In an address to Congress on Tuesday, President Donald Trump once again cast himself as a divine savior of the American people.“I was saved by God to make America great again,” he claimed as he recounted the failed assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania. During his 100-minute speech, Trump made direct appeals to the Christian right, a major segment of his base: “This will be our greatest era. With God's help over the next four years, we are going to lead this nation even higher.” He...
Mar 07, 2025•48 min•Ep 10•Transcript available on Metacast Safety net programs like Medicaid and SNAP are in peril after the House Republicans passed a budget resolution this week that proposes massive $4.5 trillion in tax cuts, alongside $2 trillion in spending reductions. The math doesn’t add up: There is no realistic way to achieve the necessary savings without slashing entitlement programs that the most vulnerable Americans depend on. While the Republicans claim they won’t cut these programs, they are simultaneously setting up eventual changes. Hous...
Feb 28, 2025•34 min•Ep 9•Transcript available on Metacast Swift and sweeping changes have marked the first month of Donald Trump's return to the White House. Having promised to "fix every single crisis facing our country," Trump wasted no time in making his mark — signing an extraordinary 36 executive orders within his first week in office. On this week’s episode of The Intercept Briefing, politics reporters Jessica Washington and Akela Lacy assess the full scope of changes. Lacy is surprised at how ill-prepared people, especially Democrats , were for ...
Feb 19, 2025•30 min•Ep 8•Transcript available on Metacast Less than a month into Donald Trump's second term, his administration's aggressive restructuring of the government and flirtation with defying court rulings threaten to spark a constitutional crisis. "He could have done all of that lawfully, and instead what he's done is testing the limits of his power in a way we have never seen in this country," says retired federal Judge Nancy Gertner . During a press conference on Tuesday, Trump dismissed concerns about executive overreach and claimed he wou...
Feb 14, 2025•28 min•Ep 7•Transcript available on Metacast Donald Trump has unleashed a "flood the zone" strategy: a cascade of executive actions aimed at rapidly reshaping the federal government and the country. The scope of changes is staggering: massive reductions in the federal workforce, the dismantling of USAID , signaling departments of labor and education are next, and the firing of Justice Department prosecutors. Trump granted Elon Musk's so-called "Department of Government Efficiency" team unprecedented access to the Treasury Department ...
Feb 07, 2025•36 min•Ep 6•Transcript available on Metacast After 15 months of Israeli bombardment, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are returning to northern Gaza as part of the first phase of the long-awaited ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas. During his inaugural speech, President Donald Trump pledged to be a peacemaker and claimed credit for securing the deal. But mere hours after promising peace and unity, Trump’s actions and rhetoric pivoted. After his inauguration, he signed an executive order lifting Biden-era sanctions agai...
Jan 31, 2025•31 min•Ep 5•Transcript available on Metacast Silicon Valley’s biggest power players traded in their hoodies for suits and ties this week as they sat front and center to watch Donald Trump take the oath of office again. Seated in front of the incoming cabinet were Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, Google’s Sundar Pichai, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, and Trump confidant and leader of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, Elon Musk. Apple CEO Tim Cook, Sam Altman from OpenAI, and TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew also looked on. For an industry once skeptic...
Jan 24, 2025•30 min•Ep 4•Transcript available on Metacast What can we expect when President-elect Donald Trump begins his second term on Monday? This week on The Intercept Briefing, we ask Intercept reporters what’s on their radar as a new president and a Republican-controlled Congress take office. They’ll be watching the tentative ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas, the brazenness of oligarchs seeking to profit from the new administration, and threats to reproductive healthcare. Trump’s biggest policy promise has been immigration, with...
Jan 17, 2025•34 min•Ep 3•Transcript available on Metacast The Supreme Court is poised to decide a landmark case on Friday that could reshape social media in America. At stake: TikTok must either break from its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, or cease U.S. operations entirely. While the government frames this as a critical national security measure, the short-form video app and its creators and users see a direct challenge to First Amendment freedoms. This tension sits at the heart of a broader debate about digital communication and national interest...
Jan 09, 2025•30 min•Ep 2•Transcript available on Metacast Few journalists have ventured as deep into the shadows of American power as The Intercept's James Risen. A Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, Risen waged a remarkable seven-year battle against the federal government to protect his sources , risking imprisonment to defend press freedom. As he prepares to retire from journalism, he joins this week's Intercept Briefing to reflect on his extraordinary career with longtime friend and colleague David Bralow, The Intercept’s general counsel. Recently, Ri...
