Fresh Air - Stacey Abrams On American Autocracy & Her New Chapter

Episode Date: July 15, 2025

Abrams isn't running for office — but she's not ruling it out, either. "Politics is a tool ... for getting good done, but it's not the only one." Her new thriller novel is Coded Justice. She spoke with Tonya Mosley about voter suppression, her faith, and collaborating with her siblings on her books. Also, David Bianculli reviews the BritBox period drama Outrageous.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Most people have some album, some movie, some book from when they were young that helped shape how they came to see the world. That's no less true for the Code Switch crew. It's still really touching and I cried re-reading it. So there. Listen as we revisit some of our old faves on Code Switch from NPR or wherever you get your podcast. or wherever you get your podcast. This is Fresh Air. I'm Tanya Mosley. And today my guest is Stacey Abrams, a name synonymous with political strategy,

voting rights advocacy, and literary prowess, authoring 17 books across various genres, from romance and thrillers, to nonfiction and children's stories. Her latest thriller, Code at Justice, is the third installment in a series that centers on Avery Keene, a former Supreme Court clerk turned corporate investigator who steps into the world of AI to examine a system designed to revolutionize veteran healthcare. What begins as a promising innovation spirals into profound questions many of us are grappling with right now about technology, ethics, and justice.

Beyond her writing, Abram served in the Georgia House of Representatives for more than a decade, including as a minority leader, becoming the first woman and the first Black American to lead either party in the Georgia General Assembly. She ran as a Democratic nominee for governor of Georgia twice in 2018 and 2022, losing both races but drawing national attention to issues of voter suppression, particularly during her remarkably close 2018 campaign. In response, she founded Fair Fight Action, an organization credited with boosting voter turnout in Georgia and contributing to Democratic victories in the 2020 presidential and Senate elections Stacey Abrams, welcome to fresh air

Thank you for having me. Okay. What a time to be releasing a book Stacey for two reasons Number one your novel dives into the world of AI. I mean, it's something that all of us are thinking about it's on our minds right now it's something that all of us are thinking about. It's on our minds right now. It's dominating headlines. And also, there are so many questions that we are all grappling with in this moment about the state of our democracy. And you recently went viral for sharing this list that struck a chord, the 10 steps toward autocracy. Could I have you walk us through those steps briefly and explain why it was important for you to share them right now?

So I want to give credit to Ken Schepel, who is a professor at Princeton University. She introduced me to the list. I've taken liberties to remix it, if you will. So first you have a free and fair election, but likely it's the last one. And that's because once that person wins, they have no intention of ever relinquishing the power again. That's how autocrats are born. Step two, they start to submit their power by exceeding the bounds of executive power.

That's why you see this rash of executive orders, each one claiming even more power than the day before, and they are not responsive to critique. Step three, those autocrats start to weaken competing power. So they go after Congress and make it complicit, threatening people who disagree with losing their jobs. You go after the judiciary and you either make them complicit by watching a Supreme Court weaken its positions or lower court that is made irrelevant because those positions no longer have meaning. You move on to step four, they gut the government. They break democracy so people forget how it works. You fire the experts. You dismantle agencies. You break public trust because people

don't believe that you will serve them anymore. Checks stop coming, mail stops being delivered, and people start to forget what democracy was supposed to do. Step five, you install loyalists. You put in place people who have no loyalty to the Constitution or the American people. You put in place people whose loyalty is only to the executive, to the autocrat in training. And once you've done that, you go after the media. You go after the media because you have to discredit the truth. You have to tell people that there's no one they can trust except the person in power.

And then you build an echo chamber, and that echo chamber just pumps out propaganda that is told so often it starts to actually sound like the truth, even though we all know it's not. And then you get to step seven. You have to pick someone to blame. And so you weaponize DEI, you weaponize diversity, equity, and inclusion, because you know that it is the system that protects us. It protects women and children and people of color.

