Episodes

3d ago

The New Yorker staff writer Isaac Chotiner joins Tyler Foggatt to reflect on several of the most notable interviews he conducted in 2025. They discuss competing theories about the origins of political violence over the past year, how to understand President Trump’s approach to power in his second term, and the challenges of covering an Administration that rarely appears to be driven by a coherent ideological framework. They also revisit two high-profile interviews: one with the former White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre , about her decision to leave the Democratic Party, and another with the legal scholar Cass Sunstein , on the limits of “big tent” politics and his curious friendship with Henry Kissinger. This week’s reading: “ In the Wake of Australia’s Hanukkah Beach Massacre ,” by Isaac Chotiner “ The Federal Judge at the Trump Rally ,” by Ruth Marcus “ The Year in Trump Cashing In ,” by John Cassidy “ The Party Politics of Sovereign House ,” by Emma Green “ Want to Talk to Zohran Mamdani? Get in Line ,” by Eric Lach The Political Scene draws on the reporting and analysis found in The New Yorker for lively conversations about the big questions in American politics. Join the magazine’s writers and editors as they put into context the latest news—about elections, the economy, the White House, the Supreme Court, and much more. New episodes are available three times a week. Tune in to The Political Scene wherever you get your podcasts . Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

6d ago

In the course of his long career, Leon Panetta was a lieutenant in the Army, a congressman from California, Bill Clinton’s White House chief of staff, Barack Obama’s director of the C.I.A., and later, his Secretary of Defense. David Remnick talks with Panetta about the current Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, the legality of the ongoing Navy strikes targeting civilian boats off the coast of Venezuela, and the problem with using the military as “the President’s personal toy.” The Political Scene draws on the reporting and analysis found in The New Yorker for lively conversations about the big questions in American politics. Join the magazine’s writers and editors as they put into context the latest news—about elections, the economy, the White House, the Supreme Court, and much more. New episodes are available three times a week. Tune in wherever you get your podcasts . Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Dec 13

The Washington Roundtable discusses what surprised them in 2025, reflecting on the major shock-and-awe events that defined the first year of Donald Trump ’s second term: the capitulation of major law firms , universities , and media companies ; the evisceration of foreign aid ; the sudden threats of war against Venezuela ; and much more. The panel also considers the shape and state of resistance to Trumpism in 2025. “There is this tug-of-war going on about what kind of country we will be by the end of this process,” the staff writer Evan Osnos says. “It’s not just about how the big institutions will behave—it’s also about how regular people behave every day when they see things that are unbearable.” This week’s reading: “ The Curse of Trump 2.0 ,” by Susan B. Glasser “ Will Trump Torpedo North American Trade? ” by Stephania Taladrid “ How the Kennedy Center Has Been Transformed by Trumpism ,” by Katy Waldman “ The Trump Administration’s Chaos in the Caribbean ,” by Jonathan Blitzer “ Is the Supreme Court Unsure About Birthright Citizenship? ” by Amy Davidson Sorkin To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker , visit newyorker.com/podcasts. To send in feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com with “The Political Scene” in the subject line. The Political Scene draws on the reporting and analysis found in The New Yorker for lively conversations about the big questions in American politics. Join the magazine’s writers and editors as they put into context the latest news—about elections, the economy, the White House, the Supreme Court, and much more. New episodes are available three times a week. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Dec 11

The New Yorker staff writer Andrew Marantz is joined by the political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, who teach at Harvard, and Lucan A. Way, who teaches at the University of Toronto, for an installment of “How Bad Is It?,” a monthly series on the health of American democracy. In a new essay for the journal Foreign Affairs , “ The Price of American Authoritarianism, ” the scholars of government assert that President Trump’s rapid consolidation of power in the first year of his second term has tipped the United States into authoritarianism—specifically, into competitive authoritarianism, in which elections persist but the ruling party rigs the system in its favor. The panel discusses how they arrived at their conclusions and suggests that not all is lost: America’s authoritarian moment could be temporary. “The United States is in a very good place to resist,” Levitsky says. “Civil society is very robust and so there is a very high likelihood that Trump will fail.” The Political Scene draws on the reporting and analysis found in The New Yorker for lively conversations about the big questions in American politics. Join the magazine’s writers and editors as they put into context the latest news—about elections, the economy, the White House, the Supreme Court, and much more. New episodes are available three times a week. Tune in wherever you get your podcasts . Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Dec 11

The New Yorker staff writer Katy Waldman joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss how the Kennedy Center, the premier performing-arts hub in Washington, D.C., has been transformed under President Trump’s second term—and under his chaotic and unprecedented chairmanship of the organization. They talk about this year’s Kennedy Center Honors, which featured a group of honorees that reflect the President’s personal tastes, as well as the past year of mass firings, boycotts, and programming changes that have followed the Trump-led upheaval inside the institution. They also examine Trump’s relationship to arts and culture, and how the planned White House ballroom reflects the kind of cultural legacy he hopes to leave behind. This week’s reading: “ How the Kennedy Center Has Been Transformed by Trumpism ,” by Katy Waldman “ The Trump Administration’s Chaos in the Caribbean ,” by Jonathan Blitzer “ How to Leave the U.S.A. ,” by Atossa Araxia Abrahamian “ The Weird Spectacle of the World Cup Draw ,” by Louisa Thomas “ Is the Supreme Court Unsure About Birthright Citizenship? ,” by Amy Davidson Sorkin The Political Scene draws on the reporting and analysis found in The New Yorker for lively conversations about the big questions in American politics. Join the magazine’s writers and editors as they put into context the latest news—about elections, the economy, the White House, the Supreme Court, and much more. New episodes are available three times a week. Tune in to The Political Scene wherever you get your podcasts . Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Dec 8

As a California congressman, Adam Schiff was the lead manager during the first impeachment proceedings against Donald Trump. He later served on the January 6th committee. Trump has castigated him as “Shifty Schiff” and demanded that the Justice Department investigate him. In a conversation with David Remnick, Schiff discusses the current inquiry into his mortgage by federal authorities; the Supreme Court’s primary role in enabling this Administration; and why he thinks the rule of law in America is “hanging by a thread.” Unlike some Democrats, Schiff is not sanguine that the release of the Epstein files will damage Trump politically. “If there are ruinous things in the files . . . Bondi and company will make sure they never reach the public eye,” Schiff says. But also, “I think he’s almost impervious to dirt.” The Political Scene draws on the reporting and analysis found in The New Yorker for lively conversations about the big questions in American politics. Join the magazine’s writers and editors as they put into context the latest news—about elections, the economy, the White House, the Supreme Court, and much more. New episodes are available three times a week. Tune in to The Political Scene wherever you get your podcasts . Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Dec 6

The Washington Roundtable discusses President Donald Trump’s health and the signs of his age-related decline: a noticeably reduced work schedule, fewer public appearances, and more rambling, profanity-laden outbursts. The panel examines how this undermines Trump’s self-styled image of strength and vigor, what lessons about aging Presidents can be drawn from the Biden and Reagan Administrations, and why America may be facing what scholars refer to as the “Bad Emperor” problem in Chinese history. “When strongmen get weak, watch out,” the staff writer Jane Mayer says. This week’s reading: “ War Is Peace, the Dozing Don Edition ,” by Susan B. Glasser “ The Dishonorable Strikes on Venezuelan Boats ,” by Ruth Marcus “ Mikie Sherrill Intends to Move Fast ,” by Gabriel Debenedetti “ The Undermining of the C.D.C. ,” by Dhruv Khullar “ The Legal Consequences of Pete Hegseth’s ‘Kill Them All’ Order ,” by Isaac Chotiner “ In the Line of Fire ,” by Benjamin Wallace-Wells “ What Can Economists Agree on These Days? ” by John Cassidy The Political Scene draws on the reporting and analysis found in The New Yorker for lively conversations about the big questions in American politics. Join the magazine’s writers and editors as they put into context the latest news—about elections, the economy, the White House, the Supreme Court, and much more. New episodes are available three times a week. Tune in wherever you get your podcasts . Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Dec 3

The New Yorker staff writer Jon Lee Anderson joins Tyler Foggatt to talk about the Trump Administration’s military strikes on alleged Venezuelan drug boats in the Caribbean. They discuss the questionable intelligence and rationale behind the operation, the legal concerns raised by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s alleged order to leave no survivors in a September strike, and whether the attacks feels more performative than strategic. They also explore how Trump’s framing of the issue as a drug war intersects with his broader ambitions—from pressuring the Venezuelan President, Nicolás Maduro, to reasserting American dominance in the hemisphere—and how other Latin American countries may respond to further military action in the region. This week’s reading: “ Can Trump’s Peace Initiative Stop the Congo’s Thirty-Year War? ,” by Jon Lee Anderson “ The Dishonorable Strikes on Venezuelan Boats ,” by Ruth Marcus “ The Legal Consequences of Pete Hegseth’s ‘Kill Them All’ Order ,” by Isaac Chotiner “ The Undermining of the C.D.C. ,” by Dhruv Khullar “ In the Line of Fire ,” by Benjamin Wallace-Wells The Political Scene draws on the reporting and analysis found in The New Yorker for lively conversations about the big questions in American politics. Join the magazine’s writers and editors as they put into context the latest news—about elections, the economy, the White House, the Supreme Court, and much more. New episodes are available three times a week. Tune in to The Political Scene wherever you get your podcasts . Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Dec 1

Only thirty per cent of the American public identifies with the MAGA movement, according to a recent NBC poll, but that coalition remains intensely loyal to Donald Trump in the face of scandals and authoritarian measures. Defections seem rare and come with the risk of reprisal, even from the President himself. Rich Logis is trying to make them less rare with his advocacy organization, Leaving MAGA. The nonprofit’s website features testimonials from former adherents, and offers advice for how friends and family can reconnect after ruptures over politics. Logis himself had been a true believer: he worked on Trump’s campaign, wrote articles, released a podcast, and called Democrats “the most dangerous group in the history of our Republic, foreign or domestic—more than Islamic supremacists, more than the Nazis.” He didn’t view MAGA as reactionary, but “very progressive and forward facing.” But somewhere along the way, Logis hung up his red hat. “Even today, talking about my past, the feelings are conjured—those feelings of being welcomed and feeling like you’re part of something, and the exhilaration that comes from that,” he tells the New Yorker Radio Hour’s Adam Howard. Logis emphasizes that leaving MAGA is difficult because, as much as it’s a political ideology, it’s also an identity that meets emotional needs. “I think that there’s a lot of trauma within the MAGA base, whether it’s political or economic. . . . I’m not qualified to make any kind of diagnosis. I’m not a therapist or a clinician, but there’s a lot of pain within MAGA. And I think that a better question [instead] of asking ‘What’s wrong with you?’ is ‘What happened to you?’” The Political Scene draws on the reporting and analysis found in The New Yorker for lively conversations about the big questions in American politics. Join the magazine’s writers and editors as they put into context the latest news—about elections, the economy, the White House, the Supreme Court, and much more. New episodes are available three times a week. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Nov 26

The “Jeopardy!” host and former contestant Ken Jennings joins Tyler Foggatt to talk about America’s favorite game show. The wide-ranging conversation took place before a live audience onstage at the annual New Yorker Festival, on October 25th. Jennings discussed his historic seventy-four-game winning streak, how contestants’ game strategies have changed over the years, his relationship with the former longtime host Alex Trebek, and why a political career was not for him. Related reading: “ Ken Jennings Has Some Questions About Death ,” by Sarah Larson “ The Rare Authority of Alex Trebek ,” by Doreen St. Félix “ The Hidden Depths of Alex Trebek’s Banter with ‘Jeopardy!’ Contestants ,” by Beth Blum Tune in to The Political Scene wherever you get your podcasts . The Political Scene draws on the reporting and analysis found in The New Yorker for lively conversations about the big questions in American politics. Join the magazine’s writers and editors as they put into context the latest news—about elections, the economy, the White House, the Supreme Court, and much more. New episodes are available three times a week. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Nov 24

Both major parties are experiencing a crisis of leadership in Washington. President Trump’s flip-flopping on the Epstein files acknowledges that, on this issue, at least, he has lost control of MAGA. For the Democrats, the collapse of their consensus on the government shutdown deepens a sense that the current leadership is ineffective. For all the talk of unity, the Party is profoundly divided on what message to convey to voters. “Some people argue that we should just—no matter what Donald Trump does or says—just always come back to the economy and prices,” Senator Chris Van Hollen, of Maryland, tells David Remnick. “And, of course, we should be very focussed on the economy and prices and rising health-care costs, as we have been. But to suggest that we should look the other way in the face of all these other outrages is, I think, a mistake, because I think the American people are tiring of Donald Trump. I think the polls indicate that.” Van Hollen is trying to pave a path between his party’s left and the establishment. He’s used the word “spineless” to describe colleagues in Congress who refused to endorse Zohran Mamdani in his mayoral campaign, but he has not called for Chuck Schumer to step down from leadership, as others have. Van Hollen wants “to be very much part of the debate as to where the Democratic Party goes.” Would that extend, Remnick wonders, to running for President? “My goal at this moment really is to stiffen the spine of the Democratic Party. But that means not just resistance to Trump. It also means taking on very powerful special interests that I think have had too much sway in both the Republican Party for sure, but also in the Democratic Party.” Remnick replies, “I’ve heard firmer nos in my time.” The Political Scene draws on the reporting and analysis found in The New Yorker for lively conversations about the big questions in American politics . Join the magazine’s writers and editors as they put into context the latest news—about elections, the economy , the White House, the Supreme Court, and much more. New episodes are available three times a week. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Nov 22

The Washington Roundtable reflects on the first year since Donald Trump’s second win before a live audience at Harvard University’s Institute of Politics, on November 20th. The panel considers how cracks in the MAGA firmament may shape what’s next for the President and the Republican party. “American politics the last ten years have been dominated by this very singular disruptive figure of Donald Trump,” the staff writer Susan B. Glasser. “So what we define as the new abnormal , for a whole generation of Americans is, in fact, the new normal.” This week’s reading: “ Dick Cheney’s Long, Strange Goodbye ,” by Susan B. Glasser “ The Darkest Thread in the Epstein E-mails ,” by Jessica Winter “ The Meaning of Trump’s Presidential Pardons ,” by Benjamin Wallace-Wells “ Kash Patel’s Acts of Service ,” by Marc Fisher “ How M.B.S. Won Back Washington ,” by Isaac Chotiner “ Donald Trump Can’t Dodge the Costly K-Shaped Economy ,” by John Cassidy Tune in wherever you get your podcasts . The Political Scene draws on the reporting and analysis found in The New Yorker for lively conversations about the big questions in American politics . Join the magazine’s writers and editors as they put into context the latest news—about elections, the economy , the White House, the Supreme Court, and much more. New episodes are available three times a week. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Nov 19

The New Yorker contributing writer Anna Russell joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss the rise of family estrangement in mainstream culture. Recent studies have found that more than a quarter of all Americans are currently estranged from a relative. They talk about how the idea of going “no contact” has gained traction in mainstream culture, the personal and generational shifts that can lead people to distance themselves from relatives, and why family bonds feel less inviolable than they once did. They also look at the political disagreements that can lead to decisions to cut off contact, whether close family relationships can survive deep ideological divides, and what therapists and researchers say about the prospects for reconciliation following estrangement. This week’s reading: “ Why So Many People Are Going ‘No Contact’ with Their Parents ,” by Anna Russell “ The Meaning of Trump’s Presidential Pardons ,” by Benjamin Wallace-Wells “ Nick Fuentes Is Not Just Another Alt-Right Boogeyman ,” by Jay Caspian Kang “ The Darkest Thread in the Epstein E-mails ,” by Jessica Winter “ Kash Patel’s Acts of Service ,” by Marc Fisher Tune in to The Political Scene wherever you get your podcasts . The Political Scene draws on the reporting and analysis found in The New Yorker for lively conversations about the big questions in American politics . Join the magazine’s writers and editors as they put into context the latest news—about elections, the economy , the White House, the Supreme Court, and much more. New episodes are available three times a week. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Nov 17

When President Donald Trump began his tariff rollout, the business world predicted that his unprecedented attempt to reshape the economy would lead to a major recession, if Trump went through with it all. But the markets stabilized and, in recent months, have continued to surge. That has some people worried about an even bigger threat: that overinvestment in artificial intelligence is creating a bubble . Andrew Ross Sorkin, one of today’s preëminent financial journalists, is well versed in what’s happening; his début book, “ Too Big to Fail ,” was an account of the 2008 financial crash, and this year he released “ 1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History—and How It Shattered a Nation .” He tells David Remnick that the concern lies in the massive borrowing to build the infrastructure for a future A.I. economy, without the sufficient revenue, currently, to pay off the loans. “If I learned anything from covering 1929, [and] covering 2008, it is leverage,” Sorkin says, “people borrowing to make all of this happen. And right now we are beginning to see a remarkable period of borrowing to make the economics of A.I. work.” Sorkin is the co-anchor of “Squawk Box” on CNBC, and he also founded the New York Times ’ business section, DealBook. The Political Scene draws on the reporting and analysis found in The New Yorker for lively conversations about the big questions in American politics . Join the magazine’s writers and editors as they put into context the latest news—about elections, the economy , the White House, the Supreme Court, and much more. New episodes are available three times a week. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Nov 15

The Washington Roundtable discusses the trove of Jeffrey Epstein correspondence released by Congress this week, the fractures it has caused in the Republican Party, and the potential political ramifications for President Trump. Their guest is the investigative reporter Michael Isikoff, who has spent decades reporting on major scandals in American politics, including the affair between President Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky, and Russian interference in the 2016 election. The panel considers the factors that made other scandals in the past, such as Watergate, break through the public consciousness and change the course of Presidencies. This week’s reading: “ The Epstein Scandal Is Now a Chronic Disease of the Trump Presidency ,” by Susan B. Glasser “ Did Democrats Win the Shutdown After All? ,” by Jon Allsop “ Socialism, But Make It Trump ,” by John Cassidy “ Governments and Billionaires Retreat Ahead of COP30 Climate Talks ,” by Elizabeth Kolbert “ Laura Loomer’s Endless Payback ,” by Antonia Hitchens “ J. B. Pritzker Sounds the Alarm ,” by Peter Slevin Tune in wherever you get your podcasts . The Political Scene draws on the reporting and analysis found in The New Yorker for lively conversations about the big questions in American politics . Join the magazine’s writers and editors as they put into context the latest news—about elections, the economy , the White House, the Supreme Court, and much more. New episodes are available three times a week. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Nov 12

The New Yorker staff writer Eric Lach joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss Zohran Mamdani’s victory in the New York City mayoral race, and what his time in office might look like. They talk about some of his early appointments to his administration and how his ambitious agenda may be at odds with other wings of the Democratic Party. They also look at how members of both parties are interpreting Mamdani’s win, and how the new mayor might respond to President Donald Trump’s threats to withhold federal funds from the city. This week’s reading: “ The Mamdani Era Begins ,” by Eric Lach “ Did Democrats Win the Shutdown After All? ,” by Jon Allsop “ Laura Loomer’s Endless Payback ,” by Antonia Hitchens “ In Gaza, Home Is Just a Memory ,” by Mohammed R. Mhawish “ The Mess at the BBC Will Never End ,” by Sam Knight Tune in to The Political Scene wherever you get your podcasts . The Political Scene draws on the reporting and analysis found in The New Yorker for lively conversations about the big questions in American politics. Join the magazine’s writers and editors as they put into context the latest news—about elections, the economy, the White House, the Supreme Court, and much more. New episodes are available three times a week. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Nov 10

Few Democratic officials have been more outspoken in opposition to the Trump Administration than J. B. Pritzker, the governor of Illinois. He seems almost to relish antagonizing Trump, who has suggested Pritzker should be in jail. Meanwhile, ICE and Border Patrol have targeted Chicago, and elsewhere in Illinois, with immigration sweeps more aggressive than what Los Angeles experienced earlier this year; they refused to pause the raids even on Halloween. The President has called Chicago a “hell hole,” but, in Pritzker’s view, immigration sweeps do nothing to reduce crime. “He’s literally taking F.B.I., D.E.A., and A.T.F.—which we work with all the time—he’s taking them out of their departments and moving them over to ICE, and they’re not . . . helping us catch bad guys,” Pritzker says in an interview with the reporter Peter Slevin . “He’s creating mayhem on the ground because you know what he wants? He wants troops on the ground in American cities, and the only way he can get that done is by proving that there’s some sort of insurrection or revolution or rebellion.” And yet, as Slevin tells David Remnick, a governor’s power to resist the federal government depends largely on the courts. Thus far, “the district courts have acted quite favorably toward the plaintiffs in various lawsuits against these actions by the federal government.” The Political Scene draws on the reporting and analysis found in The New Yorker for lively conversations about the big questions in American politics . Join the magazine’s writers and editors as they put into context the latest news—about elections, the economy , the White House, the Supreme Court, and much more. New episodes are available three times a week. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Nov 8

