"This is what's interesting in Wisconsin: I think that the Right may have picked a fight they can't win rhetorically," says Harper's columnist Thomas Frank, who visited Wisconsin during the heat of the union battles this winter. He notes that Wisconsin was historically one of the most liberal states in the country, and the labor-liberal base there is fired up and ready to fight back.

Thomas joins Laura in studio to talk Wisconsin and the bigger picture for progressives in the country--is the time of the Tea Party fading?

"Because of the separation of women, we have created societies where we are cut in the middle. And when women have gone into public life they are forced to go into public life like men," says Gioconda Belli, Nicaraguan poet and author and former Sandinista revolutionary and later government member. Gioconda and her female comrades formed "The Party of the Lusty Left" in response to continued sexism by the revolutionary party.

Gioconda is in New York for the PEN World Voices festival, and joins Laura in studio for a conversation about what modern revolutionary movements need, how women are leaders in the fight for equality, and why media matters.

Finally, as gas prices are going up, Obama's approval ratings waver--and Republicans, who never met an oil and gas subsidy they didn't like, are preparing to exploit that. Laura has some thoughts.