Diane Rehm: On My Mind

Diane Rehm’s weekly podcast features newsmakers, writers, artists and thinkers on the issues she cares about most: what’s going on in Washington, ideas that inform, and the latest on living well as we live longer.

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Episodes

Diane's farewell message

Diane Rehm started her career at WAMU 52 years ago as a volunteer. In 1979, she began hosting WAMU’s local morning talk show, Kaleidoscope , which was renamed The Diane Rehm Show in 1984. The Diane Rehm Show grew from a local program to one with international reach and a weekly on-air audience of nearly 3 million. In 2016, Diane decided to step away from daily live radio, and brought her unique mix of curiosity, honesty, intimacy and four decades of hosting experience to the podcast world with O...

May 08, 2025•2 min

Reflections on 100 days of the Trump administration

This is Diane’s final episode of On My Mind . She will be moving on from WAMU on May 2, after more than 50 years at the station. So, who better to have as her guest for this last interview than Susan Page? Susan Page and Diane have both traced the comings and goings of Washington for decades, Page at USA Today, Diane in public radio. And they often had the good fortune of sitting down together to talk about politics, and more importantly, what the actions of our government mean to you, the publi...

May 01, 2025•42 min

Rep. Jamie Raskin on countering "MAGA chaos"

Maryland Congressman Jamie Raskin was first elected to the House in 2016, just as Donald Trump ascended to the presidency for the first time. Since then, few Democrats have worked as aggressively to hold the president accountable for what he sees as violations of law and constitutional order. Raskin led the second impeachment trial of President Trump for his actions on January 6th and now acts as the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee. When elected to the position in December, Raskin ...

Apr 24, 2025•31 min

How deportations ignited a clash between the White House and the courts

Can the courts act as a check on the Trump administration’s power? Though this question is not new, it has taken on an urgency as the case of a Maryland man accidentally deported to a prison in El Salvador has highlighted the White House’s increasingly combative stance towards the judiciary. This week Trump’s team appeared to flout a unanimous decision by the Supreme Court that said the government must “facilitate” Kilmer Abrego Garcia’s return to the U.S. Days later, a federal court judge threa...

Apr 16, 2025•36 min

The impact of Trump’s about-face on tariffs

President Trump announced yesterday he is delaying the reciprocal tariffs he had imposed on dozens of countries for 90 days. But, he said, he is ratcheting up pressure on China , which he has accused of ripping off the United States for decades. This came a week after “Liberation Day,” when Trump declared a national emergency to pave the way for the most sweeping trade duties since 1910. This move had sent global markets into a tailspin and unleashed a flood of concern from the business communit...

Apr 10, 2025•26 min

Uncovering the dark secrets of Johnson and Johnson

Johnson & Johnson was founded in the late 1800s and grew into one of the most trusted brands in America for its baby powder, Tylenol, Band-Aids, then cutting edge pharmaceuticals. Today, the company is worth more than $380 billion. But behind the success, says investigative journalist Gardiner Harris, lies a wake of deceitful and dangerous corporate practices that have threatened the lives of millions. “These guys are incredibly intimidating,” he says of the company. “And when they don’t suc...

Apr 03, 2025•44 min

How Trump is using fear as a political tool

The pressure campaigns of the Trump administration are beginning to bear fruit. Last week saw two major institutions acquiesce to the president’s demands after actions taken by the White House threatened to undermine their budgets, workforce and, in some cases, ability to perform core business. The first was Paul Weiss , a major law firm that some accuse of trading pro bono work on behalf of Trump causes to maintain business ties to federal agencies. The second was Columbia University, which agr...

Mar 27, 2025•38 min

The latest on Alzheimer's research -- and why it might be at risk

Nearly 7 million Americans are living with Alzheimer’s disease. By 2050, this number is projected to rise to nearly 13 million. For years, research into the disease remained underfunded -- and patients who received a diagnosis had few options when it came to treatment. But in recent years, that has begun to change. “There are exciting developments in the research field at each stage of our lives that affect the strength of our brain and the ability of the brain to resist brain challenges,” says ...

Mar 20, 2025•40 min

How the powerful are trying to undermine press freedoms in the US

Donald Trump’s love-hate relationship with the news media was on full display throughout his first term. He screamed “fake news” at negative coverage and labeled journalists the “enemy of the people.” But lately, he has taken his campaign beyond the court of public opinion, filing lawsuits against ABC , CBS , The Des Moines Register , and the Pulitzer Board . David Enrich is the business investigations editor for the New York Times . He says Trump’s legal actions are part of a broader conservati...

Mar 14, 2025•39 min

A Trump critic on his worst fears -- and a way forward

In the weeks preceding President Trump’s address to a joint session of Congress Tuesday night, the administration was busy – taking an axe to federal agencies, imposing tariffs on neighboring countries, and reversing course on U.S. support for Ukraine. But we heard little about these issues from the president in this speech. What the president did do was tick off a list of accomplishments, including money saved through contracts cancelled and fraud exposed – many of these examples exaggerated or...

Mar 06, 2025•41 min

The fate of the CFPB and why we should care

On February 7, billionaire Elon Musk posted a message on his social media platform X: “CFPB RIP,” along with a tombstone emoji. In the days that followed, the workings of the government’s financial industry watchdog created in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis essentially ground to a halt. More than a hundred and fifty employees were let go, with more layoffs expected. Donald Trump has explicitly said he wants to get rid of the agency. And when you try to access the CFPB’s website, you ...

Feb 27, 2025•36 min

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