Alyssa Milano: Sorry Not Sorry

Recently, Nobel-prize winning economist Paul Krugman warned that Trump's deportation policies could crush the economy, bringing more pain than his thoughtless tariffs. Last year, we spoke with Alice Driver, an investigative reporter whose book "Life and Death of the American Worker" chronicles the labor conditions and importance of those immigrants-and what could happen to our food system if they are no longer here doing this work.

It’s been a minute–Alyssa was away on vacation with her family and doing some cool political and creative work. But she didn’t miss anything, right? The world was calm and nothing ridiculous happened, right? Well, let’s find out as we spend this episode digging into the news of the summer and the general state of all of this.

Is Trump a fascist? Is MAGA a fascist movement? Give a listen to the first half of this two-parter and decide for yourself. In the 1990s, Umberto Eco published the essay "Ur-Fascism," which explored fourteen common points of fascist movements and governments. In this episode, we present the first seven of those characteristics and then present Trump's own words, along with excerpts from the 2024 Republican Platform and words of prominent Trump supporters and administration members.

It’s been a minute since Alyssa’s been here–she’s been on a vacation and doing some really cool stuff in the entertainment world, but I’m sure you all miss her. After all, you don’t tune in to Ben Jackson Sorry Not Sorry! Well, a few times over the years, Alyssa has actually been the guest on this show instead of the host, and I thought it would be fun to give you what you want–some of Alyssa’s best moments here on Sorry Not Sorry.

In recent weeks, Jeffrey Epstein has burst from the grave and back into the news. Trump made much of his campaign identity about releasing the Epstein files and promised to release them–a promise on which he has since reneged. Trump had a longstanding friendship with Epstein, and recent reporting from the Wall Street Journal claims that Trump wrote Epstein a letter for his 50th birthday depicting a naked woman and wishing for more “Magical Secrets.” In this episode, we will her interviews and testimony from women–some who were girls–who have accused Donald Trump of sexual assault or other sexual misconduct–in their own words. It will not be easy to hear, and while the story will certainly continue to evolve, even between the time I am recording this and you are hearing it, the words of these brave women endure to paint a damning picture.

A couple of weeks ago, Alyssa and Ben had a conversation about the challenges of creativity in times like we’re living in. Since t’s the last week of our summer vacation, we thought we’d take a little break from the full-on politics and social issues of the show and take a look back at some of the great creatives we’ve had join us over the years. Guests include Misha Collins, Amitav Ghosh, Heather Matarazzo, and Kim Raver.

It’s Bastille Day - the "Fête Nationale" in France. Its a day of liberation, of revolution, of oppressive systems coming down and liberation rising. With that in mind, we’re looking back at some powerful guests from the past year who have revolutionary ways of thinking–ways that can help us grow, and see the world in new ways.

Well, it’s been a month. June has seen so much happening–the protests across the country, Trump deploying the national guard, big supreme court cases, a mayoral primary in New York, the political assassination of Democrats in Minnesota–oh, and we bombed a sovereign nation. As we do every month or so, we to use this episode to look back and connect some dots.

The rule of law is the foundation of our society, and yet the Trump regime is shamelessly trying to undermine that rule at every turn. We've seen a united states senator thrown to the ground and handcuffed for asking a question, a New York Mayoral candidate arrested for confronting ICE over an arrest, targeting of citizens and visitors in Democratic-led areas, and a plethora of authoritarian maneuvers which threaten our democracy. To help us understand both that threat and our rights as we seek to mitigate it, we’ve invited attorneys Eliza Orlins and Hassan Ahmad back on the show.

This episode was recorded on June 12, 2025. It has been 236 years, 3 months, and one week since the United States Constitution came into effect on March 4th, 1789. The President of the United States has federalized the state militia of California and deployed it, along with the United States Marines, against the citizens of our country in Los Angeles. The Governor of Texas has deployed the Texas national guard against the citizens in that state. The governor and attorney general of georgia have threatened violence against its citizens. The speaker of the house of representatives this week stated that the governor of California needs to be tarred and feathered. And on Saturday, the wannabe dictator of our country is holding a North Korea style military parade on his birthday, against the wishes of the government of the city where it happens. Citizens across the nation are rising up against the violent, vengeful tactics of the trump regime against citizens and noncitzens alike, and it feels like we are approaching a breaking point. We’ve aksed Barbara F. Walter, one of the words leading experts on civil wars, violent extremism, and authoritarianism, and the author of “How Civil Wars Start” back on the show to help us understand where we are and where we may be going.

It’s been nearly three years since the Dobbs decision, which the Supreme Court used to strip women of the right to control our own bodies. In that decision—and frequently presented across the ideological spectrum as an alternative to abortion—adoption has been at the forefront of the discussion. But is adoption as benevolent and empowering as it is presented to be? Our guest today argues that it is not—and she’s got compelling evidence to back that up. Dr. Gretchen Sisson is a researcher at Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Sciences at the University of California, San Francisco. Her book Relinquished: The Politics of Adoption and the Privilege of American Motherhood received a starred review from Publisher’s Weekly and much more acclaim.

