Aloha, It’s our 10th episode, and we are not slowing down.
This week, Tina Marie and Martina tackle a news cycle that swung hard in both directions -- from moments of genuine, soul-lifting hope, to stories of racial injustice that stopped them cold. They get into Iran and oil reserves, Ukraine’s drone warfare strategy, Ashley St. Clair’s bombshell revelations about Elon Musk, what Lincoln Project polling is saying about the two-party system, and what Democrats absolutely must be running on if they want to be taken seriously in November.
It was a heavy week. It was also, somehow, a hopeful one. Let’s dive right in.
Martina kicked things off where they planned to end up -- with the good news.
On Thursday, the Obama Presidential Center officially opened in Chicago. Martina watched it unfold in real time, and the buildup delivered. For her, and for Tina Marie, it was a reminder of what leadership is supposed to look and feel like -- and a stark contrast to what they’re living through right now.
“What we’re going through right now is too much,” Martina said. “Too much bad faith, corruption -- just psychopath, sociopath in the highest form of government. And we will come to a place that reflects the Obama years. But this time we’re all a little smarter because we understand the system better.”
Martina came to the United States from Germany in 2001, just weeks before September 11. She’s spent more than two decades watching this country from the inside, and for years she couldn’t quite understand why Obama -- who came in with the House, the Senate, and the presidency -- wasn’t able to pass more progressive legislation. After years of listening to historians and digging into the mechanics of American politics, she says she gets it now.
“It was at the same time he got into office that the white supremacists, the old power structures, the oligarchs and billionaires who didn’t want to lose power went into full opposition. They made everything difficult to push this country forward.”
Tina Marie, who is originally from Chicago, reflected on what Obama represented then and what the opening of his Presidential Center represents now.
“His entire campaign, his entire speeches, everything -- he spoke with such clarity and competence. And I think we are desperately yearning for that right now. We’re starved of intelligent leadership, compassionate leadership.”
She also pointed to something she considers a mark of real leadership: the ability to change your mind when the public pushes back. Obama did that. The current occupant of the White House does not.
The contrast between the two couldn’t be more visible. As Tina Marie put it, Obama brought out the best in people. The current president brings out the worst -- in the people around him, and in the broader culture.
Both Tina Marie and Martina also spoke about Michelle Obama, who gave her own speech at the Center’s opening. “I love, love everything that Michelle Obama does,” Martina said. “Such a beautiful soul, both of them.”
The episode opened and closed with this thread of hope -- and as they said, the week ended up delivering more of it than they expected.
From hope to heartbreak. Tina Marie brought the conversation directly to what has been unfolding against Black Americans in recent weeks, and she didn’t soften it.
She started with history -- Juneteenth, what it actually marks, and why it matters. The abolishment of slavery didn’t reach everyone at once. Some towns were deliberately kept in the dark by enslavers who refused to let go of their power. The last enslaved town in Texas was only liberated when Union soldiers arrived to enforce the Emancipation Proclamation on June 19, 1865. That’s what Juneteenth commemorates.
And even after legal freedom came, the suppression continued. When Black Americans started building their own businesses, their own communities, their own wealth -- organized violence came to destroy it. Greenwood District in Tulsa. Rosewood. Dozens of other communities across the country. The message, over and over, was the same: we will not let you get ahead.
“That cycle just continued over and over and over and over,” Tina Marie said. “It is a systematic issue. Systematic oppression that we still haven’t fully liberated ourselves from.”
That historical context matters because of what’s happening right now.
The Knicks’ celebration wellness check. A Black woman was in her apartment celebrating the New York Knicks’ win. She was cheering, having a good time with her dog. A neighbor called a wellness check on her -- because she was loud and happy. Police arrived. They told her to keep her dog inside. She tried to close the door, but the dog got through the crack. The dog, by all accounts friendly and playful, trotted up to the officer. The officer had already been heard saying he didn’t want to get bitten. The dog was shot and killed on the spot.
“The cops’ first reaction was to shoot the dog instead of stepping back, or letting the woman regain control,” Tina Marie said. “It’s just an awful thing to witness and see.”
The Walmart diaper run. A Black woman went to Walmart to buy diapers for her toddler. She made her purchase and came out to her car. Someone suspected her of shoplifting and called the police. Officers arrived and, knowing there was a small child in the vehicle, opened fire on the car. The child died.
“I don’t care if she stole thousands of dollars’ worth of merchandise,” Tina Marie said. “A cop’s first instinct should not be to open fire on a car with a child in it. Should not be to open fire at all. If that’s their first reaction, there is something psychologically wrong.”
Black people in this country cannot cheer for their team in their own home. They cannot run a routine errand. And in both cases, the systems meant to protect them became the source of harm.
Martina connected this to the broader collapse of civic norms. “It was unleashed in the last ten years,” she said. “And that’s how our society changed. It’s a broken society.”
She referenced historian Timothy Snyder, along with Heather Cox Richardson and Ruth Ben-Ghiat, as essential voices for understanding how we got here -- and how autocratic regimes dismantle the rule of law so that only one person’s word carries weight. That’s the environment these incidents are happening in.