It protects immigrants and the disabled. It protects the labor community. Anyone who looks different or thinks differently becomes a villain, and you must make them the scapegoats. Step eight, you target civil society because that's the group that defends our rights. And so you sue lawyers, you attack philanthropies, you dismantle universities so that we never know what we need to know. You smear community organizers. You undermine the very people who are doing the work of keeping power in check. Step nine, you incentivize private violence. You send in the National Guard into communities not to protect protesters,

but to arrest them. You militarize federal agents. You send the Marines into communities knowing that our nation has always said that that is not allowed. And you do it because it makes people afraid to speak up. It makes civic participation feel dangerous and it makes silence feel safer than the truth. And that gets us to step 10. If you're looking for autocracy, step 10 is where it happens permanently, because that's the end game. You make certain that no one votes again because they don't believe it's safe, they don't believe

it works, they don't believe that it matters. They're poor, they're scared, they're exhausted, and now the autocrat can win without having to fight. LESLIE KENDRICK It's very sobering to hear you tick off that list because it appears that in some form or fashion, we've ticked through just about all of them. What was the moment or the action over the last few months that made you realize that we as a nation

were ticking through this list? I think the two most stunning moments for me were the decision to deploy the Marines in Los Angeles. That is a violation of every precept of democratic rule under a civilian leader that we have in this country. We do not use the military against our own people. And yet that was violated with such nonchalance

that it was stunning to me. The second was the arrest of Mayor Ross Baraka because he stood outside an immigrant detention center. He didn't do anything, but they felt very comfortable arresting a mayor for simply questioning the actions of leadership. And that again should be so chilling. For me, the most important piece though, was the number of directives, the executive orders

that came out at the very beginning against DEI. And people dismissed it as, oh, well, this is just stopping quotas, or this was an HR thing. But no, he was intentionally setting up a system of belief that the protection of the vulnerable, that the corrective actions this nation has taken for 249 years, that those things were somehow inherently wrong. And it was designed to allow for the later attacks that we have seen on all of these different communities. Because if you can demonize at the beginning, it becomes a lot easier to dehumanize when

it matters. You're a lawyer. You're someone who closely follows the Supreme Court. You talk about the Supreme Court on your podcast quite often. I know you've been paying attention to Justice Katanji Brown Jackson and the unusually high number of dissenting opinions she's written. I'm bringing this up because it seems through her dissents, she's sort of waving the flag in the same way that you are talking about this. This comes at a time when there's growing concern

about the court's integrity and what that means for the health of our democracy. How do you interpret the significance of her dissents right now and what that means for the health of our democracy. How do you interpret the significance of her dissents right now and what they signal to you about the state of the court? I think she has been the most persistent in her dissent, but I want to give credit to all three of the liberal justices and the occasional common sense of Amy Comey Barrett. But I think where Justice Jackson stands out is that she is laying not just the groundwork for what we hope will be the resurgence of democracy and the rule of law, but she's also leaving breadcrumbs. She is telling us how we will end up where we are.

But she's also reminding us of why we are not there now. She comes from a tradition of Thurgood Marshall, of the Warren Court. So she understands that it is the responsibility of the judiciary. Yes, it is to interpret the law, but you cannot interpret a law you do not believe has the right to exist. And I see her very much in the vein of, to bring it to the works, the books I write, in the vein of the justices that I've employed in the Avery Keene series, that the law is hard. It is complicated.

It is uncomfortable. And we have judges because we want them to grapple with that discomfort. We want them to point out the sharp edges and tell us that we might need to ask the congressional bodies to fix them, to address them. We never ever are right when we are complicit in eroding justice. That is what she keeps calling out. That is what she keeps pushing back against. And every time others are willing to join her, those are moments where we become a better

nation, at least on paper, and it becomes a paper trail for us to follow when it's time to rebuild what they are breaking. Stacey, people are surprised, even to this day when I was talking about the book, they're surprised to learn that even with all of your books, that you are a novelist and a fiction writer and a romance novelist. When did you realize you could examine power structures through fiction? My very first novel was published right after law school. But my parents will tell you, I started writing a lot earlier.

