America at 250: Due Diligence
The United States turns 250 this year. America at 250: Due Diligence has a simple premise: the anniversary means nothing without a clear-eyed accounting of where the country actually stands. Hosted by nationally syndicated radio host Bill Bernardoni and former Voice of America White House Bureau ChiefSteve Herman, each episode of Due Diligence examines one of the foundational questions that has defined — and divided — American democracy from the beginning: What does government owe its citizens? How has the promise of the Constitution been kept, broken, or rewritten over 250 years? And where does the country stand today? The program brings together leading historians, former lawmakers, policy experts, and advocates who have lived these debates from the inside — in Congress, in city halls, in courtrooms and in communities. The format is rigorous and fair: each episode presents multiple perspectives, from the historical record through to the sharpest contemporary arguments on all sides. America at 250: Due Diligence is a program for listeners who want more than hot takes and name calling — who want to understand how the country arrived at this moment, what the founding generation actually intended and what serious people across the political spectrum believe the next 250 years should look like.
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The Power of War
07/17/2026
The Power of War
Who decides when the United States goes to war? The Constitution divides that responsibility between Congress and the president. Congress possesses the power to declare and fund war, while the president serves as commander in chief. But from the earliest years of the republic, the boundary between those powers has been tested, stretched, and frequently blurred. In this episode of America at 250: Due Diligence, Bill Bernardoni and Steve Herman trace the evolution of American war powers from Thomas Jefferson’s campaign against the Barbary powers to Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, and Venezuela. Author Joseph Wheelan takes us back to the beginning of the 19th century, when American merchant ships and sailors were being seized by the Barbary corsairs. Jefferson sent the young United States Navy into combat without requesting a formal declaration of war, while Congress financed the operation and allowed it to continue. That early confrontation established a precedent that later presidents would repeatedly invoke. Retired Army Brigadier General Ernie Audino argues that the Constitution gives the commander in chief the authority to commit American forces to combat, while Congress retains the power to raise the military and stop financing a conflict. Drawing on nearly three decades of military service, Audino also explains why political leaders must clearly define the objective of a war before asking service members to fight it—and considers the difficult questions created by artificial intelligence and autonomous weapons. Former Illinois Congressman and Air Force combat veteran Adam Kinzinger offers a perspective shaped by both the cockpit and Capitol Hill. He argues that presidents sometimes need the flexibility to act quickly, but Congress has too often surrendered its own constitutional authority. A lasting military campaign, Kinzinger says, requires more than presidential orders: Congress must participate, the mission must be clearly explained, and the American people must be brought along. From Tripoli to Pearl Harbor, Korea, Vietnam, and the conflicts of the 21st century, The Power of War examines what happens when formal declarations disappear but the consequences of war remain. The Constitution did not give the power of war to a single branch. It divided that power so that no one person or institution could own the decision alone. But that system works only when both Congress and the president are willing to accept responsibility. About the Guests Joseph Wheelan is a journalist, historian, and author who spent 24 years as a reporter and editor for The Associated Press. He is the author of Jefferson’s War: America’s First War on Terror, 1801–1805, which examines Thomas Jefferson’s confrontation with the Barbary powers and the development of the early United States Navy. Brigadier General Ernie Audino, U.S. Army (Ret.), served nearly three decades in the Army, including as executive assistant to the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He also spent a year embedded as a combat adviser with Kurdish Peshmerga forces in Iraq, becoming widely recognized as the only American general officer to have served in that capacity. Adam Kinzinger is a former Republican congressman from Illinois who served six terms in the U.S. House of Representatives, including on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. A lieutenant colonel in the Air National Guard, he flew combat missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. About the Hosts Bill Bernardoni is the founder of Bernardoni Media & Marketing and an experienced radio and podcast host, producer, political strategist, and media consultant. His work has included producing national radio programs, developing podcasts and digital media projects, and advising political campaigns and public-policy organizations. Steve Herman is an award-winning journalist and former Voice of America White House bureau chief. During his decades-long career in international journalism, he has reported from more than 70 countries and covered the White House, diplomacy, national security, natural disasters, and conflicts around the world. Join the Conversation When should a president be permitted to order military action without first receiving authorization from Congress—and when should Congress be required to vote? Share your thoughts with us at RadioFreeAmerica.media. America at 250: Due Diligence is produced with support from the Radio Free America Project and the Jordan Center for Journalism Advocacy and Innovation at the University of Mississippi School of Journalism and New Media.