“They take away all the rules,” Martina said. “Only one person can make a decision. The king. And we do know it’s not going to happen -- because we’re going to the No Kings protests, and we do the work needed to create the society we want to live in.”
There was a moment of dark humor in the episode, and it was earned.
The National Mall’s reflecting pool -- that iconic stretch of water in front of the Lincoln Memorial -- has been in rough shape. Tina Marie and Martina used it as a metaphor: the reflecting pool is reflecting exactly what’s in the White House right now, which is a swamp.
Trump famously promised to drain the swamp in 2015. He did not drain the swamp. He became the swamp. Someone on the internet drew a Trump-haired swamp monster rising out of the reflecting pool, and it landed.
“The creativity that comes from the American people -- I’m always so uplifted and astonished,” Martina said. “There’s so much darkness, but we are the good fighters. The good faith fighters for a better world.”
That spirit of dark humor and creative resistance is something they keep coming back to. It helps. It doesn’t fix anything, but it helps.
The Middle East is a mess, and it connects directly to something Trump let slip in a recent speech: the United States has roughly four weeks of oil reserves left.
That’s the context for Trump’s urgency to resolve the Iran situation. Israel is still attacking Lebanon. A memorandum of understanding is going nowhere. And Trump, with midterms on the horizon, needs this conflict wrapped up before voters notice how badly he’s handled it.
“He always hopes we forget,” Martina said. “Trust me, we don’t forget. We have independent media now. We’re going to remind people how screwed up this regime is.”
The deeper irony: the U.S. is drilling at 95% capacity on its own land, but selling that oil to other countries rather than keeping it for domestic use. The refinery infrastructure to process the crude domestically isn’t there, and nobody in the current administration seems to be thinking about how to change that.
“It’s biting them in the booty,” Tina Marie said. “I’ll say it.”
Martina connected the dots to a pattern she has observed over her lifetime: almost every major war in her memory has had oil somewhere in the middle of it. The Middle East has it. Countries that want access to it have always been willing to fight over it.
“Trump thought he could go into Iran in and out, just like he thought he could with Venezuela,” Martina said. “Same regime. Same people. Very much still in place.”
Tina Marie offered the solution plainly: renewable energy. If the United States had continued on the clean energy path that the Biden administration was building, and that Kamala Harris would have continued, we would not be this vulnerable.
“We have the solution right there,” she said.
Martina, who describes herself as an environmentalist, said it breaks her heart. “If we would have had Kamala as president, we would continue on that path to get away from oil dependency. But people had to vote in this dude. And this is the consequence.”
They’re not giving up. The path still exists. But it’s going to take winning back power to get back on it.
Putin thought he’d take Kyiv in three days. That was four years ago.
Ukraine’s military technology -- specifically its drone program -- has now become more advanced than any other country’s. And this week, Ukrainian drones hit Moscow. Not civilian targets. Oil refineries.
“It goes back to oil,” Martina said. “Targeting the refineries limits Putin’s ability to keep that economy going.”
Tina Marie connected it to the same pattern: the Ukraine-Russia war, like the Middle East conflicts, is fundamentally tied to energy and power. Putin calculated wrong, just like Trump calculated wrong on Venezuela and Iran. Overconfident leaders who move fast and assume submission end up in quagmires.
The week felt to both of them like a moment of acceleration -- too many things happening at once to track. Martina put it this way: “Isn’t there a saying -- a lot of things happen, and suddenly everything at once, and then the big shift happens? This week felt like that.”
Tina Marie had a name for it: “It’s called the stuff hitting the fan.”
Martina flagged Ashley St. Clair as someone worth paying close attention to right now. St. Clair was recruited into Turning Point USA when she was 18 years old. She’s now 27, has two children -- one of them with Elon Musk -- and is currently involved in three active lawsuits against Musk. Despite that legal pressure, she has been speaking openly and in detail on multiple podcasts.
“I’m really blown away by how she words things while still under the pressure of being in court,” Martina said. “She is really interesting, and I recommend watching what she does.”
Martina particularly recommends the two-part interview St. Clair did with Don Lemon. There’s also a Gavin Newsom/Ashley St. Clair episode she found valuable.
Tina Marie has watched clips and said everything St. Clair has been saying is illuminating. “She even talks about how Elon was alluding to the fact that he helped Trump win. We don’t know how, but there are suspicions there.”
Martina added a word about Don Lemon as an interviewer: “He asks the right questions. He goes deeper. He does not let go of something just to get to the next question. He’s a real journalist.” She and Tina Marie are quick to note they’re not journalists themselves -- they’re commentators and podcasters -- but they appreciate what real journalism looks like.
Both the St. Clair interview and the Lincoln Project polling conversation led Tina Marie to the same phrase: “The cracks are cracking.”
