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. 

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. 

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. 

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.

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.

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.”

“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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

The 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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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.