# Briahna Joy Gray Briahna Joy Gray (b. Aug. 15, 1985, in Washington, D.C.) is a lawyer turned political commentator. She was national press secretary for [[Bernie Sanders]]'s 2020 presidential campaign and hosts *Bad Faith*, a long-running left-wing interview podcast. From September 2022 to June 2024 she was the left chair on *Rising*, the daily web show of The Hill, until the outlet fired her. ## From law to the Sanders campaign Gray holds undergraduate and law degrees from Harvard and worked as a corporate litigator in New York before turning to political writing. She joined [[The Intercept]] in 2018 and was a contributing editor at the left magazine Current Affairs. Sanders's campaign hired her as national press secretary for the 2020 race. When he dropped out and endorsed [[Joe Biden]] in April 2020, she publicly declined to follow. She launched *Bad Faith* later that year, at first with a co-host from the podcast Chapo Trap House. By mid-2026 it had run about 600 episodes. In December 2020 she was the most prominent ally of [[Jimmy Dore]]'s Force the Vote campaign, which pressed progressive House Democrats to withhold support from [[Nancy Pelosi]] until she allowed a floor vote on Medicare for All, and she criticized [[Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez]] for refusing. ## Rising and the firing On *Rising*, Gray argued the left position opposite the libertarian Robby Soave. After the [[Hamas]] attack of Oct. 7, 2023, she became one of the show's sharpest critics of [[Israel]]'s war in Gaza and drew criticism for questioning reports of sexual violence during the attack. On June 4, 2024, she interviewed Yarden Gonen, whose sister Romi was being held hostage in Gaza. When Gonen closed by urging her to believe women who said they had been assaulted, Gray rolled her eyes and ended the segment. The clip spread quickly, and The Hill dismissed her on June 6. Gray said the firing fit a pattern at the outlet of suppressing criticism of Israel, and pointed to the 2022 dismissal of commentator Katie Halper. The Hill is owned by [[Nexstar]]. ## Since 2024 Gray has stayed on the left and grown more hostile to the [[Democratic Party]]. She argued that [[Kamala Harris]] lost in 2024 by refusing to back an arms embargo on Israel, has criticized Sanders for steering progressives back to the party, and has questioned [[Zohran Mamdani]]'s retreat from earlier positions since he became mayor of New York. *Bad Faith* in 2026 has covered the [[Democratic Socialists of America]], the Trump administration's foreign policy and [[Peter Thiel]]'s [[Dialog Society]]. She has appeared on [[Jimmy Dore]]'s show, but her own program has also examined the limits of the anti-Israel right and of [[Tucker Carlson]] as an ally. ## Why it's on the map Gray is the member of this cluster who did not cross over. She shares the others' platforms and their contempt for the Democratic establishment, and she was on the founding roster of the audio app [[Callin]] alongside [[Glenn Greenwald]] and [[Matt Taibbi]]. But her politics remain those of the socialist left. She is the control case for [[Heterodox Media]]: evidence that independence from party and legacy outlets does not by itself carry someone to the right, and a reminder that Gaza, more than any other issue, reshuffled this corner of the media after 2023. ## Connections - [[Heterodox Media]] · [[Jimmy Dore]] · [[Bernie Sanders]] · [[Callin]] - [[The Intercept]] · [[Nexstar]] · [[Gaza War]] · [[Hamas]] - [[Democratic Party]] · [[Democratic Socialists of America]] · [[Zohran Mamdani]]