Memorial Day is past us, and we’re barrelling into Summer. So much has been happening over the past month, and so much is going to happen in the near future. This week, Ben and I are going to round up some of the big stories in the news and think a bit about what they might mean for all of us.

Watching the news has been especially horrifying lately. We’re drowning in video of armed, masked ice agents charging into neighborhoods, refusing to identify themselves, snatching up our neighbors, and the next thing you know they’ve been deported to terrible prisons in other countries, deprived of due process, and at the mercy of a government that is refusing to follow orders of federal courts. Cristina Jimenez knows that fear, and also knows how to fight back. She is the co-founder of United We Dream, the largest immigrant youth-led organization in the country, and the author of the new book “Dreaming of Home."

The archetype of “mother” is a weight many women carry-but it’s certainly not our whole story, or necessarily an accurate one. In fact, the stories we are told about women, the complexities of womanhood, are often shackles that serve to keep us bound to a society that claims to value us but holds us back in so many ways. Nicole Graev Lipson’s new memoir in essays Mothers and Other Fictional Characters captures the complexities of motherhood, of relationships, of womanhood–and defies expectations in so many ways. She joins us to discuss.

The early part of this decade seemed like it might signify a realignment of the social and cultural power of Black Americans. But the realities of that power–and how it translates into meaningful justice and social change–are less clear, and perhaps less optimistic. Especially now in the second Trump era, where everything which does not perpetuate white power is treated as suspect and anti-American. To discuss the shifting dynamics and a path forward to meaningful change, we’ve asked Andre Perry onto the show. Andre is a senior fellow and director of the Center for Community Uplift at the Brookings Institution and a professor of practice of economics at Washington University in St. Louis. He is also nationally known and respected commentator on race, structural inequality, and education and the author of the new book “Black Power Scorecard: Measuring the Racial Gap and What We Can Do to Close It.”

The Trump regime built much of its identity–and certainly campaigned around–its hatred of LGBTQ Americans. Unfortunately, the success of that campaign again revealed just how much anti-queer bias there is in the American populace. And while there may be no populated nation in the world that is truly free of anti-queer bias, there are places that are better, are different, or that offer new perspectives. Alden Jones’ work explores queer travel. Alden is an assistant professor at Emerson College and the author of the memoirs The Blind Masseuse and The Wanting Was a Wilderness and the story collection Unaccompanied Minors. Best American Travel Writing and other venues. She edited the new anthology of queer travel writing “Edge of the World” and he is here to discuss that work and the queer travel experience.

It’s hard to overstate the danger the Trump regime is posing to Americans. This is especially true for Americans who rely on our healthcare system for chronic diseases or conditions. From cuts to research funding, building registries for people with autism, attacks on women’s access to healthcare, and so much more, it’s truly horrifying what is in store in this country. To help us unpack it, and maybe help find a way to act against it, we’ve asked Laura Packard, Founder of Voices of Health Care Action back onto the show.

There is a rapist presiding over the United States. That rapist has directed his government to gut federal efforts to protect women from violence of all sorts. Health and Human Services fired nearly all of its staff at the Division of Violence Prevention. The office on violence against women has removed all funding opportunities from its website and reports are coming in that all of the grants it issues are being cancelled. Online, platforms owned by Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg–billionaires who support Trump and his regime–own giant social media platforms rife with digital violence against women and seemingly no efforts at all to curtail it. It is a dangerous time to be a woman. This has always been true, but it is especially true in Trump’s America. Our guest for this episode is Alia Dastagir. Dastagir is an award-winning journalist and former reporter for USA Today who was one of eight U.S. recipients of the prestigious Rosalynn Carter Fellowships for Mental Health Journalism. Her book on women and online abuse, “To Those Who Have Confused You to Be a Person: Words as Violence and Stories of Women’s Resistance Online,” is now available.

Most weeks, we bring a guest onto speak in depth on a single issue. But every once in a while, there’s so much going on that Alyssa and Ben take an episode to check in on...all of this nonsense. That’s what we’re doing this week. And we even start with some good news: It’s baseball season.

The United States executes more people than nearly any other country. In fact, in 2023, the only countries with more reported executions were Iran, Saudi Arabia, Somalia and Iraq. Inside the United States, courts are trying to navigate the legality of execution and methods of execution, and the various states have different rules and customs of this barbaric practice. Gianna Toboni has faced some of the world’s most dangerous people: ISIS fighters, cartel hitmen, and sex traffickers. In her new book --- THE VOLUNTEER: The Failure of the Death Penalty in America and One Inmate’s Quest to Die with Dignity -- Gianna dives into her most intense year yet—covering the life of a death row inmate, all while uncovering the shocking, dirty truths about our criminal justice system. And it should be noted that this episode contains frank discussions of both capital punishment and suicidality.