Jan 03, 2025•41 min•Ep 1•Transcript available on Metacast Originally aired November 15, 2024 In the wake of President-elect Donald Trump’s victory, Democrats and those on the left are grappling with what comes next. On The Intercept Briefing podcast this week, columnist Natasha Lennard critiques the Democratic Party. “You can’t be both at once: You can’t be the party of Wall Street, and you can’t be the party of the working class,” Lennard says. By acquiescing to Silicon Valley and Wall Street, the Democrats failed again “to offer a robust politics tha...
Dec 27, 2024•25 min•Transcript available on Metacast Among a president’s most profound responsibilities is the power to grant clemency. Now, as President Joe Biden's first term winds down, he faces mounting calls to use that authority to commute the sentences of the 40 men on federal death row. Donald Trump's final months in office marked a stark shift in federal execution policy. After a 17-year hiatus, his administration executed 13 people — the most under any president in over a century. While Biden halted this practice, advocates warn that a s...
Dec 20, 2024•32 min•Ep 8•Transcript available on Metacast The unexpected toppling this weekend of the Assad regime by rebel forces brought a swift end to Syria's 13-year uprising-cum-civil war and over half a century of authoritarian rule. Syrians around the world have celebrated the development , with thousands walking free from the regime's hellish prisons. But in the aftermath, the situation remains volatile. Israel has struck targets inside Syria and moved troops deeper into the occupied Golan Heights , while international powers jockey for i...
Dec 13, 2024•39 min•Ep 7•Transcript available on Metacast For years, Donald Trump has vowed to go after his critics and journalists. As he prepares to reenter the White House, he’s nominating loyalists, like incoming FBI director Kash Patel, who have pledged to do the same. The Trump administration may soon have a new weapon to target perceived enemies. On this week’s episode of The Intercept Briefing, we discuss the Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act, or H.R. 9495. Last month, the House passed H.R. 9495, which would give ...
Dec 06, 2024•27 min•Ep 6•Transcript available on Metacast Continued campus protests against the Gaza war have sparked heated debates around free speech, academic freedom, and the role of universities in addressing global issues. This spring saw an outpouring of students demanding that their institutions divest from Israel. Since then, universities have taken sometimes draconian measures to stop protests before they even begin. On this week’s episode of The Intercept Briefing, Intercept reporters Akela Lacy and Jonah Valdez, who have been followin...
Nov 27, 2024•27 min•Ep 5•Transcript available on Metacast As the clock winds down on the Biden presidency, Democrats have a limited window to act. Come January 20, Republicans will control the executive branch and both houses of Congress. On this week's episode of The Intercept Briefing, Rep. Summer Lee, D-Pa. , acknowledges the need for swift action, particularly on the war in Gaza, prison pardons, and immigration. “I’ve been on calls with advocacy groups around immigration,” she says. President-elect Donald Trump's promises to conduct mass depor...
Nov 22, 2024•32 min•Ep 4•Transcript available on Metacast In the wake of President-elect Donald Trump’s victory, Democrats and those on the left are grappling with what comes next. On The Intercept Briefing podcast this week, columnist Natasha Lennard critiques the Democratic Party. “You can’t be both at once: You can’t be the party of Wall Street, and you can’t be the party of the working class,” Lennard says. By acquiescing to Silicon Valley and Wall Street, the Democrats failed again “to offer a robust politics that serves the working class." Facing...
Nov 15, 2024•25 min•Ep 3•Transcript available on Metacast There will be much analysis and innumerable postmortems of what Kamala Harris and her campaign got wrong about the electorate this election. Already, the trends are becoming clear: She failed to reach Black and Latino men, who flocked to Donald Trump this cycle. She underperformed in cities, typically Democratic strongholds. And she even lagged among younger voters vital to her party’s present and future. What’s behind this dismal showing? One explanation is Harris’s inability to put forth a dis...
Nov 07, 2024•31 min•Ep 2•Transcript available on Metacast Welcome to The Intercept Briefing, a new podcast from our newsroom. In our first episode, politics reporters Jessica Washington and Akela Lacy break down The Intercept’s recent investigation on how the American Israel Public Affairs Committee has shaped U.S. foreign policy, as well as, as well as its record-breaking spending in the 2024 election cycle to unseat members of Congress who are who are insufficiently pro-Israel. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information....
Nov 02, 2024•23 min•Ep 1•Transcript available on Metacast The process of Jewish expansion over Palestinian land has involved maintaining a "system of domination," says author Nathan Thrall on this week's Intercepted. In order to constrict "Palestinians into tighter and tighter space" over the decades, Israel has deployed a strict permit system, movement restrictions, walls, fences, segregated roads, and punitive actions such as arrests and detentions, even of children. In “ A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy ," Thrall’s bo...
