runs through 250 years of American history: Is federalism a safeguard the founders wisely built into the Constitution to prevent any one level of government from becoming too powerful—or can it become an excuse, dressing the denial of rights in the language of local self-government? Federalism can be both. The fight is over which one it is. Hosts Steve Herman Steve Herman is a veteran journalist and former White House Bureau Chief for Voice of America. He brings decades of reporting experience to America at 250: Due Diligence, helping guide the series through the historical, political, and institutional questions that have shaped the United States. Website: Steve Herman X: @newsguyUSA Bill Bernardoni Bill Bernardoni is the founder of Bernardoni Media & Marketing and co-host of America at 250: Due Diligence. His work focuses on building, producing, and distributing podcasts and radio programs that bring serious conversations to broad audiences. Website: Bernardoni Media & Marketing Blog: The Bernardoni Brief X: @BillBernardoni Guests Featured in This Episode Randy E. Barnett Randy E. Barnett is the Patrick Hotung Professor of Constitutional Law at Georgetown University Law Center and faculty director of the Georgetown Center for the Constitution. A former felony prosecutor in the Cook County State's Attorney's Office, Barnett argued the medical-marijuana case Gonzales v. Raich before the U.S. Supreme Court and was one of the lawyers representing the National Federation of Independent Business in its constitutional challenge to the Affordable Care Act. He is the author or co-author of numerous books on the Constitution, including Restoring the Lost Constitution: The Presumption of Liberty and The Original Meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment: Its Letter and Spirit. In this episode, Barnett explains the original architecture of Madison's "compound republic"—and why he believes national authority has expanded far beyond the domestic role the founding generation envisioned. Faculty Profile: Randy E. ...
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    59 分
  • The Key to the Cage: Is It Time for an Article V Convention?

    The Key to the Cage: Is It Time for an Article V Convention?
    2026/06/13
    As America approaches its 250th anniversary, America at 250: Due Diligence turns to one of the most consequential — and least understood — provisions in the U.S. Constitution: Article V, and the question of whether the country should call its first-ever Article V convention. This episode opens in the summer of 1787, inside a sweltering Pennsylvania Statehouse, where George Mason — one of the sharpest minds at the Constitutional Convention — warned that the founders were "building a cage without a key." Mason's insistence on a state-led convention process became Article V's second amendment pathway, a mechanism that has never once been used in 250 years of American history. Today, that mechanism is at the center of a growing political movement. The Convention of States Project has organized more than 20 states behind a push to convene a convention aimed at imposing fiscal restraints, term limits, and jurisdictional limits on the federal government. Supporters call it the founders' intended check on a federal government that won't check itself. Critics warn it's a legal "pig in a poke" — a process with no rules for who attends, what they can do, or how it could be stopped once started. To unpack the history, the strategy, and the stakes, the episode brings together three very different voices: a constitutional law scholar who has spent years studying Article 5's uncertainties, the leader of the nationwide campaign to trigger a convention, and a former U.S. senator whose book lays out why he believes the effort poses a serious danger to the Constitution as we know it. Together, they wrestle with a question that traces straight back to George Mason's "cage without a key": is Article V's convention clause a safety valve the founders wisely built in — or a loophole that's never been tested because it's too dangerous to use? Hosts Steve Herman Steve Herman is a veteran journalist and former White House Bureau Chief for Voice of America. He brings decades of reporting experience to America at 250: Due Diligence, helping guide the series through the historical, political, and institutional questions that have shaped the United States. Website: Steve Herman X: @newsguyUSA Bill Bernardoni Bill Bernardoni is the founder of Bernardoni Media & Marketing and co-host of America at 250: Due Diligence. His work focuses on building, producing, and distributing podcasts and radio programs that bring serious conversations to broad audiences. Website: Bernardoni Media & Marketing Blog: The Bernardoni Brief X: @BillBernardoni Guests Featured in This Episode David Super David A. Super is the Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Law and Economics at Georgetown University Law Center, where his research focuses on constitutional law, administrative law, and the federal budget. He has written and testified extensively on Article 5, including before state legislatures considering convention-related resolutions, and is a leading voice raising questions about the legal uncertainties surrounding a convention's scope, delegate selection, and ratification process. Faculty Page: David A. Super — Georgetown Law Mark Meckler Mark Meckler is the co-founder and president of Convention of States Action, part of Citizens for Self-Governance, and a co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots. He leads the nationwide campaign to call an Article V convention of states aimed at imposing fiscal restraints, term limits, and jurisdictional limits on the federal government — an effort that has secured resolutions from 20 states. Website: Convention of States Project X: @MarkMeckler Russ Feingold Russ Feingold is a former U.S. senator from Wisconsin, where he served nearly two decades and was the lone vote against the Patriot Act. He is the co-author, with Peter Prindiville, of The Constitution in Jeopardy: An Unprecedented Effort to Rewrite Our Fundamental Law and What We Can Do About It, which examines the risks of an Article 5 convention and the broader challenges of constitutional change in a polarized era. Book: The Constitution in Jeopardy — Hachette Book Group Listener Question As America turns 250, do you think Article 5's convention clause is a safeguard the founders got right, a loophole too dangerous to use, or something that needs to be reformed before anyone calls a convention? Join the conversation and respond by sending us an email by visiting RadioFreeAmerica.media.
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    53 分
  • Kicking the Can Down the Road: What Does Government Owe Its People?

