The Political Scene | The New Yorker

The New Yorker’s Head of Fact Checking on Our Post-Truth Era

11 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Fergus McIntosh, the head research editor at The New Yorker, joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss how the magazine is approaching fact -checking in the seco...

Anna Wintour Embraces a New Era at Vogue

08 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Speculation, analysis, and commentary circulated all summer, after the announcement, in June, that Anna Wintour would step back from her role as the e...

Trump Has Grabbed Emergency Powers. How Will He Use Them?

06 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Washington Roundtable, hosted by the staff writers Susan B. Glasser, Jane Mayer, and Evan Osnos, is back in season. The co-hosts reflect on the ne...

Why Pam Bondi Is the Attorney General of Trump’s Dreams

03 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The New Yorker contributing writer Ruth Marcus joins the guest host and staff writer Clare Malone to discuss Marcus’s recent profile of U.S. Attorne...

Donald Trump’s War on Culture Is Not a Sideshow

01 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The term “culture wars” is most often associated with issues of sexuality, race, religion, and gender. But, as recent months have made plain, when...

The Democratic Party’s Identity Crisis

28 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Democratic strategist Lis Smith joins the guest host Clare Malone, a New Yorker staff writer, to discuss the state of the Democratic Party, and ho...

Dexter Filkins on Drones and the Future of Warfare

25 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Since the end of the Cold War, most Americans have taken U.S. military supremacy for granted. We can no longer afford to do so, according to reporting...

Is Trump the Roman Tyrant America's Founders Feared?

22 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Washington Roundtable speaks with Jeffrey Rosen, the president and C.E.O. of the National Constitution Center, a nonpartisan nonprofit, about how ...

How Bad Is It?: Trump’s Self-Dealing and the Question of Kleptocracy

21 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The New Yorker staff writer Andrew Marantz joins Tyler Foggatt for the latest installment of “How Bad Is It?,” a monthly series on the health of A...

A Palestinian Journalist Escapes Death in Gaza

19 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Mohammed R. Mhawish was living in Gaza City during Israel’s invasion, in the immediate aftermath of the October 7th attack. He witnessed the invasio...

What Happens After Someone Is Arrested by ICE?

13 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The New Yorker staff writer Jonathan Blitzer joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss how Donald Trump’s second-term immigration agenda has shifted from borde...

Your Questions Answered: Trump vs. the Rule of Law

11 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

From the attempt to end birthright citizenship to the gutting of congressionally authorized agencies, the Trump Administration has created an enormous...

How Bad Is It?: Trump’s War on Comedians

31 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The New Yorker staff writer Andrew Marantz joins Tyler Foggatt for the latest installment of “How Bad Is It?,” a monthly series on the health of A...

Mayor Karen Bass on Marines in Los Angeles

28 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The city of Los Angeles has declared itself a sanctuary city, where local authorities do not share information with federal immigration enforcement. B...

Wired’s Katie Drummond on What the Tech Titans Learned from DOGE

25 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Washington Roundtable’s Evan Osnos interviews Katie Drummond, the global editorial director of Wired, about the publication’s scoop-filled cov...

How the Epstein Conspiracy Theory Took Over Politics

24 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The New Yorker contributor Jon Allsop joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss how President Trump’s refusal to release the Epstein files has fractured his ba...

Michael Wolff on MAGA’s Revolt over Jeffrey Epstein

21 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The sense that the White House is covering something up about Jeffrey Epstein has led to backlash from some of Trump’s most ardent supporters. Even ...

Leah Litman on Trump’s Supreme Court

18 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Washington Roundtable’s Jane Mayer interviews Leah Litman, a law professor at the University of Michigan, a co-host of the “Strict Scrutiny”...

Janet Yellen on the Danger of a “Banana Republic” Economy

14 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In conservative economics, cuts to social services are often seen as necessary to shrink the expanding deficit. Donald Trump’s budget bill is someth...

Fiona Hill on What Putin Tells Us About Trump

11 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Washington Roundtable’s Susan B. Glasser interviews the Russia expert Fiona Hill about Vladimir Putin’s long reign and Trump’s dismantling o...

Andy Beshear Has a Plan for the Democratic Party

09 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Andy Beshear, the governor of Kentucky, joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss the damage that President Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” will cause in rura...

The Scientists Studying the End of the World

02 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The New Yorker staff writer Rivka Galchen joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss a class at the University of Chicago with a tantalizingly dark title: Are We ...

