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Listen to the full conversation on the Perspectives Journal podcast, available to subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Amazon Music, and all other major podcast platforms.

Stay tuned for future episodes with other candidates in the 2026 NDP leadership race.

Avi Lewis is a journalist, documentary filmmaker, and candidate running to be the next leader of the federal NDP. Born in Toronto, he built a career telling stories about movements for economic and social justice, from worker-run enterprises to global climate campaigns.

The debate over IVF has revealed a deep fissure inside the pro-life movement—not over whether life is sacred, but over whether we trust human beings to act in accord with that truth.

When President Trump announced a suite of policies to subsidize and support some forms of IVF, the fiercest criticism didn’t come from the Left. It came from those who consider themselves the most devout defenders of life. They denounced IVF as inherently immoral, condemned those who use it as selfish, and warned that creating embryos outside the womb violates the natural order.

This reaction was characterized more by moral discomfort than by moral clarity. Though the modern pro-life movement has done inestimable good, there are some among its number who conflate the misuse of fertility technology with the immorality of all fertility technology per se. It’s a reactionary posture that treats human innovation as a threat rather than a tool—one that, if guided rightly, can aid nature in its sacred purpose of bringing new life into the world.

I know this because I’ve lived it.

Since the end of the Cold War, the United States has attempted to hold Pax Americana together with a simple, deeply flawed strategy: pay everyone off and hope they behave. Allies, adversaries, neutrals—it didn’t matter. Subsidies, aid, trade asymmetries, security guarantees, sanctions waivers, and diplomatic indulgences were handed out on the assumption that gratitude would follow. It didn’t—entitlement did.

Bribery diplomacy rests on a childlike premise: if you keep paying, people will stay in line. In reality, when money flows freely and consequences never arrive, it stops being leverage and becomes reverse tribute. Nations don’t become loyal. They become resentful, arrogant, and defiant. And the moment you threaten to turn off the spigot, the outrage begins. “How dare you?” “You’re betraying us.” “You’re imperialist.” “You’re fascist.” The language is predictable because the psychology is.

Europe is the archetype. After World War II, the United States rebuilt the continent and underwrote its security. That made sense at the time. What didn’t make sense was continuing to subsidize Europe indefinitely while tolerating trade imbalances, defense freeloading, and open hostility toward American interests. When Trump demanded NATO countries pay their share, it was treated as the end of the “world order.” When he demanded reciprocal trade instead of one-way free trade, elites panicked. The system wasn’t collapsing; the subsidy was.

Amy Remeikis and Bill Browne join Ebony Bennett to discuss how having fewer guns in the community will make Australians safer. However, the complex anti-hate legislation that was rushed through at the same time could have serious consequences for Australian society.

A time for Bravery: what happens when Australia chooses courage is available now via Australia Institute Press. Use the code ‘POD5’ at checkout to save $5 off the price – available for a limited time only.

Where it all went wrong: the case against John Howard by Amy Remeikis is available for pre-order now.

Guest: Amy Remeikis, Chief Political Analyst, the Australia Institute // @amyremeikis

Guest: Bill Browne, Democracy & Accountability Director, the Australia Institute // @browne90

Host: Ebony Bennett, Deputy Director, the Australia Institute // @ebonybennett

Show notes:

MAGA world seems to be down at the mouth lately. Though still months away, the latest polling seems to portend defeat in the upcoming midterms. And yet, looking back over the past year since January 20, 2025, I see not gloomy defeat but an America that has—for the first time in decades—a fighting chance.

The first year of President Trump’s second administration gives me hope that America will not continue on the path that seemed inevitable just over a year ago: tyrannical censorship, weaponized government agencies, and a Rubicon as heavily trafficked as the Rio Grande. Instead, the Trump Administration has racked up a series of clear victories in several major areas of policy that they can build on in the years ahead to inaugurate a new American golden age.

Monumental Immigration Enforcement

No issue was more central to Trump’s ascent than finally getting immigration under control, a demand from American voters that both parties had previously ignored for decades. In his first administration, Trump controlled the border. But in his second term, he’s done far more than that (crossings these days are virtually nil, something the political class said just a couple of years ago required an act of Congress). He’s taken massive steps toward removing the many millions who reside in the United States illegally.

Australia Institute research shows the number of guns in the Australian community has surged to more than 4 million and a gun is stolen every four hours in Australia. The theft of legally owned guns is the biggest single source of new firearms on the black market in Australia.

The laws establish the infrastructure for a new national gun buyback scheme, make it illegal to import the kind of rapidly reloading rifles and shotguns used in the Bondi massacre, and enable states and territories to consider intelligence gathered by Commonwealth agencies like ASIO as part of firearms licensing decisions.

“Gun law reforms can’t stop hate or antisemitism, but these reforms will help stop hate from turning into the kind of horror we saw in Bondi,” said Ebony Bennett, Deputy Director of The Australia Institute.

“Australia Institute research has repeatedly shown that the most straightforward way to keep Australians safe is to reduce the number of guns available in the community.

“Not only are there at least 800,000 more guns in the Australian community now than before the Port Arthur massacre, but they are being kept in large numbers in our cities and suburbs.

“Thirty years on from Port Arthur and there is still no National Firearms Register up and running, something that needs to be accelerated as a matter of urgency.

In the town of Howell, Michigan, Andrea Lee has been trying to secure special education resources for her children through lawsuits. According to local reporting, she’s filed “more than two dozen complaints and four legal grievances over the Howell Public Schools’ treatment of her three children with disabilities.” Special education policy in North Carolina’s Cumberland County is also being determined by way of lawsuit: A new lawsuit claims that the county’s school district “systematically violated federal disability law by delaying special education evaluations for children who showed clear signs of needing help.”

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), after all, makes it so that special education policy is essentially created lawsuit by lawsuit. It puts mandates in place and then, according to Miriam Kurtzig Freedman in the University of Chicago Law Review, sets up “an adversarial private-enforcement system for the rights it created.”

In 1983, under the guidance of Ronald Reagan, Congress created the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) to “foster the infrastructure of democracy.” Reagan had used the phrase a year before in an address to Parliament to describe the building blocks of liberty: a free press, unions, political parties, and universities. The president’s stated aim was noble, even high-minded—to advance democratic norms without the blunt instruments that had characterized earlier Cold War interventions.

The institutional form chosen to achieve this aim, however, was peculiar from the start. The NED was conceived as a government-organized non-government organization—a GONGO—deliberately positioned at arm’s length from formal diplomacy while remaining entirely dependent on congressional appropriations. This structure allowed U.S. officials to exert political influence abroad while maintaining a veneer of non-intervention and plausible deniability. The result was not independence, but ambiguity: foreign policy without clear accountability to either Congress or the president.

On this episode of After America, Matt Duss joins Dr Emma Shortis to discuss the Trump administration’s new tariffs against Europe, what if anything it might do in Iran, and its threats to prosecute political opponents.

This discussion was recorded on Friday 16 January (AEDT) 2026.

A time for Bravery: what happens when Australia chooses courage is available now via Australia Institute Press. Use the code ‘POD5’ to get $5 off – offer available for a limited time only.

Guest: Matt Duss, Executive Vice President, Center for International Policy // @mattduss

Host: Emma Shortis, Director, International & Security Affairs, the Australia Institute // @emmashortis

Show notes:

‘Shorter America this week: everything is gender’ by Emma Shortis, The Point (January 2026)

‘How Marco Rubio Went from “Little Marco” to Trump’s Foreign-Policy Enabler’ by Dexter Filkins, The New Yorker (January 2026)