The Washington Roundtable kicks off the 2026 election season by answering questions from listeners about the forces most likely to shape next year’s midterm elections. They discuss the ascendancy of Zohran Mamdani in New York City, bitter redistricting battles in the states, the high number of elected officials retiring, and much more. Plus, the hosts reflect on the legacy of former Vice-President Dick Cheney, who died on Monday. This week’s reading: “ America Begins Clapping Back at Donald Trump ,” by Susan B. Glasser “ California Strikes Back in the Redistricting War ,” by Jon Allsop “ How Far Can Donald Trump Take Emergency Power? ,” by Jeannie Suk Gersen “ A Next-Generation Victory for Democrats ,” by Benjamin Wallace-Wells “ The N.Y.C. Mayoral Election, as Processed in Therapy ,” by Tyler Foggatt “ What Zohran Mamdani’s Bid for Mayor Reveals About Being Muslim in America ,” by Rozina Ali “ Voting Rights and Immigration Under Attack ,” by Jelani Cobb Tune in wherever you get your podcasts . The Political Scene draws on the reporting and analysis found in The New Yorker for lively conversations about the big questions in American politics. Join the magazine’s writers and editors as they put into context the latest news—about elections, the economy, the White House, the Supreme Court, and much more. New episodes are available three times a week. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Nov 6

The New Yorke r staff writer Benjamin Wallace-Wells joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss Democrats’ sweeping victories in the first major elections of Donald Trump’s second term. They talk about what the results—from Zohran Mamdani’s record-turnout win in New York City to victories in the Virginia and New Jersey gubernatorial races—reveal about Trump’s weakening hold on voters and a generational shift inside the Democratic Party. They also explore how a focus on affordability and economic anxiety fuelled Democrats’ success, and how these outcomes may shape the strategies of both parties heading into next year’s midterms. This week’s reading: “ A Next-Generation Victory for Democrats ,” by Benjamin Wallace-Wells “ What the Democrats’ Good Night Means for 2026 and Beyond ,” by Isaac Chotiner “ California Strikes Back in the Redistricting War ,” by Jon Allsop “ The Mamdani Era Begins ,” by Eric Lach “ The N.Y.C. Mayoral Election, as Processed in Therapy ,” by Tyler Foggatt Tune in to The Political Scene wherever you get your podcasts . The Political Scene draws on the reporting and analysis found in The New Yorker for lively conversations about the big questions in American politics. Join the magazine’s writers and editors as they put into context the latest news—about elections, the economy, the White House, the Supreme Court, and much more. New episodes are available three times a week. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Nov 3

Jon Stewart has been a leading figure in political comedy since before the turn of the millennium. But compared to his early years on Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show”—when Stewart was merciless in his attacks on George W. Bush’s Administration—these are much more challenging times for late-night comedians. Jimmy Kimmel nearly lost his job over a remark about MAGA supporters of Charlie Kirk, after the head of the F.C.C. threatened ABC. CBS recently announced the cancellation of Stephen Colbert’s program. And Stewart now finds himself very near the hot seat: Comedy Central is controlled by David Ellison, the Trump-friendly C.E.O. of the recently merged Paramount Skydance. Stewart’s contract comes up in December. “You’re going to sign another one?” David Remnick asked him, in a live interview at The New Yorker Festival. “We’re working on staying,” Stewart said. “You don’t compromise on what you do. You do it till they tell you to leave. That’s all you can do.” Stewart, moreover, doesn’t blame solely Donald Trump for recent attacks on the independence of the media, universities, and other institutions. “This is the hardest truth for us to get at, is that [these] institutions . . . have problems. They do. And, if we don’t address those problems in a forthright way, then those institutions become vulnerable to this kind of assault. Credibility is not something that was just taken. It was also lost.” In fact, Stewart also directs his ire at “the Democratic Party, [which] thinks it’s O.K. for their Senate to be an assisted-living facility.” “In the general-populace mind, government no longer serves the interests of the people it purports to represent. That’s a broad-based, deep feeling. And that helps when someone comes along and goes, ‘The system is rigged,’ and people go, ‘Yeah, it is rigged.’ Now, he’s a good diagnostician. I don’t particularly care for his remedy.” This episode was recorded live at The New Yorker Festival, on October 26, 2025. The Political Scene draws on the reporting and analysis found in The New Yorker for lively conversations about the big questions in American politics. Join the magazine’s writers and editors as they put into context the latest news—about elections, the economy, the White House, the Supreme Court, and much more. New episodes are available three times a week. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Oct 31

On August 7, 1985, five family members were shot dead in their English country manor, Whitehouse Farm. It looked like an open-and-shut case. But the New Yorker staff writer Heidi Blake finds that almost nothing about this story is as it seems. New Yorker subscribers get early, ad-free access to “Blood Relatives.” In Apple Podcasts, tap the link at the top of the feed to subscribe or link an existing subscription. Or visit newyorker.com/dark to subscribe and listen in the New Yorker app. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Oct 30

The New Yorker staff writer Andrew Marantz joins Tyler Foggatt for the latest installment of “How Bad Is It?,” a regular checkup on the health of American democracy. Their guests are the Rutgers historians Mark Bray and Yesenia Barragan, a married couple who recently left the United States after Bray became the target of a right-wing doxing campaign. Bray and Barragan share the events leading up to their decision to leave the country with their family, including the death threats that followed Bray’s addition to a right-wing “professor watch list” and the portrayal of his work in conservative media as promoting political violence. Bray, who is the author of “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook,” also speaks with Tyler and Andrew about his research into militant antifascism and how those ideas resonate in Donald Trump’s second Presidential term. They discuss the debates his work has sparked over political violence, free speech, and how his arguments about antifascism challenge conventional ideas of liberalism and academic freedom. This week’s reading: “ When the Government Stops Defending Civil Rights ,” by Eyal Press “ What if the Big Law Firms Hadn’t Caved to Trump? ,” by Fabio Bertoni “ Trump and the Presidency That Wouldn’t Shut Up ,” by Jill Lepore “ Why Biden’s White House Press Secretary Is Leaving the Democratic Party ,” by Isaac Chotiner “ Why Trump Tore Down the East Wing ,” by Adam Gopnik Tune in to The Political Scene wherever you get your podcasts . The Political Scene draws on the reporting and analysis found in The New Yorker for lively conversations about the big questions in American politics . Join the magazine’s writers and editors as they put into context the latest news—about elections, the economy , the White House, the Supreme Court, and much more. New episodes are available three times a week. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Oct 27

Since Zadie Smith published her début novel, “ White Teeth ,” twenty-five years ago, she has been a bold and original voice in literature. But those who aren’t familiar with Smith’s work outside of fiction are missing out. As an essayist, in The New Yorker and other publications, Smith writes with great nuance about culture, technology, gentrification, politics; “There’s really not a topic that wouldn’t benefit from her insight,” David Remnick says. He spoke with Smith about her new collection of essays, “ Dead and Alive .” “The one thing about talking about essays,” she notes, ruefully, “is you find yourself saying the same thing, but worse—without the commas.” One of the concerns in the book is the role of our devices, and social media in particular, in shaping our thoughts and our political discourse. “Everybody has a different emphasis on [Donald] Trump and what’s going on. My emphasis has been on, to put it baldly, mind control. I think what’s been interesting about the manipulations of a digital age is that it is absolutely natural and normal for people to be offended at the idea that they are being manipulated. None of us like to feel that way. And I think we wasted about—whatever it’s been since the invention of the Iphone—trying to bat away that idea, calling it a moral panic, blaming each other, [and] talking about it as if it were an individual act of will.” In fact, she notes, “we are all being manipulated. Me, too. . . . Once we can all admit that, on the left and the right, then we can direct our attention to who’s been doing this and to what advantage.” The Political Scene draws on the reporting and analysis found in The New Yorker for lively conversations about the big questions in American politics . Join the magazine’s writers and editors as they put into context the latest news—about elections, the economy , the White House, the Supreme Court, and much more. New episodes are available three times a week. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Oct 20

The swiftness and severity with which the Trump Administration has tried to impose its will on higher education came as a shock to many, not least university presidents and faculties from Harvard to U.C.L.A. But for conservatives this arena of cultural conflict has been a long time coming. The staff writer Emma Green has been speaking with influential figures in the current Administration as well as in the larger conservative movement about how they mapped out this battle for Donald Trump’s return to power. “There’s a recognition among the people that I interviewed,” Green tells David Remnick, “that the Administration cannot come in and script to universities: this is what you will teach and this is the degrees that you will offer, and just script it from top to bottom. First of all, that would be not legally possible. And it also, I think in some ways, violates core instincts that conservatives have around academic freedom, because a lot of these people have been on élite campuses and had the experience of being told that their views weren’t acceptable.” Green also speaks with James Kvaal, an education official who served in both the Biden and Obama Administrations, and May Mailman, a conservative education-policy activist who worked in the Trump White House and coördinated its attacks against universities. “When you have federal grants, you do not need to be funding racism and racial hierarchies and violence and harassment,” Mailman told Green. “I think that line is: do what you wanna do, but we don’t want to have to fund it.” Emma Green’s “ Inside the Trump Administration’s Assault on Higher Education ” was published on October 13, 2025. The Political Scene draws on the reporting and analysis found in The New Yorker for lively conversations about the big questions in American politics. Join the magazine’s writers and editors as they put into context the latest news—about elections, the economy, the White House, the Supreme Court, and much more. New episodes are available three times a week. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Oct 18

The Washington Roundtable examines the fragile Israel-Hamas ceasefire and the uncertain road ahead, asking to what degree the Trump family’s business interests in the Middle East are shaping American foreign policy. The panel discusses the financial relationships between Qatar, the U.A.E., and Jared Kushner’s private-equity firm, and analyzes the intertwinement of personal profit and global dealmaking in the President’s approach. “The cliché about Trump is that he’s a transactional President,” the staff writer Evan Osnos says. “He’s basically putting that at the center of the diplomatic discussion.” This week’s reading: “ The End of Israel’s Hostage Ordeal ,” by Ruth Margalit “ Donald Trump’s Dream Palace of Puffery ,” by Susan B. Glasser “ How Will Americans Remember the War in Gaza? ,” by Jay Caspian Kang “ Donald Trump’s Deep-State Wrecking Ball ,” by Andy Kroll “ The Last Columbia Protester in ICE Detention ,” by Aida Alami Tune in wherever you get your podcasts . The Political Scene draws on the reporting and analysis found in The New Yorker for lively conversations about the big questions in American politics. Join the magazine’s writers and editors as they put into context the latest news—about elections, the economy, the White House, the Supreme Court, and much more. New episodes are available three times a week. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Oct 15

The New Yorker staff writer E. Tammy Kim joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss how the government shutdown is affecting the federal workforce. They talk about how the shutdown began and what it means for hundreds of thousands of civil servants who have been furloughed, laid off, or required to work without pay. They also examine the Administration’s new “reductions in force,” or mass layoffs across key agencies, and how those cuts are being used in the effort to shrink and politicize federal agencies—and how those efforts could weaken not just essential public services but the long-term stability and nonpartisan functioning of the federal government itself. This week’s reading: “ Inside the Trump Administration’s Assault on Higher Education ,” by Emma Green “ The Indictment of Letitia James and the Collapse of Impartial Justice ,” by Ruth Marcus “ The Real Problem Is How Trump Can Legally Use the Military ,” by Jeannie Suk Gersen “ The End of Israel’s Hostage Ordeal ,” by Ruth Margalit “ What Zohran Mamdani Knows About Power ,” by Eric Lach Tune in to The Political Scene wherever you get your podcasts . The Political Scene draws on the reporting and analysis found in The New Yorker for lively conversations about the big questions in American politics. Join the magazine’s writers and editors as they put into context the latest news—about elections, the economy, the White House, the Supreme Court, and much more. New episodes are available three times a week. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Oct 13

Next month, New York City may elect as its next mayor a man who was pretty much unknown to the broader public a year ago. Zohran Mamdan, who is currently thirty-three years old and a member of the State Assembly, is a democratic socialist who won a primary upset against the current mayor, Eric Adams, and the former governor Andrew Cuomo, who was trying to stage a political comeback. Mamdani now leads the race by around twenty percentage points in most polls. His run for mayor is a remarkable story, but it has not been an easy one. His campaign message of affordability—his ads widely tout a rent freeze in the city—resonates with voters, but his call for further taxing the top one per cent of earners has concerned the state’s governor, Kathy Hochul. In Congress, Democratic leaders Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries have yet to even endorse him. “There are many people who will say housing is a human right, and yet it oftentimes seems as if it is relegated simply to the use of it as a slogan,” Mamdani tells David Remnick at his campaign headquarters, in midtown Manhattan. “It often comes back to whether you’re willing to fight for these ideals that you hold.” Donald Trump, for his part, dubs Mamdani a Communist, and has threatened to withhold federal funds from New York if he’s elected, calling such a vote “a rebellion.” An attack by the President “will be an inevitability,” Mamdani says, noting that the city’s legal department is understaffed for what may be an epic battle to come. “This is an Administration that looks at the flourishing of city life wherever it may be across this country as a threat to their entire political agenda. And New York City looms large in their imagination.” Zohran Mamdani’s campaign was chronicled by Eric Lach, a staff writer covering New York politics and life for The New Yorker. The Political Scene draws on the reporting and analysis found in The New Yorker for lively conversations about the big questions in American politics. Join the magazine’s writers and editors as they put into context the latest news—about elections, the economy, the White House, the Supreme Court, and much more. New episodes are available three times a week. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Oct 11

The Washington Roundtable discusses the President’s use of the military for political ends, and the “almost unlimited” powers he would unlock by invoking the Insurrection Act, with Kori Schake, the director of foreign-and-defense-policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute. Donald Trump’s decisions—sending the National Guard into American cities over the objections of local leaders and firing Judge Advocate General’s Corps lawyers who help determine if an order is legal—send a message to the historically apolitical armed forces. “What he’s trying to do is circumvent the disciplined senior leadership and appeal for personal loyalty to the younger, noncommissioned and enlisted soldiers,” Schake says. “The pressure from this Administration—there’s been nothing like it since at least the constitutional crisis of 1866-68.” Schake is the author of the forthcoming book “The State and the Soldier: A History of Civil-Military Relations in the United States.” This week’s reading: “ Trump, the Self-Styled ‘President of PEACE’ Abroad, Makes War at Home ,” by Susan B. Glasser “ Donald Trump, Pete Hegseth, and the ‘War from Within ,’ ” by Benjamin Wallace-Wells “ Nixon Now Looks Restrained ,” by Ruth Marcus “ Hope and Grief in Israel After the Gaza Ceasefire Deal ,” by Ruth Margalit “ The Volunteers Tracking ICE in Los Angeles ,” by Oren Peleg Tune in wherever you get your podcasts . The Political Scene draws on the reporting and analysis found in The New Yorker for lively conversations about the big questions in American politics. Join the magazine’s writers and editors as they put into context the latest news—about elections, the economy, the White House, the Supreme Court, and much more. New episodes are available three times a week. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Oct 8

The New Yorker contributing writer Ruth Marcus joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss Donald Trump’s “revenge tour”—his effort to use the levers of government to settle personal and political scores. They talk about the indictment of the former F.B.I. director James Comey, why legal experts see the case against Comey as alarmingly weak, and how Trump’s campaign of retribution has expanded to include prosecutors, lawmakers, and even the families of his critics. They also consider how Trump’s quest for vengeance is testing the limits of American law, and whether the country can avoid a permanent cycle of political retaliation and lawfare. This week’s reading: “ The Flimsy, Dangerous Indictment of James Comey ,” by Ruth Marcus “ What Will Bari Weiss Do to CBS News? ,” by Jon Allsop “ Who Can Lead the Democrats? ,” by Amy Davidson Sorkin “ The Volunteers Tracking ICE in Los Angeles ,” by Oren Peleg “ Why Israel and Hamas Might Finally Have a Deal ,” by Isaac Chotiner Tune in to The Political Scene wherever you get your podcasts . The Political Scene draws on the reporting and analysis found in The New Yorker for lively conversations about the big questions in American politics. Join the magazine’s writers and editors as they put into context the latest news—about elections, the economy, the White House, the Supreme Court, and much more. New episodes are available three times a week. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Oct 6

Robert P. George is not a passive observer of the proverbial culture wars; he’s been a very active participant. As a Catholic legal scholar and philosopher at Princeton University, he was an influential opponent of Roe v. Wade and same-sex marriage, receiving a Presidential medal from President George W. Bush. George decries the “decadence” of secular culture, and, in 2016, he co-wrote an op-ed declaring Donald Trump “manifestly unfit” to serve as President. Although George disagrees with the Administration’s tactics to change universities’ policies by punishment, he agrees with its contention that campuses have become hotbeds of leftism that stifle debate. He regards this not as a particular evil of the left but as “human nature”: “If conservatives had the kind of monopoly that liberals had,” George tells David Remnick, “I suspect we’d have the same situation, but just in reverse.” His recent book, “ Seeking Truth and Speaking Truth: Law and Morality in Our Cultural Moment ,” tries to chart a course back toward civil, functioning debate in a polarized society. “I encourage my students to take courses from people who disagree with me, like Cornel West and Peter Singer,” the latter of whom is a controversial philosopher of ethics. “Cornel and I teach together for this same reason. Peter invites his students to take my courses. That’s the way it should be.” The Political Scene draws on the reporting and analysis found in The New Yorker for lively conversations about the big questions in American politics. Join the magazine’s writers and editors as they put into context the latest news—about elections, the economy, the White House, the Supreme Court, and much more. New episodes are available three times a week. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Oct 4

The Washington Roundtable discusses how this week’s government shutdown can be best understood by looking at the background and influence of Russell Vought, the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget. Vought is a Christian nationalist who served in the first Trump Administration. He was a chief architect of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, and has written that the country is in a “post constitutional moment.” Amid the shutdown, Vought has threatened to lay off federal workers en masse and to withhold funds from Democratic-leaning states. The panel considers whether these moves are not just an expansion of Presidential power but a fiscal “partitioning” of America. This week’s reading: “ Donald Trump’s Shutdown Power Play ,” by Susan B. Glasser “ Can the Democrats Take Free Speech Back from the Right? ,” by Jay Caspian Kang “ Why Democrats Shut Down the Government ,” by Jon Allsop “ Is Donald Trump’s Sweeping Gaza Peace Plan Really Viable? ,” by Robin Wright “ Eric Adams Slips Out the Side Door ,” by Eric Lach “ The Politics of Faith After Charlie Kirk ,” by Michael Luo “ Grace and Disgrace ,” by David Remnick Tune in to The Political Scene wherever you get your podcasts . The Political Scene draws on the reporting and analysis found in The New Yorker for lively conversations about the big questions in American politics. Join the magazine’s writers and editors as they put into context the latest news—about elections, the economy, the White House, the Supreme Court, and much more. New episodes are available three times a week. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Oct 1

The New Yorker contributing writer Jeannie Suk Gersen joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss the Supreme Court’s new term and the cases that could test the boundaries of executive authority and separation of powers. They talk about challenges to Presidential power under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, disputes over voting rights and racial gerrymandering, and a First Amendment fight over state bans on conversion therapy. They also consider the Court’s increasing reliance on its emergency docket and what John Roberts’s twenty years as Chief Justice reveals about the conservative legal movement’s influence on the Court. This week’s reading: “ Harvard’s Mixed Victory ,” by Jeannie Suk Gersen “ Is Donald Trump’s Sweeping Gaza Peace Plan Really Viable? ,” by Robin Wright “ Why Democrats Shut Down the Government ,” by Jon Allsop “ Have Cubans Fled One Authoritarian State for Another? ,” by Jon Lee Anderson “ The Age of Enshittification ,” by Kyle Chayka Tune in to The Political Scene wherever you get your podcasts . The Political Scene draws on the reporting and analysis found in The New Yorker for lively conversations about the big questions in American politics. Join the magazine’s writers and editors as they put into context the latest news—about elections, the economy, the White House, the Supreme Court, and much more. New episodes are available three times a week. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Sep 29

The author and podcaster Ezra Klein may be only forty-one years old, but he’s been part of the political-culture conversation for a long time. He was a blogger, then a Washington Post columnist and editor, a co-founder of Vox , and is now a writer and podcast host for the New York Times . He’s also the co-author of the recent best-selling book “ Abundance ”. Most recently, Klein has drawn the ire of progressives for a column he wrote about the assassination of Charlie Kirk, in which he praised the late conservative activist for practicing politics “the right way.” He’s also been making a case for how the Democrats can reëmerge from the political wilderness. But some of his other ideas have also invited their share of detractors. Klein tells David Remnick, “I try to take seriously questions that I don’t love. I don’t try to insist the world works the way I want it to work. I try to be honest with myself about the way it’s working.” In response to criticism that his recent work has indicated a rightward shift in his thinking, Klein says, “One thing I’ve been saying about the big tent of the Democratic Party is the theory of having a big tent doesn’t just mean moving to the right; it also means accepting in the left.” The Political Scene draws on the reporting and analysis found in The New Yorker for lively conversations about the big questions in American politics. Join the magazine’s writers and editors as they put into context the latest news—about elections, the economy, the White House, the Supreme Court, and much more. New episodes are available three times a week. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Sep 27