Bret Baier On Trump’s Love-Hate Relationship with Fox News

30 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The relationship between Fox News and Donald Trump is not just close; it can be profoundly influential. Trump frequently responds to segments in real ...

How Bad Is It?: Trump Strikes Iran and His Base Hits Back

26 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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 ...

Why Israel Struck Iran First

23 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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...

Where Is the Iran-Israel Conflict Headed?

20 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Washington Roundtable discusses the escalating conflict between Israel and Iran, and the possibility that the United States will join the fray by ...

The Rise And Fall of DOGE

19 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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 me...

The Unfolding Genocide in Sudan

16 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The New Yorker recently published a report from Sudan, headlined “Escape from Khartoum.” The contributor Nicolas Niarchos journeyed for days throu...

Trump Makes a Big Show of Military Force

14 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Washington Roundtable discusses President Trump’s deployment of uniformed troops in Los Angeles, the Administration’s attempt to blur the dist...

What Broke the U.S.-China Relationship?

12 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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 ...

What Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Doesn’t Understand About Autism

09 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

When Donald Trump made an alliance with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., he brought vaccine skepticism and the debunked link between vaccines and autism into t...

The Oligarchs Are Fighting

07 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Washington Roundtable discusses the fallout from the messy rupture between Donald Trump and Elon Musk, how battles between maximalist rulers and t...

The Man Who Thinks Trump Should Be King

05 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The New Yorker staff writer Ava Kofman joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss her recent Profile of the iconoclastic right-wing blogger Curtis Yarvin. They di...

Lesley Stahl on What a Settlement with Donald Trump Would Mean for CBS News

02 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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 corresponde...

Examining Trump's War on the Media, and a Warning from Hungary

29 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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 he...

How Experts Became the Enemy

22 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Northwestern history professor and New Yorker contributor Daniel Immerwahr joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss the ways in which the COVID crisis deepe...

Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson on President Joe Biden’s Decline, and Its Cover-Up

19 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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...

Biden, Trump, and the Challenges of Covering an Aging President

17 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Washington Roundtable discusses new information that has emerged about Joe Biden’s decline while in office, and his advisers' efforts to downpla...

What Is Jeff Bezos’s Plan for the Washington Post?

14 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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 th...

Elissa Slotkin to Fellow-Democrats: “Speak in Plain English”

12 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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 ...

Decoding Donald Trump’s Love of A.I. Imagery

07 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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 ...

How Donald Trump Is Trying to Rewrite the Rules of Capitalism

05 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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 ...

Donald Trump Is Using the Presidency to Get Rich

03 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Washington Roundtable discusses the unprecedented corruption of the federal government, including Trump Administration members’ self-enrichment ...

How Bad Is It?: Andrew Marantz on the Health of Our Democracy

01 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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 ...

Cory Booker on America’s Crisis of “Moral Leadership”

28 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

As Donald Trump continues to launch unprecedented and innovative attacks on immigrants, civic institutions, and the rule of law, the Democratic respon...

A Politics of Fear Defines Trump’s First Hundred Days in Office

26 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Washington Roundtable discusses the first hundred days of President Trump’s second Administration, and the fear, pain, and outrage reverberating...

Pope Francis’s Legacy and the Coming Conclave

23 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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...

How Science Fiction Led Elon Musk to DOGE

21 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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-sel...

Will the Supreme Court Yield to Donald Trump?

14 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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 e...

Donald Trump Gets a “Spanking” from the Bond Market

11 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Washington Roundtable is joined by Mark Blyth, a professor of international economics and public affairs at Brown University, to discuss how the b...

Sherrod Brown on Trump’s Tariffs and the Future of Economic Populism

09 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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 the Tech Giant Nvidia Owns the Future

07 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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 t...

Donald Trump Finally Gets His Way on Tariffs

05 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Washington Roundtable discusses President Donald Trump’s invocation of emergency powers to enact sweeping tariffs and the ensuing global economi...

How Tesla Dealerships Became the Epicenter of the Trump Resistance

02 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Sarah Larson joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss the Tesla Takedown movement, protesting Elon Musk and Donald Trump, along with the political efficacy of t...

Senator Chris Murphy: “This Is How Democracy Dies—Everybody Just Gets Scared”

31 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

With congressional Republicans unwilling to put any checks on an Administration breaking norms and issuing illegal orders, the focus has shifted to th...

