President Donald Trump fired up his social media account Sunday to say the U.S. would immediately slap a 25 percent tariff on all goods from Colombia, among other penalties. It was a response to Colombian President Petro Gustavo’s move to block two U.S. military planes carrying migrants from landing in the country. Trump also continued his push to dismantle Diversity, Equity and Inclusion — or DEI — programs, extending threats of punishment beyond the federal government to the private sector. Fa...
Jan 27, 2025•24 min•Transcript available on Metacast President Donald Trump was dealt his first major legal blow since returning to the White House when a federal judge on Thursday temporarily blocked his executive order to end birthright citizenship for the future children of some immigrants. U.S. District Judge John Coughenour, a Reagan appointee, called the order "blatantly unconstitutional." In all of the nonsense this week, one executive order that's received less attention is the administration's move to designate drug cartels as foreign ter...
Jan 24, 2025•22 min•Transcript available on Metacast It’s been a couple of days since President Donald Trump granted clemency to all of his nearly 1,600 supporters who faced charges for storming the Capitol on January 6, 2021. Most of them received full, complete and unconditional pardons for their actions that day. The 14 people who didn’t get pardons were all members of far-right extremist groups, and instead had their sentences commuted. Tess Owen, a freelance reporter covering extremism and politics, explains what Trump’s clemency actions mean...
Jan 23, 2025•28 min•Transcript available on Metacast In one of his first acts back in the White House, President Donald Trump signed a bunch of executive orders Monday to severely restrict immigration in the United States. He signed an executive order to end birthright citizenship, a move that's already prompted multiple lawsuits. He also declared a national emergency at the southern border, shut down a Biden-era mobile app to streamline the asylum process for migrants, brought back his 'Remain in Mexico' policy, and paused refugee resettlement, a...
Jan 22, 2025•21 min•Transcript available on Metacast Donald Trump is President of the United States. Again. His inaugural address Tuesday wasn’t quite as dark as the ‘American carnage’ speech he gave eight years ago. This time around, Trump promised the beginning of a “golden age of America” before reading off a laundry list of policies he plans to pursue during his presidency that will, almost certainly, not usher in a golden age. Standing behind Trump were some of the richest men in the world: Tech CEOs Sundar Pichai of Google, Meta’s Mark Zucke...
Jan 21, 2025•24 min•Transcript available on Metacast Today is Inauguration Day in DC. As of around noon ET, we will officially be living under a Donald Trump administration. Again. The president-elect's inaugural committee has raised a record $170 million for the ceremony and accompanying festivities — a huge jump from the then-record $107 million raised for Trump’s first inauguration. We talk to reporter Ilya Marritz, former co-host of the WNYC podcast ‘Trump Inc.,’ to explore the parallels between today’s inauguration and 2017. And in headlines:...
Jan 20, 2025•23 min•Transcript available on Metacast Joe Biden’s presidency officially ends at noon on Monday, when Donald Trump is sworn in... again. And along with the end of Biden’s presidency comes reflection on his legacy as leader of the free world. Biden made his case for the history books during a farewell address Wednesday night from the Oval Office. But despite some notable wins, Biden also tallied some painful failures – on inflation, the war in Gaza, and maybe chief of all, his decision to run again in 2024. Alexis Coe, presidential hi...
Jan 17, 2025•28 min•Transcript available on Metacast Negotiators announced Wednesday that Israel and Hamas had reached a temporary ceasefire deal to pause the 15-month war in Gaza and return some Israeli hostages. President Biden celebrated the news of the deal in comments at the White House, though it still has to be ratified by Israel’s government. The ceasefire is set to go into effect Sunday, but it doesn’t guarantee a permanent end to the war. Ultimately, it will be up to the incoming Trump administration to make sure both parties uphold thei...
Jan 16, 2025•24 min•Transcript available on Metacast Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to run the Pentagon, faced tough questions — at least from Senate Democrats — during his confirmation hearing Tuesday. The veteran and former Fox News host is facing allegations of excessive drinking, sexual misconduct, and financial mismanagement. But none of that seems to be disqualifying for Republicans, because Hegseth appears headed toward confirmation. Veteran and Illinois Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth joins us to share her thoughts on Tu...
Jan 15, 2025•28 min•Transcript available on Metacast Around a dozen of President-elect Donald Trump’s cabinet picks are headed to Capitol Hill this week to appear for their Senate confirmation hearings. The big one to watch today is the hearing for Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Defense, military veteran and former Fox News host Pete Hegseth, who’s facing allegations of excessive drinking, financial mismanagement, and sexual assault. Hegseth’s confirmation hearings could be a litmus test for some of Trump’s other problematic picks. Burgess...