The Washington Roundtable discusses how, in the wake of the reinstatement of Jimmy Kimmel’s show, public resistance has a chance to turn the tide against autocratic impulses in today’s politics. They are joined by Hardy Merriman, an expert on the history and practice of civil resistance, to discuss what kinds of coördinated actions—protests, boycotts, “buycotts,” strikes, and other nonviolent approaches—are most effective in a fight against democratic backsliding. “Acts of non-coöperation are very powerful,” Merriman, the former president of the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict, says. “Non-coöperation is very much about numbers. You don’t necessarily need people doing things that are high risk. You just need large numbers of people doing them.” This week’s reading: “ Donald Trump Keeps Finding New Ways to Shock the World ,” by Susan B. Glasser “ Is Trump’s Attack on the Media Following Putin’s Playbook? ,” by Joshua Yaffa “ Where Should the Democrats Go from Here? ,” by Jon Allsop “ Donald Trump’s Firing of a Federal Prosecutor Crosses the Reddest of Lines ,” by Ruth Marcus “ Seeing Enemies Everywhere ,” by Jonathan Blitzer “ Can Progressive Mayors Redeem the Democratic Party? ,” by Bill McKibben Tune in wherever you get your podcasts . The Political Scene draws on the reporting and analysis found in The New Yorker for lively conversations about the big questions in American politics. Join the magazine’s writers and editors as they put into context the latest news—about elections, the economy, the White House, the Supreme Court, and much more. New episodes are available three times a week. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Sep 24

The New Yorker contributing writer Dhruv Khullar joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss how Donald Trump is transforming the nation’s approach to vaccines and immunization during his second term. They talk about the repopulating of federal agencies and advisory panels with skeptics, the politicization of once technical debates under the “Make America Healthy Again” agenda, and what happens when people distrustful of the medical establishment end up running American public-health policy. They also examine how states are stepping in to fill the vacuum left by Washington, creating a patchwork of approaches to vaccines across the country. This week’s reading: “ A New Era of Vaccine Federalism ,” by Dhruv Khullar “ Can Progressive Mayors Redeem the Democratic Party? ,” by Bill McKibben “ Donald Trump’s Firing of a Federal Prosecutor Crosses the Reddest of Lines ,” by Ruth Marcus “ What Trump Wants from a TikTok Deal with China ,” by Clare Malone “ Can Liberalism Be Saved? ,” by Isaac Chotiner Tune in to The Political Scene wherever you get your podcasts . The Political Scene draws on the reporting and analysis found in The New Yorker for lively conversations about the big questions in American politics. Join the magazine’s writers and editors as they put into context the latest news—about elections, the economy, the White House, the Supreme Court, and much more. New episodes are available three times a week. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Sep 22

“The Constitution gives the states the power to set the time, place, and manner of elections,” the election lawyer Marc Elias points out. “It gives the President no [such] power.” Yet, almost one year before the midterms, Donald Trump has called for a nationwide prohibition on mail-in voting, an option favored by Democrats, as well as restrictions on voting machines. The Justice Department has demanded sensitive voter information from at least thirty-four states so far, with little explanation as to how the information will be used. Will we have free and fair congressional elections in 2026? “I am very worried that we could have elections that do not reflect the desires and the voting preferences of everyone who wishes they could vote and have their vote tabulated accurately,” Elias tells David Remnick. “That may sound very lawyerly and very technical, but I think it would be a historic rollback.” Elias’s firm fought and ultimately won almost every case that Trump and Republican allies brought against the 2020 election, and Elias continues to fight the latest round of incursions in court. And while he rues what he calls “re-gerrymandering” in Texas—designed to squeeze Texas’s Democratic representatives out of Congress—Elias thinks states run by Democrats have no choice but to copy the tactic. “Before Gavin Newsom announced what he was doing, I came out publicly and said Democrats should gerrymander nine seats out of California, which would mean there’d be no Republicans left in the delegation. . . . At the end of the day, if there’s no disincentive structure for Republicans to jump off this path, [then] it just continues.” The Political Scene draws on the reporting and analysis found in The New Yorker for lively conversations about the big questions in American politics. Join the magazine’s writers and editors as they put into context the latest news—about elections, the economy, the White House, the Supreme Court, and much more. New episodes are available three times a week. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Sep 19

The Washington Roundtable is joined by the former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Keren Yarhi-Milo, the dean of the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University, to discuss why interpreting the psychology of world leaders such as Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, and Xi Jinping is essential to understanding global crises. Clinton also shares her thoughts on Gavin Newsom’s plan for redistricting in California, the Trump Administration’s free-speech crackdown in the wake of the Charlie Kirk assassination, and ABC’s decision to pull “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” off the air. “Jimmy Kimmel and all of the late-night comedians have certainly said a lot of things about me that I found painful, offensive, outraging. It never crossed my mind that I could call up and say, ‘Hey, get rid of this guy,’ ” Clinton says. “It’s all at the behest of the President, who wants to stifle and remove any opposition, and certainly anyone who makes fun of him.” Clinton and Yarhi-Milo’s new book, “ Inside the Situation Room: The Theory and Practice of Crisis Decision-Making ,” was published this week. This week’s reading: “ The Grave Threat Posed by Donald Trump’s Attack on Jimmy Kimmel ,” by Isaac Chotiner “ Israel’s New Occupation ,” by Ruth Margalit “ J. D. Vance, Charlie Kirk, and the Politics-as-Talk Show Singularity ,” by Andrew Marantz “ What the Video of Charlie Kirk’s Murder Might Do ,” by Jay Caspian King Tune in wherever you get your podcasts . The Political Scene draws on the reporting and analysis found in The New Yorker for lively conversations about the big questions in American politics. Join the magazine’s writers and editors as they put into context the latest news—about elections, the economy, the White House, the Supreme Court, and much more. New episodes are available three times a week. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Sep 18

The New Yorker staff writer Andrew Marantz joins Tyler Foggatt for the latest installment of “How Bad Is It?,” a monthly series on the health of American democracy. Their guest is the Brazilian filmmaker Petra Costa, whose documentaries explore the country’s democratic backsliding. They discuss what the United States can learn from Brazil’s struggles with political violence and the rise of authoritarianism, and they respond to the recent conviction of Jair Bolsonaro for his role in a coup attempt. Tyler and Andrew also consider the possible ramifications of the recent assassination of Charlie Kirk, including the Trump Administration’s threats to target liberal groups. This week’s reading: “Charlie Kirk and Tyler Robinson Came from the Same Warped Online Worlds ,” by Kyle Chayka “ What the Video of Charlie Kirk’s Murder Might Do ,” by Jay Caspian King “ The U.S. Government’s Extraordinary Pursuit of Kilmar Ábrego García ,” by Cristian Fairas “ Donald Trump’s Assault on Disability Rights ,” by E. Tammy Kim “ How Jessica Reed Kraus Went from Mommy Blogger to MAHA Maven ,” by Clare Malone Tune in to The Political Scene wherever you get your podcasts . The Political Scene draws on the reporting and analysis found in The New Yorker for lively conversations about the big questions in American politics. Join the magazine’s writers and editors as they put into context the latest news—about elections, the economy, the White House, the Supreme Court, and much more. New episodes are available three times a week. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Sep 15

For decades, the United States backed efforts to achieve a two-state solution—in which Israel would exist side by side with the Palestinian state, with both states recognizing each other’s claim to contested territory. The veteran negotiators Hussein Agha, representing Palestine, and Robert Malley, an American diplomat, played instrumental roles in that long effort, including the critical Camp David summit of 2000. But, in their new book, “ Tomorrow Is Yesterday ,” they conclude that they were part of a charade. There was never any way that a two-state solution could satisfy either of the parties, Agha and Malley tell David Remnick in an interview. “A waste of time is almost a charitable way to look at it,” Malley notes bitterly. “At the end of that thirty-year-or-so period, the Israelis and Palestinians are in a worse situation than before the U.S. got so heavily invested.” The process, appealing to Western leaders and liberals in Israel, was geared to “find the kind of solutions that have a technical outcome, that are measurable, and that can be portrayed by lines on maps,” Agha says. “It completely discarded the issue of emotions and history. You can’t be emotional. You have to be rational. You have to be cool. But rational and cool has nothing to do with the conflict.” “ What Killed the Two-State Solution? ,” an excerpt from Agha and Malley’s new book, was published in The New Yorker. New episodes of The New Yorker Radio Hour drop every Tuesday and Friday. Follow the show wherever you get your podcasts . The Political Scene draws on the reporting and analysis found in The New Yorker for lively conversations about the big questions in American politics. Join the magazine’s writers and editors as they put into context the latest news—about elections, the economy, the White House, the Supreme Court, and much more. New episodes are available three times a week. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Sep 13

The Washington Roundtable discusses the fatal shooting of the right-wing activist and Donald Trump ally Charlie Kirk, who was killed on Wednesday during a speech on a college campus. The panel considers whether the United States risks tumbling into a spiral of political violence, and how the Administration might use this moment to justify a crackdown on political opponents. This week’s reading: “ Did Trump Just Declare War on the American Left? ,” by Susan B. Glasser “ MAGA Reacts to the Assassination of Charlie Kirk ,” by Antonia Hitchens “ Charlie Kirk’s Murder and the Crisis of Political Violence ,” by Benjamin Wallace-Wells “ The Epstein Birthday Book Is Even Worse Than You Might Realize ,” by Jessica Winter Tune in wherever you get your podcasts . The Political Scene draws on the reporting and analysis found in The New Yorker for lively conversations about the big questions in American politics. Join the magazine’s writers and editors as they put into context the latest news—about elections, the economy, the White House, the Supreme Court, and much more. New episodes are available three times a week. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Sep 11

Fergus McIntosh, the head research editor at The New Yorker, joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss how the magazine is approaching fact -checking in the second Trump era. They talk about how the spread of disinformation and deepfakes has changed the work of verifying facts; why Trump has been more aggressive, in his second term, about restricting the release of government data; and what makes his particular style of spreading falsehoods so difficult to counter. This week’s reading: “ The Latest Phase in Trump’s War on Data ,” by Fergus McIntosh “ Inside the Chaos at the C.D.C. ,” by Charles Bethea “ Social Media Is Navigating Its Sectarian Phase ,”by Kyle Chayka “ Brazil Braces for a Verdict on Its Ex-President—and on Its Democracy ,” by Jon Lee Anderson “ Does Society Have Too Many Rules? ,” by Joshua Rothman Tune in to The Political Scene wherever you get your podcasts . The Political Scene draws on the reporting and analysis found in The New Yorker for lively conversations about the big questions in American politics. Join the magazine’s writers and editors as they put into context the latest news—about elections, the economy, the White House, the Supreme Court, and much more. New episodes are available three times a week. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Sep 8

Speculation, analysis, and commentary circulated all summer, after the announcement, in June, that Anna Wintour would step back from her role as the editor-in-chief of American Vogue . This changing of the guard is uniquely fraught, because Wintour’s name has become nearly inextricable from the magazine, to a degree almost unknown today. And, as New York Fashion Week was set to begin, Wintour spoke with David Remnick about choosing her successor, the Vogue.com editor Chloe Malle. “It felt like this was the right time,” she says. With an unusual number of new creative directors in positions at major fashion houses, “It seemed like a good moment to bring in someone with a different perspective and a different generation who could look at things in a new way.” Wintour was appointed editor-in-chief in 1988, and generations of designers have come up under her famously acute and decisive judgments. She comes from a publishing family; her brother is a well-known journalist, and her father was the editor of the London Evening Standard . She credits him with steering her into a career in fashion, even suggesting that the teen-age Anna write down “editor of Vogue ” as her career aspiration on a school form. “Working my first jobs in London, there [was] no money, there’s no staff, there’s no teams, so that you have to learn how to do everything,” Wintour says. “So, when I came to the States and there was a shoe editor and an underwear editor and a fabric editor, it was all so siloed. I felt very confident because I sort of knew how to do everything.” Wintour is also known for bringing politics to Vogue ; she’s a noted Democratic supporter and donor. “I’ve been impressed by Governor Newsom, I think he’s certainly making a stand, and obviously I’m sure there’ll be many other candidates that will emerge, hopefully soon.” But, in this political environment, Remnick asks, “How do you make a case that fashion is important?” Fashion, she replies, “is always important. It’s a question of self-expression and a statement about yourself. . . . And, forgive me, David, but how boring would it be if everybody was just wearing a dark suit and a white shirt all the time?” New episodes of The New Yorker Radio Hour drop every Tuesday and Friday. Follow the show wherever you get your podcasts . The Political Scene draws on the reporting and analysis found in The New Yorker for lively conversations about the big questions in American politics. Join the magazine’s writers and editors as they put into context the latest news—about elections, the economy, the White House, the Supreme Court, and much more. New episodes are available three times a week. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Sep 6

The Washington Roundtable, hosted by the staff writers Susan B. Glasser, Jane Mayer, and Evan Osnos, is back in season. The co-hosts reflect on the news of this summer, discussing President Trump’s imposition of tariffs on nearly every major U.S. trading partner; his deployment of the National Guard on the streets of the capital; and his purges of agencies including the Department of Justice, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. They also discuss what Trump might use emergency powers to do in the near future. “You don’t acquire all this power, and go to all this effort, and then not start to use it,” Glasser says. This week’s reading: “ How Many Court Cases Can Trump Lose in a Single Week? ,” by Susan B. Glasser “ Trump’s Department of Energy Gets Scienced ,” by Bill McKibben “ Texas Democrats’ Weapons of the Weak ,” by Rachel Monroe “ Do State Referendums on Abortion Work? ,” by Peter Slevin Tune in wherever you get your podcasts . The Political Scene draws on the reporting and analysis found in The New Yorker for lively conversations about the big questions in American politics. Join the magazine’s writers and editors as they put into context the latest news—about elections, the economy, the White House, the Supreme Court, and much more. New episodes are available three times a week. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Sep 3

The New Yorker contributing writer Ruth Marcus joins the guest host and staff writer Clare Malone to discuss Marcus’s recent profile of U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi. They talk about Bondi’s political origins and her unprecedented reshaping of the Justice Department, and how she delivers on President Trump’s desire to use the legal system for revenge and retribution. They also touch on Bondi’s mishandling of the Jeffrey Epstein case, which has drawn the ire of both Democratic politicians and core parts of the President’s base. This week’s reading: “ Pam Bondi’s Power Play ,” by Ruth Marcus “ Texas Democrats’ Weapons of the Weak ,” by Rachel Monroe “ Do State Referendums on Abortion Work? ,” by Peter Slevin “ Why Don’t We Take Nuclear Weapons Seriously? ,” by Rivka Galchen “ How Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.,’s Anti-Vax Agenda Is Infecting America ,” by Isaac Chotiner Tune in to The Political Scene wherever you get your podcasts . The Political Scene draws on the reporting and analysis found in The New Yorker for lively conversations about the big questions in American politics. Join the magazine’s writers and editors as they put into context the latest news—about elections, the economy, the White House, the Supreme Court, and much more. New episodes are available three times a week. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Sep 1

The term “culture wars” is most often associated with issues of sexuality, race, religion, and gender. But, as recent months have made plain, when Donald Trump refers to the culture wars, he also means the arts. He fired the board of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, which Republicans want to rename for him. His Administration fired the national archivist and the Librarian of Congress, and pressured the director of the National Portrait Gallery to resign; it is reviewing the entire Smithsonian Institution, looking for what the President calls “improper ideology.” Some view these moves as low-hanging fruit for Trump, and a distraction from bad press about Jeffrey Epstein, the Putin meeting, and tariffs. But Adam Gopnik believes that interpretation is a misreading. The loyalty purge at institutions such as the National Portrait Gallery is a key part of his agenda. “Pluralism is the key principle of a democratic culture,” Gopnik tells David Remnick. Could we be following the path of Stalinist Russia, where a head of state dictated reviews of concerts, Remnick asks? “I pray and believe that we are not. But that is certainly the direction in which one inevitably heads when the political boss takes over key cultural institutions, and dictates who’s acceptable and who is not.” Gopnik recalls saying after the election that “Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert would be next.” “You would see them disappear,” he added. “Each time, we find a rationale for it or a rationale is offered. And it’s much easier for us to swallow the rationale than to face the reality.” The Political Scene draws on the reporting and analysis found in The New Yorker for lively conversations about the big questions in American politics. Join the magazine’s writers and editors as they put into context the latest news—about elections, the economy, the White House, the Supreme Court, and much more. New episodes are available three times a week. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Aug 28

The Democratic strategist Lis Smith joins the guest host Clare Malone, a New Yorker staff writer, to discuss the state of the Democratic Party, and how a decade of reliance on anti-Trump rhetoric has left Democrats reactive and directionless. They consider why groups that Democrats once counted on—from young people to communities of color—are shifting rightward, and what new strategies politicians from Gavin Newsom to Zohran Mamdani are testing to prove that the Democratic Party stands for more than opposition to Trump. This week’s reading “ The Trump Administration’s Efforts to Reshape America’s Past ,” by Jill Lepore “ How Former Biden Officials Defend Their Gaza Policy ,” by Isaac Chotiner “ The Endless August Recess ,” by Antonia Hitchens “ The Enormous Stakes of Trump’s Effort to Fire the Fed Governor Lisa Cook ,” by John Cassidy “ What’s Life Like in Washington, D.C., During Trump’s Takeover? ,” by Margaret Talbot Tune in to The Political Scene wherever you get your podcasts . The Political Scene draws on the reporting and analysis found in The New Yorker for lively conversations about the big questions in American politics. Join the magazine’s writers and editors as they put into context the latest news—about elections, the economy, the White House, the Supreme Court, and much more. New episodes are available three times a week. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Aug 25

Since the end of the Cold War, most Americans have taken U.S. military supremacy for granted. We can no longer afford to do so, according to reporting by the staff writer Dexter Filkins. China has developed advanced weapons that rival or surpass America’s; and at the same time, drone warfare has fundamentally changed calculations of the battlefield. Ukraine’s ability to hold off the massive Russian Army depends largely on a startup industry that has provided millions of drones—small, highly accurate, and as cheap as five hundred dollars each—to inflict enormous casualties on invading forces. In some other conflict, could the U.S. be in the position of Russia? “The nightmare scenario” at the Pentagon, Filkins tells David Remnick, is, “we’ve got an eighteen-billion-dollar aircraft carrier steaming its way toward the western Pacific, and [an enemy could] fire drones at these things, and they’re highly, highly accurate, and they move at incredible speeds. . . . To give [Secretary of Defense Pete] Hegseth credit, and the people around him . . . they say, ‘O.K., we get it. We’re going to change the Pentagon procurement process,’ ” spending less on aircraft carriers and more on small technology like drones. But “the Pentagon is so slow, and people have been talking about these things for years. . . . Nobody has been able to do it.” Read Filkins’s “ Is the U.S. Ready for the Next War ?” New episodes of The New Yorker Radio Hour drop every Tuesday and Friday. Follow the show wherever you get your podcasts . The Political Scene draws on the reporting and analysis found in The New Yorker for lively conversations about the big questions in American politics. Join the magazine’s writers and editors as they put into context the latest news—about elections, the economy, the White House, the Supreme Court, and much more. New episodes are available three times a week. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Aug 22

The Washington Roundtable speaks with Jeffrey Rosen, the president and C.E.O. of the National Constitution Center, a nonpartisan nonprofit, about how America’s founders tried to tyrant-proof their constitutional system, how Donald Trump’s whim-based decision-making resembles that of the dictator Julius Caesar, and what we can learn from the fall of the Roman Republic. Plus, how the Supreme Court is responding to the Trump Administration’s broad claims of executive power. Rosen, a professor at George Washington University Law School, hosts the “ We the People ” podcast and is the author of “ The Pursuit of Happiness: How Classical Writers on Virtue Inspired the Lives of the Founders and Defined America .” This episode originally aired on March 7th, 2025 The Political Scene draws on the reporting and analysis found in The New Yorker for lively conversations about the big questions in American politics. Join the magazine’s writers and editors as they put into context the latest news—about elections, the economy, the White House, the Supreme Court, and much more. New episodes are available three times a week. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Aug 21

The New Yorker staff writer Andrew Marantz joins Tyler Foggatt for the latest installment of “How Bad Is It?,” a monthly series on the health of American democracy. Their guest is David D. Kirkpatrick, whose new investigation details the many ways President Donald Trump has profited during his second term—from a reported private jet gifted by Qatar to soaring valuations of Trump Media and a flood of crypto ventures. They discuss whether these attempts at self-enrichment amount to ordinary political corruption or whether they represent tools for consolidating power which could accelerate democratic backsliding in the United States, much like in kleptocracies and oligarchies abroad. This week’s reading: “ How Much Is Trump Profiting Off the Presidency? ,” by David D. Kirkpatrick “ Can Donald Trump Police the United States? ,” by Christian Fairas “ Pam Bondi’s Power Play ,” by Ruth Marcus “ The Troubling Lines That Columbia Is Drawing ,” by Eyal Press “ The Texas Democrats’ Remote Resistance ” by Peter Slevin Tune in to The Political Scene wherever you get your podcasts . The Political Scene draws on the reporting and analysis found in The New Yorker for lively conversations about the big questions in American politics. Join the magazine’s writers and editors as they put into context the latest news—about elections, the economy, the White House, the Supreme Court, and much more. New episodes are available three times a week. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Aug 19

