Nick Paro, Walter Rhein, and Will Fullwood open this Powerful Voices episode by welcoming Keira Havens — Air Force veteran, former scientist, co-founder of the Citizens Impeachment Coalition, and a driving force behind the Courage for Democracy candidate slate. The intro is warm and the military banter is real, but Keira gets down to business fast: she swore an oath to the Constitution, she’s taking it seriously, and she’s here because almost nobody in Congress is.
The backstory Keira lays out is both more organized and more infuriating than most people realize. In April 2025 — when polls were already showing 80-plus percent of Democrats, 40-50% of independents, and even 20% of Republicans wanting impeachment — the Citizens Impeachment Coalition launched with a single coordinated action: 600 people, one from every congressional district, sent an article of impeachment to Congress at the exact same moment. It worked. Rep. Shri Thanedar of Michigan’s 13th district incorporated their drafted article into a full impeachment resolution, filed it under Rule 9 (which forces a House floor vote within two legislative days), and brought it to a vote in under a month. Then Democratic leadership walked onto the floor and physically yelled at Thanedar until he pulled it. The first vote that did happen saw 79 members willing to take up the question of impeachment. By December, that number had jumped to 140. Only 47 Democrats followed leadership into the “present” column. The coalition reads this as a signal: leadership is isolated. The caucus is not with them. The movement needs to keep forcing votes until leadership can no longer pretend otherwise. Citizens Impeachment is still pushing for the next one.
The second pillar of this work is Courage for Democracy — the candidate replacement arm. If Congress won’t do its job, you replace the people in Congress. That logic produced a slate of 130-plus Courage Candidates across 38 states, running in 100-plus districts at the federal level, spanning both House and Senate races. Keira is clear on what “non-partisan” actually means in this context: it doesn’t mean bipartisan, it doesn’t mean splitting the difference, and it doesn’t mean she has any interest in what label a candidate puts on themselves. It means a shared standard — elected officials uphold the Constitution and are held to it equally — applied without exception and without carve-outs for team affiliation. The candidate interview playbook Walter and Courtney built (now live at broadbanner.com/candidate-interview-playbook) is part of this infrastructure: giving independent media creators the baseline they need to run a serious candidate interview and get something useful on the record.
The primary calendar is where this episode becomes immediately actionable. Primary season kicks off May 5th, with Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana all in the first wave. Louisiana’s Courage Candidate has already cleared her primary — her opponent dropped out, so she’s on the general election ballot. Georgia has Brianna Woodson and Case Norton, who Keira describes as showing up ready and willing to fight. California is a major target on June 6th, along with a batch of others. The math Keira lays out matters: a typical congressional primary turns out roughly 40,000 voters in a district where the general may pull 200,000. That compression means 100, 200, or 500 organized people can swing a primary. The movement doesn’t need to win the whole country at once. It needs to win primaries, one district at a time, with people who show up before the general and vote when it actually counts. Full candidate search by state and office is at couragefordemocracy.com.
Nick closes by pulling the two threads together on-screen — showing the BroadBanner resources page with Citizens Impeachment and Courage for Democracy links already live — and framing what the platform is for: getting serious candidates in front of audiences before the money decides the conversation. Keira’s assessment of what podcasters and independent media can actually provide is worth sitting with. It isn’t money, and it isn’t infrastructure. It’s taking candidates seriously, giving them a platform where they look credible, and asking them the question that the institutional media consistently refuses to ask: are you willing to fight? That question, Keira says, is the one that actually separates the candidates who matter from the ones who are just running for résumé reasons. All resources — Citizens Impeachment, Courage Candidates, the community calendar, and the candidate interview playbook — are consolidated at broadbanner.com/resources.
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