Jan 14, 2025•24 min•Transcript available on Metacast After months of delays, New York State Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan finally sentenced president-elect Donald Trump in his criminal hush money case Friday. Merchan ruled Trump’s conviction must be upheld, but he did not order the president-elect to serve any jail time. In D.C., the U.S. Supreme Court seemed inclined to side with the federal government over a law to ban TikTok or force its sale, something Trump once supported but now opposes. Jay Willis, editor-in-chief of the legal website ...
Jan 13, 2025•25 min•Transcript available on Metacast The Palisades and Eaton fires that began Tuesday in and around Los Angeles have become some of the most destructive — and likely most expensive — wildfires in American history. City and county officials say more than 9,000 structures have been damaged or destroyed so far. And as the fires have spread, so too has a ton of disinformation online, some of it been fanned by President-elect Donald Trump. Scott Waldman, a White House reporter focused on climate change at Politico’s E&E News, helps us d...
Jan 10, 2025•25 min•Transcript available on Metacast The Los Angeles area is battling massive fires. At least five people have died, and more than 2,000 structures have either been damaged or destroyed so far. Tens of thousands of people remain under evacuation orders, including parts of the region that aren’t usually at immediate risk for fire damage. Lenya Quinn-Davidson, director of the University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources’s Fire Network, breaks down how the fires were able to spread so fast. Later in the show, Bob Corn-Re...
Jan 09, 2025•24 min•Transcript available on Metacast Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced Tuesday that the company plans to end its fact-checking program as part of a broader overhaul of how it moderates content on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads. In a video, Zuckerberg said the move was an effort to prioritize "free expression" and called the 2024 election a "cultural tipping point." It was a notable policy shift ahead of President-elect Donald Trump's inauguration in a little more than week. Jason Koebler, co-founder of the tech website 404 Media...
Jan 08, 2025•21 min•Transcript available on Metacast Congress certified President-elect Donald Trump’s victory Monday, exactly four years after he denied President Joe Biden the same courtesy by inciting a violent mob of insurrectionists to march to the Capitol. At 78 years old, Trump will be the oldest president ever sworn into office, edging out Biden by just a few months. And at 82, Biden will walk away as the oldest sitting president ever. In fact, nearly a quarter of Congress is 70 or older. Ken Klippenstein, an independent journalist coverin...
Jan 07, 2025•21 min•Transcript available on Metacast Congress is set to certify President-elect Donald Trump's victory today, on the four-year anniversary of the Jan. 6 insurrection. Since then, almost 1,500 people have been charged with crimes for their actions that day, and more than 500 people have served — or are still serving — time in prison. Not Trump, though. He's managed to avoid any real consequences for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Hanna Rosin, co-host of The Atlantic's narrative podcast 'We Live Here Now,' joins us to ref...
Jan 06, 2025•24 min•Transcript available on Metacast Something mysterious has been going down in New Jersey this week…but it’s NOT drones. It’s that thousands of people are looking at airplanes in the night sky and thinking they see UFOs. What causes mass delusions like this wave of now mostly debunked drone sightings? In this concluding episode of How We Got Here, Max and Erin share four stories of famous mass hysterias and talk to William Bernstein, an author who writes about the science of mass delusions and why they happen.
Dec 21, 2024•32 min•Transcript available on Metacast House Republicans on Thursday failed to pass their backup plan to fund the government temporarily. The bill’s demise left lawmakers with few options to avert a looming shutdown Friday, after President-elect Donald Trump and his ‘first buddy’ Elon Musk used their respective social media platforms earlier this week to blow up a bipartisan deal. Politico politics reporter Mia McCarthy, explains the prospects of a government shutdown just a few days before Christmas and the start of Hanukkah. Later ...
Dec 20, 2024•23 min•Transcript available on Metacast The Supreme Court on Wednesday agreed to hear a case over South Carolina’s effort to defund Planned Parenthood. The state wants to cut off Medicaid funding for all of Planned Parenthood’s healthcare services. That includes things like mammograms, birth control, STD testing — you know, health care. So here we are again, with the very conservative Supreme Court set to hear another case that could affect how and where people get their reproductive care. Mary Ziegler, a professor at U.C. Davis Schoo...
Dec 19, 2024•22 min•Transcript available on Metacast President-elect Donald Trump made good on his promise late Monday to sue The Des Moines Register, the newspaper's former pollster, Ann Selzer, and the paper's parent company, Gannett. His lawyers argue that Selzer's early November poll showing Vice President Kamala Harris beating Trump in Iowa amounted to "election interference." The suit comes on the heels of ABC News' decision to pay $15 million to settle a defamation lawsuit brought by Trump. Dylan Byers, media reporter and founding partner o...