Mohammed R. Mhawish was living in Gaza City during Israel’s invasion, in the immediate aftermath of the October 7th attack. He witnessed the invasion for months and reported on its devastating consequences for Al Jazeera, The Nation, and other outlets. After his home was targeted in an Israeli strike, which nearly killed him, he fled Gaza. In The New Yorker, he’s written about mental-health workers who are trying to treat a deeply traumatized population, while themselves suffering from starvation, the loss of loved ones, their own injuries—and the constant, remorseless death toll around them. “They were telling me, ‘We cannot wait for the war to stop to start healing—or for ourselves to heal—to start healing others,’” Mhawish relates to David Remnick. “I understood they were trying to heal by helping others heal.” New episodes of The New Yorker Radio Hour drop every Tuesday and Friday. Follow the show wherever you get your podcasts . The Political Scene draws on the reporting and analysis found in The New Yorker for lively conversations about the big questions in American politics. Join the magazine’s writers and editors as they put into context the latest news—about elections, the economy, the White House, the Supreme Court, and much more. New episodes are available three times a week. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Aug 13

The New Yorker staff writer Jonathan Blitzer joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss how Donald Trump’s second-term immigration agenda has shifted from border enforcement to an unprecedented campaign of interior deportations. They talk about the expansion of detention through military bases and state-run facilities, the changes to long-standing arrest protocols, and the strategic transfers designed to separate detainees from their families and lawyers. Plus, they examine how these tactics have eroded due-process protections, why Democrats have struggled to mount an effective response, and whether public outrage could slow the Administration’s most aggressive deportation measures. This week’s reading: “ Can Democrats Fight Back Against Trump’s Redistricting Scheme? ,” by Jonathan Blitzer “ How Much Is Trump Profiting Off the Presidency? ,” by David D. Kirkpatrick “ Can Donald Trump Run a Mile? ,” by Zach Helfand “ What Happens to Public Media Now? ,” by Oliver Whang “ What If A.I. Doesn’t Get Much Better Than This? ,” by Cal Newport Tune in to The Political Scene wherever you get your podcasts . To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker , visit newyorker.com/podcasts . To send feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com . The Political Scene draws on the reporting and analysis found in The New Yorker for lively conversations about the big questions in American politics. Join the magazine’s writers and editors as they put into context the latest news—about elections, the economy, the White House, the Supreme Court, and much more. New episodes are available three times a week. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Aug 11

From the attempt to end birthright citizenship to the gutting of congressionally authorized agencies, the Trump Administration has created an enormous number of legal controversies. The Radio Hour asked for listeners’ questions about President Trump and the courts. To answer them, David Remnick speaks with two regular contributors: Ruth Marcus , who writes about legal issues and the Supreme Court, and Jeannie Suk Gersen , who teaches constitutional law at Harvard Law School. While the writers disagree on some significant questions—such as the Supreme Court’s recent ruling in Trump v. CASA, which struck down the use of nationwide injunctions—both acknowledge the unprecedented nature of some of the questions from listeners. “They never taught you these things in law school, because he’s pushing on areas of the law that are not normally pushed on,” Marcus tells Remnick. New episodes of The New Yorker Radio Hour drop every Tuesday and Friday. Follow the show wherever you get your podcasts . The Political Scene draws on the reporting and analysis found in The New Yorker for lively conversations about the big questions in American politics. Join the magazine’s writers and editors as they put into context the latest news—about elections, the economy, the White House, the Supreme Court, and much more. New episodes are available three times a week. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Jul 31

The New Yorker staff writer Andrew Marantz joins Tyler Foggatt for the latest installment of “How Bad Is It?,” a monthly series on the health of American democracy. Their guest is Roy Wood, Jr., the host of the satirical program “Have I Got News for You,” on CNN. The group discusses the significance of CBS’s cancellation of “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” a recent episode of “South Park” that is searingly critical of Donald Trump, and the President’s deployment of lawsuits and the administrative state to try to intimidate his critics in the media and entertainment industries. “There's always going to be these petty, ticky-tack battles that the Administration fights,” says Wood. “But I don't think that's gonna stop the comedians from doing what Trump hopes this would do, which is silence them.” This week’s reading: “‘ South Park” Skewers a Satire-Proof President ,’ by Tyler Foggatt “ What the Cancellation of Stephen Colbert’s ‘Late Show’ Means ,” by Vinson Cunningham “ How the Israeli Right Explains the Aid Disaster It Created ,” by Isaac Chotiner “ Should Police Officers Be More Like U.F.C. Fighters? ,” by Sam Eagan “ Is Brazil’s Underdog Era Coming to an End? ,” by Shannon Sims Tune in to The Political Scene wherever you get your podcasts . To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker , visit newyorker.com/podcasts . To send feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com . The Political Scene draws on the reporting and analysis found in The New Yorker for lively conversations about the big questions in American politics. Join the magazine’s writers and editors as they put into context the latest news—about elections, the economy, the White House, the Supreme Court, and much more. New episodes are available three times a week. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Jul 28

The city of Los Angeles has declared itself a sanctuary city, where local authorities do not share information with federal immigration enforcement. But L.A.—where nearly forty per cent of residents are foreign-born—became ground zero for controversial arrests and deportations by ICE. The Trump Administration deployed marines and the National Guard to the city, purportedly to quell protests against the operation, and the Secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, spoke of the government’s intention to “liberate” Los Angeles from its elected officials. This week, David Remnick talks with the city’s mayor, Karen Bass, a former congressional representative, about the recent withdrawal of some troops, and a lawsuit the city has joined arguing that the Trump Administration’s immigration raids and detentions are unconstitutional. (A federal judge has issued a temporary restraining order against the government.) “I’ve described L.A. as a petri dish,” Bass says. The Administration “wanted to . . . show that they could come in and do whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted, and however they wanted. They were putting every other city in America on notice: ‘mess with us will come for you.’ ” The Political Scene draws on the reporting and analysis found in The New Yorker for lively conversations about the big questions in American politics. Join the magazine’s writers and editors as they put into context the latest news—about elections, the economy, the White House, the Supreme Court, and much more. New episodes are available three times a week. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Jul 25

The Washington Roundtable’s Evan Osnos interviews Katie Drummond, the global editorial director of Wired , about the publication’s scoop-filled coverage of DOGE, and what Elon Musk’s experience in Washington taught Silicon Valley leaders. “They know that they can operate with relative impunity, and they are now lining themselves up next to a President who will allow that to continue to happen,” Drummond says. Plus, a discussion of how artificial intelligence will shape our society and democracy, and transform the workforce in the years to come. This week’s reading: “ Trump Redefines the Washington Scandal ,” by Susan B. Glasser “ Donald Trump’s Tariff DealmMaker-In-Chief ” by Antonia Hitchens “ Are the Democrats Getting Better at the Internet? ,” by Jon Allsop To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker , visit newyorker.com/podcasts. To send in feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com with “The Political Scene” in the subject line. The Political Scene draws on the reporting and analysis found in The New Yorker for lively conversations about the big questions in American politics. Join the magazine’s writers and editors as they put into context the latest news—about elections, the economy, the White House, the Supreme Court, and much more. New episodes are available three times a week. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Jul 24

The New Yorker contributor Jon Allsop joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss how President Trump’s refusal to release the Epstein files has fractured his base, and how the Democratic Party has increasingly weaponized the Epstein conspiracy theory in its attempt to combat the MAGA movement. How do we proceed given that our country’s politics are increasingly defined by conspiratorial thinking? This week’s reading: “ Donald Trump, Jeffrey Epstein, and Three Conspiracy-Theory Theories ,” by Jon Allsop “ Behind Trump’s Jeffrey Epstein Problem ,” by Benjamin Wallace-Wells “ What the Cancellation of Stephen Colbert’s ‘Late Show’ Means ,” by Vinson Cunningham “ Coldplaygate Is a Reminder That There’s No Escaping Going Viral ,” by Kyle Chayka “ In an Age of Climate Change, How Do We Cope with Floods? ,” by John Seabrook To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker , visit newyorker.com/podcasts . To send feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com . The Political Scene draws on the reporting and analysis found in The New Yorker for lively conversations about the big questions in American politics. Join the magazine’s writers and editors as they put into context the latest news—about elections, the economy, the White House, the Supreme Court, and much more. New episodes are available three times a week. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Jul 21

The sense that the White House is covering something up about Jeffrey Epstein has led to backlash from some of Trump’s most ardent supporters. Even after the financier was convicted for hiring an underage prostitute, for which he served a brief and extraordinarily lenient sentence, Epstein remained a playboy, a top political donor, and a very good friend of the very powerful—“a sybarite,” in the words of the journalist Michael Wolff, “in that old -fashioned sense [that] ‘my identity comes from breaking all norms.’ ” Wolff got to know Epstein and recorded, he estimates, a hundred hours of interviews with him. After Epstein was arrested again, in 2019, and was later found dead in his jail cell in what was ruled a suicide, it has been an article of faith within MAGA that his death was a conspiracy or a coverup, and the Trump campaign promised a reveal. Attorney General Pam Bondi initially asserted that she had Epstein’s so-called “client list” on her desk and was reviewing it, but now claims that there is nothing to share. Do the Epstein files have something incriminating about the President? “The central point from which this grew is the [Bill] Clinton relationship with Epstein,” Wolff tells David Remnick. But the MAGA believers “seem to have overlooked the Trump relationship [with Epstein], which was deeper and longer.” The men were “probably the closest friend either of them ever had,” until they reportedly fell out over real estate in 2004. Now Trump is frantically trying to control the narrative, pretending that he barely knew Epstein. This, Wolff thinks, “may be the beginning of Donald Trump’s lame-duck years.” The Political Scene draws on the reporting and analysis found in The New Yorker for lively conversations about the big questions in American politics. Join the magazine’s writers and editors as they put into context the latest news—about elections, the economy, the White House, the Supreme Court, and much more. New episodes are available three times a week. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Jul 18

The Washington Roundtable’s Jane Mayer interviews Leah Litman, a law professor at the University of Michigan, a co-host of the “ Strict Scrutiny ” podcast, and the author of “ Lawless: How the Supreme Court Runs on Conservative Grievance, Fringe Theories, and Bad Vibes .” Litman analyzes the wave of victories that the Court has given President Trump’s second Administration—on both its regular docket and its so-called shadow docket—and how outside influence seeps into the Court’s decision-making. Plus, how to parse the dissenting Justices’ language to understand what is happening behind closed doors at the Court. This week’s reading: “ Trump Has a Bad Case of Biden on the Brain ,” by Susan B. Glasser “ Can Trump Deport People to Any Country That Will Take Them? ,” by Isaac Chotiner “ Sick Children Will Be Among the Victims of Trump’s Big Bill ,” by Rachel Pearson “ Donald Trump, Jeffrey Epstein, and Three Conspiracy-Theory Theories ,” by Jon Allsop To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker , visit newyorker.com/podcasts. To send in feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com with “The Political Scene” in the subject line. The Political Scene draws on the reporting and analysis found in The New Yorker for lively conversations about the big questions in American politics. Join the magazine’s writers and editors as they put into context the latest news—about elections, the economy, the White House, the Supreme Court, and much more. New episodes are available three times a week. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Jul 14

In conservative economics, cuts to social services are often seen as necessary to shrink the expanding deficit. Donald Trump’s budget bill is something altogether different: it cuts Medicaid while slashing tax rates for the wealthiest Americans, adding $6 trillion to the national debt, according to the Cato Institute. Janet Yellen, a former Treasury Secretary and former chair of the Federal Reserve, sees severe impacts in store for average Americans: “What this is going to do is to raise interest rates even more. And so housing will become less affordable, car loans less affordable,” she tells David Remnick. “This bill also contains changes that raise the burdens of anyone who has already taken on student debt. And with higher interest rates, further education—college [and] professional school—becomes less affordable. It may also curtail investment spending, which has a negative impact on growth.” This, she believes, is why the President is desperate to lower interest rates; he has spoken of firing his appointed chair of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, whom he has called a “numbskull” and a “stupid person,” and installing a more compliant chair. But lowering interest rates to further political goals, Yellen says, “are the words one expects from the head of a banana republic that is about to start printing money to fund fiscal deficits. … And then you get very high inflation or hyperinflation.” The Political Scene draws on the reporting and analysis found in The New Yorker for lively conversations about the big questions in American politics. Join the magazine’s writers and editors as they put into context the latest news—about elections, the economy, the White House, the Supreme Court, and much more. New episodes are available three times a week. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Jul 11

The Washington Roundtable’s Susan B. Glasser interviews the Russia expert Fiona Hill about Vladimir Putin’s long reign and Trump’s dismantling of American institutions. Hill, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, previously served in the National Security Council and National Intelligence Council. She gained national attention as a star witness during the first impeachment inquiry against Donald Trump, in 2019. Additionally, Hill, who is also a member of Harvard’s Board of Overseers, talks with Glasser about the Trump Administration’s war on academic institutions. This week’s reading: “ Did Trump Really Just Break Up with Putin? ” by Susan B. Glasser “ Why a Devoted Justice Department Lawyer Became a Whistle-Blower ,” by Ruth Marcus “ Sheldon Whitehouse’s Three-Hundredth Climate Warning ,” by Elizabeth Kolbert “ The Supreme Court Sides with Trump Against the Judiciary ,” by Ruth Marcus Tune in wherever you get your podcasts . The Political Scene draws on the reporting and analysis found in The New Yorker for lively conversations about the big questions in American politics. Join the magazine’s writers and editors as they put into context the latest news—about elections, the economy, the White House, the Supreme Court, and much more. New episodes are available three times a week. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Jul 9

Andy Beshear, the governor of Kentucky, joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss the damage that President Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” will cause in rural America. Beshear paints a picture of how Democrats can win back voters without compromising on issues such as abortion or trans rights, what the party can learn from Mamdani’s victory in the New York City mayoral primary, and the importance of communicating with the public using everyday language. This week’s reading: “ Donald Trump, Zohran Mamdani, and Posting as Politics ” by Kyle Chayka “ The Texas Floods and the Lives Lost at Camp Mystic ,” by Jessica Winter “ Is There Still Time to Be Hopeful About the Climate? ,” by Daniel A. Gross “ The War on Gaza’s Children ,” by Isaac Chotiner “ 4.6 Billion Years On, the Sun Is Having a Moment ,” by Bill McKibben To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker , visit newyorker.com/podcasts . To send feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com . The Political Scene draws on the reporting and analysis found in The New Yorker for lively conversations about the big questions in American politics. Join the magazine’s writers and editors as they put into context the latest news—about elections, the economy, the White House, the Supreme Court, and much more. New episodes are available three times a week. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Jul 2

The New Yorker staff writer Rivka Galchen joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss a class at the University of Chicago with a tantalizingly dark title: Are We Doomed? It’s in the interdisciplinary field of existential risk, which studies the threats posed by climate change, nuclear warfare, and artificial intelligence. Galchen, who spent a semester observing the course and its students, considers how to contend with this bleak future, and how to understand the young people who may inherit it. This episode originally aired June 5, 2024 This week’s reading: “ Donald Trump, Zohran Mamdani, and Posting as Politics ” by Kyle Chayka “ Do We Need Another Green Revolution? ,” by Elizabeth Kolbert “ What Therapists Treating Immigrants Hear ,” by Geraldo Cadava Tune in to The Political Scene wherever you get your podcasts . The Political Scene draws on the reporting and analysis found in The New Yorker for lively conversations about the big questions in American politics. Join the magazine’s writers and editors as they put into context the latest news—about elections, the economy, the White House, the Supreme Court, and much more. New episodes are available three times a week. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Jun 30

The relationship between Fox News and Donald Trump is not just close; it can be profoundly influential. Trump frequently responds to segments in real time online—even to complain about a poll he doesn’t like. He has tapped the network for nearly two dozen roles within his Administration—including the current Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth , a former Fox News host. The network is also seen as having an outsized impact on his relationship with his base, and even on his agenda. Most recently, it’s been reported that Fox News’ coverage of the Iran-Israel conflict played a role in Trump’s decision to enter that fight. And while the network’s right-wing commentators—from Sean Hannity to Laura Ingraham to Mark Levin—tend to grab the most headlines and stand as the ideological coloring of the network, “Special Report,” Fox’s 6 P.M. broadcast, anchored by Bret Baier, is essential to the conservative-media complex. Baier draws more than three million viewers a night, at times surpassing legacy brands like “CBS Evening News,” despite being available in half as many homes. Baier insists on his impartiality, but his network’s reputation as an outlet for the right and its connection to President Trump himself can make his job representing the news arm of the network more challenging. And, when it comes to Trump and his relationship to the media, Baier tells David Remnick, “I think it is this cat-and-mouse game. You know, for all of the things he says about the media . . . he’s reaching out and doing interviews with the same people he says are nasty.” The Political Scene draws on the reporting and analysis found in The New Yorker for lively conversations about the big questions in American politics. Join the magazine’s writers and editors as they put into context the latest news—about elections, the economy, the White House, the Supreme Court, and much more. New episodes are available three times a week. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Jun 26

The New Yorker staff writer Andrew Marantz joins Tyler Foggatt for another episode of “How Bad Is It?,” a monthly series that examines the health of American democracy. They discuss whether the President’s recent strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities may threaten his “America first” coalition, how the threat of war may enable him to consolidate more power domestically, and whether Trump’s use of the National Guard to quell protest in Los Angeles is truly undemocratic. This week’s reading: “ Zohran Mamdani’s New York City Miracle ,” by Eric Lach “ Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Declaration of Independence ,” by Ruth Marcus “ A.I. Is Homogenizing Our Thoughts ,” by Kyle Chayka “ Heir Ball: How the Cost of Youth Sports Is Changing the N.B.A. ,” by Robin Wright “ Can Ayatollah Khamenei, and Iran’s Theocracy, Survive This War? ,” by Antonia Hitchens To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker , visit newyorker.com/podcasts . To send feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com . The Political Scene draws on the reporting and analysis found in The New Yorker for lively conversations about the big questions in American politics. Join the magazine’s writers and editors as they put into context the latest news—about elections, the economy, the White House, the Supreme Court, and much more. New episodes are available three times a week. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Jun 23

The ayatollahs who have ruled Iran since 1979 have long promised to destroy the Jewish state, and had even set a deadline for it. While arming proxies to fight Israel—Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, the Houthis in Yemen, and more—Iran is believed to have sought to develop nuclear weapons for itself. “The big question about Iran was always: how significant is its apocalyptic theology?” Yossi Klein Halevi explains to David Remnick. “How central is that end-times vision to the Iranian regime? And is there a possibility that the regime would see a nuclear weapon as the way of furthering their messianic vision?” Halevi is a journalist and senior fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute, and he co-hosts the podcast “For Heaven’s Sake.” He is a fierce critic of Benjamin Netanyahu, saying, “I have no doubt that he is capable of starting a war for his own political needs.” And yet Netanyahu was right to strike Iran, no matter the consequences, Halevi asserts. “The Israeli perspective is not . . . the American war in Iraq and Afghanistan. It’s our own experience.” New episodes of The New Yorker Radio Hour drop every Tuesday and Friday. Follow the show wherever you get your podcasts . The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. The Political Scene draws on the reporting and analysis found in The New Yorker for lively conversations about the big questions in American politics. Join the magazine’s writers and editors as they put into context the latest news—about elections, the economy, the White House, the Supreme Court, and much more. New episodes are available three times a week. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Jun 20

The Washington Roundtable discusses the escalating conflict between Israel and Iran, and the possibility that the United States will join the fray by bombing Iranian nuclear facilities. They are joined by Karim Sadjadpour, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a longtime Iran expert. “What is going to drive events is not the national interest of the United States or the national interests of Iran, but this duel between these two men, Donald Trump and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei,” Sadjapour says. “What I really fear is that both of these men feel like their honor is on the line.” This week’s reading: “Donald Trump’s No-Strategy Strategy on Iran,” by Isaac Chotiner “The Trump Crackdown on Elected Officials,” by Jonathan Blitzer “What Is Israel’s Endgame with Iran?” by Robin Wright “The Military’s Birthday Parade Rolls Quietly Through Trump’s Washington,” by Antonia Hitchens “After Attacking Iran, Israel Girds for What’s Next,” by Ruth Margalit “Why Netanyahu Decided to Strike Iran Now,” by Isaac Chotiner “President Trump’s Military Games,” by Ruth Marcus “Is the Anti-Trump Opposition Getting Its #Resistance Back?” by Jon Allsop Tune in wherever you get your podcasts. The Political Scene draws on the reporting and analysis found in The New Yorker for lively conversations about the big questions in American politics. Join the magazine’s writers and editors as they put into context the latest news—about elections, the economy, the White House, the Supreme Court, and much more. New episodes are available three times a week. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Jun 19

The New Yorker staff writer Benjamin Wallace-Wells joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss the decline of DOGE, what Elon Musk’s exit from the White House means for its work, and the initiative’s legacy in the long run. Plus, the assassination of the Minnesota state representative Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark Hortman, and the growing trend of impersonating law enforcement. This week’s reading: “ What Did Elon Musk Accomplish at DOGE? ,” by Benjamin Wallace-Wells “ The Minnesota Shootings and the Dangerous Trend of Impersonating Law Enforcement ,” by Benjamin Wallace-Wells “ The Trump Crackdown on Elected Officials ,” by Jonathan Blitzer “ What Is Israel’s Endgame with Iran? ,” by Robin Wright “ The Military’s Birthday Parade Rolls Quietly Through Trump’s Washington ,” by Antonia Hitchens To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker , visit newyorker.com/podcasts . To send feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com . The Political Scene draws on the reporting and analysis found in The New Yorker for lively conversations about the big questions in American politics. Join the magazine’s writers and editors as they put into context the latest news—about elections, the economy, the White House, the Supreme Court, and much more. New episodes are available three times a week. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Jun 16

