RSVP for The Intercept Briefing Podcast’s Live Conversation on Gaza. Sign up to join us on Tuesday, May 19, at 5 p.m. ET/2 p.m. PT . Join The Intercept Briefing podcast for a special live episode taping with Intercept journalist Jonah Valdez and Tariq Kenney-Shawa, an Al-Shabaka U.S. policy fellow and co-host of Al-Shabaka’s Policy Lab series. Show description: In 16 pages, the Trump administration’s new official counterterrorism strategy outlines in broad terms who it views as terrorist threats...
May 15, 2026•42 min•Season 3Ep. 21
The U.S. Supreme Court dealt a fatal blow to the Voting Rights Act, triggering a new wave of redistricting fights in the midst of midterm primary elections. Last week, the court struck down a Louisiana congressional map with a second majority-Black district. The decision requires there to be evidence of intentional racism to prove that a map is discriminatory, making it nearly impossible to successfully challenge racial gerrymandering. Following the 6-3 decision along partisan lines, Louisiana s...
May 08, 2026•44 min•Season 3Ep. 20
The White House Correspondents’ Dinner last weekend became the site of the third failed attempt to assassinate President Donald Trump. “I remember the feeling was very similar to when it was clear that the House had been invaded on January 6, 2021,” Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., who was in attendance, tells The Intercept Briefing. “Everybody was afraid that somebody had come in with an AR-15 or something like that.” This week on the podcast, host Akela Lacy speaks to Raskin about his experience at t...
May 01, 2026•46 min•Season 3Ep. 19
It’s primary season, this time against a backdrop of heightened concerns and awareness of powerful figures skirting accountability for sexual abuse and misconduct. Survivors of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein have “made accountability for sexual abuse and sexual violence an electoral issue,” says Intercept politics reporter Jessica Washington. One of the biggest stories to shake up politics in recent weeks are sexual assault allegations that upended Rep. Eric Swalwell’s bid to become the ...
Apr 24, 2026•35 min•Season 3Ep. 18
Sen. Bernie Sanders forced a vote on Wednesday to block the sales of bombs and bulldozers to Israel. The resolutions failed mostly along party lines with a handful of defections to the Republican side, but a record number of Democrats voted against sending weapons to Israel. “A supermajority of Democrats oppose this war, are generally against America's global military interventions,” former Sanders foreign policy adviser Matt Duss tells The Intercept Briefing. Yet Senate Minority Leader Chuck Sc...
Apr 17, 2026•45 min•Season 3Ep. 17
Vote here to help The Intercept Briefing win its first Webby Award for best news and politics podcast. Show description: As talks to end the U.S.–Israel war on Iran break down and President Donald Trump demands a naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, journalist Amy Goodman says that in times of war and conflicts, “What I care about is the answer, and I care that people in this country don't get health care at the same time that money goes to kill others in another country.” This week on The In...
Apr 14, 2026•32 min•Season 3Ep. 16
Vote here to help The Intercept Briefing win its first Webby Award for best news and politics podcast. Show description: Vice President JD Vance is set to lead renewed negotiations with Iran this weekend to bring an end to the U.S.–Israel war on the country that stretched into a second month. The talks come after a roller coaster of a week, which began with President Donald Trump threatening genocidal war crimes against Iran. “A whole civilization will die tonight,” he wrote on social media, “ne...
Apr 10, 2026•46 min•Season 3Ep. 15
Vote here to help The Intercept Briefing win its first Webby Award for best news and politics podcast. Show description: After more than a month into the U.S.–Israel conflict with Iran , President Donald Trump addressed the nation directly for the first time on Wednesday about why he dragged the country into an unprovoked illegal war. During his wide-ranging speech, Trump made numerous false claims, including repeatedly emphasizing the nuclear threat Iran posed. The reasons the Trump administrat...
Apr 03, 2026•40 min•Season 3Ep. 14
Donald Trump’s second term has been broadly defined by an overwhelming sense of chaos. Every week the U.S. finds itself in a new crisis of the president’s making. The war in Iran and the broader Middle East is stretching into its fourth week, as the administration prepares to send thousands of troops to the region for a possible ground invasion . The U.S. oil blockade on Cuba has plunged the country deeper into a humanitarian crisis. The Department of Homeland Security sent ICE to airports acros...
Mar 27, 2026•43 min•Season 3Ep. 13
From the White House to Iran’s former crown prince, proponents of the U.S.–Israel war on Iran sell it to the American people — and Iranians themselves — as a crusade for liberation. Instead, the regime remains in place as the death toll grows, environmental hazards proliferate, and civilian infrastructure is decimated. As if the destruction inside Iran itself wasn't enough, the war is starting to have serious ramifications for the global economy and, more to the point, expanding into neighboring...