My first attempt at a novel was when I was 12. It was called The Diary of Angst. I was a very tortured 12-year-old, and I had to explain why this boy didn't like me and why my friends were cruel. And, you know, it was very, very full of angst and gestalt. My mom actually had it bound for me when I was like 25 as a, I think both a gag gift and a Christmas gift. Oh, you still have it, yeah, yeah. I do, I do. But I grew up with parents who loved storytelling

and loved books, but they both understood in their way that they could expand our worlds, even if they couldn't afford to give us the world. And so we grew up in Mississippi. My mom used to call us the genteel poor. We had no money, but we watched PBS and we read books. What did she mean by genteel? So she called us genteel poor because what she wanted us to know is that economically

we were not capable or not, we couldn't access all of the riches of the world. But our gentility was that we could, we could still enjoy and be refined and engage. And so we read widely and we watched PBS and we had tea parties. I mean, some of it was tongue in cheek, but we're Southern. And so the notions of gentility permeate all things. Where my dad came in was that, my dad was a shipyard worker and he's also dyslexic. My dad didn't learn to read a functional level

until he was in his 30s, because he grew up in the Jim Crow South. And because he was dyslexic, they didn't diagnose dyslexia back then. And even if they had, there weren't the resources available. And so my dad memorized his way through school, gotten himself to college, eventually got himself to Emory University to do a master's degree. But he loved storytelling.

And he was just voracious. And he and my mom would share information. And I watched my dad kind of work his way through a book. My dad has read everything I've written, and I know it's hard for him, but he enjoys the challenge so much. What that gave me was not just an appreciation of the information I could share, it was an appreciation of an audience that wanted something to consume. For me, the joy of my life has been that in every one of my books, my siblings

helped me in some way. It is a shared project. Sometimes it's just free labor for me, but I have five brothers and sisters. What do you mean? They help you. Do they help you write it literally? Oh, they do. No, no.

So they're my resources. So my first romantic suspense novel, my sister Leslie, was my editor. She read every word. And this latest novel, Coded Justice, my oldest sister Andrea is an anthropologist who specialized in DEI. And she helped me really think about how to tease out questions of social justice in the midst of this novel. My brother Richard was a social worker. And so when I'm writing those characters and I need to create complexity, I go to him. My brother Walter edited, he's edited three of my books, meaning I give it to him. I'm like, okay, I need you to read it. Tell me everything you don't like. All of my siblings

read different versions of it. My youngest sister Janine is a molecular systematist. So on my first Avery King novel, she was the one who helped me with all of the biogenetics. So I really have very smart siblings who don't charge me money. I just put them in the different books. But more than anything, they are my sounding boards. They are very comfortable with telling me this doesn't make sense, this is a dumb idea. Sometimes they're that blunt about it. Usually though, it's a, well, Stacey, have you thought about doing it this way? It's a nice circle of trust, but also they are readers that I trust.

So when they give me feedback, I believe what they're telling me and I believe what they say. And I think I can make better product because of who they are. Let's get into coded justice because it dives into the world of AI. It's the third, as we said in the series, that really explores, really after going through them, it feels like you're exploring this theme of trust or the lack of it in our institution. So the Supreme Court, federal surveillance, big tech. What sparked the idea of AI? Of course it's at the top of our minds now. It has been for the last few years, but it feels like

what a timely topic to take on in this moment. I wanted to talk about a topic where on its face the technology is neutral. And I wanted to write a book where the lines are blurred because sometimes there's good intention, just problematic execution. And I think AI is emblematic of that. In order to write my books, I do a lot of deep research. I did very deep dives. My approach whenever I write about a topic that's not my area of expertise, my mission is to sound smart enough about it in the book that the layperson believes me and the expert respects me. They know I'm like, they don't know I know, they know I don't know everything, but they at least recognize that I

tried really hard. And so I spent a lot of time doing deep dives. And the more I dove into the conversation of AI, I'd been fascinated about it because my niece was using it. My niece lived with me before she went off to college. And I was trying to understand how she was able to use AI and that line between it being a helpful tool and it being cheating. Faith was raised with a very strong morality and she knew that she wasn't going to be allowed to misuse it. One day we had a conversation. I was like, talk to me about this.

