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, i...
Jun 30, 2025•35 min
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: “ Zohra...
Jun 26, 2025•51 min
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? ...
Jun 23, 2025•43 min
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 Leade...
Jun 20, 2025•40 min
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...
Jun 19, 2025•41 min
T he 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 hi...
Jun 16, 2025•19 min
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 su...
Jun 14, 2025•33 min
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 Victim...
Jun 12, 2025•44 min
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...
Jun 09, 2025•30 min
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...
Jun 07, 2025•33 min
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, ...
Jun 05, 2025•38 min
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...
Jun 02, 2025•27 min
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 Márt...
May 29, 2025•48 min
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 skept...
May 22, 2025•41 min
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...
May 19, 2025•50 min
The Washington Roundtable discusses new information that has emerged about Joe Biden’s decline while in office, and his advisers' efforts to downplay it, as chronicled in several new books . The group also discusses the challenges faced by members of the press as they report on Donald Trump’s signs of aging and his long-standing incoherence. “I think that’s where we run into trouble,” the staff writer Susan B. Glasser says. “Donald Trump has always been quite ignorant. He’s always been a fact ch...
May 17, 2025•44 min
The New Yorker staff writer Clare Malone joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss the changes that Jeff Bezos, the owner of the Washington Post , is making at the paper. They talk about why Bezos decided to purchase the paper, in 2013, how his recent exertion of editorial influence has caused the paper to hemorrhage both staffers and subscribers, and the future of a news media dependent on the support of “benevolent” billionaires to support it. This week’s reading: “ Is Jeff Bezos Selling Out the Washingt...
May 14, 2025•42 min
When Elissa Slotkin narrowly won her Senate seat in Michigan last fall, she was one of only four Democratic senators to claim victory in a state that voted for Donald Trump. It made other Democrats take note: since then, the Party has turned to her as someone who can bridge the red state–blue state divide. In March, Slotkin delivered the Democrats’ rebuttal to Trump’s speech before Congress , and she’s been making headlines for criticizing her own party’s attempts to rein in the President and th...
May 12, 2025•28 min
The New Yorker staff writer Katy Waldman joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss Donald Trump’s fondness for A.I.-generated memes and what it tells us about our current political climate. They talk about how Trump uses these images to bend the cultural narrative to his will, why the MAGA aesthetic is tailor-made for the age of A.I., and how the proliferation of A.I. slop is damaging our brains. This week’s reading: “ Trump Is the Emperor of A.I. Slop ,” by Katy Waldman “ My Brain Finally Broke ,” by Jia ...
May 07, 2025•28 min
For a long time, Republicans and many Democrats espoused some version of free-trade economics that would have been familiar to Adam Smith. But Donald Trump breaks radically with that tradition, embracing a form of protectionism that resulted in his extremely broad and chaotic tariff proposals, which tanked markets and deepened the fear of a global recession. John Cassidy writes The New Yorker’s The Financial Page column, and he’s been covering economics for the magazine since 1995. His new book,...
May 05, 2025•18 min
The Washington Roundtable discusses the unprecedented corruption of the federal government, including Trump Administration members’ self-enrichment through cryptocurrency schemes and the inaugural committee, and the gutting of parts of the government that are responsible for rooting out self-dealing from public life. It is a level of corruption so “outright” and “brazen,” the staff writer Evan Osnos says, that it constitutes “a new phase in American politics.” This week’s reading: “ Mike Waltz L...
May 03, 2025•29 min
In a new recurring series on The Political Scene, the staff writer Andrew Marantz joins Tyler Foggatt to assess the status of American democracy. How does one distinguish—in the blizzard of federal workforce cuts, deportations, and executive orders that have defined the first hundred days of Donald Trump’s second term—actions that are offensive to some, but fundamentally within the power of the executive, from moves which threaten the integrity of our system of government? Marantz applies the le...
May 01, 2025•55 min
As Donald Trump continues to launch unprecedented and innovative attacks on immigrants, civic institutions, and the rule of law, the Democratic response has been—in the eyes of many observers—tepid and inadequate. One answer to the sense of desperation came from Senator Cory Booker, who, on March 31st, launched a marathon speech on the Senate floor, calling on Americans to resist authoritarianism. Booker beat the record previously held by Senator Strom Thurmond’s twenty-four-hour-long filibuster...
Apr 28, 2025•30 min
The Washington Roundtable discusses the first hundred days of President Trump’s second Administration, and the fear, pain, and outrage reverberating through U.S. politics. The clinical psychologist and longtime Department of Justice official Alix McLearen is helping distressed government workers connect with service providers during this time. She joins the roundtable to discuss how a politics of fear is shaping the lives of federal employees and ordinary citizens alike, and strategies for copin...
Apr 26, 2025•31 min
Paul Elie, who writes about the Catholic Church for The New Yorker, joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss the life and legacy of Pope Francis, his feuds with traditionalist Church figures and right-wing political leaders, and what to expect from the upcoming papal conclave to determine his successor. This week’s reading: “ The Down-to-Earth Pope ,” by Paul Elie “ Pope Francis’s Tangled Relationship with Argentina ,” by Graciela Mochkofsky “ The Mexican President Who’s Facing Off with Trump ,” by Stepha...
Apr 23, 2025•31 min
Elon Musk, who’s taking his chainsaw to the federal government , is not merely a chaos agent, as he is sometimes described. Jill Lepore , the best-selling author of “ These Truths ” and other books, says that Musk is animated by obsessions and a sense of mission he acquired through reading, and misreading, science fiction. “When he keeps saying, you know, ‘We’re at a fork in the road. The future of human civilization depends on this election,’ he means SpaceX,” she tells David Remnick. “He means...
Apr 21, 2025•19 min
Ruth Marcus resigned from the Washington Post after its C.E.O. killed an editorial she wrote that was critical of the paper's owner, Jeff Bezos. She ended up publishing the column in The New Yorker, and soon after she published another piece for the magazine asking "Has Trump's Legal Strategy Backfired?" "Trump's legal strategy has been backfiring, I think, demonstrably in the lower courts," she tells David Remnick, on issues such as undoing birthright citizenship and deporting people without du...
Apr 14, 2025•28 min
The Washington Roundtable is joined by Mark Blyth, a professor of international economics and public affairs at Brown University, to discuss how the bond market forced Donald Trump to retreat on some tariffs, and the risks of the President’s escalating trade war with China. “Ultimately, they can take the pain more than you can,” Blyth says, of the Chinese government. “They have locked down their cities for a year or more. They can deliver food through the window through drones. They don’t care i...
Apr 11, 2025•35 min
The former senator Sherrod Brown, of Ohio, joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss the tumult that Trump’s tariffs have inflicted on the global economy, and why progressives should not merely oppose the President’s trade policy but offer a clear alternative. “I've heard economists talk about these tariffs upending the global order on trade. Well, to a lot of workers, anything’s better than the global order on trade. It’s our policy problem as a country, and it’s our political problem for Democrats,” Brow...
Apr 09, 2025•31 min
The microchip maker Nvidia is a Silicon Valley colossus. After years as a runner-up to Intel and Qualcomm, Nvidia has all but cornered the market on the parallel processors essential for artificial-intelligence programs like ChatGPT. “Nvidia was there at the beginning of A.I.,” the tech journalist Stephen Witt tells David Remnick. “They really kind of made these systems work for the first time. We think of A.I. as a software revolution, something called neural nets, but A.I. is also a hardware r...
Apr 07, 2025•31 min