T he New Yorker recently published a report from Sudan, headlined “ Escape from Khartoum .” The contributor Nicolas Niarchos journeyed for days through a conflict to reach a refugee camp in the Nuba Mountains, where members of the country’s minority Black ethnic groups are seeking safety, but remain imperilled by hunger. The territory is “very significant to the Nuba people,” Niarchos explains to David Remnick. “They feel safe being there because they have managed to resist genocide before by hiding in these mountains. And then you start seeing the children with their distended bellies, and you start hearing the stories of the people who fled.” The civil war pits the Sudanese Army against a militia group called the Rapid Support Forces. Once allies in ousting Sudan’s former President, the Army and the R.S.F. now occupy different parts of the country, destroying infrastructure in the opposing group’s territory, and committing atrocities against civilians: killing, starvation, and widespread, systematic sexual violence. The warring parties are dominated by Sudan’s Arabic-speaking majority, and “there’s this very, very toxic combination of both supremacist ideology,” Niarchos says, and “giving ‘spoils’ to troops instead of paying them.” One of Niarchos’s sources, a man named Wanis, recalls an R.S.F. soldier telling him, “If you go to the Nuba Mountains, we’ll reach you there. You Nuba, we’re supposed to kill you like dogs.” The Political Scene draws on the reporting and analysis found in The New Yorker for lively conversations about the big questions in American politics. Join the magazine’s writers and editors as they put into context the latest news—about elections, the economy, the White House, the Supreme Court, and much more. New episodes are available three times a week. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Jun 14

The Washington Roundtable discusses President Trump’s deployment of uniformed troops in Los Angeles, the Administration’s attempt to blur the distinction between the military and law enforcement, and this weekend’s parade in D.C. to celebrate the Army’s two-hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary, which also happens to be the President’s seventy-ninth birthday. Plus, the handcuffing of California Senator Alex Padilla at a press conference given by Kristi Noem, the Secretary of Homeland Security. “To suddenly see this guy being thrown around on the ground—it really brought back all of the feelings I’ve had about living in places like Egypt and in China,” says the staff writer Evan Osnos. “When the highest office-holders in the land start to get brutalized, that just tells you that really anybody out there is being treated in much harsher ways.” This week’s reading: “ Donald Trump’s Dictator Cosplay ,” by Susan B. Glasser “ Donald Trump Enters His World Cup Era ,” by Jon Allsop “ Looking for the National Guard in Los Angeles ,” by Emily Witt “ Immigration Protests Threaten to Boil Over in Los Angeles ,” by E. Tammy Kim “ The Farmers Harmed by the Trump Administration ,” by Peter Slevin “ The Victims of the Trump Administration’s China-Bashing ,” by Michael Luo “ The Department of Veterans Affairs Is Not O.K. ,” by David W. Brown To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker , visit newyorker.com/podcasts. To send in feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com with “The Political Scene” in the subject line. The Political Scene draws on the reporting and analysis found in The New Yorker for lively conversations about the big questions in American politics. Join the magazine’s writers and editors as they put into context the latest news—about elections, the economy, the White House, the Supreme Court, and much more. New episodes are available three times a week. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Jun 12

Michael Luo, an executive editor of The New Yorker , joins the show as guest host. He sits down with Peter Hessler, a staff writer who spent more than a decade living in and writing about China. They discuss the Sinophobic history behind the Trump Administration’s threats to revoke Chinese students’ visas, how the COVID pandemic reshaped the U.S.-China relationship, and how escalating tensions between the United States and China stand to change the global order. This week’s reading: “ The Victims of the Trump Administration’s China-Bashing ,” by Michael Luo “ The Uncertain Future of a Chinese Student at Harvard, ” by Peter Hessler “ Looking for the National Guard in Los Angeles ,” by Emily Witt “ The Farmers Harmed by the Trump Administration ,” by Peter Slevin “ The Private Citizens Who Want to Help Trump Deport Migrants ,” by Jessica Pishko “ An Inside Look at Gaza’s Chaotic New Aid System ,” by Isaac Chotine To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker , visit newyorker.com/podcasts . To send feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com . The Political Scene draws on the reporting and analysis found in The New Yorker for lively conversations about the big questions in American politics. Join the magazine’s writers and editors as they put into context the latest news—about elections, the economy, the White House, the Supreme Court, and much more. New episodes are available three times a week. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Jun 9

When Donald Trump made an alliance with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., he brought vaccine skepticism and the debunked link between vaccines and autism into the center of the MAGA agenda. Though the scientific establishment has long disproven that link, as many as one in four Americans today believe that vaccines may cause autism. In April, Kennedy, now the Secretary of Health and Human Services, shocked the medical community and families across the country when he said that his agency would uncover the cause of autism—the subject of decades of research—once and for all. That news came even as Kennedy oversees drastic cuts to critical medical research of all kinds. Dr. Alycia Halladay, the chief science officer of the Autism Science Foundation, talks with David Remnick about the initiative, and the problems with focussing on environmental factors such as vaccines or mold. She also discusses why debunked claims and misinformation have such a powerful hold on parents. “You will do anything to help your child, so if it means a bleach enema”—referring to one extremely poisonous and falsely touted treatment—“and you think that’s going to help them, you’ll do it. It’s not because these people don’t love their children. It’s because they’re desperate.” The Political Scene draws on the reporting and analysis found in The New Yorker for lively conversations about the big questions in American politics. Join the magazine’s writers and editors as they put into context the latest news—about elections, the economy, the White House, the Supreme Court, and much more. New episodes are available three times a week. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Jun 7

The Washington Roundtable discusses the fallout from the messy rupture between Donald Trump and Elon Musk, how battles between maximalist rulers and the mega-wealthy have unfolded in history, and how this week’s fighting could portend a new, more combative phase of American oligarchy. They talk about America’s new Gilded Age, drawing on “The Haves and Have-Yachts: Dispatches on the Ultrarich,” a new book by Evan Osnos, just out this week. This week’s reading: “ The Musk-Trump Divorce Is as Messy as You Thought It Would Be ,” by Susan B. Glasser “ Donald Trump’s Politics of Plunder ,” by Evan Osnos “ The Sublime Spectacle of Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s Social-Media Slap Fight ,” by Jessica Winter “ The Private Citizens Who Want to Help Trump Deport Migrants ,” by Jessica Pishko “ Can Public Media Survive Trump? ,” by Jon Allsop Tune in wherever you get your podcasts . The Political Scene draws on the reporting and analysis found in The New Yorker for lively conversations about the big questions in American politics. Join the magazine’s writers and editors as they put into context the latest news—about elections, the economy, the White House, the Supreme Court, and much more. New episodes are available three times a week. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Jun 5

The New Yorker staff writer Ava Kofman joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss her recent Profile of the iconoclastic right-wing blogger Curtis Yarvin. They discuss Yarvin’s desire to end American democracy by installing a monarch, whether his provocations can be seen as trolling, and how his writings have found a receptive audience among conservative politicians and the tech élite. “Obviously, Yarvin’s influence on the right is great, and maybe can’t be overstated,” Kofman says. “But, at the same time, a lot of these ideas he’s getting from having conversations with powerful people in Silicon Valley and with powerful people in Washington.” This week’s reading: “ Curtis Yarvin’s Plot Against America ,” by Ava Kofman “ Democracy Wins a Referendum in South Korea ,” by E. Tammy Kim “ Josh Hawley and the Republican Effort to Love Labor ,” by Eyal Press “ Trump Makes America’s Refugee Program a Tool of White Racial Grievance ,” by Jonathan Blitzer “ Elon Musk’s Vanishing Act ,” by Jon Allsop To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker , visit newyorker.com/podcasts . To send feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com . The Political Scene draws on the reporting and analysis found in The New Yorker for lively conversations about the big questions in American politics. Join the magazine’s writers and editors as they put into context the latest news—about elections, the economy, the White House, the Supreme Court, and much more. New episodes are available three times a week. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Jun 2

Lesley Stahl, a linchpin of CBS News, began at the network in 1971, covering major events such as Watergate, and for many years has been a correspondent on “60 Minutes.” But right now it’s a perilous time for CBS News, which has been sued by Donald Trump for twenty billion dollars over the editing of a “60 Minutes” interview with Kamala Harris during the 2024 Presidential campaign. Its owner, Paramount, seems likely to settle, and corporate pressure on journalists at CBS has been so intense that Bill Owens, the executive producer of “60 Minutes,” and Wendy McMahon, the head of CBS News, resigned in protest. Owens’s departure was “a punch in the stomach,” Stahl tells David Remnick in a recent interview, “one of those punches where you almost can’t breathe.” And far worse could happen in a settlement with Trump, which would compromise the integrity of the premier investigative program on broadcast news. “I’m already beginning to think about mourning, grieving,” Stahl says. “I know there’s going to be a settlement. . . . And then we will hopefully still be around, turning a new page, and finding out what that new page is going to look like.” Although she describes herself as “Pollyannaish,” Stahl acknowledges that she is “pessimistic about the future for all press today. . . . The public has lost faith in us as an institution. So we’re in very dark times.” The Political Scene draws on the reporting and analysis found in The New Yorker for lively conversations about the big questions in American politics. Join the magazine’s writers and editors as they put into context the latest news—about elections, the economy, the White House, the Supreme Court, and much more. New episodes are available three times a week. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

May 29

This is the second installment of “How Bad Is It,” a recurring series in which the staff writer Andrew Marantz joins Tyler Foggatt to conduct a health check on American democracy. They discuss how Donald Trump has bullied media companies, why it’s troubling that some outlets are seeking to settle lawsuits with the Administration, and how the role of social media in public discourse has changed during the second Trump Administration. Plus, an interview with the prominent Hungarian journalist Márton Gulyás, who’s on the show to discuss a new bill making its way through the Hungarian parliament which is designed to quell the free press, and what a potential crackdown may tell us about the future of American media. This week’s reading: “ Donald Trump’s Politics of Plunder ,” by Evan Osnos “ Donald Trump’s War on Gender Is Also a War on Government ,” by Paisley Currah “ The Criminalization of Venezuelan Street Culture ,” by Oriana van Praag “ J. D. Vance Warns Courts to Get in Line ,” by Ruth Marcus “ In Chicago, Will the Pope Bump Last? ,” by Geraldo Cadava To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker , visit newyorker.com/podcasts . To send feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com . Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

May 22

The Northwestern history professor and New Yorker contributor Daniel Immerwahr joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss the ways in which the COVID crisis deepened Americans’ distrust of institutional experts and propelled R.F.K., Jr., to the height of political power in the Trump Administration. Plus, they talk about how Anthony Fauci’s clashes and eventual reconciliation with AIDS activists in the nineteen-eighties and nineties could serve as a guide to repairing the rift between Americans who are skeptical of experts and the officials who set public-health policy today. This week’s reading: “ R.F.K., Jr., Anthony Fauci, and the Revolt Against Expertise ,” by Daniel Immerwahr “ Who Gets to Be an American? ,” by Michael Luo “ The Stakes of the Birthright-Citizenship Case ,” by Ruth Marcus “ Donald Trump’s Culture of Corruption ,” by Isaac Chotiner “ The Mideast Is Donald Trump’s Safe Place ,” by Susan B. Glasser Tune in to The Political Scene wherever you get your podcasts . To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker , visit newyorker.com/podcasts . To send feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com . Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

May 19

Nearly a year ago, a Presidential debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, moderated by Jake Tapper and Dana Bash of CNN, began the end of Biden’s bid for a second term. The President struggled to make points, complete sentences, and remember facts; he spoke in a raspy whisper. This was not the first time voters expressed concern about Biden’s age, but his decline was shocking to many, and suddenly Trump seemed likely to win in a landslide. New reporting by Tapper and Thompson reveals that the debate was no fluke at all. In “How Joe Biden Handed the Presidency to Donald Trump” (an excerpt from their new book “Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again”), they lay out a case that the latter half of Biden’s Presidency was carefully stage-managed by his top aides; Biden would often end the workday as early as four-thirty. “What [aides and] others would say is, ‘His decision-making was always fine.’ The job of the President is not just decision-making. It’s also communication,” Tapper tells David Remnick. “If you are a President . . . and you’re not able to go into a room full of donors and speak extemporaneously for ten minutes, then there’s something wrong. And that was happening in 2023.” Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

May 17

The Washington Roundtable discusses new information that has emerged about Joe Biden’s decline while in office, and his advisers' efforts to downplay it, as chronicled in several new books . The group also discusses the challenges faced by members of the press as they report on Donald Trump’s signs of aging and his long-standing incoherence. “I think that’s where we run into trouble,” the staff writer Susan B. Glasser says. “Donald Trump has always been quite ignorant. He’s always been a fact checker's nightmare. He’s always rambled. He’s always lied. And, yes, he’s always not known basic facts about the American system of government. So where do we discern a trajectory with him? How does age factor into it?” This week’s reading: “ The Mideast Is Donald Trump’s Safe Place ,” by Susan B. Glasser “ How Joe Biden Handed the Presidency to Donald Trump ,” by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson “ The Real Audience for Trump’s Anti-Immigrant Spectacles ,” by Jon Allsop “ Donald Trump’s Culture of Corruption ,” by Isaac Chotiner “ Justice David Souter Was the Antithesis of the Present ,” by Jeannie Suk Gersen “ How an Election Denier Became the U.S. Treasurer ,” by Charles Bethea “ The Astonishing Threat to Suspend Habeas Corpus ,” by Ruth Marcus To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker , visit newyorker.com/podcasts. To send in feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com with “The Political Scene” in the subject line. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

May 14

The New Yorker staff writer Clare Malone joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss the changes that Jeff Bezos, the owner of the Washington Post , is making at the paper. They talk about why Bezos decided to purchase the paper, in 2013, how his recent exertion of editorial influence has caused the paper to hemorrhage both staffers and subscribers, and the future of a news media dependent on the support of “benevolent” billionaires to support it. This week’s reading: “ Is Jeff Bezos Selling Out the Washington Post ? ” by Clare Malone “ How Joe Biden Handed the Presidency to Donald Trump ,” by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson “ How an Election Denier Became the U.S. Treasurer ,” by Charles Bethea “ Will the First American Pope Be a Pontiff of Peace? ” by Paul Elie “ Brazil’s President Confronts a Changing World ,” by Jon Lee Anderson To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker , visit newyorker.com/podcasts . To send feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com . Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

May 12

When Elissa Slotkin narrowly won her Senate seat in Michigan last fall, she was one of only four Democratic senators to claim victory in a state that voted for Donald Trump. It made other Democrats take note: since then, the Party has turned to her as someone who can bridge the red state–blue state divide. In March, Slotkin delivered the Democrats’ rebuttal to Trump’s speech before Congress , and she’s been making headlines for criticizing her own party’s attempts to rein in the President and the Republican Party. She thinks Democrats need to start projecting “alpha energy,” that identity politics “needs to go the way of the dodo , ” and that Democrats should drop the word “oligarchy” from their vocabulary entirely. Slotkin prides herself on her bipartisanship, and she believes that Democrats must use old-school collegial collaboration in Congress. And, as different Democratic leaders have appeared on The New Yorker Radio Hour in the past few months, discussing what the next four years might have in store, Slotkin tells David Remnick about a different path forward. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

May 7

The New Yorker staff writer Katy Waldman joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss Donald Trump’s fondness for A.I.-generated memes and what it tells us about our current political climate. They talk about how Trump uses these images to bend the cultural narrative to his will, why the MAGA aesthetic is tailor-made for the age of A.I., and how the proliferation of A.I. slop is damaging our brains. This week’s reading: “ Trump Is the Emperor of A.I. Slop ,” by Katy Waldman “ My Brain Finally Broke ,” by Jia Tolentino “ How Is Elon Musk Powering His Supercomputer? ,” by Bill McKibben “ Is This the End of the Separation of Church and State? ,” by Ruth Marcus “ Twelve Migrants Sharing a Queens Apartment ,” by Jordan Salama “ How Russia and Ukraine Are Playing Trump’s Blame Game ,” by Joshua Yaffa To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker , visit newyorker.com/podcasts . To send feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com . Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

May 5

For a long time, Republicans and many Democrats espoused some version of free-trade economics that would have been familiar to Adam Smith. But Donald Trump breaks radically with that tradition, embracing a form of protectionism that resulted in his extremely broad and chaotic tariff proposals, which tanked markets and deepened the fear of a global recession. John Cassidy writes The New Yorker’s The Financial Page column, and he’s been covering economics for the magazine since 1995. His new book, “ Capitalism and Its Critics: A History ,” takes a long view of these debates, and breaks down some of the arguments that have shaped the U.S.’s current economic reality. “Capitalism itself has put its worst face forward in the last twenty or thirty years through the growth of huge monopolies which seem completely beyond any public control or accountability,” Cassidy tells David Remnick. “And young people—they look at capitalism and the economy through the prism of environmentalism now in a way that they didn’t in our generation.” Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

May 3

The Washington Roundtable discusses the unprecedented corruption of the federal government, including Trump Administration members’ self-enrichment through cryptocurrency schemes and the inaugural committee, and the gutting of parts of the government that are responsible for rooting out self-dealing from public life. It is a level of corruption so “outright” and “brazen,” the staff writer Evan Osnos says, that it constitutes “a new phase in American politics.” This week’s reading: “ Mike Waltz Learns the Hard Truth About Serving Donald Trump ,” by Susan B. Glasser “ How Donald Trump Is Expanding His Authority While Shrinking the Government ,” by Jon Allsop “ What Canadians Heard—and Americans Didn’t ,” by Adam Gopnik “ Trump’s Deportees to El Salvador Are Now ‘Ghosts’ in U.S. Courts ,” by Jonathan Blitzer “ Will the Trump Tariffs Devastate the Whiskey Industry? ,” by Charles Bethea “ A Life-Changing Scientific Study Ended by the Trump Administration ,” by Dhruv Khullar “ The Bureaucratic Nightmares of Being Trans Under Trump ,” by Grace Byron “ How Trump Is Helping Tycoons Exploit the Pandemic ,” by Jane Mayer (July, 2020) To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker , visit newyorker.com/podcasts. To send in feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com with “The Political Scene” in the subject line. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

May 1

In a new recurring series on The Political Scene, the staff writer Andrew Marantz joins Tyler Foggatt to assess the status of American democracy. How does one distinguish—in the blizzard of federal workforce cuts, deportations, and executive orders that have defined the first hundred days of Donald Trump’s second term—actions that are offensive to some, but fundamentally within the power of the executive, from moves which threaten the integrity of our system of government? Marantz applies the lens of Viktor Orbán’s Hungary to analyze where we may be in a potential slide toward autocracy, exploring ways in which Trump has even gone beyond the “Orbán playbook.” Marantz and Foggatt also discuss what it would take to reverse democratic backsliding. This week’s reading: “ Is It Happening Here? ,” by Andrew Marantz “ One Hundred Days of Ineptitude ,” by David Remnick “ The Bureaucratic Nightmares of Being Trans Under Trump ,” by Grace Byron To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker , visit newyorker.com/podcasts . To send feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com . Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Apr 28

As Donald Trump continues to launch unprecedented and innovative attacks on immigrants, civic institutions, and the rule of law, the Democratic response has been—in the eyes of many observers—tepid and inadequate. One answer to the sense of desperation came from Senator Cory Booker, who, on March 31st, launched a marathon speech on the Senate floor, calling on Americans to resist authoritarianism. Booker beat the record previously held by Senator Strom Thurmond’s twenty-four-hour-long filibuster of the Civil Rights Act, in 1957, and he spoke in detail about Americans who are in desperate straits because of federal job cuts and budget slashing. “We knew . . . if I could last twenty-four hours and eighteen minutes, that we could potentially command some attention from the public,” Booker tells David Remnick. “That’s the key here . . . to deal with the poverty of empathy we have in our nation right now.” Yet Booker bridles as Remnick asks about Democratic strategy to resist the Administration’s attacks. Instead, he emphasized the need for “Republicans of good conscience” to step up. “Playing this as a partisan game cheapens the larger cause of the country,” he argues. “This is the time that America needs moral leadership, and not political leadership.” Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Apr 26

The Washington Roundtable discusses the first hundred days of President Trump’s second Administration, and the fear, pain, and outrage reverberating through U.S. politics. The clinical psychologist and longtime Department of Justice official Alix McLearen is helping distressed government workers connect with service providers during this time. She joins the roundtable to discuss how a politics of fear is shaping the lives of federal employees and ordinary citizens alike, and strategies for coping when psychological forces like fear and trauma become governing principles. This week’s reading: “ Waiting for Trump’s Big, Beautiful Deals ,” by Susan B. Glasser “ The Conservative Lawyer Defending a Firm from Donald Trump ,” by Ruth Marcus “ The Immigrant Families Jailed in Texas ,” by Jack Herrera “ The Cost of Defunding Harvard ,” by Atul Gawande “ Donald Trump’s Deportation Obsession ,” by Jonathan Blitzer “ The Guerrilla Marketing Campaign Against Elon Musk ,” by Anna Russell “ The Supreme Court Finally Takes On Trump ,” by Ruth Marcus To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker , visit newyorker.com/podcasts. To send in feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com with “The Political Scene” in the subject line. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Apr 23