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One Toke Over the Line: Prohibition, Marijuana, and the Limits of Federal Power
07/11/2026
One Toke Over the Line: Prohibition, Marijuana, and the Limits of Federal Power
Alcohol prohibition required the Constitution twice—once to impose it and once to repeal it. Marijuana prohibition took a different path, imposed through federal law even as a growing number of states have chosen legalization. In this episode of America at 250: Due Diligence, Steve Herman and Bill Bernardoni examine how national prohibition takes hold, what happens when Americans refuse to comply, and how conflicts between federal and state power can reshape the law. Historian Richard Hamm explains how nearly a century of temperance organizing, religious activism, women’s groups, and state-level campaigns culminated in the Eighteenth Amendment. He describes how the Anti-Saloon League pioneered modern lobbying, how World War I weakened the alcohol industry’s political resistance, and why enforcement varied dramatically from one community to another. Yale Law professor Robert Post explores how Prohibition transformed the Supreme Court and the federal judiciary. The enormous enforcement burden helped produce major developments in search-and-seizure law, automobile searches, electronic surveillance, privacy rights, and the Court’s control over its own docket. Post also explains how former President William Howard Taft used his executive experience to reshape the role of the chief justice and modernize the federal court system. Vanderbilt Law professor Robert Mikos brings the debate into the present. He explains why the federal government needed a constitutional amendment to impose alcohol prohibition but has used its Commerce Clause authority to prohibit marijuana. He also examines the Tenth Amendment’s anti-commandeering principle, which allows states to decline to enforce federal marijuana policy even though they cannot repeal federal law. Together, the conversations reveal a recurring American dilemma: What happens when Washington establishes a national rule, but the states, local authorities, and much of the public no longer accept or enforce it? About the Hosts Steve Herman is a veteran journalist and former White House bureau chief for Voice of America. During his international reporting career, he covered the White House, national security, diplomacy, politics, and major events across the United States and around the world. Bill Bernardoni is the founder of Bernardoni Media & Marketing and an experienced radio and podcast producer, political communications professional, and broadcaster. He has produced nationally distributed programming for media organizations, public-policy groups, authors, journalists, and independent hosts. About the Guests Richard F. Hamm is a Distinguished Teaching Professor of History and Collins Fellow at the University at Albany, State University of New York. A leading historian of American Prohibition, he is the author of Shaping the Eighteenth Amendment: Temperance Reform, Legal Culture, and the Polity, 1880–1920. Robert C. Post is Sterling Professor of Law at Yale Law School and served as the school’s dean from 2009 to 2017. He is a constitutional-law scholar and the author of The Taft Court: Making Law for a Divided Nation, 1921–1930. Robert A. Mikos holds the LaRoche Family Chair in Law at Vanderbilt Law School and is a leading authority on federalism, marijuana law, and the relationship between state legalization policies and federal drug regulation. Join the Conversation When a federal prohibition remains on the books but states and much of the public have moved in another direction, should Washington continue enforcing the national rule—or formally return the decision to the states? Share your thoughts with us at RadioFreeAmerica.media.
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Power Struggle: Energy, Climate, and the Future
07/04/2026
Power Struggle: Energy, Climate, and the Future
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. • • 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. • • • 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). • • X: 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. • Travis Fisher Travis Fisher is the director of energy and environmental policy studies at the Cato Institute. He has nearly twenty years of experience in energy policy, including roles at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the Department of Energy, the Institute for Energy Research, the Electricity Consumers Resource Council, and the Heritage Foundation. • • A Question for Our Listeners If the data centers powering the next decade of economic growth have to go somewhere, whose backyard should they go in — and who should decide? Send us your thoughts at RadioFreeAmerica.media. America at 250: Due Diligence is produced in partnership with the Jordan Center for Journalism, Advocacy, and Innovation at the University of Mississippi School of Journalism and New Media. Audio production by Bill Bernardoni of Bernardoni Media and Marketing. Portions of this program are recorded at WUMS Radio in Oxford, Mississippi. For more information, visit newslab.org.