The Lincoln Project, one of the first organized resistance groups against Trump that Martina followed starting in 2020, published polling this week that caught her attention. Rick Wilson -- the strategist who coined the hashtag #ETTD, Everything Trump Touches Dies -- and his colleagues found that a growing number of Americans are identifying as independent. Not leaning independent. Actively rejecting both parties.
“People say, I’m independent now. I definitely cannot vote for the Republican Party. And the Democratic Party? It’s a lame club,” Martina summarized.
Tina Marie didn’t hold back on why it’s hard to be excited about Democrats right now. In April, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said impeachment was not going to be a top priority for Democrats when they win back the House. Tina Marie found that unconscionable.
“What the f*** dude? What is going to be a top priority? If any Democrat is running on a national campaign and they don’t have impeachment as a top priority -- what the f***?”
She even made the provocative observation that JD Vance, who she doesn’t find inspiring, at least appears to care what people think about him. The current president does not. And that’s actually something to work with, politically speaking -- unlike someone who operates entirely outside accountability.
Martina added that impeachment doesn’t have to mean only the president. RFK Jr., Pete Hegseth, and others in the cabinet have committed enough documented violations to be impeachable. Start with who you can get.
“Clean up as much as you can as soon as you get the House and the Senate,” she said.
Tina Marie and Martina laid out the mechanics clearly for listeners who want to understand the big picture.
Win back the House and Senate in November. That’s the first step. Here’s why it matters so much:
If Democrats take back the House, they will control the Speaker of the House position. The Speaker is third in the line of presidential succession. If Trump is impeached and convicted, and the vice president is also impeached and convicted, the Speaker becomes president -- unless the vice president nominates a replacement before that happens.
That means November isn’t just about slowing down the agenda. It’s potentially about replacing the president through a legal constitutional process.
“We really have to be pushing our Congress people,” Tina Marie said. “The people running for Congress -- make impeachment a top priority. Make conviction a priority. That’s how you actually get him out of the White House.”
Beyond impeachment, the longer-term structural reforms both of them want to see:
Eliminate the Electoral College and implement ranked choice voting, which would open the door to viable third parties
Reform the Supreme Court, including term limits
Rebuild the administrative rule of law that has been gutted
This is the work. And it’s why both Tina Marie and Martina are leaders in Kona Indivisible -- trying to reach the people who aren’t engaged yet, and help them understand that what happens in November will shape the country for a very long time.
“The more you can dedicate some time to that cause, the better,” Martina said. “It will affect us for a long, long time.”
The episode closed where it opened -- with Thursday, and with hope.
The same day the Obama Presidential Center opened, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani gave a speech at the Knicks’ NBA Championship celebration. Martina listened to all of it -- the Obamas’ speeches, Mamdani’s speech -- and said it was exactly what she needed.
“It was absolute uplift,” she said.
(For the record: Martina doesn’t follow basketball. She’s from Germany. Soccer is her thing, though she admits she’s been too distracted by the news cycle to pay attention to the World Cup either. Tina Marie refers to all sports as “sports ball.” They’re doing their best.)
The Mamdani connection for Martina goes beyond the Knicks. She pointed to something that has given her real hope: Obama, despite having the House, the Senate, and the presidency, could only get half of what he wanted through Congress -- with ObamaCare being his signature achievement. Mamdani, as the New York City mayor, is implementing significant changes. The lesson is that it can be done. It has been done. The tools exist.
“Yes, we can,” Tina Marie said.
“Yes, we can,” Martina echoed. “We can make the changes. We just have to keep up the fight. This is the time to do it. And in four or five years, maybe we have smoother sailing -- a society we actually want to live in.”
After everything above, here is something you can actually do.
Tina Marie signed up to be an election audit watcher and she wants you to join her. The Hawaiʻi Office of Elections needs volunteers at counting centers on every island for the 2026 Primary (August 8) and General (November 3) elections. You must be 16 or older by June 30.
Open volunteer roles:
Audit Team: hand-tallies results to confirm accuracy and integrity
Ballot Opening: removes and prepares ballots for counting
Duplication: tracks and recreates defective ballots one-for-one
VBC Processing: controls the counting, tabulation, and security of voted ballots
Official Observers: the public’s eyes and ears inside the counting center
Apply by island: Hawaiʻi Island | Maui | Kauaʻi | Oʻahu
Or visit: elections.hawaii.gov/voting/volunteer
“Do your part,” Martina said. “Be the engaged, educated citizen. Resist with joy.”
💬 Before You Go | Take our Visionaire Questionnaire.
Here at Resist with Joy, we take the future very seriously. So our research department spent their entire lives developing a highly sophisticated, scientifically calibrated system for understanding someone’s vision for our world ahead. After multiple peer reviews, revisions, and at least one whiteboard diagram that made us feel incredibly intelligent, we’ve discovered the perfect formula: a simple 5-question survey. We want to hear what concerns you, what gives you hope, and what joy looks like for you right now. Take the Visionaire Questionnaire here.
Resist with Joy is a podcast about civic education, grassroots organizing, and joyful resistance. Real voices, including engaged citizens, experts, and politicians, to help build the wall against authoritarianism, one joyful action at a time.
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