Paul Elie, who writes about the Catholic Church for The New Yorker, joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss the life and legacy of Pope Francis, his feuds with traditionalist Church figures and right-wing political leaders, and what to expect from the upcoming papal conclave to determine his successor. This week’s reading: “ The Down-to-Earth Pope ,” by Paul Elie “ Pope Francis’s Tangled Relationship with Argentina ,” by Graciela Mochkofsky “ The Mexican President Who’s Facing Off with Trump ,” by Stephania Taladrid “ The Cost of Defunding Harvard ,” by Atul Gawande “ The Supreme Court Finally Takes On Trump ,” by Ruth Marcus Tune in to The Political Scene wherever you get your podcasts . Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Apr 21

Elon Musk, who’s taking his chainsaw to the federal government , is not merely a chaos agent, as he is sometimes described. Jill Lepore , the best-selling author of “ These Truths ” and other books, says that Musk is animated by obsessions and a sense of mission he acquired through reading, and misreading, science fiction. “When he keeps saying, you know, ‘We’re at a fork in the road. The future of human civilization depends on this election,’ he means SpaceX,” she tells David Remnick. “He means . . . ‘I need to take these rockets to colonize Mars and that’s only going to happen through Trump.’ ” The massive-scale reduction in social services he is enacting through DOGE, Lepore thinks, is tied to this objective. “Although there may be billions of [people] suffering here on planet Earth today, those are miniscule compared to the calculation of the needs of the billions of humans that will one day ever live if we can gain escape velocity from planet Earth. . . . That is, in fact, the math that lies behind DOGE.” Lepore’s BBC radio series on the SpaceX C.E.O. is called “ X-Man: The Elon Musk Origin Story .” Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Apr 14

Ruth Marcus resigned from the Washington Post after its C.E.O. killed an editorial she wrote that was critical of the paper's owner, Jeff Bezos. She ended up publishing the column in The New Yorker, and soon after she published another piece for the magazine asking "Has Trump's Legal Strategy Backfired?" "Trump's legal strategy has been backfiring, I think, demonstrably in the lower courts," she tells David Remnick, on issues such as undoing birthright citizenship and deporting people without due process. Federal judges have rebuked the Administration's lawyers, and ordered deportees returned to the United States. But "we have this thing called the Supreme Court, which is, in fact, supreme," Marcus says. "I thought the Supreme Court was going to send a message to the Trump Administration: 'Back off, guys.' . . . That's not what's happened." In recent days, that Court has issued a number of rulings that, while narrow, suggest a more deferential approach toward Presidential power. Marcus and Remnick spoke last week about where the Supreme Court—with its six-Justice conservative majority—may yield to Trump's extraordinary exertions of power, and where it may attempt to check his authority. "When you have a six-Justice conservative majority," she notes, there is"a justice to spare." Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Apr 11

The Washington Roundtable is joined by Mark Blyth, a professor of international economics and public affairs at Brown University, to discuss how the bond market forced Donald Trump to retreat on some tariffs, and the risks of the President’s escalating trade war with China. “Ultimately, they can take the pain more than you can,” Blyth says, of the Chinese government. “They have locked down their cities for a year or more. They can deliver food through the window through drones. They don’t care if you cut them off from certain things. So getting into that fight is very, very destructive.” This week’s reading: “ Trump’s Do-Over Presidency ,” by Susan B. Glasser “ The Conservative Legal Advocates Working to Kill Trump’s Tariffs ,” by Cristian Farias “ At the Smithsonian, Donald Trump Takes Aim at History ,” by David Remnick “ The Trump Show Comes to the Kennedy Center ,” by Katy Waldman “ The Other Side of Signalgate ,” by Rozina Ali To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker , visit newyorker.com/podcasts. To send in feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com with “The Political Scene” in the subject line. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Apr 9

The former senator Sherrod Brown, of Ohio, joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss the tumult that Trump’s tariffs have inflicted on the global economy, and why progressives should not merely oppose the President’s trade policy but offer a clear alternative. “I've heard economists talk about these tariffs upending the global order on trade. Well, to a lot of workers, anything’s better than the global order on trade. It’s our policy problem as a country, and it’s our political problem for Democrats,” Brown says. They also discuss his latest project, The Dignity of Work Institute , a think tank dedicated to advocacy for the working class. This week’s reading: “‘ I Am Seeing My Community of Researchers Decimated ,’” by E. Tammy Kim “ The Other Side of Signalgate ,” by Rozina Ali “ The Trump Show Comes to the Kennedy Center ,” by Katy Waldman “ At the Smithsonian, Donald Trump Takes Aim at History ,” by David Remnick To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker , visit newyorker.com/podcasts . To send feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com . Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Apr 7

The microchip maker Nvidia is a Silicon Valley colossus. After years as a runner-up to Intel and Qualcomm, Nvidia has all but cornered the market on the parallel processors essential for artificial-intelligence programs like ChatGPT. “Nvidia was there at the beginning of A.I.,” the tech journalist Stephen Witt tells David Remnick. “They really kind of made these systems work for the first time. We think of A.I. as a software revolution, something called neural nets, but A.I. is also a hardware revolution.” In The New Yorker , Stephen Witt profiled Jensen Huang, Nvidia’s brilliant and idiosyncratic co-founder and C.E.O. His new book is “ The Thinking Machine: Jensen Huang, Nvidia, and the World’s Most Coveted Microchip .” Until recently, Nvidia was the most valuable company in the world, but its stock price has been volatile, posting the largest single-day loss in history in January. But the company’s story is only partially a business story; it’s also one about global superpowers, and who will decide the future. If China takes military action against Taiwan, as it has indicated it might, the move could wrest control of the manufacturing of Nvidia microchips from a Taiwanese firm, which is now investing in a massive production facility in the U.S. “Maybe what’s happening,” Witt speculates, is that “this kind of labor advantage that Asia had over the United States for a long time, maybe in the age of robots that labor advantage is going to go away. And then it doesn’t matter where we put the factory. The only thing that matters is, you know, is there enough power to supply it?” Plus, the staff writer Joshua Rothman has long been fascinated with A.I.—he even interviewed its “godfather,” Geoffrey Hinton, for The New Yorker Radio Hour. But Rothman has become increasingly concerned about a lack of public and political debate over A.I.—and about how thoroughly it may transform our lives. “Often, if you talk to people who are really close to the technology, the timelines they quote for really reaching transformative levels of intelligence are, like, shockingly soon,” he tells Remnick. “If we’re worried about the incompetence of government, on whatever side of that you situate yourself, we should worry about automated government. For example, an A.I. decides the length of a sentence in a criminal conviction, or an A.I. decides whether you qualify for Medicaid. Basically, we’ll have less of a say in how things go and computers will have more of a say.” Rothman’s essay “ Are We Taking A.I. Seriously Enough? ” appears in his weekly column, Open Questions . Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Apr 5

The Washington Roundtable discusses President Donald Trump’s invocation of emergency powers to enact sweeping tariffs and the ensuing global economic meltdown, in addition to how authoritarians have historically used economic control and coercion to strengthen their grip on power. The Roundtable also examines other spheres where Trump’s maximalist approach might make a mark, including immigration enforcement, the politicization of the military, and the potential seizure of Greenland. This week’s reading: “ Donald Trump’s Ego Melts the Global Economy ,” by Susan B. Glasser “ Pete Hegseth’s Secret History ,” by Jane Mayer (December, 2024) “ The Truth About Donald Trump’s ‘Liberation Day ,’ ” by John Cassidy “ Has Trump’s Legal Strategy Backfired? ,” by Ruth Marcus “ Fighting Elon Musk, One Tesla Dealership at a Time ,” by Sarah Larson “ How Trump Is Helping Tycoons Exploit the Pandemic ,” by Jane Mayer (July, 2020) To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker , visit newyorker.com/podcasts. To send in feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com with “The Political Scene” in the subject line. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Apr 2

Sarah Larson joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss the Tesla Takedown movement, protesting Elon Musk and Donald Trump, along with the political efficacy of targeting an electric-car company and why some protesters are borrowing tactics from the AIDS activist group ACT UP. This week’s reading: “ Fighting Elon Musk, One Tesla Dealership at a Time ,” by Sarah Larson “ The Fired Student-Debt Relievers ,” by E. Tammy Kim “ What Marine Le Pen’s Conviction Means for French Democracy ,” by Isaac Chotiner “ How Donald Trump Throttled Big Law ,” by Ruth Marcus “ Why Benjamin Netanyahu Is Going Back to War ,” by Bernard Avishai To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker , visit newyorker.com/podcasts . To send feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com . Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Mar 31

With congressional Republicans unwilling to put any checks on an Administration breaking norms and issuing illegal orders, the focus has shifted to the Democratic opposition—or the lack thereof. Democrats like Chris Murphy, the junior senator from Connecticut, have vehemently disagreed with party leaders’ reversion to business as usual. Murphy opposed Senator Chuck Schumer’s negotiation to pass the Republican budget and keep the government running; he advocated for the Democrats to skip the President’s joint address to Congress en masse. Murphy believes that the Democrats have a winning formula if they stick to a populist, anti-big-money agenda. But, he concedes, some of his colleagues are playing normal politics, “where we try to become more popular than Republicans. People like me believe that it won’t matter if we’re more popular than them, because the rules won’t allow us to run a fair election.” By attacking democratic institutions, law firms, and other allies, he thinks, Republicans can insure that their party wins indefinitely, as in failed democracies around the world. “If you think that democracy is the No. 1, No. 2 and No. 3 story,” Murphy tells David Remnick, “then you have to act like it. You need to show that you’re willing to take a political risk.” Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Mar 28

The Washington Roundtable is off today, and will be back next week. In the meantime, enjoy a conversation about the California governor’s new podcast venture, “This Is Gavin Newsom,” from Vanity Fair’s “Inside the Hive” podcast. Radhika Jones, the host and editor-in-chief of Vanity Fair , talks with the magazine’s executive editor, Claire Howorth, and the “Hive” editor Michael Calderone about why Newsom is taking time off from running the world’s fifth-largest economy to talk to people such as Steve Bannon. Is he effectively reaching right-wingers and countering the MAGA media machine? And will the show help or hinder his chances of leading the Democratic ticket one day? To discover more from “Inside the Hive” and other Vanity Fair podcasts, visit vanityfair.com/podcasts. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Mar 26

The writer David W. Brown, who has long covered NASA and the space industry, joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss Elon Musk’s takeover of NASA, the agency’s increasingly complicated relationship with SpaceX, and whether Donald Trump’s interest in sending people to Mars will spare the space program from DOGE’s downsizing. This week’s reading: “ Inside Trump and Musk’s Takeover of NASA ,” by David W. Brown “ Don’t Believe Trump’s Promises About Protecting the Social Safety Net ,” by John Cassidy “ The E.P.A. vs. the Environment ,” by Elizabeth Kolbert “ We’re Still Not Done with Jesus ,” by Adam Gopnik “ Is March Madness All Luck? ,” by Tyler Foggatt To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker , visit newyorker.com/podcasts . To send feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com . Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Mar 24

Kaitlan Collins was only a couple years out of college when she became a White House correspondent for Tucker Carlson’s the Daily Caller. Collins stayed in the White House when she went over to CNN during Donald Trump’s first term, and she returned for his second. Trump has made his disdain for CNN clear—and he’s not a big fan of Collins, either. At one point during Trump’s first term, she was barred from a press conference; he called her a “nasty person” during a Presidential campaign interview. There’s never been a White House so overtly hostile to the press than the second Trump Administration, penalizing news organizations for not conforming to the President’s wishes. But, as Collins tells the staff writer Clare Malone , she believes that Trump is “someone who seeks the validation of the press as much as he criticizes them publicly. And so, you know, it doesn’t really bother me when he gets upset at my question.” Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Mar 22

The Washington Roundtable speaks with with Michael Waldman, the president and C.E.O. of the Brennan Center for Justice, at N.Y.U. Law, to discuss the escalating attacks on the judiciary by President Trump and his allies. If the Administration ignores a legitimate order from a federal judge, as it has come close to doing, what can the courts do in response? This week’s reading: “ Donald Trump, Producer-in-Chief ,” by Susan B. Glasser “ Why ‘Constitutional Crisis’ Fails to Capture Trump’s Attack on the Rule of Law ,” by Isaac Chotiner “ The Trump Administration Nears Open Defiance of the Courts ,” by Ruth Marcus To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker , visit newyorker.com/podcasts. To send in feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com with “The Political Scene” in the subject line. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Mar 20

The veteran courts reporter Ruth Marcus joins the host Tyler Foggatt to discuss the Trump Administration’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, why flights of Venezuelan deportees were sent to El Salvador, and how the defiance of federal court orders has set off a constitutional crisis. This week’s reading: “ The Trump Administration Nears Open Defiance of the Courts ,” by Ruth Marcus “ The Case of Mahmoud Khalil ,” by Benjamin Wallace-Wells “ The Long Nap of the Lazy Bureaucrat ,” by Charlie Tyson “ Hundreds of Thousands Will Die ,” by David Remnick “ The Felling of the U.S. Forest Service ,” by Peter Slevin To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker , visit newyorker.com/podcasts . To send feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com . Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Mar 17

Two weeks after the Inauguration of Donald Trump, Elon Musk tweeted, “We spent the weekend feeding USAID into a wood chipper.” Musk was referring to the Agency for International Development, an agency which supports global health and economic development, and which has saved millions of lives around the world. “A viper’s nest of radical-left lunatics,” Musk called it. U.S.A.I.D.’s funding is authorized by Congress, and its work is a crucial element of American soft power. DOGE has decimated the agency with cuts so sudden and precipitous that federal workers stationed in conflict zones were stranded without safe passage home, as their own government publicly maligned them for alleged fraud and corruption. Courts have blocked aspects of the federal purge of U.S.A.I.D., but it’s not clear if workers can be rehired and contracts restarted, or whether the damage is done. In January, 2022, Atul Gawande, a surgeon and leading public health expert who has written for The New Yorker since 1998, was sworn in as assistant administrator for global health at U.S.A.I.D. He resigned as the new administration came to power, and is watching in shock as Trump and Musk make U.S.A.I.D. a guinea pig for the government-wide purge now under way. U.S.A.I.D. was, he admits, a soft target for MAGA—helping people in faraway countries. Gawande calls U.S.A.I.D. “America at its best.” But with Trump and Musk, “there’s a different world view at play here,” he says. “Power is what matters, not impact.” Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Mar 15

The Washington Roundtable discusses the ideological underpinnings of Elon Musk’s DOGE with the former Democratic operative and San Francisco-based journalist Gil Duran. Duran writes about the so-called cognitive élite, the right-wing Silicon Valley technologists who want to use A.I. and cryptocurrency to unmake the federal government, on his newsletter The Nerd Reich . This week’s reading: “ The Most Powerful Crypto Bro in Washington Has Very Weird Beliefs ,” by Gil Duran (for The New Republic ) “ Uncertainty Is Trump’s Brand. But What if He Already Told Us Exactly What He’s Going to Do? ,” by Susan B. Glasser “ The Felling of the U.S. Forest Service ,” by Peter Slevin “ Trump Is Still Trying to Undermine Elections ,” by Sue Halpern “ Who Gets to Determine Greenland’s Future? ,” by Louise Bokkenheuser To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker , visit newyorker.com/podcasts. To send in feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com with “The Political Scene” in the subject line. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Mar 12

The staff writer John Cassidy joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss the recent meltdown of the U.S. stock market, Donald Trump’s long-standing support for tariffs, and what the potential death of an American-dominated free-trade system could mean for the global economy. This week’s reading: “ Will Trumpian Uncertainty Knock the Economy Into a Recession? ,” by John Cassidy “ Who Gets to Determine Greenland’s Future? ,” by Louise Bokkenheuser “ What’s Next for Ukraine? ,” by Joshua Yaffa “ Canada, the Northern Outpost of Sanity ,” by Bill McKibben “ Can Americans Still Be Convinced That Principle Is Worth Fighting For? ,” by Jay Caspian Kang “ Donald Trump's A.I. Propaganda ,” by Kyle Chayka To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker , visit newyorker.com/podcasts . To send feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com . Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Mar 10

Recently, the former New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez was sentenced to eleven years in prison for accepting bribes in cash and gold worth more than half a million dollars. He is the first person sentenced to prison for crimes committed in the Senate in more than forty years. Menendez did favors for the government of Egypt while he was the senior Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, and intervened in criminal cases against the businessmen who were bribing him. In New York, he broke down in tears before a federal judge, pleading for leniency. Upon emerging from the courtroom, he made a thinly veiled plea to the man he had once voted to impeach. “President Trump is right,” Menendez declared to news cameras. “This process is political, and it’s corrupted to the core. I hope President Trump cleans up the cesspool and restores the integrity to the system.” WNYC’s New Jersey reporter Nancy Solomon explores how the son of working-class immigrants from Cuba scaled the heights of American politics, and then fell dramatically. But will he serve the time? Solomon speaks with the constitutional-law professor Ciara Torres-Spelliscy, who says, “It’s hard to know who Trump will pardon next. One of the more recent pardons was for the former governor of Illinois, Rod Blagojevich. He was a Democrat. . . . [Trump] seems much more interested in undermining anti-corruption laws left, right, and center.” Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Mar 8

The Washington Roundtable speaks with Jeffrey Rosen, the president and C.E.O. of the National Constitution Center, a nonpartisan nonprofit, about how America’s founders tried to tyrant-proof their constitutional system, how Donald Trump’s whim-based decision-making resembles that of the dictator Julius Caesar, and what we can learn from the fall of the Roman Republic. Plus, how the Supreme Court is responding to the Trump Administration’s broad claims of executive power. Rosen, a professor at George Washington University Law School, hosts the “ We the People ” podcast and is the author of “ The Pursuit of Happiness: How Classical Writers on Virtue Inspired the Lives of the Founders and Defined America .” This week’s reading: “ Trump’s Golden Age of Bunk ,” by Susan B. Glasser “ Trump’s Disgrace, ” by David Remnick “ What Will Democratic Resistance Look Like? ,” by Jay Caspian Kang “ What Putin Wants Now ,” by Isaac Chotiner To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker , visit newyorker.com/podcasts. To send in feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com with “The Political Scene” in the subject line. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Mar 6

The staff writer Eric Lach joins the guest host Andrew Marantz to discuss the alleged quid pro quo between Mayor Eric Adams and President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice. Plus, why the President keeps inserting himself into New York City politics and what to make of former Governor Andrew Cuomo’s bid for Gracie Mansion. This week’s reading: “ Donald Trump’s Golden Age of Bunk, ” by Susan B. Glasser “ Elon Musk Also Has a Problem with Wikipedia, ” by Margaret Talbot “ What Will Democratic Resistance Look Like? ,” by Jay Caspian Kang “ Trump’s E.P.A. Seeks to Deny Science That Americans Discovered ,” by Bill McKibben “ Growing Up U.S.A.I.D. ,” by Jon Lee Anderson “ A Ukrainian Family’s Three Years of War ,” by Louisa Thomas To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker , visit newyorker.com/podcasts . To send feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com . Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Mar 3

Democrats in Washington have seemed almost paralyzed by the onslaught of far-right appointments and draconian executive orders coming from the Trump White House. But some state governors seem more willing to oppose the federal government than congressional Democrats are. In January, Governor Tim Walz, of Minnesota, tweeted, “President Trump just shut off funding for law enforcement, farmers, schools, veterans, and health care. . . . Minnesota needs answers. We’ll see Trump in court.” He’s only one of many Democratic governors challenging the federal government. Walz joins David Remnick to offer his analysis of why Democrats lost the 2024 election, why the Party has been losing support from men, and what Democrats need to do now that Donald Trump is back in the White House. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Mar 1

The Washington Roundtable discusses the Trump Administration’s decision to bar the Associated Press from Presidential events, Jeff Bezos’s dramatic makeover of the Washington Post’s opinion section, and why freedom of the press matters. Plus, what journalists can do to meet this moment. This week’s reading: “ Why Aren’t We in the Streets? ,” by Susan B. Glasser “ What Will Democratic Resistance Look Like? ,” by Jay Caspian Kang “ The Peril Donald Trump Poses to Ukraine ,” by Keith Gessen “ Growing Up U.S.A.I.D. ,” by Jon Lee Anderson “ Trump’s E.P.A. Seeks to Deny Science That Americans Discovered ,” by Bill McKibben To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker , visit newyorker.com/podcasts. To send in feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com with “The Political Scene” in the subject line. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Feb 26