That really became part of the spark for coded justice. This tool that we intend to use for good can be misapplied. When you expand out what we have watched AI do, I wanted to think about what happens when even the intentional pursuit of good can lead to challenges and, you know, murder. Yes, that's the thriller part of the book, because the characters are grappling with the hope and the promise of a future where AI could truly benefit us. I mean, the book is really wrapped around this technology that can help veterans in healthcare and then be a broader source for others as well. But the human beings ultimately get in the way.

They make the decisions about whether it helps or harms us. Has breathing life into Avery at all helped you work out any bigger issues or policies or ideas or steps for yourself? Yeah. Writing her, researching her first of all, is important to me. These are topics that matter. I care about public policy. It is, to me, one of the most important spaces that we have to grapple with because politics is a tool for policy. But too often we let our policy be a tool for our politics. And my grounding is always to come back to what is it we're trying to do? And then how do our politics help us make that happen. And having grown up in communities where the policies have been antithetical to the needs

of my community, I am always eager to understand the policies that can do the most harm or the most good if the people who are the least concerned or least considered are people of concern. And so in every single story, I do try to incorporate my belief that I can't just think about this because it's exciting. I have to think about who could be helped or harmed. And that makes me better at the work that I do. And then third, democracy demands that you deliver. And this goes back, again, to the autocracy conversation. Part of what I've been able to do, especially through coded justice, is think about authoritarianism. And I finished the book before the fall of democracy

started in earnest. But what she explores in this book, they matter to me. Authoritarianism takes steps and it starts with the curtailing of access to information, the marginalization of community. It happens when we give ourselves permission to quiet dissent and to not be frustrated by that. And how we code our future, how AI determines access, that is a gateway to authoritarianism. It's why it was so critical in the mega bill that just passed. One of the few bright spots was that they stripped out the moratorium on AI regulation. You should always be concerned when so many powerful companies agree to work together to stop anyone else from telling them how to do their jobs.

Anytime competitors are that unified, we should all be terrified. It matters that they were saying, look, don't let any state regulate us. But they weren't at the same time saying, but here's the regulation that should happen at the federal level. Our guest today is Stacey Abrams. She's written a new novel called Code It Justice. We'll be back with more after a short break. I'm Tonya Mosley and this is Fresh Air. On this week's Wild Card podcast, comedian Mark Maron reflects on being content-ish. I can honestly say there's never been a better time in my life and I'm not even sure this one is that great. I'm Rachel Martin. Mark Maron's on Wild Card, the show where cards control the conversation.

This message comes from the Kresge Foundation. Established 100 years ago, the Kresge Foundation works to expand equity and opportunity in cities across America. A century of impact, a future of opportunity. More at kresge.org. Hi, this is Molly Sivinesper, digital producer at Fresh Air. a future of opportunity. More's a fun read. It's also the only place where we tell you what's coming up next week an exclusive So subscribe at whyy.org Fresh air and look for an email from Molly every Saturday morning

Alright Stacey, let's get into politics you have spoken about this many times You call it the three warning rule. One, you're going to warn us. Then you're going to remind us. And then you're going to take action. And I'm thinking about this in light of your 10 steps to autocracy. That's a warning. There are reports that you are weighing a third run for Georgia's governorship despite

two tough defeats. Are you planning to run for office again? Politics is a tool and it's a very important one for getting good done, but it's not the only one. And I am really focused right now on the other tools in my toolbox. That is not to say I won't run for office again, but my focus right now is on sharing information.

