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Amid Covid surges, rising inflation and a deadlocked Senate, what’s driving American politics?

Mara Liasson is a national political correspondent for NPR.
Mara Liasson is a national political correspondent for NPR.

Covering politics for decades for NPR, Mara Liasson juggles the clues that signal what voters are thinking: polling about who approves and disapproves of the job President Biden is doing, factors that worry them, like Covid surges and soaring inflation, and patterns of past rejections of the party in power.

But Liasson says now she sees more caustic polarization than she ever has--sharpened, in her view, by former President Trump’s claim that the 2020 election was stolen, and the choice of many elected Republicans to agree, without evidence: "We don't even have a common set of facts now. And that’s really scary to me."

Liasson will be in Baltimore a week from today for the Baltimore Speakers Series presented by Stevenson University.

Sheilah Kast is the host of On The Record, Monday-Friday, 9:30-10:00 am.
Maureen Harvie is Senior Supervising Producer for On the Record. She is a graduate of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and joined WYPR in 2014 as an intern for the newsroom. Whether coordinating live election night coverage, capturing the sounds of a roller derby scrimmage, interviewing veterans, or booking local authors, she is always on the lookout for the next story.