Illinois congressional candidate Kat Abughazaleh was charged earlier this week with federal conspiracy charges for protesting outside of Broadview ICE Processing Center last month. Along with five others, Abughazaleh was indicted on felony charges for assaulting and conspiring to injure law enforcement officers. The 11-page indictment alleges the protesters “banged aggressively” on a federal agent's car and “pushed against the vehicle to hinder and impede its movement.” They also allegedly scrat...
Nov 01, 2025•22 min•Season 2Ep. 45
Once again, Israeli bombs rained down on Gaza. The latest wave of strikes killed more than 100 people, mostly women and children , according to health authorities. The bombardment marked the deadliest day since the weeks-old U.S.-brokered ceasefire between Israel and Hamas began on October 10 — a ceasefire Israel has repeatedly broken with impunity. “As the Trump administration likes to say, the ceasefire is still in place. And the media has parroted that as well. But an overwhelming amount of p...
Oct 31, 2025•25 min•Season 2Ep. 44
New York City is on the cusp of an election in which what once looked impossible has begun to seem inevitable. Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist member of the New York state Assembly, is heavily favored to beat Andrew Cuomo, New York’s onetime Democratic governor and a former icon of the party establishment, in a race for mayor that has become among the most-watched in the nation. Cuomo and Mamdani articulate two vastly different visions for New York City — and where the Democratic Party is...
Oct 24, 2025•44 min•Season 2Ep. 43
The first phase of the U.S.-brokered Gaza ceasefire deal began to move forward this week as Israeli and Palestinian hostages have been released and aid trickles in. “The crossings were partially reopened, so some aid is coming in — food, water, and medicine — but only a small amount compared to the huge need,” says Intercept contributor Taqwa Ahmed Al-Wawi . “People are surviving, but every day it is still a struggle.” “There is a pause in the bombing, and I say 'a pause' because there are still...
Oct 17, 2025•44 min•Season 2Ep. 42
We're excited to share a new podcast from The Intercept called 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 in the d...
Oct 10, 2025•55 min
The United States has executed 21 people over the last month in targeted drone strikes off the coast of Venezuela. The Trump administration has so far authorized at least four strikes against people it claims are suspected “narco-terrorists.” The strikes mark a dark shift in the administration’s approach to what it’s framing as an international drug war — one it’s waging without congressional oversight . “There actually could be more strikes,” says Intercept senior reporter Nick Turse . This wee...
Oct 10, 2025•42 min•Season 2Ep. 41
The federal government shut down on Wednesday as President Donald Trump threatened mass federal layoffs. Republicans are blaming Democrats for the shutdown, while Democrats are refusing to support a Republican spending bill without guarantees to extend Obamacare provisions set to expire and reverse GOP health care cuts earlier this year. “Democrats are ... trying to reverse some of the cuts from the 'One Big Beautiful Bill' that was passed earlier this year to Medicaid,” says Intercept politics ...
Oct 02, 2025•35 min•Season 2Ep. 40
In the early hours of Wednesday morning, drones attacked a fleet of small boats bringing humanitarian aid to Gaza. The Global Sumud Flotilla , as it’s known, is the latest group attempting to break Israel’s siege on Gaza to deliver food and medical supplies. This week on The Intercept Briefing, host Jordan Uhl speaks to Tommy Marcus, who goes by Quentin Quarantino on Instagram, about the convoy enduring attacks on international waters as volunteers remain resolved to continue their mission to de...
Sep 26, 2025•45 min•Season 2Ep. 39
In the wake of Charlie Kirk's death, conservatives have moved quickly to consolidate power and attack their political enemies, whose relative impotence and penchant for capitulation to power and decorum have been on full display this week. "You have these right-wing forces that smell blood, they smell weakness, and they're going after everyone who doesn't comply and run through the obligatory kind of mourning," said Adam H. Johnson , a media analyst and co-host of the “ Citations Needed ” podcas...
Sep 19, 2025•41 min•Season 2Ep. 38
After the fatal shooting of right-wing personality Charlie Kirk on Wednesday afternoon, the rhetoric on the right quickly escalated. Influential voices on social media declared war on the left , despite the absence of any knowledge about the suspect or their motive at the time. President Donald Trump made a formal address where he pledged to go after the “radical left.” “We are seeing language weaponized so swiftly,” says Intercept columnist Natasha Lennard . “I think the Trump administration ha...
Sep 12, 2025•26 min•Season 2Ep. 37
The ghost of Jeffrey Epstein. Another government shutdown. The U.S. military shooting down a boat . The Centers for Disease Control is in turmoil just ahead of flu season. And where in the world will the National Guard go next? This is the world Congress returned to this week. If your head is spinning, you’re not the only one. This week on The Intercept Briefing, we break it all down with host Akela Lacy and politics reporters Jessica Washington and Matt Sledge. “The biggest thing hanging over e...