So I have Assembly Required, my podcast, and Assembly Notes, my substack. It's raising money for organizations and for candidates that I do believe right now are the right answers. It's doing the work of writing books like Coded Justice, and Stacey Speaks Up so I can talk to kids. I'm not taking Running for Office off the table, but it's not right now top of mind. I think for many people when they hear right now, time is relative, you know? And as we are experiencing things changing in real time in profound ways that have all

of our heads spinning, when you say right now, I mean, we understand literally right now, but is it something that you would consider in the future? I always will look at standing for public office as one of the most important tools I can use. Where I am though on the very specific question of 2026 is that I truly have not made any decisions. And that is in part because there's an urgency to 2025 that we cannot ignore. My focus right now is on how do we ensure

that we have free and fair elections in 2026. There's a lot of hope being pinned on the 26 midterms. My concern is that the speed at which we are advancing through the 10 Steps to Autocracy, the fact that the city of Miami changed the dates of its elections, and I think in North Carolina there are some date changes. Those can seem incredibly benign and maybe, but I don't ignore harbingers. And so for me, the urgency of now is explicit and is truly requiring the focus that I have. We do know you because of your voter suppression work and all that you had done over the last few years.

And as you mentioned, these elections will continue to happen until the end of the year and into the next year. How are you thinking about voter suppression and how should we be thinking about it? So step 10 in the 10 steps to autocracy focuses on not having free and fair elections. If you look at the raft of executive orders issued, there was one that was issued that essentially would block free and fair elections. It was a voter suppression edict.

And it mimics behaviors that we have seen in Georgia, in Texas, in Ohio. It's responsive to what New Hampshire has done to students who are trying to vote, what Arizona attempted to do, although we've got really great leadership in Arizona now pushing back. Voter suppression is all around us and what we have to reset our minds towards, and this goes back to storytelling. Many of us grew up with the stories of the civil rights movement and voter suppression of the 60s, guns and dogs and hoses.

The voter suppression of the 21st century is administrative. It's refusing to allow the disabled to use mail-in voting, making it more difficult, which is what they did in Georgia. The state added additional layers. It's shutting down early voting opportunities. Early voting matters because in the 1960s, we didn't have on-call scheduling. So you need to be able to vote on some day or time that is not Tuesday in November. It is making certain that students who need to prove their identities can use the one

form of ID they have, which are their student IDs, but multiple states like Georgia and Florida and Texas have made that illegal. And so voter suppression happens not in these grand, massive ways we're used to seeing, it happens in these insidious administrative ways that can be justified on paper, but can be villainous in reality. Voter suppression happens in three ways. It's can you register and stay on the rolls? If you make it hard to register or stay on the rolls, that is voter suppression.

It's does the state allow you to cast your ballot? Well, if you can't get to a ballot box because they moved your polling place, but they didn't provide public transportation, that's voter suppression. And does your vote get counted? Well, in Georgia, we had to have the state Supreme Court step in because they were changing the rules up to the last minute here in Georgia in the 2024 election. The insidious nature of voter suppression often escapes recognition because it doesn't look like what we were used to. And that's the same thing that we're seeing with autocracy.

Let's take a quick break and continue this conversation on the other side. If you're just joining us, my guest is Stacey Abrams, and we are talking about her latest novel called Coded Justice, the third in her Avery Keene legal thriller series. We'll continue our conversation after a short break. This is Fresh Air. So Stacey, you grew up in Mississippi and Georgia, and you mentioned to us that your mother called your family the genteel poor.

Your parents were also people of faith. They were ministers as well. And I just wonder how that factors into your worldview, your own sense of identity as it relates to your religion and your faith. One of the lessons I learned from my parents, my mom was a librarian and my dad was a shipyard worker. They both were called into the ministry, and at the age of 40, they left their jobs and moved myself and my five brothers and sisters from Mississippi to Georgia so they could attend Emory University and do their Masters of Divinity. When we were growing up, my parents said, you had three jobs, go to church, go to school, take care of each other. And they didn't just tell us, they lived those values.