Jul 03, 2024•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast Throughout the past nine months of Israel’s scorched-earth war against the people of Gaza, the world has watched as the official death toll has increased by the day. Nearly 40,000 Palestinians have been killed. These figures are likely a stark undercount of the true devastation. A recent report from the British aid organization Save the Children estimates that more than 20,000 Palestinian children are missing in Gaza. A new documentary by Fault Lines called “ The Night Won’t End: Biden’s War on ...
Jun 26, 2024•52 min•Transcript available on Metacast The escalating military confrontation between Hezbollah and Israel now threatens to expand the conflict in Gaza into a full-blown regional war. For the past eight months, Israel and Hezbollah have traded missile attacks , leading to the evacuation of tens of thousands of civilians from northern Israel and southern Lebanon. The two sides have fought devastating wars in the past, but a cold peace has reigned for nearly 17 years. That peace is now in jeopardy, as Hezbollah has mobilized in sympathy...
Jun 19, 2024•32 min•Transcript available on Metacast An Israeli military operation in Gaza this week aimed at rescuing four hostages from Hamas killed over 270 Palestinians and wounded hundreds more. The Nuseirat refugee camp, where the attacks occurred, became a scene of horror as the injured sought care from Gaza's few remaining hospitals. Karin Huster, a Doctors Without Borders medical coordinator, witnessed the aftermath. She joins host Murtaza Hussain on Intercepted to discuss what she saw following the Israel Defense Forces attack alleged to...
Jun 13, 2024•35 min•Transcript available on Metacast After eight months of brutal fighting with no end in sight, the war in Gaza is at risk of metastasizing into a regional conflict. Recent tensions between Egypt and Israel — normally security partners who have cooperated in the blockade of Gaza — have thrown into stark relief the growing risks of a spillover from the war. This week on Intercepted, security expert H. A. Hellyer discusses with co-host Murtaza Hussain the growing hostilities between the two countries, which have resulted in Egypt jo...
Jun 05, 2024•45 min•Transcript available on Metacast The past week in Gaza has seen a major escalation in Israeli attacks against the besieged and starving Palestinians trapped in a killing cage. The Biden administration has aggressively sought to portray itself as being increasingly at odds with Israel’s tactics, mostly focusing on U.S. threats to withhold some weapons shipments if Benjamin Netanyahu conducts an invasion of Rafah. But the cold reality is that Israel has already bombed and occupied large swaths of Rafah. The regime has order...
May 15, 2024•46 min•Transcript available on Metacast Evergreen State College, in Olympia, Washington, reached a deal with students to work toward divesting from “companies that profit from gross human rights violations and/or the occupation of Palestinian territories.” It is one of the few schools to reach deals with students protesting Israel's war on Gaza as demonstrations spread to more than 154 campuses nationwide. This week on Intercepted, we bring you a special episode from inside the student movement for Gaza. Prem Thakker, a politics repor...
May 08, 2024•45 min•Transcript available on Metacast Last month, the famed American philosopher and gender studies scholar Judith Butler was thrust into the center of a controversy after remarks Butler made about the October 7 attacks in Israel. A longtime critic of Zionism and Israel’s war against the Palestinians, Butler had condemned the attacks in the immediate aftermath. But at a March roundtable in France , Butler offered a historical context for the Hamas-led operations and stated that the attacks constituted armed resistance. The blowback ...
May 01, 2024•53 min•Transcript available on Metacast In the face of growing international pressure, the Biden administration has continued to double down on a policy of blanket support for Israel, even as it presses ahead with a possible military offensive against the town of Rafah that many observers have warned could trigger the largest humanitarian crisis of the war so far. This week on Intercepted, co-hosts Jeremy Scahill and Murtaza Hussain discuss the Biden administration's approach to the conflict with Thanassis Cambanis, director of the fo...
Apr 24, 2024•59 min•Transcript available on Metacast The war in Gaza has been among the deadliest for civilians, including children, of any war in the 21st century. After spending five weeks volunteering and administering at a field hospital in Rafah, Mohammad Subeh, an American doctor, describes what he saw to Intercepted co-hosts Jeremy Scahill and Murtaza Hussain. Subeh spent weeks treating wounded Palestinian children, many of them orphaned by Israeli attacks. He also described treating those who survived the aftermath of “mass casualty incide...
Apr 17, 2024•40 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