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The First Shot: 27 Words, 230 Years, and a Fight That Isn't Over
06/27/2026
The First Shot: 27 Words, 230 Years, and a Fight That Isn't Over
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: • X: 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: • Blog: • X: 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 . 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: • Duke Center for Firearms Law: 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 he pursued for seven years — and is a gun owner who has received death threats as a result of his advocacy. • Virginia House of Delegates: Stephen P. Halbrook Stephen P. Halbrook is a constitutional attorney, Senior Fellow at the Independent Institute, and one of the foremost litigators in the field of Second Amendment law. He has personally argued and won three landmark cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. • Website: • America's Rifle: The Case for the AR-15: A Question for Our Listeners The Second Amendment has been interpreted in radically different ways by different courts, in different eras, with different political majorities shaping who got to decide. Now the Supreme Court has told judges to look to history — but as Professor Blocher points out, that history includes some deeply uncomfortable chapters. Delegate Helmer argues that the founders themselves drew lines around military weapons. Stephen Halbrook argues the line Congress drew in 1934 — at fully automatic firearms — has held for ninety years for a reason. If the question of which weapons the Second Amendment protects is ultimately decided by historical analogy, whose history counts — and who gets to say? Send us your thoughts at . America at 250: Due Diligence is produced in partnership with the Jordan Center for Journalism, Advocacy, and Innovation at the University of Mississippi School of Journalism and New Media. Audio production by Bill Bernardoni of Bernardoni Media and Marketing. Portions of this program are recorded at WUMS Radio in Oxford, Mississippi. For more information, visit .
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The State of Control: Federalism and the Limits of Federal Power
06/20/2026
The State of Control: Federalism and the Limits of Federal Power
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: X: 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: Blog: X: 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. Marvin P. King Jr. Marvin P. King Jr. is associate professor of political science and African American studies at the University of Mississippi. His teaching and research focus on American federalism, African American politics, political inequality and the politics of the American South. King teaches a course on American Federalism and brings that perspective to the central question of his segment: What has historically happened to voting rights when their protection was left primarily to the states—from the collapse of Reconstruction and the rise of Jim Crow through the Voting Rights Act and the aftermath of Shelby County v. Holder? Ilya Shapiro Ilya Shapiro is a senior fellow and director of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal. He previously served as executive director and senior lecturer at the Georgetown Center for the Constitution and as a vice president of the Cato Institute. Shapiro has filed more than 500 amicus curiae briefs at the U.S. Supreme Court and is the author of Supreme Disorder: Judicial Nominations and the Politics of America’s Highest Court and Lawless: The Miseducation of America’s Elites. In this episode, he argues that power has shifted too far toward Washington, that the federal government no longer consistently behaves like one of limited and enumerated powers, and that a healthier constitutional balance would return more authority to the state and local levels closest to the people. Listener Question As America turns 250, do you think federalism still works as the founders intended—a safeguard that keeps government close to the people and checks the power of Washington—or has it too often become a shield for states to deny basic rights? When state and federal power collide, who should have the final say? Join the conversation and share your thoughts through the contact form at .
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The Key to the Cage: Is It Time for an Article V Convention?
06/13/2026
The Key to the Cage: Is It Time for an Article V Convention?
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: X: 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: Blog: X: 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: 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: X: 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: 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 .
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Kicking the Can Down the Road: What Does Government Owe Its People?
06/06/2026
Kicking the Can Down the Road: What Does Government Owe Its People?
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: X: 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: Blog: X: 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: Substack: 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: X: 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: Social Security Reform Hub: Book: 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 .
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America at 250: Due Diligence Trailer
06/01/2026
America at 250: Due Diligence Trailer
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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