Watching your parents go back to school at the age of 40, your father, who is not the strongest reader, didn't like writing reports. I watched my dad struggle through graduate school because it was so important to him to serve his faith by getting the education necessary to teach his parishioners. My mom had a master's degree in library science already and in some ways was opposite of my dad when it comes to her approach to school. But watching my mom come home, as my dad did, after a full day's work and a full day's lessons and still help raise my siblings and myself. I watched my parents live those values that education matters, that faith matters, and

that helping people matter. And for me, those are the values that guide me, my faith first and foremost. I cannot call myself a Christian and not believe that it is my responsibility to help the stranger, to help the immigrant, to help the dispossessed. I cannot say that my faith justifies the venom that has been turned against the LGBTQIA community, the way we have demonized the transgender community. I cannot be a woman of faith who has read the Bible and just conveniently pick the passages I like. I have to understand and I learned that from my parents.

But I also learned that education is part of my faith because I'm not expected to simply blindly behave. The notion of free will exists because faith is when you have the information and you make the decision to do anyway, to do the things you need to do. And then ultimately what ties it all together for me is the responsibility to serve others. I stand for public office when it makes sense.

I start organizations, started Fair Fight, started Fair Count, started a number of organizations. Right now I've started a consortium of groups called the American Pride Rises Network, focusing on diversity, equity, and inclusion. You start up a nonprofit like no other. I like you. Well, here's why.

So I'm a tax attorney by training. But I also am a student of history. And what we know tends to happen is that if there's an organization started by cult of personality, the first time there's a problem, everything collapses. My responsibility is to identify a problem, create a structure to respond not just to the moment, but to the actual problem. And if you're going to create a structure, it needs to have stability, it needs to have permanence, and it needs to have somebody other than me

in charge because the moment I get attacked, then the institution itself is under attack. And I've seen that happen even long after I'm gone. Well, that's the case. I mean, the new Georgia project, the Georgia Senate investigation, you found it, this project. They admitted earlier this year to secretly aiding your 2018 gubernatorial campaign. You were not the head of the organization at the time, but the org has admitted to violating campaign finance laws and agreed to pay a penalty for that. What is your response to that investigation?

That goes exactly to my point. I've not been involved with New Georgia Project since before my campaign, so 2017. I qualified to run for governor in 2018. I stood up an organization. I made certain it had good leadership. They made choices after I left. They are responsible for the choices they made. They are responsible for the leadership. My responsibility was to build an infrastructure and a superstructure that could do the mission

that I thought was necessary. And that work was done. It was done so effectively that tens of thousands of voters got added to the roles in the state of Georgia. I cannot manage what I'm not in charge of. And so I'm disappointed by what's happened. But my larger point is this. Do I regret creating an entity that empowered tens of thousands of people who believed that their voices mattered so much that they showed up election after election and changed the trajectory of the state of Georgia? No, I don't regret that. I'm proud of the work that I do, but I intentionally stand things up

so that other people can also be a part of how change gets done. The worst kind of leadership is a leadership that says I alone can solve it. I alone can make the decisions. That is never who I am. I think the sticky point for this though is that that organization, they were working on behalf of your campaign, even though you weren't the head of it at the time. And I just wonder if there are any lessons that you've learned in hindsight that you might do differently. I'm going to push back a bit because they were accused of contributing to supporting

my candidacy by doing things with people. They never once were found. In fact, we've said they didn't, they've said they didn't, and the State Ethics Committee has admitted they didn't. There was no direct connection to my campaign. I cannot stop enthusiastic supporters from making decisions. They admitted that they made a mistake, they have paid for that mistake. But there has not been and there was no connection to my campaign in that.

I will tell you, 1.9 million people supported my campaign. I don't know all the things that people did to make it happen. But I do know that I have not taken any action that can be seen as anything other than doing the very best I could to run a clean campaign and to be as transparent as I could. The challenge though, and this goes back to the beginning of this question, the Republicans in Georgia presume that anything that may have benefited me had some fashion been nefarious. People make mistakes. And let's be clear, I didn't win.