Sep 05, 2025•32 min•Season 2Ep. 36
Homeless sweeps have become the go-to, bipartisan performance of “doing something” about the U.S. housing crisis — a spectacle embraced by Democrats and Republicans, city halls, and the White House alike. But sweeps are not a solution. They’re a way to make homelessness less visible while the crisis deepens. The roots stretch back decades. President Ronald Reagan’s Tax Reform Act of 1986 pulled the federal government out of building and maintaining public housing, paving the way for a fragmented...
Aug 29, 2025•43 min•Season 2Ep. 35
The Democratic Party has lost millions of voters since 2020, according to new analysis from the New York Times . Meanwhile, Republicans are gaining ground, even in traditional blue states, as more voters register with the GOP. “We're missing layups on the basics right now,” says longtime Democratic strategist Nina Smith, alarmed by the news. “We're losing on voter registration in 30 states — the only 30 states that track voter registration between parties. We're losing in every single one.” This...
Aug 22, 2025•38 min•Season 2Ep. 34
Since the Supreme Court’s landmark June 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization overturned Roe v. Wade and federal abortion protections, a wave of state legislatures have rushed to impose bans and restrictions. According to the Guttmacher Institute , 41 states now have abortion bans in effect, including 12 with total bans. “We hear about the endless, supposedly unintentional consequences of abortion bans like rising maternal mortality, child rape victims forced to travel ac...
Aug 15, 2025•26 min•Season 2Ep. 33
As the Israeli government weighs, once again, expanding its genocidal military campaign in Gaza, the enclave is sliding into a full-scale famine. “We're seeing a purely manmade famine,” says Bob Kitchen, vice president of emergencies at the International Rescue Committee . “The Gaza Strip is surrounded by very fertile farming territory. All of the countries around Gaza have more than enough food.” This week on the Intercept Briefing, Intercept reporter Jonah Valdez speaks with Kitchen about what...
Aug 08, 2025•32 min•Season 2Ep. 32
Nationwide protests. Racist discrimination. Militarized police. These were the characteristics used to describe America during the long hot summer of 1967, when riots swept through more than 150 cities. They still describe America today, as the government has responded to protests against racist policing and immigration raids with militarized police forces backed by the Marines and the National Guard . It all sounds eerily similar to the America of more than half a century ago, when a presidenti...
Aug 01, 2025•26 min•Season 2Ep. 31
More than 1,000 Palestinians seeking food have been killed by Israeli forces in just the last few months, according to the United Nations. Israel’s blockade on aid, ongoing bombardment, and the dismantling of independent relief efforts have pushed Gaza to the brink of mass famine. At least 600,000 people are suffering from severe malnutrition, and aid groups warn of a manufactured humanitarian catastrophe. “It's not about the distribution of food, it's not about humanitarian aid. It's about crea...
Jul 25, 2025•39 min•Season 2Ep. 30
During Donald Trump’s first term, the Supreme Court made some effort to check his power. But that era is over. The court has ruled that Trump cannot be prosecuted for actions he took as president, including for his role in the January 6 attack on the Capitol, and it just wrapped its latest term by restricting lower courts' power to block his unlawful orders on issues like birthright citizenship, abortion care, and immigrants’ basic rights. “What the Supreme Court did is it limited lower courts’ ...
Jul 18, 2025•39 min•Season 2Ep. 29
On the Fourth of July, President Donald Trump signed into law a bill that constitutes one of the largest transfers of wealth in history — taking money away from working people and giving it to the nation’s elite. The bill is the culmination of years of giveaways that have allowed corporations and billionaires to tighten their grip on the government. The law triples the budget for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, slashes taxes for the most wealthy, and pays for it all by cutting health care f...
Jul 11, 2025•51 min•Season 2Ep. 28
This week on The Intercept Briefing, we're re-sharing a conversation we first aired on March 7, 2025 – a conversation that’s only grown more relevant since it first aired. It’s a deep dive into the right-wing Christian ideologies shaping Donald Trump’s inner circle, featuring journalist and author of “ Wild Faith ,” Talia Lavin, and Intercept politics reporter Jessica Washington. As Trump consolidates power — with the backing of a hardline Congress and a Supreme Court increasingly aligned with h...
