What A Day

If you’re looking for hype, fake outrage, and groupthink, kindly keep moving. Our mission at What a Day is simple: to be your guide to what truly matters each morning (and the fun stuff you might have missed) in just 20 minutes. Host Jane Coaston brings you in-depth reporting and substantive analysis on the big stories shaping today and the creeping trends shaping tomorrow—and when she doesn’t know the answers, she asks someone even smarter to fill us all in. Radical, right? New episodes at 5:00 a.m. EST, Monday–Friday in your favorite podcast app and on YouTube. Being informed was never this easy.

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Episodes

How Trump’s Shredding Green Regulations

The Trump administration is running through our constitutional rights like a bull unleashed on the streets of Pamplona. For days now, the high-stakes back-and-forth between the administration, the courts and the Constitution over the wrongful deportation of a Maryland man has dominated headlines. But in the background, the administration is working overtime to dismantle regulations, particularly around the environment. Just since Monday, the administration got the ball rolling on gutting a key p...

Apr 18, 2025•22 min

Dems Go To Bat For Due Process

Maryland Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen traveled to El Salvador Wednesday to push for the release of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man who the U.S. government wrongfully deported to a Salvadoran super prison last month. While the administration continues to dig in on its allegations the Salvadoran national was a gang member, courts are also showing their willingness to challenge the White House’s claims. On Wednesday, a federal judge found probable cause to find Trump Administration offic...

Apr 17, 2025•21 min

How RFK Jr. Has Already Reshaped Public Health

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is taking his “Make America Healthy Again” agenda on the road this week, stopping in Indiana Tuesday. While Kennedy has only had the job for two months, he’s already made major changes to the American public health system, from firing thousands of agency staff to digging in on debunked theories tying childhood vaccinations to an increase in autism diagnoses. Alice Miranda Ollstein, health care reporter for Politico, breaks down the worryi...

Apr 16, 2025•27 min

Trump's Deportation Standoff Keeps Getting Worse

President Donald Trump met with President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador in the Oval Office Monday. Their conversation centered on immigration, and specifically the wrongful deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran man whose removal the White House chalked up to an “administrative error.” Last week, the Supreme Court ordered the administration to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return to the U.S. But Bukele told reporters Monday he won’t send him back, and Trump said no one can make him do it...

Apr 15, 2025•26 min

We Went To The 'Fighting Oligarchy' Rally

Congress is out of session this week. Democrats are keeping busy with planned town hall events in red and blue districts nationwide. But a certain progressive duo is taking a different approach. Vermont Independent Senator Bernie Sanders will continue his “Fighting Oligarchy” tour with New York Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez over the next few days to speak out against the Trump administration. The two were just in Los Angeles over the weekend. We stopped by to talk to folks i...

Apr 14, 2025•18 min

House Republicans Pass Big Beautiful Bill feat. Rep. Ro Khanna

If you’re not feeling better after President Donald Trump paused the largest of his previously planned tariffs on 75 countries on Wednesday, you’re not alone. The stock market is just as confused as you are. Wednesday’s historic gains were essentially wiped out by huge losses on Thursday. And nobody knows what Trump is going to do next on tariffs, if they’ll go into effect, when they’ll go into effect, or how high they’ll be. And with millions of Americans scared about rising prices and losing t...

Apr 11, 2025•25 min

Trump: Now You Tariff… Now You Don’t

When most of us woke up Wednesday morning, President Donald Trump was still very excited about the tariffs he imposed on dozens of countries that had gone into effect just after midnight eastern time. At the National Republican Congressional Committee dinner the night before, he even claimed the scheme would be ‘legendary in a positive way’ and bragged, ‘These countries are calling us up. Kissing my ass.’ But by Wednesday afternoon, Trump had blinked, announcing a 90-day pause on nearly all of t...

Apr 10, 2025•25 min

Supreme Court Gives Trump What He Wants... For Now

The Supreme Court handed the Trump administration three successive wins this week, albeit temporary ones. On Tuesday, the justices halted a lower court’s order to rehire thousands of temporary federal workers. And on Monday, the justices paved the way for the White House to resume deportations of alleged foreign gang members using a wartime statute. That decision came just hours after Chief Justice John Roberts paused a deadline to return a Salvadoran man who was wrongly deported. Leah Litman, c...

Apr 09, 2025•22 min

Trump’s Market Meltdown… And Your Wallet

The stock market continued to have a not very good time Monday as a result of President Donald Trump's tariffs on everyone, even penguins. And counter to the desperate hopes of Wall Street executives, economists, and, really, most Americans, Trump reiterated that he is not, in fact, looking to pause them any time soon. To put it mildly, the whole thing is really freaking people out, and the word 'recession' is getting thrown around a lot. Jessica Roy, personal finance and utility columnist at th...

Apr 08, 2025•26 min

Massive Crowds Tell Trump 'Hands Off' My Government

Hundreds of thousands people across the country spent part of their Saturday at ‘Hands Off’ rallies to protest President Donald Trump and his administration. Organizers say there were more than 1,300 rallies scheduled, from Portland, Maine, to San Diego, California. But while progressives and liberals pretty much agree on what we’re against, we've been struggling to figure out what, exactly, are we for? And if Democrats are the party that believes governance is good, why aren’t the outcomes bett...

Apr 07, 2025•25 min

Trump Tariffies The Markets

If Wednesday was ‘Liberation Day’ in America, then Thursday was its day of reckoning, as the reality of President Donald Trump’s decision to levy steep tariffs on dozens of countries set in. Financial markets around the world cratered. In the U.S., stocks lost more than $3 trillion in market value, registering their largest one-day drop since the start of the pandemic. But none of it seemed to bother Trump, who said of the fallout from his tariff announcement, ‘I think it’s going very well.’ Sco...

Apr 04, 2025•25 min