Dec 18, 2024•22 min•Transcript available on Metacast Robert F. Kennedy Jr. started making the rounds on Capitol Hill Monday to lobby Senators on his nomination to be the next secretary of Health and Human Services. There are plenty of reasons why he could face an uphill battle to confirmation, from his prior support for abortion access and background as an environmental lawyer to his hostility toward industrial agriculture. However, chief among the reasons why Senators may be hesitant to confirm RFK Jr. is that he's been one of the most prominent ...
Dec 17, 2024•27 min•Transcript available on Metacast President Joe Biden and Senate Democrats are expected to score a big win this week. If all goes to plan, they’ll get their 235th judge on the federal bench, one more than President-elect Donald Trump seated in his first term. But the story is bigger than the total number of judges earning lifetime appointments under Biden. The president is also set to appoint a record number of Black judges, and more than half of his appointments have been people of color and women — both firsts for a sitting pr...
Dec 16, 2024•20 min•Transcript available on Metacast It’s been a week since Syrian rebels overtook the country’s capital and forced out the longtime dictator, Bashar al-Assad. This has all been a long time coming, but now a lot is happening very quickly. In this week’s How We Got Here, Max takes a look at the handful of other countries whose governments have also been overthrown by rebels to understand what it means for Syria that the guys with guns are now in control. Will they be tolerant and pluralistic — or despotic and cruel? Will they govern...
Dec 14, 2024•30 min•Transcript available on Metacast The murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson has sparked a massive reaction online that’s veered into support for the alleged shooter, with an outpouring of sympathy on social media. This week we also saw a jury acquit Daniel Penny, a Marine veteran who killed a man named Jordan Neely using a chokehold on a New York Subway train. The verdict prompted a similar outpouring of support for Penny on the right. Suffice it to say, it was a big week for vigilantism. Atlantic staff writer Ali Brelan...
Dec 13, 2024•24 min•Transcript available on Metacast We are just 39 days away from President-elect Donald Trump's inauguration. But Democrats are still trying to figure out what went wrong in 2024, and how to fix it before 2026. Wisconsin Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin breaks down why she thinks she won re-election in a swing state, in which Trump also won, and how Democrats are approaching the president-elect's cabinet picks. Later in the show, Politico senior defense correspondent Conner O'Brien explains what's actually in the big defense bill Ho...
Dec 12, 2024•26 min•Transcript available on Metacast It’s a tense time in international politics right now. And it’s coming at a pretty tough time for the U.S., as President Joe Biden gets ready to hand over the foreign policy reins to President-elect Donald Trump. Syria’s fate is a big question mark as it prepares for a new government, Israel’s war in Gaza is still raging, and Russia and Ukraine are stuck in a stalemate. Ben Rhodes, former deputy national security advisor for President Barack Obama and co-host of Crooked’s ‘Pod Save the World,’ j...
Dec 11, 2024•23 min•Transcript available on Metacast TikTok’s days in the U.S. may be numbered after a federal appeals court upheld a federal law late last week to force the ban or sale of the social media app. The case could ultimately end up before the Supreme Court. President-elect Donald Trump has also promised to reverse the ban, even though he tried to ban TikTok in his first term. Louise Matsakis, senior business editor at WIRED, walks us through all the what-ifs of a future without TikTok. Later in the show, Bloomberg senior editor Stacey ...
Dec 10, 2024•30 min•Transcript available on Metacast President-elect Donald Trump stopped by 'Meet the Press' on Sunday for his first network sit-down interview since winning back the White House. During his hour-plus conversation, he reaffirmed his promise to pardon most of the people who violently stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, possibly on his first day back in office. And he said every person who sat on the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6 attack "should go to jail." Those kinds of comments are exactly why the Biden Administration i...
Dec 09, 2024•26 min•Transcript available on Metacast Trump’s rhetoric glorifies an America where men are in charge and women are subjugated. Rights that many of us took for granted for decades—no fault divorce, access to contraception and abortion—as well as newer rights like access to gender-affirming health care and same sex marriage are now in the crosshairs of an empowered conservative bloc. Project 2025 calls for the government to stop barely short of forcing women back into a state of subservience, gay people back into the closet, and Americ...
Dec 07, 2024•22 min•Transcript available on Metacast There are only two weeks left for the 118th Congress to legislate. And there’s a lot to do. Lawmakers must pass a federal spending package to prevent a government shutdown, approve a defense budget, and decide how much money to set aside for relief after a rough year of natural disasters—no big deal. In the Senate, Democrats also need to confirm as many as President Joe Biden’s remaining judicial nominations before they lose power. Nevada Senator Jacky Rosen joins us to discuss what’s on the Sen...
Dec 06, 2024•17 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