The staff writer Gideon Lewis-Kraus joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss why people around the world are having fewer and fewer children and how the issue of birth rates has become a rallying cry for the American right. Plus, the lack of political will on the left to contend with the issue; and the societal effects on South Korea, which has the lowest birth rates in the world. This week’s reading: “ The End of Children ,” by Gideon Lewis-Kraus The Chaos of Trump’s Guantánamo Plan ,” by Jonathan Blitzer “ The New Trump-Family Megaphone ,” by Jon Allsop “ Month One of Donald Trump’s “Golden Age,” by Antonia Hitchens “ Team Canada’s Revenge, Served Ice-Cold ,” by Louisa Thomas Tune in to The Political Scene wherever you get your podcasts . Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Feb 24

Since the election, Senator John Fetterman—once a great hope of progressives—has conspicuously blamed Democrats for the electoral loss. Fetterman tells David Remnick that the Democratic Party discouraged male voters, particularly white men. He has pursued a lonely course of bipartisanship by meeting with Trump at Mar-a-Lago before his Inauguration, joining Truth Social, and voting to confirm Pam Bondi as Attorney General—the only Democrat to do so. But, despite Trump’s relatively high approval ratings, he lambasts the Administration for the “chaos” it is currently sowing in America. Fetterman sympathizes with voters’ widespread disgust with contemporary politicking. “Unlimited money has turned all of us in some way into all OnlyFans models,” he says. “We’re all just online hustling for money.” Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Feb 22

The Washington Roundtable discusses with the Stanford University political scientist Larry Diamond about President Trump’s attempts to claim broad powers, why most Republican lawmakers have fallen into line out of fear, and whether the United States has already tipped over into authoritarian territory. Plus, how the courts, Congress, and ordinary citizens might course-correct American democracy. This week’s reading: “ The Crisis of Democracy Is Here ,” by Larry Diamond “ Trump’s Putinization of America ,” by Susan B. Glasser “ Pulling Our Politics Back from the Brink ,” by Evan Osnos (2020) “ Month One of Donald Trump’s ‘Golden Age,’ ” by Antonia Hitchens “ We’d Never Had a King Until This Week ,” by Bill McKibben “ The Trump Administration Trashes Europe and NATO ,” by Dexter Filkins “ The Second Trump Administration’s New Forms of Distraction ,” by Kyle Chayka To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker , visit newyorker.com/podcasts. To send in feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com with “The Political Scene” in the subject line. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Feb 20

The New Yorker staff writer Kyle Chayka joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss Elon Musk’s seizure of power within the U.S. government, the tech industry’s slide into right-wing politics, and how the ideology of techno-fascism is taking root in Silicon Valley. Can the populists and the technologists coexist in Donald Trump’s Washington? This week’s reading: “ Elon Musk’s A.I.-Fuelled War on Human Agency ,” by Kyle Chayka “ The Second Trump Administration’s New Forms of Distraction ,” by Kyle Chayka “ Make South Africa Great Again? ,” by Isaac Chotiner “ Elizabeth Warren Fights to Defend the Consumer Protection Agency She Helped Create ,” by John Cassidy “ A Fistfight Over Donald Trump at the Evangelical Version of Harvard ,” by Emma Green To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker , visit newyorker.com/podcasts . To send feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com . Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Feb 17

In Donald Trump’s first term in office, the American Civil Liberties Union filed four hundred and thirty-four lawsuits against the Administration. Since Trump’s second Inauguration, the A.C.L.U. has filed cases to block executive orders ending birthright citizenship, defunding gender-affirming health care, and more. If the Administration defies a judge’s order to fully reinstate government funds frozen by executive order, Anthony Romero, the A.C.L.U.’s executive director, says, we will have arrived at a constitutional crisis. “We’re at the Rubicon,” Romero says. “Whether we’ve crossed it remains to be seen.” Romero has held the job since 2001—he started just days before September 11, 2001—and has done the job under four Presidents. He tells David Remnick that it’s nothing new for Presidents to chafe at judicial obstacles to implement their agendas; Romero mentions Bill Clinton’s attempts to strip courts of certain powers as notably aggressive. But, “if Trump decides to flagrantly defy a judicial order, then I think . . . we’ve got to take to the streets in a different way. We’ve got to shut down this country.” Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Feb 13

The essayist and cultural critic Brady Brickner-Wood talks with Tyler Foggatt about the opposition Donald Trump encountered in his first Presidential term, why many liberals are feeling a sense of resignation, and the Democratic Party’s struggle to present a unifying message. Plus, the political commentary embedded in Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl halftime show. This week’s reading: “ What Happened to the Trump Resistance? ,” by Brady Brickner-Wood “ The War on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion ,” by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor “ The Fears of the Undocumented ,” by Geraldo Cadava “ The Madness of Donald Trump ,” by David Remnick “ Elon Musk and Donald Trump Are Not Fixing U.S. Foreign Aid but Destroying It ,” by John Cassidy “ Elon Musk’s A.I.-Fuelled War on Human Agency ,” by Kyle Chayka “ What Happens if Trump Defies the Courts ,” by Isaac Chotiner To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker , visit newyorker.com/podcasts . To send feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com . Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Feb 10

Many of the most draconian measures implemented in the first couple weeks of the new Trump Administration have been justified as emergency actions to root out D.E.I.—diversity, equity, and inclusion—including the freeze (currently rescinded) of trillions of dollars in federal grants. The tragic plane crash in Washington, the President baselessly suggested, might also be the result of D.E.I. Typically, D.E.I. describes policies at large companies or institutions to encourage more diverse workplaces. In the Administration’s rhetoric, D.E.I. is discrimination pure and simple, and the root of much of what ails the nation. “D.E.I. is the boogeyman for anything,” Jelani Cobb tells David Remnick. Cobb is a longtime staff writer, and the dean of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. “If there’s a terrible tragedy . . . if there is something going wrong in any part of your life, if there are fires happening in California, then you can bet that, somehow, another D.E.I. is there.” Although affirmative-action policies in university admissions were found unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, D.E.I. describes a broad array of actions without a specific definition. “It’s that malleability,” Cobb reflects, that makes D.E.I. a useful target, “one source that you can use to blame every single failing or shortcoming or difficulty in life on.” Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Feb 8

The Washington Roundtable is joined by Atul Gawande, the former head of the U.S. Agency for International Development, to discuss Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s rapid-fire dismantling of the agency . They explore the life-and-death implications of the Trump Administration ending foreign aid, why the agency was targeted, and which federal agencies might be next. This week’s reading: “ Behind the Chaotic Attempt to Freeze Federal Assistance ,” by Atul Gawande “ Elon Musk’s Revolutionary Terror ,” by Susan B. Glasser “ Donald Trump’s Madness on Gaza ,” by David Remnick “ How Donald Trump Is Transforming Executive Power ,” by Isaac Chotiner “ What Happened to the Trump Resistance? ” by Brady Brickner-Wood “ Donald Trump’s Anti-Woke Wrecking Ball ,” by Benjamin Wallace-Wells “ Trump’s Trade War Is Only Getting Going ,” by John Cassidy To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker , visit newyorker.com/podcasts. To send in feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com with “The Political Scene” in the subject line. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Feb 6

Matthew L. Wald joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss the political aftermath of last week’s horrific collision between an American Airlines plane and a Black Hawk military helicopter. They look at the current state of airline safety, the changes afoot at the Federal Aviation Administration, and President Trump’s wild pronouncements that somehow diversity initiatives were to blame for the crash that claimed sixty-seven lives. “The culture warriors, with such a vengeance, are now turning to the F.A.A.—it’s something new and it’s not healthy,” Wald says. This week’s reading: “ How to Understand the Reagan Airport Crash ,” by Matthew L. Wald “ How Donald Trump Is Transforming Executive Power ,” by Isaac Chotiner “ The U.S. Military’s Recruiting Crisis ,” by Dexter Filkins “ Donald Trump’s Anti-Woke Wrecking Ball ,” by Benjamin Wallace-Wells “ Kash Patel’s Political-Persecution Fantasies ,” by Tess Owen To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker , visit newyorker.com/podcasts . To send feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com . Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Feb 3

In the nineteen-eighties and nineties, Bill Gates was the best known of a new breed: the tech mogul—a coder who had figured out how to run a business, and who then seemed to be running the world. Gates was ranked the richest person in the world for many years. In a new memoir, “ Source Code, ” he explains how he got there. The book focusses on Gates’s early life, and just through the founding of Microsoft. Since stepping away from the company, Gates has devoted himself to his foundation, which is one of the largest nonprofits working on public health around the globe. That has made him the target of conspiracy theories by anti-vaxxers, including Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who has asserted that Gates and Anthony Fauci are together responsible for millions of deaths during the COVID-19 pandemic. Gates views the rise of conspiracy thinking as symptomatic of larger trends in American society exacerbated by technology. “The fact that outrage is rewarded because it’s more engaging, that’s kind of a human weakness,” he tells David Remnick. “And the fact that I thought everybody would be doing deep analysis of facts and seeking out the actual studies on vaccine safety—boy, was that naïve. When the pandemic came, people wanted some evil genius to be behind it. Not some bat biology. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Feb 1

The Washington Roundtable discusses the fallout of the White House releasing, and then rescinding, a memo intended to freeze trillions of dollars in federal grants and loans. The incident, as well as this week’s Senate confirmation hearings for controversial Cabinet nominees such as Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and Kash Patel, offers Democrats an opportunity to seize control of the narrative—if they can get organized, Sheldon Whitehouse, the Democratic senator from Rhode Island, says. “If what Democrats are doing is running around calling them chaotic and incompetent, that’s not going to win the day unless those charges are connected to actual harms happening to regular people.” This week’s reading: “ Donald Trump’s Cabinet of Revenge ,” by Susan B. Glasser “ Trump’s Orders Sow Chaos Inside the Nation’s Enforcer of Equal Opportunity ,” by E. Tammy Kim “ Kash Patel’s Political-Persecution Fantasies ,” by Tess Owen “ Behind the Chaotic Attempt to Freeze Federal Assistance ,” by Atul Gawande “ The Junk Science of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. ,” by Clare Malone “ How Donald Trump Seizes the Primal Power of Naming ,” by Jessica Winter “ Trump’s Attempt to Redefine America ,” by Benjamin Wallace-Wells Tune in wherever you get your podcasts . To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker , visit newyorker.com/podcasts. To send in feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com with “The Political Scene” in the subject line. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Jan 30

On Tuesday, the Trump Administration sent out a memo attempting to put a blanket pause on most federal funding, sowing confusion about financing for student loans, SNAP benefits, nonprofits, and more. The next day, after a backlash, the Administration rescinded the memo, while maintaining that a freeze remains in “full force and effect.” The order created chaos across the federal government, threatening a power struggle between the President, Congress, and the courts. The New Yorker contributor and Harvard Law professor Jeannie Suk Gersen joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss how Trump’s directives are testing how far a President can go. This week’s reading: “ Trump's Attempt to Redefine America ,” by Benjamin Wallace-Wells “ The Unchecked Authority of Trump's Immigration Orders ,” by Jonathan Blitzer “ Donald Trump Throws the Doors to the Patriot Wing Open ,” by Antonia Hitchens “ Trump Is Already Drowning Us in Outrages ,” by Susan B. Glasser “ Britain’s Foreign Secretary Braces for the Second Trump Age ,” by Sam Knight To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker , visit newyorker.com/podcasts . To send feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com . Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Jan 25

The Washington Roundtable discusses President Trump’s first week in office, during which he broke a record for the most executive orders any modern-day President has signed on Day One. The President’s inaugural address and barrage of orders seemed driven by a sense of grievance, accrued in the course of four years out of office, four criminal prosecutions, and a deep desire for revenge. Will an apparatus of rage, taking form as vengeance, ultimately inhibit the government from performing its functions? Plus, they discuss the Episcopal Bishop Marianne Buddy’s remarks at the interfaith prayer service, and the importance of speaking truth to power. This week’s reading: “ Trump Is Already Drowning Us in Outrages ,” by Susan B. Glasser “ The Unchecked Authority of Trump’s Immigration Orders ,” by Jonathan Blitzer “ The Big Tech Takeover of American Politics ,” by Jay Caspian Kang “ Why Is the Mastermind of Trump’s Tariff Plan Still Sitting at Home in Florida? ,” by Benjamin Wallace-Wells “ How Much Power Does President Trump Have? ,” by Jeannie Suk Gersen “ Donald Trump Invents an Energy Emergency ,” by Bill McKibben “ What Trump 2.0 Means for Ukraine and the World ,” by Isaac Chotiner To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker , visit newyorker.com/podcasts. To send in feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com with “The Political Scene” in the subject line. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Jan 23

Within hours of his Inauguration, and shortly after proclaiming that his victory had been preordained by God, Donald Trump signed dozens of executive orders. These included exiting the World Health Organization, attempting to end birthright citizenship in the United States, and renaming the Gulf of Mexico. He also issued pardons for hundreds of the January 6th convicts. David Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker , joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss what Trump’s first days back in office portend for the next four years. “[Trump] hasn’t changed one iota,” Remnick says, “except that his confidence has increased, and his base has increased, and the obedience of the Republican Party leadership is absolute.” This week’s reading: “ Donald Trump’s Inaugural Day of Vindication ,” by Susan B. Glasser “ Donald Trump Plays Church ,” by Vinson Cunningham. “ ‘An Oligarchy Is Taking Shape,’ ” by David Remnick “ What Trump 2.0 Means for Ukraine and the World ,” by Isaac Chotiner “Donald Trump Returns to Washington ,” by Antonia Hitchens “Donald Trump Invents an Energy Emergency ,” by Bill McKibben To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker , visit newyorker.com/podcasts . To send feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com . Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Jan 18

The Washington Roundtable discusses this week’s confirmation hearings for Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense and Pam Bondi as Attorney General, and the potential for a “shock and awe” campaign in the first days of Donald Trump’s second term. Plus, as billionaires from many industries gather around the dais on Inauguration Day, what should we make of President Biden’s warning, in the waning days of his Administration, about “an oligarchy taking shape in America”? This week’s reading: “ “The Trump Effect”: On Deal-Making and Credit-Claiming in Trump 2.0 ,” by Susan B. Glasser “ The Pressure Campaign to Get Pete Hegseth Confirmed as Defense Secretary ,” by Jane Mayer “ Why the Israel-Hamas Ceasefire Is Happening Now ,” by Isaac Chotiner “ ‘An Oligarchy Is Taking Shape,’ ” by David Remnick “ How Much of the Government Can Donald Trump Dismantle? ” by Jeannie Suk Gersen “ The Shock of a Gaza Ceasefire Deal ,” by Ruth Margalit To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker , visit newyorker.com/podcasts. To send in feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com with “The Political Scene” in the subject line. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Jan 15

The Eaton and Palisades fires continue to wreak destruction across Los Angeles. They are predicted to become the most expensive fire recovery in American history. As the fires have burned, a torrent of right-wing rage has emerged online. Elon Musk, Donald Trump, and Charlie Kirk have attacked liberal mismanagement and blamed D.E.I. programs and “woke” politics for the destruction. Meanwhile, California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, has expressed concerns that the future Trump Administration may add conditions to federal financial-assistance relief for California, something that Republican Congress members have already floated. The New Yorker staff writer Jay Caspian Kang joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss what happens when disaster relief is swept up in the culture war. This week’s reading: “ The Insurance Crisis That Will Follow the California Fires ,” by Elizabeth Kolbert “ On the Ground During L.A.’s Wildfire Emergency ,” by Emily Witt “ An Arson Attack in Puerto Rico ,” by Graciela Mochkofsky “ Elon Musk’s Latest Terrifying Foray Into British Politics ,” By Sam Knight “ The Pressure Campaign to Get Pete Hegseth Confirmed as Defense Secretary ,” by Jane Mayer To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker , visit newyorker.com/podcasts . To send feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com . Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Jan 13

Representative Ro Khanna of California is in the Democrats’ Congressional Progressive Caucus. And although his district is in the heart of Silicon Valley—and he once worked as a lawyer for tech companies—Khanna is focussed on how Democrats can regain the trust of working-class voters. He knows tech moguls, he talks with them regularly, and he thinks that they are forming a dangerous oligarchy, to the detriment of everyone else. “This is more dangerous than petty corruption. This is more dangerous than, ‘Hey, they just want to maximize their corporation's wealth,’ ”he tells David Remnick. “This is an ideology amongst some that rejects the role of the state.” Although he’s an ally of Bernie Sanders, such as advocating for Medicare for All and free public college, Khanna is not a democratic socialist. He calls himself a progressive capitalist. Real economic growth, he says, requires “a belief in entrepreneurship and technology and in business leaders being part of the solution.” Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Jan 10

The Washington Roundtable discusses Mark Zuckerberg’s decision to end its fact-checking program across Meta’s social-media sites. Instead, Meta will release a tool that allows readers to add context and corrections to posts, similar to the way one can leave a “community note” on X. What does this choice mean for truth online in the coming Trump Administration, and have “alternative facts,” as they were dubbed by Kellyanne Conway in 2017, won out? Plus, free speech in the era of Donald Trump, lawsuits brought against the mainstream media, and how journalists will cover President Trump’s second Administration. This week’s reading: “ King Donald and the Presidents at the National Cathedral ,” by Susan B. Glasser “ Why the MAGA Fight Over H-1B Visas Is Crossing Party Lines ,” by John Cassidy “ Lauren Boebert’s Survival Instincts ,” by Peter Hessler Tune in wherever you get your podcasts . Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Jan 8

After nearly a decade as Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau has resigned from office. His stepping down follows a years-long decline in popularity, which stands in sharp contrast to his meteoric rise in 2015. It now seems likely that the Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre, whose far-right populist support some have likened to Trump’s MAGA movement, will attain Canada’s highest office. The New Yorker staff writer Adam Gopnik joins the show to discuss Trudeau’s descent, Poilievre’s ascent, expectations for the upcoming parliamentary election, and what the future of Canadian politics may hold. This week’s reading: “ Why Justin Trudeau Had to Step Down ,” by Adam Gopnik “ How Much Do Democrats Need to Change? ,” by Peter Slevin “ Bourbon Street After the Terror ,” by Paige Williams “ How Sheriffs Might Power Trump’s Deportation Machine ,” by Jessica Pishko “ New Mexico’s Nuclear-Weapons Boom ,” by Abe Streep To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker , visit newyorker.com/podcasts . To send feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com . Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Jan 3

The Political Scene will be back next week. In the meantime, enjoy a recent episode from The New Yorker’s Critics at Large podcast. Artists owe a great debt to ancient Rome. Over the years, it’s provided a backdrop for countless films and novels, each of which has put forward its own vision of the Empire and what it stood for. The hosts Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz discuss the latest entry in that canon, Ridley Scott’s “Gladiator II,” which has drawn massive audiences and made hundreds of millions of dollars at the box office. The hosts also consider other texts that use the same setting, from the religious epic “Ben-Hur” to Sondheim’s farcical swords-and-sandals parody, “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.” Recently, figures from across the political spectrum have leapt to lay claim to antiquity, even as new translations have underscored how little we really understand about these civilizations. “Make ancient Rome strange again. Take away the analogies,” Schwartz says. “Maybe that’s the appeal of the classics: to try to keep returning and understanding, even as we can’t help holding them up as a mirror.” Read, watch, and listen with the critics: “Gladiator II” (2024) “I, Claudius” (1976) “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” (1966) “The Last Temptation of Christ” (1988) “Monty Python’s Life of Brian” (1979) “Cleopatra” (1963) “Spartacus” (1960) “Ben-Hur” (1959) “ Gladiator ” (2000) “The End of History and the Last Man,” by Francis Fukuyama “I, Claudius,” by Robert Graves “ I Hate to Say This, But Men Deserve Better Than Gladiator II, ” by Alison Willmore (Vulture) “On Creating a Usable Past,” by Van Wyck Brook (The Dial) Emily Wilson’s translations of the Odyssey and the Iliad New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Jan 1

The New Yorker staff writer Jay Caspian Kang joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss efforts by the U.S. government to rein in social media, including the latest attempt to ban TikTok. While Kang agrees that society should be more conscientious about how we, especially children, use social media, he argues that efforts to ban these apps also violate the First Amendment. “Social media has become the public square, even if it is privately owned,” he says. This episode was originally published in March, 2024. This week’s reading: “ The Misguided Attempt to Control Tiktok ,” by Jay Caspian Kang To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker , visit newyorker.com/podcasts. To send feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com . Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Dec 30, 2024

President Jimmy Carter has died at the age of one-hundred. He is remembered as a man of paradoxes: an evangelical-Christian Democrat, a white Southern champion of civil rights and solar energy, and a one-term President whose policies have come to seem prescient. Carter was unpopular when he departed the White House, in 1981, but, more than any other President, he saw his reputation improve after he left office. What does the evolution of Carter’s legacy tell us about American politics, and about ourselves? Lawrence Wright spent significant time with Carter and even wrote a play about the Camp David Accords, the peace deal that only Carter, Wright argues, could have brokered between Israel and Egypt. He joins Tyler Foggatt to remember Carter as a man and leader. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Dec 27, 2024

The Washington Roundtable revisits an episode recorded after Henry Kissinger’s death, in November, 2023. Susan B. Glasser, Jane Mayer and Evan Osnos evaluate Kissinger’s controversial legacy, share anecdotes from his time in and around Washington, and discuss how he continued to shape U.S. foreign policy long after leaving the State Department. “There are not that many hundred-year-olds who insist upon their own relevance and actually are relevant,” Glasser says. This week’s reading: “ Henry Kissinger’s Hard Compromises ,” by Evan Osnos “ Why Washington Couldn’t Quit Kissinger ,” by Isaac Chotiner This episode was originally published in December, 2023. To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker , visit newyorker.com/podcasts. To send in feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com with “The Political Scene” in the subject line. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Dec 18, 2024