From “Inside the Hive”: Gavin Newsom’s Risky Podcast Gambit

28 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Washington Roundtable is off today, and will be back next week. In the meantime, enjoy a conversation about the California governor’s new podcas...

Will Trump’s Obsession with Space Save NASA?

26 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The writer David W. Brown, who has long covered NASA and the space industry, joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss Elon Musk’s takeover of NASA, the agency...

Kaitlan Collins Is Not “Nasty”; She’s Just Doing Her Job.

24 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Kaitlan Collins was only a couple years out of college when she became a White House correspondent for Tucker Carlson’s the Daily Caller. Collins st...

Will Judges Stick Together to Face Trump’s Defiance?

22 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Washington Roundtable speaks with with Michael Waldman, the president and C.E.O. of the Brennan Center for Justice, at N.Y.U. Law, to discuss the ...

Can Donald Trump Deport Anyone He Wants?

20 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The veteran courts reporter Ruth Marcus joins the host Tyler Foggatt to discuss the Trump Administration’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act of 17...

Atul Gawande on Elon Musk’s “Surgery with a Chainsaw”

17 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Two weeks after the Inauguration of Donald Trump, Elon Musk tweeted, “We spent the weekend feeding USAID into a wood chipper.” Musk was referring ...

The “Cognitive Élite” Seize Washington

15 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Washington Roundtable discusses the ideological underpinnings of Elon Musk’s DOGE with the former Democratic operative and San Francisco-based j...

Will Trump’s Tariffs Trigger a Recession?

12 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The staff writer John Cassidy joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss the recent meltdown of the U.S. stock market, Donald Trump’s long-standing support for ...

How Bob Menendez Came By His Gold Bars

10 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Recently, the former New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez was sentenced to eleven years in prison for accepting bribes in cash and gold worth more than hal...

America’s Founders Feared a Caesar. Has One Arrived?

08 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Washington Roundtable speaks with Jeffrey Rosen, the president and C.E.O. of the National Constitution Center, a nonpartisan nonprofit, about how ...

Eric Adams and Donald Trump’s Curious Alliance

06 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The staff writer Eric Lach joins the guest host Andrew Marantz to discuss the alleged quid pro quo between Mayor Eric Adams and President Donald Trump...

Does Tim Walz Have Any Regrets?

03 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Democrats in Washington have seemed almost paralyzed by the onslaught of far-right appointments and draconian executive orders coming from the Trump W...

Trump’s Putin-Like Cull of the White House Press Pool

01 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Washington Roundtable discusses the Trump Administration’s decision to bar the Associated Press from Presidential events, Jeff Bezos’s dramati...

Is America Destined for a Future Without Children?

26 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The staff writer Gideon Lewis-Kraus joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss why people around the world are having fewer and fewer children and how the issue o...

John Fetterman on Trump’s “Raw Sewage,” and What the Democrats Get Wrong

24 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Since the election, Senator John Fetterman—once a great hope of progressives—has conspicuously blamed Democrats for the electoral loss. Fetterman ...

What Stops Democracy from Backsliding?

22 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Washington Roundtable discusses with the Stanford University political scientist Larry Diamond about President Trump’s attempts to claim broad p...

Elon Musk’s A.I.-Driven Government Coup

20 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The New Yorker staff writer Kyle Chayka joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss Elon Musk’s seizure of power within the U.S. government, the tech industry’...

The A.C.L.U. v. Trump 2.0

17 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In Donald Trump’s first term in office, the American Civil Liberties Union filed four hundred and thirty-four lawsuits against the Administration. S...

What Does It Mean to Resist Trump in 2025?

13 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The essayist and cultural critic Brady Brickner-Wood talks with Tyler Foggatt about the opposition Donald Trump encountered in his first Presidential ...

Trump’s Boogeyman: D.E.I.

10 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Many of the most draconian measures implemented in the first couple weeks of the new Trump Administration have been justified as emergency actions to ...

Why Trump Is Targeting Foreign Aid, with Atul Gawande

08 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Washington Roundtable is joined by Atul Gawande, the former head of the U.S. Agency for International Development, to discuss Donald Trump and Elo...

Is Flying Actually Becoming Less Safe?

06 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Matthew L. Wald joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss the political aftermath of last week’s horrific collision between an American Airlines plane and a Bl...

Bill Gates on His New Memoir and Dining with Trump at Mar-a-Lago

03 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In the nineteen-eighties and nineties, Bill Gates was the best known of a new breed: the tech mogul—a coder who had figured out how to run a busines...