So it wasn't as though I benefited in a way that was problematic. But what they're angry about, they're not angry about the fact that I didn't win. They're angry about the fact that it almost worked, that I ran a campaign that almost won, that I started an organization that added tens of thousands of voters they cannot discount to the roles. They are angry about a change in systems that added people to the roles and added voices to democracy that they did not believe they would have to contend with. If we get distracted from that by the Sturm und Drang of a fine, then we are ignoring the plot because

the plot is to stop democracy from working. Thank you for that, Stacey. Thank you for that clarification as well. You've been so open over the years. Your love of Star Trek, through your fiction, we're also able to get a glimpse into your creative mind. You've written about your financial struggles, your brother's incarceration. Politics though has a way sometimes of turning authenticity into a kind of performance, almost

like creating a packaged version of ourselves. And I wonder how you think about that tension. Is it something that you wrestle with? The people in my world who have to navigate the world with me will tell you that I am not at all packaged. I defy my labeling way too often for their taste, but it's part of who I am. I think it's hard to tell a story over and over again without there being lines that you understand, in shorthand that you develop so people can grasp who you are. Performative happens when you start to believe the mythology versus the reality. I've met me, I'm not overly impressed, and I do not

take myself so seriously. I make mistakes, I have malapropisms, and I make decisions that in hindsight probably should have done something else. I try my best when that happens to be honest with myself, to be honest with my teams, to be honest with the public. Part of what can sometimes seem performative is I think the unusual behavior that I have sometimes of taking public responsibility. Because I don't think you can ask someone to trust you with their lives if they can't trust you with yours. And so I try to tell the truth. Now, I enjoy my privacy, and I will be as transparent as I can, but transparency doesn't give me the either the obligation or I think

the responsibility to not be contemplative and to not weigh and measure what has to happen. And so I think sometimes what people expect from politicians is sort of an instantaneous response or what you expect from someone in the public eye is an instantaneous reaction. I don't do that. I think hard about what I say and what I do because people are affected by what I do. Their paychecks, their livelihoods, their voting rights. And so my obligation is to try to weigh

the performances that's necessary for people to understand me versus the integrity and authenticity that makes me capable of doing the work. Stacey Abrams, thank you so much for this conversation. Thank you, Tanya, for having me and for some very thoughtful questions. Stacey Abrams' new book is called Coded Justice. After a short break, TV critic David Bianculli reviews the drama series Outrageous, now streaming on BritBox. This is Fresh Air. Our TV critic David Bianculli recommends the new six-part series Outrageous, now streaming on BritBox. Set in the 1930s, it tells the story of the

infamously non-conformist Mitford sisters, whose parents were a lord and lady, but who themselves were less interested in marrying and settling down than fighting for various causes, some of them controversial. David says the period drama is entertaining in the same anglophile pleasing way as Downton Abbey or The Crown, but that it also carries a message of political division that hits closer to home and closer to today. Here's his review. In the UK, the Mitford Girls is a subject and a phrase that's instantly recognizable.

So much so that when Mary S. Lovell wrote a detailed biography of them in 2001, she called her book The Mitford Girls. Except in America, where it was called The Sisters. But the story's the same, and these siblings indeed are fascinating. During the Depression, they lived the lavish life in a Downton Abbey-ish estate with their parents, a lord and lady they lovingly called Muv and Fav. But as they approached the age to be introduced into proper society, the Mitford girls had other ideas.

Nancy, the eldest, became a published novelist, writing thinly veiled accounts of her own family dramas. One book, The Pursuit of Love, was made into a prime video miniseries in 2021, providing fine roles for Lily James, Dominic West and Andrew Scott. But Outrageous, created and written by Sarah Williams, is based on Lovell's original biography and has quite a story to tell.

For an American equivalent of what these Mitford sisters got into and how infamous they got for doing it, it might be helpful to picture publishing tycoon heiress Patty Hearst becoming a gun-toting bank robber in the 1970s, or movie star Jane Fonda speaking out against the Vietnam War and being denounced by some as Hanoi Jane. In the 1930s, the Miford girls pursued extreme, sometimes opposing interests.