Mar 20, 2026•47 min•Season 3Ep. 12
In the last few days, President Donald Trump has said that the U.S-Israel war on Iran will end soon, after oil prices jumped and the growing regional conflict continued to shake markets . After a wave of heavy bombardments throughout Iran, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth promised another round, “The most fighters, the most bombers, the most strikes.” “Hegseth has, yes, said that it's going to be basically death and destruction from the air, and they're delivering that,” Hooman Majd , an Iranian Am...
Mar 11, 2026•47 min•Season 3Ep. 11
The Israel–U.S. military campaign in Iran has killed more than 1,000 people since the assault began on February 28. A war powers resolution in the Senate to curb President Donald Trump’s ability to drag the U.S. into the war failed on Wednesday. Similarly, a measure in the House failed on Thursday. “This war is just a few days old and it's escalating really quickly,” says Ali Gharib, senior editor at The Intercept. “It's becoming a regional conflict,” as Iran retaliates and targets U.S. bases as...
Mar 06, 2026•36 min•Season 3Ep. 10
“The deliberate cruelty that they found humor in stood out to me,” says Jordan Uhl of Donald Trump’s Tuesday evening State of the Union. This week on the Intercept Briefing, co-hosts Uhl, Akela Lacy, and Jessica Washington disentangle Trump’s nearly two-hour-long speech so you don’t have to. “This is who these people are. In some ways, they're trying to sugarcoat what they're doing, but in other ways they're so blatant about doing really evil things around the world and being totally OK with it,...
Feb 25, 2026•38 min•Season 3Ep. 9
Cuba is spiraling into a humanitarian crisis. The country’s long-standing economic and political turmoil reached new heights this week as the effects of the Trump administration’s oil blockade took hold. The president’s targeting of Cuba is part of the administration’s broader attacks on the region, where the U.S. kidnapped Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores earlier this year and has executed more than 140 people in boat strikes . As the U.S. hurtles toward war with Ir...
Feb 20, 2026•59 min•Season 3Ep. 8
Cut through the noise with The Intercept’s reporters as they tackle the most urgent issues of the moment. The Briefing is a weekly podcast delivering incisive political analysis and deep investigative reporting, hosted by The Intercept’s journalists and contributors including Jessica Washington, Akela Lacy, and Jordan Uhl. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Feb 18, 2026•58 sec
Attorney General Pam Bondi testified before the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday, defending the Justice Department’s widely criticized rollout of the Epstein files against accusations that her department is shielding powerful men, including President Donald Trump, at the expense of survivors. Democrats, who reviewed the unredacted files for the first time this week, revealed that the names of “wealthy, powerful men” were improperly redacted, while the names of victims were left exposed. Th...
Feb 13, 2026•34 min•Season 3Ep. 7
The word “terrorist” wasn’t coined on September 11, 2001, but the defining event of the early 21st century ushered it in as the United States’ go-to term for demonizing outsiders and dissenters alike. The so-called “war on terror” transformed the way the U.S. wields power at home and abroad, enabling mass surveillance and a crackdown on the right to free speech. It became reflexive for the U.S. to disparage immigrants and protesters as supporters of terrorism. President Donald Trump has embraced...
Feb 06, 2026•39 min•Season 3Ep. 6
In the two months Minnesota has been under siege by federal agents, immigration officers have shot and killed two U.S. citizens, poet and artist Renee Good and ICU nurse Alex Pretti . Local and state law enforcement say they’ve been blocked from properly investigating the shootings of Good and Pretti. “The federal government has blocked our state BCA, so that's the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. They are the state law enforcement agency that has authority to investigate any kind of deadly use ...
Jan 30, 2026•53 min•Season 3Ep. 5
The people of Iran are in the midst of one of the country’s biggest uprisings — and harshest government crackdowns — since the Iranian Revolution. It started with shopkeepers in bazaars closing their doors at the end of December in protest of the plummeting Iranian rial and economic distress. But demonstrations soon spread to universities and across the country to every single province. Working-class Iranians wanted relief — both from the inflation crisis and U.S sanctions. This week on The Inte...
Jan 23, 2026•49 min•Season 3Ep. 4
Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Jonathan Ross fatally shot Renee Good , a 37-year-old mother of three, in Minneapolis last week, unleashing a wave of anti-ICE protests and sentiment throughout Minnesota and the rest of the United States. On Wednesday evening, federal immigration agents shot and wounded a man in Minneapolis, adding to the tension in the Twin Cities. President Donald Trump threatened to send in troops to crush the unrest. “What should be very clear to all Americans now i...