From the conflict in Gaza and the war in Ukraine to political chaos across Europe and the reëlection of Donald Trump, 2024 has been among the most tumultuous years in recent memory. Isaac Chotiner, the primary contributor to The New Yorker’s Q. & A. segment, has been following it all. He joins the show to reflect on his favorite interviews of the year, and to discuss 2024’s two biggest stories: the violence in Gaza and the reëlection of Donald Trump. Chotiner also talks about Joe Biden’s legacy, and his view on how Biden’s Presidency will be regarded by history. This week’s reading: “ The Year in Brain Rot ,” by Jessica Winter “ Luigi Mangione and the Making of a Modern Antihero ,” by Jessica Winter “ Syria After Assad ,” by Robin Wright “ In South Korea, a Blueprint for Resisting Autocracy? ,” by E. Tammy Kim Tune in to The Political Scene wherever you get your podcasts . Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Dec 16, 2024

Power dynamics in the Middle East shifted dramatically this year. In Lebanon, Israel dealt a severe blow toHezbollah, and another crucial ally of Iran—Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria—was toppled by insurgents. But the historian Rashid Khalidi is skeptical that these changes will set back the Palestinian cause, as it relates to Israel. “This idea that the Palestinians are bereft of allies assumes that they had people who were doing things for their interest,” Khalidi tells David Remnick, “which I don’t think was true.” The limited responses to the war in Gaza by Iran and Hezbollah, Khalidi believes, clearly demonstrate that Iran’s so-called Axis of Resistance “was designed by Iran to protect the Iranian regime. . . . It wasn’t designed to protect Palestine.” Khalidi, a professor emeritus at Columbia University, is the author of a number of books on Palestinian history; among them, “The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine” has been particularly influential. The book helped bring the term “settler colonialism” into common parlance, at least on the left, to describe Israel’s relationship to historic Palestine. Sometimes invoked as a term of opprobrium, “settler colonialism” is strongly disputed by supporters of Israel. Khalidi asserts that the description is historically specific and accurate. The early Zionists, he says, understood their effort as colonization. “That’s not some antisemitic slur,” he says. “That’s the description they gave themselves.” The concept of settler colonialism has been applied, on the political left, to describe Israel’s founding, and to its settlement of the Palestinian-occupied territories. This usage has been disputed by supporters of Israel and by thinkers including Adam Kirsch, an editor at the Wall Street Journal, who has also written about philosophy for The New Yorker. “Settler colonialism is . . . a zero-sum way of looking at the conflict,” Kirsch tells David Remnick. “In the classic examples, it involves the destruction of one people by another and their replacement over a large territory, really a continent-wide territory. That’s not at all the history of Israel and Palestine.” Kirsch made his case in a recent book, “On Settler Colonialism: Ideology, Violence, and Justice.” Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Dec 11, 2024

After a five-day manhunt, Luigi Mangione, a twenty-six-year-old Ivy League graduate, was arrested and charged on Monday with the widely publicized assassination of the UnitedHealthcare C.E.O. Brian Thompson. The case seized public imagination, and there has been a torrent of commentary celebrating Mangione and denigrating Thompson, including fan edits of the alleged shooter to posts sharing personal anecdotes of denied health-insurance claims. “Mangione is going to be seen as a folk hero across the aisle,” the New Yorker staff writer Jia Tolentino tells Tyler Foggatt. What does the lionization of a suspected murderer say about the health of our society? This week’s reading: “ How Daniel Penny Was Found Not Guilty in a Subway Killing That Divided New York ,” by Adam Iscoe “ A Man Was Murdered in Cold Blood and You’re Laughing? ,” by Jia Tolentino “ What Will Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy Accomplish with Doge? ,” by Benjamin Wallace-Wells“ The Fall of Assad’s Syria ,” by Rania Abouzeid To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker , visit newyorker.com/podcasts. To send feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com . Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Dec 9, 2024

Immigration has been the cornerstone of Donald Trump’s political career, and in his second successful Presidential campaign he promised to execute the largest deportation in history. Stephen Miller, Trump’s key advisor on hard-line immigration policy, said that the incoming Administration would “unleash the vast arsenal of federal powers to implement the most spectacular migration crackdown,” possibly involving the use of the military. “I do think they’re going to strain the outer limits of the law on that,” the staff writer Jonathan Blitzer tells David Remnick. “We’re entering unprecedented territory.” Blitzer unpacks some of the anti-immigrant rhetoric, and explains measures that the new Administration is likely to take. “I.C.E. has a policy that discourages arrests at schools, hospitals, places of worship, courts,” he says. That policy can change and, he believes, will. “You’re going to see arrest operations in very scary and upsetting places.” The aim, he thinks, will be “to create a sense of terror. That is going to be the modus operandi of the Administration.” Blitzer is the author of “ Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here ,” a definitive account of the immigration crisis. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Dec 6, 2024

The Washington Roundtable discusses Donald Trump’s transition back into the White House, the world he will inherit in 2025, and his provocative nomination of Pete Hegseth to be Secretary of Defense. In their final Roundtable episode of 2024, Susan B. Glasser , Jane Mayer , and Evan Osnos also reflect on the twists and turns of the past year in politics, including what to make of President Joe Biden’s legacy. This week’s reading: “ The Scandal of Trump’s Cabinet Picks Isn’t Just Their Personal Failings ,” by Susan B. Glasser “ Pete Hegseth’s Secret History ,” by Jane Mayer “ The Demise and Afterlife of Donald Trump’s Criminal Cases ,” by Jeannie Suk Gersen “ Biden’s Pardon of Hunter Further Undermines His Legacy ,” by Isaac Chotiner “ Stopping the Press ,” by David Remnick “ The Immigrants Most Vulnerable to Trump’s Mass Deportation Plans Entered the Country Legally ,” by Jonathan Blitzer To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker , visit newyorker.com/podcasts. To send in feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com with “The Political Scene” in the subject line. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Dec 4, 2024

A year ago, Donald Trump was facing four separate criminal indictments, and had become the first President to be charged with and convicted of a felony. Now that Trump is President-elect, and with the Supreme Court having granted sitting Presidents broad immunity, the Justice Department’s efforts to hold Trump accountable appear to be over. Even so, Trump’s legal saga has radically changed American law and politics, the New Yorker staff writer Jeannie Suk Gersen argues. “These prosecutions forced the Supreme Court to at least answer the question [of Presidential immunity],” Gersen says. “It will affect the kind of people who run for President, and it will affect how they think of their jobs.” This week’s reading: “ Pete Hegseth’s Secret History ,” by Jane Mayer “ Stopping The Press ,” by David Remnick “ The Fundamental Problem with R.F.K., Jr.,’s Nomination to H.H.S. ,” by Dhruv Khullar “ Did the Opioid Epidemic Fuel Donald Trump’s Return to the White House? ,” by Benjamin Wallace-Wells “ Biden’s Pardon of Hunter Further Undermines His Legacy ,” by Isaac Chotiner. “ A Coup, Almost, in South Korea, ” by E. Tammy Kim. To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker , visit newyorker.com/podcasts. To send feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com . Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Nov 25, 2024

Since the founding of the nation, just 116 people have served as Supreme Court Justices; the 116th is Ketanji Brown Jackson, appointed by President Biden in 2022. Jackson joined a Court with six conservative Justices setting a new era of jurisprudence. She took her seat just days after the Dobbs decision, when Justice Samuel Alito’s majority opinion overturned Roe v. Wade. She wrote a blistering dissent to the Harvard decision, which ended affirmative action in college admissions, in which she accused the majority of a “let-them-eat-cake obliviousness” to the reality of race in America. She also dissented in the landmark Presidential-immunity case. Immunity might “incentivize an office holder to push the envelope, with respect to the exercise of their authority,” she tells David Remnick. “It was certainly a concern, and one that I did not perceive the Constitution to permit.” They also discussed the widely reported ethical questions surrounding the Court, and whether the ethical code it adopted ought to have some method of enforcement. But Jackson stressed that whatever the public perception, the nine Justices maintain old traditions of collegiality (no legal talk at lunch, period), and that she sometimes writes majority opinions as well as vigorous dissents. Jackson’s recent memoir is titled “Lovely One,” about her family, youth, and how she got to the highest position in American law. To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker , visit newyorker.com/podcasts. To send in feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com with “The Political Scene” in the subject line. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Nov 23, 2024

The Washington Roundtable discusses how people in D.C. and across the country are preparing themselves for Donald Trump’s second Presidency, and what tools citizens have to protect their rights and push back on abuses of power. The American Civil Liberties Union has called attention to the strategies of litigation, legislation, and mobilization—strategies that are proven to work. David Cole, a former legal director of the A.C.L.U. and a professor of law and public policy at Georgetown University, joins Susan B. Glasser, Jane Mayer, and Evan Osnos to discuss the checks and balances that exist as guardrails in government and civil society, and how those may be utilized in the coming four years. This week’s reading: “ What Could Stop Him? ,” by David Cole ( The New York Review of Books ) “ The Explosion of Matt Gaetz and Other Early Lessons in Trump 2.0 ,” by Susan B. Glasser “ Donald Trump’s Administration Hopefuls Descend on Mar-a-Lago ,” by Antonia Hitchens “ The Pain Creating a New Coalition for Trump ,” by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor “ The Technology the Trump Administration Could Use to Hack Your Phone ,” by Ronan Farrow “ Donald Trump’s U.F.C. Victory Party ,” by Sam Eagan “ Understanding Latino Support for Donald Trump ,” by Geraldo Cadava To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker , visit newyorker.com/podcasts. To send in feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com with “The Political Scene” in the subject line. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Nov 20, 2024

The New Yorker staff writers Dexter Filkins and Clare Malone join Tyler Foggatt to examine Donald Trump’s appointments of former congressman Matt Gaetz and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., to his Cabinet.Gaetz, who has been nominated for Attorney General, is one of Trump’s most vociferous defenders and the former subject of a sex-trafficking investigation run by the Department of Justice. (Gaetz has denied all allegations.) Trump has chosen Kennedy to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, giving one of the world’s most prominent anti-vaccine activists broad powers over public health. How would these men reshape the legal and medical infrastructures of our federal government? And will they even be confirmed? This week’s reading: “ How Far Would Matt Gaetz Go? ,” by Dexter Filkins “ R.F.K., Jr.,’s Next Move ,” by Clare Malone “ Why Is Elon Musk Really Embracing Donald Trump? ,” By John Cassidy “ Trump’s Cabinet of Wonders ,” by David Remnick “ The Most Extreme Cabinet Ever ,” by Susan B. Glasser To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker , visit newyorker.com/podcasts. To send feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com . Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Nov 18, 2024

American voters have elected a President with broadly, overtly authoritarian aims. It’s hardly the first time that the democratic process has brought an anti-democratic leader to power. The political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, who both teach at Harvard, assert that we shouldn’t be shocked by the Presidential result. “It’s not up to voters to defend a democracy,” Levitsky says. “That’s asking far, far too much of voters, to cast their ballot on the basis of some set of abstract principles or procedures.” He adds, “With the exception of a handful of cases, voters never, ever—in any society, in any culture—prioritize democracy over all else. Individual voters worry about much more mundane things, as is their right. It is up to élites and institutions to protect democracy—not voters.” Levitsky and Ziblatt published “ How Democracies Die ” during Donald Trump’s first Administration, but they argue that what’s ailing our democracy runs much deeper—and that it didn’t start with Trump. “We’re the only advanced, old, rich democracy that has faced the level of democratic backsliding that we’ve experienced. . . . So we need to kind of step back and say, ‘What has gone wrong here?’ If we don’t ask those kinds of hard questions, we’re going to continue to be in this roiling crisis,” Ziblatt says. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Nov 13, 2024

The second Trump Administration might dramatically reshape the foundations of the federal government for decades to come. Meanwhile, the Democratic Party is reckoning with what could be interpreted as a generational rebuke of its platform and presentation. But is this the beginning of a mass political realignment in the United States? And how will politicians communicate their platforms in a world where the “attention economy” has so radically shifted? Author, political commentator, and MSNBC host Chris Hayes joins guest host Andrew Marantz for an election postmortem and to discuss where the Democrats go from here. This week’s reading: “ Donald Trump, Reprised ” “ The Tucker Carlson Road Show ,” by Andrew Marantz “ Does Hungary Offer a Glimpse of Our Authoritarian Future? ,” by Andrew Marantz “ Why We Can’t Stop Arguing About Whether Trump Is a Fascist ,” by Andrew Marantz “ Why Was It So Hard for the Democrats to Replace Biden ,” by Andrew Marantz Tune in to The Political Scene wherever you get your podcasts . Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Nov 8, 2024

The Washington roundtable is joined by David Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker , to discuss how Donald Trump, a convicted felon and sexual abuser, won both the Electoral College and the popular vote—a first for a Republican President since 2004. Democrats lost almost every swing state, even as abortion-rights ballot measures found favor in some conservative states. On this crossover episode with The New Yorker Radio Hour, they discuss Kamala Harris’s campaign, Trump’s overtly authoritarian rhetoric, and the American electorate’s rightward trajectory. This week’s reading: “ Donald Trump’s Revenge ,” by Susan B. Glasser “ 2016 and 2024 ,” by Jelani Cobb “ How Donald Trump, the Leader of White Grievance, Gained Among Hispanic Voters ,” by Kelefa Sanneh “ The Reckoning of the Democratic Party ,” by Jay Caspian Kang “ How America Embraced Gender War ,” by Jia Tolentino “ Donald Trump’s Second Term Is Joe Biden’s Real Legacy ,” by Isaac Chotiner To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker , visit newyorker.com/podcasts. To send in feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com with “The Political Scene” in the subject line. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Nov 7, 2024

Four years after refusing to accept defeat and encouraging a violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, Donald J. Trump has once again been elected President of the United States. The former President, who in the past year alone has been convicted of a felony and has survived two assassination attempts, campaigned largely on a platform of mass deportations, trade wars, and retribution for his detractors. On Tuesday, he secured the Presidency thanks to a surge of rural voters, high turnout among young men, and unprecedented gains with Black and Latino populations. What does a second Trump term mean for America? Clare Malone and Jay Caspian Kang, who’ve been covering the election for The New Yorker , join Tyler Foggatt to discuss how we got here, and the uncertain future of the Democratic Party. This week’s reading: “ Donald Trump’s Revenge,” by Susan B. Glasser The Americans Prepping for a Second Civil War , by Charles Bethea What’s the Matter with Young Male Voters? , by Jay Caspian Kang Tune in to The Political Scene wherever you get your podcasts . Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Nov 4, 2024

In recent weeks and months, dozens of prominent security and military officials and Republican politicians have come out against Donald Trump, declaring him a security threat, unfit for office, and, in some cases, a fascist. Way out in front of this movement was Liz Cheney. Up until 2021, she was the third-ranking Republican in Congress, but after the January 6th insurrection she voted to impeach Trump. She then served as vice-chair of the House Select Committee on the January 6th attack. She must have expected it would cost her the midterms and her seat in Congress, which ended up being the case when Wyoming voters rejected her in 2022. Since then, Cheney has gone further, campaigning forcefully on behalf of Vice-President Harris. David Remnick spoke with Cheney last week at The New Yorker Festival, shortly after Jeff Bezos, owner of the Washington Post, blocked its planned endorsement of Harris. “It absolutely proves the danger of Donald Trump,” Cheney said. “When you have Jeff Bezos apparently afraid to issue an endorsement for the only candidate in the race who’s a stable, responsible adult, because he fears Donald Trump, that tells you why we have to work so hard to make sure that Donald Trump isn’t elected,” Cheney told Remnick. “And I cancelled my subscription to the Washington Post.” Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Nov 1, 2024

The Washington Roundtable discusses the 2024 election with the historian Michael Beschloss, before a live audience at The New Yorker Festival, on October 26th. He calls this election a “turning point” as monumental as the election of 1860—on the eve of the Civil War—and that of 1940, when the U.S. was deciding whether to adopt or fight Fascism. “I think Donald Trump meets most of the parts of the definition of the word fascist,” Beschloss says. “You go through all of American history, and you cannot find another major party nominee who has promised to be dictator for a day, which we all know will not be only for a day.” But, if Trump does return to the White House, he adds, there is still hope that the rule of law, public protest, and the presence of state capitals free of federal domination will allow the U.S. to resist autocracy. This week’s reading: “ Garbage Time at the 2024 Finish Line ,” by Susan B. Glasser “ Safeguarding the Pennsylvania Election ,” by Eliza Griswold “ The Fight Over Truth in a Blue-Collar Pennsylvania County ,” by Clare Malone “ Standing Up to Trump ,” by David Remnick “ The Trump Show Comes to Madison Square Garden ,” by Andrew Marantz “ The Obamas Campaign for Kamala Harris ,” by Emily Witt “ Trump’s Health, and Ours ,” by Dhruv Khullar To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker , visit newyorker.com/podcasts. To send in feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com with “The Political Scene” in the subject line. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Oct 30, 2024

At Donald Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden this past weekend, the comedian Tony Hinchcliffe called Puerto Rico an “island of garbage.” In the swing state of Pennsylvania, which is home to nearly half a million people of Puerto Rican descent, the fallout from Hinchcliffe’s offensive remarks threatens to shift the balance of the Latino electorate. The New Yorker contributing writer Geraldo Cadava joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss the public response to the rally and why the Republican Party has appealed to Latino voters in recent years. “In all of the interviews of Latino Republicans that I’ve done over the past several years, they will point to real concerns they have about crime, safety, charter schools, immigration, the economy that they feel like the Democrats haven’t had an answer for,” Cadava says. This week’s reading: “ The Political Journey of a Top Latino Strategist for Trump ,” by Geraldo Cadava “ The Radio Station That Latino Voters Trust ,” by Stephania Taladrid “ Donald Trump and the F-Word ,” by Susan B. Glasser “ The Trump Show Comes to Madison Square Garden ,” by Andrew Marantz “ Bidenomics Is Starting to Transform America. Why Has No One Noticed? ,” by Nicolas Lemann Tune in to The Political Scene wherever you get your podcasts . Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Oct 28, 2024

In these final days of the Presidential campaign, Vice-President Kamala Harris has been getting in front of voters as much as she can. Given the polls showing shaky support among Black men, one man she absolutely had to talk to was Lenard McKelvey, much better known as Charlamagne tha God. As a co-host of the syndicated “Breakfast Club” morning radio show, Charlamagne has interviewed Presidential candidates such as Harris, Hillary Clinton, and Joe Biden, as well as New York City’s embattled Mayor Eric Adams and many more. He tells David Remnick that he received death threats just for speaking with Harris—“legitimate threats, not . . . somebody talking crazy on social media. That’s just me having a conversation with her about the state of our society. So imagine what she actually gets.” Charlamagne believes firmly that the narrative of Harris losing Black support is overstated, or a polling fiction, but he agrees that the Democrats have a messaging problem. The author of a book titled “Get Honest or Die Lying,” Charlamagne says that the Party has shied away from widespread concerns about immigration and the economy, to its detriment. “I just want to see more honesty from Democrats. Like I always say, Republicans are more sincere about their lies than Democrats are about their truth!” Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Oct 26, 2024

The Washington Roundtable discusses the avalanche of disinformation that has taken over the 2024 election cycle, including an A.I. video meant to slander Tim Walz and claims that the votes are rigged before they’re even counted. Will this torrent of lies tip the election in favor of Donald Trump? Is there a way out of this morass of untruth? “I think the lies are clearly winning,” the staff writer Evan Osnos says. “But I would also say that that doesn’t mean that we should abandon the tools that are available.” Osnos notes recent defamation rulings against Rudy Giuliani and Fox News over false statements about the 2020 election as cases in point. This week’s reading: “ Donald Trump and the F-Word ,” by Susan B. Glasser “ Can Older Americans Swing the Election for Harris? ,” by Bill McKibben “ What’s the Matter with Young Male Voters? ,” by Jay Caspian Kang “ Door-Knocking in Door County ,” by Emily Witt “ What Would Donald Trump Do to the Economy? ,” by John Cassidy “ The Tight-Knit World of Kamala Harris’s Sorority ,” by Jazmine Hughes To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker , visit newyorker.com/podcasts. To send in feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com with “The Political Scene” in the subject line. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Oct 24, 2024

Since Donald Trump tried to challenge the 2020 election, the Republican National Committee has been hard at work building a network of poll watchers to observe ballot counting in counties across America. The program could help Trump and the R.N.C. challenge the results of the 2024 election should Trump lose, while also driving turnout among Republican voters who are skeptical of election integrity in the U.S. The New Yorker contributing writer Antonia Hitchens joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss how the R.N.C.’s poll-watching efforts may come into play on November 5th and beyond. This week’s reading: “ The U.S. Spies Who Sound the Alarm About Election Interference ,” by David Kirkpatrick “ The Election-Interference Merry-Go-Round ,” by Jon Allsop To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker , visit newyorker.com/podcasts. To send feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com . Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices