Town Hall: November 10, 2024

Sunday, November 10th, 7–8:30 PM ET

Al Franken

Al Franken was one of the original writers for Saturday Night Live, where he worked for fifteen seasons. He’s won five Emmys, for writing and producing, and after his SNL years, he won two Grammys. He’s also the author of four #1 New York Times bestsellers, including Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot and Other Observations, Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them – A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right, and Al Franken, Giant of the Senate. Franken served Minnesota in the Senate from 2009-2018, winning his first election by a margin of 312 votes. He was reelected in 2014. He served on the Judiciary, Energy, Indian Affairs, and HELP (Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions) Committees, where he was known as a no-nonsense interrogator and a fierce opponent of media concentration, mandatory arbitration, and Betsy DeVos. In the Senate, he wrote a key provision of the Affordable Care Act – the Medical Loss Ratio, which requires insurance companies to spend at least 80% (85% for large group plans) of premiums on actual health care and not profits, administrative costs, executive salaries, and marketing. If they don’t comply, they must rebate the difference to policyholders. Millions of Americans have received billions in rebates. At the moment, he’s the host of The Al Franken Podcast. His political action committee, Midwest Values PAC, supports Democrats and a host of other good, non-political things.

Tad Devine

Tad Devine has worked on presidential campaigns in United States and around the world for over 40 years. In the US, his work began in 1980 on President Carter’s campaign as a delegate tracker. He worked for Walter Mondale in 1984 as Deputy Director of Delegate Selection and in 1988 he served as Director of Delegate Selection for Governor Michael Dukakis. In the general election, Tad served as Campaign Manager for the Vice-Presidential nominee Senator Lloyd Benson. Tad also served as a Senior Advisor to Al Gore’s campaign in 2000, John Kerry’s campaign in 2004 and was Chief Strategist of Bernie Sanders presidential campaign in 2016. Since 1993 Tad has worked as media consultant – writing, directing and producing television, radio and digital advertising for campaigns in the US and internationally. He has made ads in 20 winning US Senate and Gubernatorial campaigns and worked as a consultant in 12 winning campaigns for President or Prime Minister around the world.

Nicholas Lemann

Nicholas Lemann was born and raised in New Orleans. He began his journalism career there as a 17-year-old staff writer for an alternate weekly paper called the Vieux Carre Courier. He graduated from Harvard College, where he was president of The Harvard Crimson, in 1976, magna cum laude in American History and Literature. He has worked as a reporter and editor at The Washington Monthly, Texas Monthly, The Washington Post, The Atlantic (where he was national correspondent from 1983 to 1999) and The New Yorker (where he has been a staff writer for twenty-five years), and contributed to many other publications. From 2003 to 2013 he was dean of Columbia Journalism School, leading a period of significant growth and change for the school, and since then he has been a professor there. At Columbia he has also helped launch Columbia Global Reports, a publishing venture that he continues to lead, Columbia World Projects, and the Knight Columbia First Amendment Institute. He is currently one of three co-chairs of the university’s antisemitism task force. His books include The Promised Land (1991), The Big Test (1999), Redemption (2006), Transaction Man (2019), and, most recently, Higher Admissions (2024). He is a member of several honorary societies, including the American Philosophical Society, the New York Institute for the Humanities, the Society of American Historians, the American Academy of Political and Social Science, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, where he serves as co-chair of the academy’s Commission on Reimagining Our Economy.