The Political Scene | The New Yorker

Sarah Larson joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss the Tesla Takedown movement, protesting Elon Musk and Donald Trump, along with the political efficacy of targeting an electric-car company and why some protesters are borrowing tactics from the AIDS activist group ACT UP. 

This week’s reading:

• “Fighting Elon Musk, One Tesla Dealership at a Time,” by Sarah Larson
• “The Fired Student-Debt Relievers,” by E. Tammy Kim
• “What...

With congressional Republicans unwilling to put any checks on an Administration breaking norms and issuing illegal orders, the focus has shifted to the Democratic opposition—or the lack thereof.  Democrats like Chris Murphy, the junior senator from Connecticut, have vehemently disagreed with party leaders’ reversion to business as usual. Murphy opposed Senator Chuck Schumer’s negotiation to pass the Republican budget and k...

The Washington Roundtable is off today, and will be back next week. In the meantime, enjoy a conversation about the California governor’s new podcast venture, “This Is Gavin Newsom,” from Vanity Fair’s “Inside the Hive” podcast. Radhika Jones, the host and editor-in-chief of Vanity Fair, talks with the magazine’s executive editor, Claire Howorth, and the “Hive” editor Michael Calderone about why Newsom is taking time off f...

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’s increasingly complicated relationship with SpaceX, and whether Donald Trump’s interest in sending people to Mars will spare the space program from DOGE’s downsizing. 

This week’s reading:

• “Inside Trump and Musk’s Takeover of NASA,” by David W. Brown
• “Don’t Believ...

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 stayed in the White House when she went over to CNN during Donald Trump’s first term, and she returned for his second. Trump has made his disdain for CNN clear—and he’s not a big fan of Collins, either. At one point during Trump’s first term, she was barred from a press conferenc...

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 escalating attacks on the judiciary by  President Trump and his allies. If the Administration ignores a legitimate order from a federal judge, as it has come close to doing, what can the courts do in response? 

This week’s reading:

• “Donald Trump, Producer-in-Chief,” by...

The veteran courts reporter Ruth Marcus joins the host Tyler Foggatt to discuss the Trump Administration’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, why flights of Venezuelan deportees were sent to El Salvador, and how the defiance of federal court orders has set off a constitutional crisis. 

This week’s reading:

• “The Trump Administration Nears Open Defiance of the Courts,” by Ruth Marcus
• “The Case of Mahmoud...

Two weeks after the Inauguration of Donald Trump, Elon Musk tweeted, “We spent the weekend feeding USAID into a wood chipper.” Musk was referring to the Agency for International Development, an agency which supports global health and economic development, and which has saved millions of lives around the world. “A viper’s nest of radical-left lunatics,” Musk called it. U.S.A.I.D.’s funding is authorized by Congress, and its...

The Washington Roundtable discusses the ideological underpinnings of Elon Musk’s DOGE with the former Democratic operative and San Francisco-based journalist Gil Duran. Duran writes about the so-called cognitive élite, the right-wing Silicon Valley technologists who want to use A.I. and cryptocurrency to unmake the federal government, on his newsletter The Nerd Reich. 

This week’s reading:

• “The Most Powerful Cry...

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 tariffs, and what the potential death of an American-dominated free-trade system could mean for the global economy. 

This week’s reading:

• “Will Trumpian Uncertainty Knock the Economy Into a Recession?,” by John Cassidy
• “Who Gets to Determine Greenland’s Future?,” by ...

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 half a million dollars. He is the first person sentenced to prison for crimes committed in the Senate in more than forty years. Menendez did favors for the government of Egypt while he was the senior Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, and intervened in criminal cases a...

The Washington Roundtable speaks with Jeffrey Rosen, the president and C.E.O. of the National Constitution Center, a nonpartisan nonprofit, about how America’s founders tried to tyrant-proof their constitutional system, how Donald Trump’s whim-based decision-making resembles that of the dictator Julius Caesar, and what we can learn from the fall of the Roman Republic. Plus, how the Supreme Court is responding to the Trump ...

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’s Department of Justice. Plus, why the President keeps inserting himself into New York City politics and what to make of former Governor Andrew Cuomo’s bid for Gracie Mansion. 

This week’s reading:

• “Donald Trump’s Golden Age of Bunk,” by Susan B. Glasser
• “Elon Mus...

Democrats in Washington have seemed almost paralyzed by the onslaught of far-right appointments and draconian executive orders coming from the Trump White House. But some state governors seem more willing to oppose the federal government than congressional Democrats are. In January, Governor Tim Walz, of Minnesota, tweeted, “President Trump just shut off funding for law enforcement, farmers, schools, veterans, and health c...

The Washington Roundtable discusses the Trump Administration’s decision to bar the Associated Press from Presidential events, Jeff Bezos’s dramatic makeover of the Washington Post’s opinion section, and why freedom of the press matters. Plus, what journalists can do to meet this moment. 

This week’s reading:

• “Why Aren’t We in the Streets?,” by Susan B. Glasser
• “What Will Democratic Resistance Look Like?,” by Jay Cas...

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 of birth rates has become a rallying cry for the American right. Plus, the lack of political will on the left to contend with the issue; and the societal effects on South Korea, which has the lowest birth rates in the world. 

This week’s reading:

• “The End of Chi...

Since the election, Senator John Fetterman—once a great hope of progressives—has conspicuously blamed Democrats for the electoral loss. Fetterman tells David Remnick that the Democratic Party discouraged male voters, particularly white men. He has pursued a lonely course of bipartisanship by meeting with Trump at Mar-a-Lago before his Inauguration, joining Truth Social, and voting to confirm Pam Bondi as Attorney General—t...

The Washington Roundtable discusses with the Stanford University political scientist Larry Diamond about President Trump’s attempts to claim broad powers, why most Republican lawmakers have fallen into line out of fear, and whether the United States has already tipped over into authoritarian territory. Plus, how the courts, Congress, and ordinary citizens might course-correct American democracy.

This week’s reading:

• “Th...

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’s slide into right-wing politics, and how the ideology of techno-fascism is taking root in Silicon Valley. Can the populists and the technologists coexist in Donald Trump’s Washington? 

This week’s reading:

• “Elon Musk’s A.I.-Fuelled War on Human Agency,” by Kyle Ch...