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse on What Democrats Should Do Next

01 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

 The Washington Roundtable discusses the fallout of the White House releasing, and then rescinding, a memo intended to freeze trillions of dollars in...

How Trump’s Federal-Aid Fiasco Is Testing the Separation of Power

30 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

On Tuesday, the Trump Administration sent out a memo attempting to put a blanket pause on most federal funding, sowing confusion about financing for ...

A Spirit of Vengeance in Trump’s First Week

25 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Washington Roundtable discusses President Trump’s first week in office, during which he broke a record for the most executive orders any modern-...

David Remnick on the Dawn of Trump’s Second Term

23 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Within hours of his Inauguration, and shortly after proclaiming that his victory had been preordained by God, Donald Trump signed dozens of executive ...

Big Money and Trump’s New Cabinet

18 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Washington Roundtable discusses this week’s confirmation hearings for Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense and Pam Bondi as Attorney General, an...

How the Blazes in L.A. Got Swept Into the Culture War

15 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Eaton and Palisades fires continue to wreak destruction across Los Angeles. They are predicted to become the most expensive fire recovery in Ameri...

Representative Ro Khanna on Elon Musk and the Tech Oligarchy

13 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Representative Ro Khanna of California is in the Democrats’ Congressional Progressive Caucus. And although his district is in the heart of Silicon V...

What the End of Meta’s Fact-Checking Program Means for the Future of Free Speech

10 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Washington Roundtable discusses Mark Zuckerberg’s decision to end its fact-checking program across Meta’s social-media sites. Instead, Meta wi...

Will Justin Trudeau’s Resignation Lead to the MAGA-fication of Canada?

08 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

After nearly a decade as Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau has resigned from office. His stepping down follows a years-long decline in populari...

From Critics at Large: The Modern-Day Fight for Ancient Rome

03 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Political Scene will be back next week. In the meantime, enjoy a recent episode from The New Yorker’s Critics at Large podcast. Artists owe a gr...

Why Banning TikTok Could Violate the First Amendment

01 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The New Yorker staff writer Jay Caspian Kang joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss efforts by the U.S. government to rein in social media, including the late...

Remembering Jimmy Carter, a “President Out of Time”

30 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

President Jimmy Carter has died at the age of one-hundred. He is remembered as a man of paradoxes: an evangelical-Christian Democrat, a white Southern...

How Henry Kissinger Accumulated and Wielded Power

27 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The Washington Roundtable revisits an episode recorded after Henry Kissinger’s death, in November, 2023. Susan B. Glasser, Jane Mayer and Evan Osnos...

We Have Some Questions for Isaac Chotiner About 2024

18 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

From the conflict in Gaza and the war in Ukraine to political chaos across Europe and the reëlection of Donald Trump, 2024 has been among the most tu...

Rashid Khalidi on the Palestinian Cause in a Volatile Middle East, and the Meaning of Settler Colonialism

16 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Power dynamics in the Middle East shifted dramatically this year. In Lebanon, Israel dealt a severe blow toHezbollah, and another crucial ally of Ira...

Why Luigi Mangione Is Being Treated as a Folk Hero

11 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

After a five-day manhunt, Luigi Mangione, a twenty-six-year-old Ivy League graduate, was arrested and charged on Monday with the widely publicized ass...

Inside Donald Trump’s Mass-Deportation Plans

09 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Immigration has been the cornerstone of Donald Trump’s political career, and in his second successful Presidential campaign he promised to execute t...

Is Trump’s “Shock and Awe” Transition Working?

06 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The Washington Roundtable discusses Donald Trump’s transition back into the White House, the world he will inherit in 2025, and his provocative nomi...

How the Trump Indictments Backfired

04 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

A year ago, Donald Trump was facing four separate criminal indictments, and had become the first President to be charged with and convicted of a felon...

Ketanji Brown Jackson on Ethics, Trust, and Keeping It Collegial at the Supreme Court

25 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Since the founding of the nation, just 116 people have served as Supreme Court Justices; the 116th is Ketanji Brown Jackson, appointed by President Bi...

How to Prepare for Trump 2.0

23 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The Washington Roundtable discusses how people in D.C. and across the country are preparing themselves for Donald Trump’s second Presidency, and wha...

What Is Donald Trump’s Cabinet Planning for America?

20 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The New Yorker staff writers Dexter Filkins and Clare Malone join Tyler Foggatt to examine Donald Trump’s appointments of former congressman Matt Ga...