Jul 04, 2025•49 min
A tenuous ceasefire between Israel and Iran announced Monday appears to be holding. President Donald Trump made the announcement after unilaterally dragging the U.S. into the conflict and authorizing strikes on three Iranian nuclear sites using 30,000-pound bunker busters . Israel attacked Iran on June 13, just days before Iran and the U.S. were set to resume talks in Oman over the country’s nuclear enrichment program. “ You don't have to be anti-war to understand that diplomacy in this case wou...
Jun 28, 2025•45 min•Season 2Ep. 27
In the wake of the political assassination of Minnesota lawmaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, prominent right-wing figures moved quickly to assign blame. Utah Sen. Mike Lee pinned the killings on “ Marxism .” Elon Musk pointed to the “ far left .” Donald Trump Jr., the president’s son, said it “ seems to be a leftist .” But the facts quickly told a different story: The suspect, 57-year-old Vance Boelter is a Trump supporter who held radical anti-abortion views. “There's an entire right-wing ...
Jun 20, 2025•41 min•Season 2Ep. 26
Across the country, demonstrators are preparing for a weekend of protests against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations, Donald Trump's planned June 14 military parade , and Trump himself . Ground zero for these demonstrations is likely to be Los Angeles, where heavily armed ICE agents have carried out raids at churches, graduations, parking lots, and scores of other gathering spots recently. “ The level of armament that these guys are wearing is out of a GI Joe movie,” said Salvad...
Jun 13, 2025•52 min•Season 2Ep. 25
At a recent rally at U.S. Steel in Pennsylvania, Donald Trump stood in front of a row of workers in hard hats and safety vests and proclaimed, “We're right now on the verge of passing the largest working class tax cuts in American history.” He framed his “Big Beautiful Bill” — a massive tax cut for the wealthy — as a blue-collar blessing. The sleight of hand is classic Trump, and what makes his appeal to voters enduring. “The Republican Party is building the multiracial working class coalition t...
Jun 06, 2025•55 min•Season 2Ep. 24
“Catch and revoke” — the phrase sounds like something from a dystopian thriller, but it's Secretary of State Marco Rubio's very real characterization of the Trump administration's new one-strike visa cancellation policy targeting foreign students. A State Department spokesperson said that "full social media vetting" will be used for visa interviews and will be ongoing while the student remains in the U.S. for studies. On this week's episode of The Intercept Briefing, host Akela Lacy speaks to an...
May 30, 2025•41 min•Season 2Ep. 23
LATE SUNDAY NIGHT, police in El Salvador arrested one of President Nayib Bukele’s sharpest critics, Ruth Eleonora López , an anti-corruption attorney who has spent years exposing government abuses. “[She] is one of the strongest voices in defense of democracy,” says Noah Bullock, her colleague and the executive director of Cristosal , a human rights group operating in northern Central America, including El Salvador. López, a university professor and former elections official, heads Cristosal’s a...
May 23, 2025•43 min•Season 2Ep. 22
As Elon Musk steps away from the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, the chaotic legacy of his aggressive assault on federal agencies continues to reverberate throughout the government. Musk’s goal — slashing $1 trillion from the federal budget — has fallen far short. At most, it has cut $31.8 billion of federal funding, a number that the Financial Times reports is “ opaque and overstated .” Notably, the richest man on Earth’s businesses have received a comparable amount of government...
May 16, 2025•33 min•Season 2Ep. 21
Donald Trump’s all-caps executive order on policing — “STRENGTHENING AND UNLEASHING AMERICA’S LAW ENFORCEMENT TO PURSUE CRIMINALS AND PROTECT INNOCENT CITIZENS” – is less about policy and more about intent. And that intent is clear: To give Trump direct control over local law enforcement and further shield police from accountability. As journalist and author of “Rise of the Warrior Cop” Radley Balko puts it, “It’s a statement of intent and whether or not Trump is able to do a lot of the more per...
May 08, 2025•44 min•Season 2Ep. 20
The Intercept Briefing is sharing a recent live podcast recording The Intercept's Senior Politics Reporter Akela Lacy joined about the unlawful detention of Rümeysa Öztürk — a graduate student who was seized by federal immigration agents for co-authoring an op-ed in her school's newspaper. The live event, hosted by Question Everything with Brian Reed – which you can listen to on KCRW – and the Tufts Daily where Rümeysa published her op-ed, gathered journalists, editors, and attorneys, including ...
May 05, 2025•1 hr 17 min
This week, Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., joined forces with Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Rep. Debbie Dingell, D-Mich., to introduce ambitious Medicare for All legislation that would provide comprehensive coverage to every American without premiums, co-payments, or deductibles. The move comes at a striking moment — with Donald Trump in the White House and Republicans controlling both chambers of Congress, the bill's passage remains unlikely. In this week's episode of The Intercept Briefing, J...
May 02, 2025•31 min•Season 2Ep. 19