    Kicking the Can Down the Road: What Does Government Owe Its People?
    2026/06/06
    As America approaches its 250th anniversary, America at 250: Due Diligence takes on one of the country's biggest and most enduring questions: What does the government owe the people it serves? Not as a theory. Not as a campaign slogan. But in real life — in retirement checks, health care, food assistance, taxes, debt, and the promises made to working Americans. This episode traces the American social safety net from the Founding era through the New Deal, the Great Society, the Reagan Revolution, and today's debate over Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, SNAP, federal spending, and the national debt. It begins with Franklin Roosevelt's defense of "social insurance" during the Great Depression, revisits early opposition to Social Security, and then brings the debate into the present through three very different voices: a historian, a former congressman, and a libertarian fiscal-policy scholar. Together, they wrestle with a question that has shaped America for nearly a century: Is the safety net a promise America must keep, a system America can no longer afford, or something that needs to be rebuilt before it breaks? Hosts Steve Herman Steve Herman is a veteran journalist and former White House Bureau Chief for Voice of America. He brings decades of reporting experience to America at 250: Due Diligence, helping guide the series through the historical, political, and institutional questions that have shaped the United States. Website: Steve Herman X: @newsguyUSA Bill Bernardoni Bill Bernardoni is the founder of Bernardoni Media & Marketing and co-host of America at 250: Due Diligence. His work focuses on building, producing, and distributing podcasts and radio programs that bring serious conversations to broad audiences. Website: Bernardoni Media & Marketing Blog: The Bernardoni Brief X: @BillBernardoni Guests Featured in This Episode Julian Zelizer Julian Zelizer is the Malcolm Stevenson Forbes Professor of History and Public Affairs at Princeton University and the author or editor of more than two dozen books on American political history, Congress, the New Deal, and the Great Society. Website: Julian Zelizer — Princeton University Substack: The Long View Dennis Kucinich Dennis Kucinich is a former mayor of Cleveland, a former U.S. congressman from Ohio, and a two-time presidential candidate. He spent much of his career arguing for working people, seniors, public services, and the protection of the social safety net. Website: The Kucinich Report X: @Dennis_Kucinich Romina Boccia Romina Boccia is Director of Budget and Entitlement Policy at the Cato Institute. Her work focuses on federal spending, debt, Social Security, Medicare, and entitlement reform. Website: Romina Boccia — Cato InstituteSocial Security Reform Hub: Cato's Hub for Social Security Reform Book: Reimagining Social Security — Cato Institute Listener Question As America turns 250, what do you think the federal government owes its citizens: a guaranteed safety net, a smaller and more localized support system, or something entirely different? Join the conversation and respond by sending us an email by visiting RadioFreeAmerica.media.
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    54 分
  • America at 250: Due Diligence Trailer

    America at 250: Due Diligence Trailer
    2026/06/01

    The United States turns 250 this year — but what does the anniversary actually mean? Hosted by nationally syndicated radio host Bill Bernardoni and former Voice of America White House Bureau Chief Steve Herman, America at 250: Due Diligence cuts through the noise to ask the hard questions: What has the Constitution's promise delivered over 250 years, and where has it fallen short? Each episode brings together historians, former lawmakers, policy experts, and advocates to examine the debates that have defined — and divided — American democracy from the beginning. This is the podcast for listeners who want real answers, not hot takes — and who are ready to take an honest look at where America stands as it enters its next 250 years.
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    2 分