Jan 16, 2026•1 hr•Season 3Ep. 3
How long will the United States claim control over Venezuela? “Only time will tell,” President Donald Trump told the New York Times on Wednesday — potentially years. U.S. troops invaded the country over the weekend, kidnapping President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores. Maduro and Flores pleaded not guilty to narco-terrorism charges in New York on Monday. They now sit in a Brooklyn jail, awaiting trial. Trump and administration officials have justified ousting Maduro by claiming it was ...
Jan 09, 2026•38 min•Season 3Ep. 2
After OpenAI CEO Sam Altman launched ChatGPT in 2022, the race for dominance in the field of artificial intelligence hit warp speed. Silicon Valley has poured billions of dollars into developing AI, building data centers, and promising a future free from the chains of unfulfilling work across the globe. But in “Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI,” tech reporter Karen Hao pulls back the curtain, unveiling the human and environmental cost of artificial intelligence and the ...
Jan 02, 2026•37 min•Season 3Ep. 1
We're excited to share another episode of The Intercept’s new podcast Collateral Damage . The investigative series examines the half-century-long war on drugs, its enduring ripple effects, and the devastating consequences of building a massive war machine aimed at the public itself. Hosted by Radley Balko , an investigative journalist who has been covering the drug war and the criminal justice system for more than 20 years, each episode takes an in-depth look at someone who was unjustly killed i...
Dec 26, 2025•59 min
The most defining feature of Donald Trump’s first year back in office has been the brutality of his deportation machine and his administration's numerous attempts to upend due process. Back in March, the Trump administration wrongly deported Kilmar Ábrego Garcia to a notoriously violent prison in El Salvador. Ábrego Garcia’s legal status protected him from deportation to his home country for fear of persecution. “I think most Americans are intelligent enough to recognize that everybody deserves ...
Dec 19, 2025•46 min•Season 2Ep. 51
In September, The Intercept broke the story of the U.S. military ordering an additional strike on an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean. Since then, U.S. boat strikes have expanded to the Pacific Ocean. The Intercept has documented 22 strikes as of early December that have killed at least 87 people . Alejandro Carranza Medina, a Colombian national, was one of the dozens of people killed in these strikes. His family says he was just out fishing for marlin and tuna when U.S. forces attacked his bo...
Dec 12, 2025•32 min•Season 2Ep. 50
As of December first, officials across the U.S. have executed 44 people in 11 states, making 2025 one of the deadliest years for state sanctioned executions. In this week’s episode we talk to Malcolm Gladwell, whose new podcast series dives into one case to understand how the system operates and the reality that who gets sentenced to die often depends on things that have nothing to do with guilt or innocence. Intercept reporter Liliana Segura also joins the conversation. Hosted on Acast. See aca...
Dec 05, 2025•40 min•Season 2Ep. 49
This week on The Intercept Briefing: What does it mean to work full-time in America and still not afford a place to live? We're resharing our conversation with journalist Brian Goldstone , whose new book “ There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America ,” examines this growing crisis. Goldstone's book — a finalist for the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction — reveals how people holding down jobs are increasingly living in their cars, motels, shelters, or on the streets. This e...
Nov 28, 2025•43 min
The Labor Department reported September jobs numbers on Thursday, showing employers added 119,000 jobs to the economy but also an increase in unemployment to 4.4 percent. “The September report shows fairly good job growth, but every other report we have for October shows a slowdown,” says Robert Reich , the former secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton. “Real wages — that is, wages adjusted for inflation — are going down for most people. The bottom 90 percent of Americans are in very ba...
Nov 21, 2025•28 min•Season 2Ep. 48
It’s the end of an era. Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who counts among her legacies in Congress successfully undercutting the push for Medicare for All, announced last week that she is retiring from Congress. The two-time former speaker of the House made her announcement after Democrats made remarkable gains in nationwide elections, campaigning on affordability and standing up to the Trump administration. “We are in this era where we need new ideas, we need new leaders, we need people who are goi...
Nov 14, 2025•43 min•Season 2Ep. 47
On Tuesday, voters in Virginia, New York City, New Jersey, Texas, California, and Mississippi overwhelmingly supported Democratic candidates and ballot initiatives. In New York, despite facing racist opposition from both Republicans and much of the Democratic establishment, Zohran Mamdani sailed to victory . The new mayor-elect won over 50 percent of the vote in a three-way race. And in Virginia, Governor-elect Abigail Spanberger won with an even greater margin over her opponent, Winsome Earle-S...
Nov 06, 2025•37 min•Season 2Ep. 46