One, Jessica became an avowed communist and set out to fight for that cause. Another, Diana became romanically involved with Oswald Mosley, founder of the British Union of Fascists. And a third sister, Unity, developed a crush on a charismatic rising politician and made it her life's mission to meet him, which she did, and his name was Adolf Hitler. While in Germany she

published a letter in support of Hitler's policies in a German newspaper, a letter which found its way back to her home country reprinted in English to the dismay of many who read it, including her parents, Muv and Favre, who were played with understandable exasperation by Anna Chancellor and James Purfoy. Where on earth did we go wrong with that girl? We... we did not go wrong. I mean, I'm normal, you are normal.

They all had a perfectly normal childhood. Yet each one of these girls is more perverse than the other. As outrageous ticks through the months and years of the Depression era decade, its story begins in 1931 and ends in 1937, the girls' political alliances become as wild and unpredictable as their respective romances. Part of the story, as Sarah Williams frames it in this six-part drama, is oddly like adolescence.

That's the recent, unforgettable British TV production that looked at some shocking behavior by young people and asked not only what happened, but why. In the case of Outrageous, the questions include, why are some people drawn to certain causes and politicians and others repelled by them? And what happens to families, even close ones, when those divisions become raw and unavoidable? Those questions have echoes and relevance today, but even almost a century ago,

they could generate some intense arguments. Here's a scene partway into Outrageous, just after Unity's pro-Hitler letter has been reprinted in England. Nancy, the eldest sister, visits another sister, Diana, to ask her to intervene on behalf of their parents. But Diana, who by now is deeply involved with the British fascist leader Moseley, responds angrily. Bessie Carter, who played Prudence Featherington in Bridgerton, stars as Nancy. Joanna Vanderham plays Diana. Listen,

Mav wondered if you would have a quiet word with Unity about her letter and just explain to her why everyone's so upset about it and perhaps encourage her to rethink what she's said if she clearly listens to you. Certainly not. She's an adult now and she's entitled to her opinions. But... Nard, you cannot support what she said in that letter,

all that hatred, I mean, you can't, can you? Look, her views are her own. If that's what she thinks, I don't see how I can change it. Oh, come on. You have a huge influence on her. You can't just sit by and do nothing. You can't condone it. Neither Mosley nor I have anything against the Jews as a race.

But what's happening in Germany, it's none of our business. What? This isn't you. This is Mosley speaking, isn't it? Don't be ridiculous. Well, it's not the girl I grew up with. It's not you. Don't tell me who I am or what I think.

Just because you're the eldest. It's got nothing to do with that. It doesn't mean we have to fall in line behind you. We are all entitled to our own views, to be ourselves. Now if you'll excuse me. But that's it since you met Moseley, you're not yourself at all. You've changed completely. You think you know me better than I know myself.

Well, you don't. Just get out, will you? Now. Oh, don't worry, I'm going. Not all the scenes in Outrageous are that intense. Others are quite funny, and all of them are charmingly acted. One final observation. In the leading role, Bessie Carter should

be singled out not only for her performance but for her lineage. Her mother is Imelda Staunton who played the elder queen in The Crown and her father is Jim Carter who played the head butler Mr. Carson on Downton Abbey. On a period production piece like Outrageous that almost counts as TV royalty. David Bianculli is professor of television studies at Rowan University. He reviewed the series Outrageous, streaming on Britbox. Tomorrow on Fresh Air, ProPublica investigative reporter Abram Lustgarden joins us to talk about the catastrophic flood that tore through central Texas.

In the aftermath, FEMA failed to respond to most calls for help and local warnings arrived too late. Lusgarden explains how this disaster reveals the cracks in our climate readiness and emergency response. I hope you can join us. To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram at NPR Fresh Air. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our senior producer today was Sam Brigger. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham.

Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Anne-Marie Baldonado, Lauren Krenzel, Theresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Challener, Susan Ngocundi, and Anna Bauman. Our digital media producer is Molly C.V. Nesper. Our consulting visual producer is Hope Wilson. Roberta Shorrock directs the show. With Terry Gross, I'm Tanya Mosley.