The Political Scene | The New Yorker
Episodes
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...
The Authors of “How Democracies Die” on the New Democratic Minority
18 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
American voters have elected a President with broadly, overtly authoritarian aims. It’s hardly the first time that the democratic process has brough...
Chris Hayes on the New Trump Coalition, and What Democrats Do Next
13 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The second Trump Administration might dramatically reshape the foundations of the federal government for decades to come. Meanwhile, the Democratic ...
Donald Trump Returns. What Now?
08 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The Washington roundtable is joined by David Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker, to discuss how Donald Trump, a convicted felon and sexual abuser, ...
How Trump Took Back America
07 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Four years after refusing to accept defeat and encouraging a violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, Donald J. Trump has once again been elected Pre...
Liz Cheney on Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell, and Jeff Bezos
04 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In recent weeks and months, dozens of prominent security and military officials and Republican politicians have come out against Donald Trump, declari...
Why American Democracy is in Danger, with Michael Beschloss
01 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The Washington Roundtable discusses the 2024 election with the historian Michael Beschloss, before a live audience at The New Yorker Festival, on Octo...
Is the Backlash to a Racist Joke Trump’s October Surprise
30 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
At Donald Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden this past weekend, the comedian Tony Hinchcliffe called Puerto Rico an “island of garbage.” In ...
Charlamagne tha God Has Some Advice for Harris and the Democrats
28 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In these final days of the Presidential campaign, Vice-President Kamala Harris has been getting in front of voters as much as she can. Given the polls...
The Lies Are Winning
26 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The Washington Roundtable discusses the avalanche of disinformation that has taken over the 2024 election cycle, including an A.I. video meant to slan...
How Poll Watchers Could Help Trump Challenge the Election Results
24 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Since Donald Trump tried to challenge the 2020 election, the Republican National Committee has been hard at work building a network of poll watchers t...
The Stakes for Abortion Rights, from the Head of Planned Parenthood
22 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
If Vice-President Kamala Harris wins in November, it will likely be on the strength of the pro-choice vote, which has been turning out strongly in rec...
What Billionaires See in Donald Trump
19 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The Washington Roundtable discusses the ultra-rich figures, such as Elon Musk, who are donating staggeringly large sums of money to Donald Trump’s c...
How Hurricane Helene Has Fuelled Far-Right Conspiracies
16 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Jessica Pishko, who recently published a piece about the devastation left behind by Hurricane Helene, joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss conspiracy theori...
How Kamala Harris Became a Contender
15 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Since July 21st, when Joe Biden endorsed her in the Presidential race, all eyes have been on Vice-President Kamala Harris. The New Yorker’s Evan Osn...
What Motivates Kamala Harris?
12 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The Washington Roundtable: Susan B. Glasser, Jane Mayer, and Evan Osnos discuss the final stretch of Kamala Harris’s Presidential campaign, includin...
What Some Gaza Protest Voters See in Trump
09 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
With the U.S. Presidential election less than a month away, and the war in Gaza now ongoing for a full year, the group of voters who are “uncommitte...
Newt Gingrich on What Trump Could Accomplish in a Second Term
07 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Long before Donald Trump got serious about politics, Newt Gingrich saw himself as the revolutionary in Washington, introducing a combative style of po...
How to Find Every Democratic Voter in Wisconsin
05 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The Washington Roundtable is joined by the Wisconsin Democratic Party chair, Ben Wikler, to discuss ground operations for Kamala Harris in the key bat...
Will J. D. Vance’s Debate Victory Matter on Election Day?
02 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The first and only Vice-Presidential Debate of the 2024 campaign was mostly cordial, but J. D. Vance's smooth performance tried to soften the sharper ...
Young Donald Trump, Roy Cohn, and the Dark Arts of Power
30 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Actors and comedians have usually played Donald Trump as larger than life, almost as a cartoon. In the new film “The Apprentice,” Sebastian Stan d...
The Election Dividing Husbands and Wives Across America
28 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Recent polls suggest that American men and women are more divided over the 2024 election than they were in 2016, when Donald Trump ran against Hillary...
From “Inside the Hive”: Behind Donald Trump's “Bro Podcast” Binge
25 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The Political Scene brings you a recent episode of Vanity Fair’s “Inside the Hive,” hosted by the special correspondent Brian Stelter. The Atlan...
Timothy Snyder on Why Ukraine Can Still Win the War
24 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Since the war in Ukraine began, the historian Timothy Snyder has made several trips to Ukraine, and it was there that he wrote parts of his newest boo...
Is Eric Adams Impervious to Scandal?
18 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Last week, New York City’s police commissioner, Edward Caban, resigned after a federal corruption probe. Shortly after, Mayor Eric Adams’s chief l...
Josh Shapiro on How Kamala Harris Can Win Pennsylvania
16 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In 2024, all eyes are on Pennsylvania: its nineteen electoral votes make it the largest swing state, and it’s considered a critical battleground for...