What Next | Daily News and Analysis

George Floyd’s death at the hands of Minneapolis police last year sparked an international protest movement and amplified calls for police accountability. Now, as the former police officer Derek Chauvin goes on trial, Minneapolis is preparing for another public reckoning. Guest: Jon Collins, senior reporter for Minnesota Public Radio. Slate Plus members get bonus segments and ad-free podcast feeds. Sign up now. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The federal Lifeline program was intended to bridge the gap between Americans who could comfortably pay for phone and internet service, and those who couldn’t. But in the midst of the pandemic, Lifeline is falling woefully short. How did a program meant to help connect low-income Americans with phone and internet service ended up making them second-class digital citizens at the worst possible moment? Guest: Tony Romm, senior tech policy reporter at the Washington Post, author of “How the...

After Joe Biden’s surprising win in Georgia, Republicans in the state started in on legislation to limit voting access in the state. Their efforts mirror what’s happening in state houses across the country. Is there any way to slow down these efforts to limit access to the ballot? Guest: Ari Berman, writer for Mother Jones and the author of Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America. Slate Plus members get bonus segments and ad-free podcast feeds. Sign up now. Learn...

As legislative sessions begin across the country, a rash of anti-trans bills have been brought to the floor by Republican legislators. Many of the proposals target trans youth -- both in sports, and access to medical care. If any of these bills become law, what will it mean for trans rights across the country? Guest: Kate Sosin, Reporter for the 19th Slate Plus members get bonus segments and ad-free podcast feeds. Sign up now. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

President Joe Biden has said he wants to focus his foreign policy on rebuilding international alliances and standing up to China and Russia. But just five weeks into the new administration, the Middle East has already started to demand Biden’s attention. Guest: Josh Keating, senior editor at Slate. Slate Plus members get bonus segments and ad-free podcast feeds. Sign up now. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The power’s back on in Texas, but many residents are still struggling to clean up after a disastrous winter storm. The cold snap knocked out electricity for several days and froze water lines. Some Texans are still without water; others are bailing out flooded homes. But this storm was just the latest in a series of catastrophes to hit Texas in the past several years, leaving the state’s most vulnerable residents in ever more precarious positions. Guest: Amal Ahmed, reporter at the Texas...

Over the last year, the Australian government has been waging a quiet war against Facebook and Google. Through a new law, it plans to force the big tech companies to pay news outlets in exchange for linking to their sites. Will this new law have the intended effect? Or will it set a dangerous precedent that cedes even more power over to the tech giants? Guest: JR Hennessy, editor at Business Insider Australia Host Lizzie O’Leary Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

After years of policy work in Washington, Neera Tanden is more than qualified to serve as Biden’s Director of the Office of Management and Budget. But her open scorn for conservatives and progressives alike, often expressed through aggressive Twitter barbs, has made her confirmation the most tenuous of the new president’s picks. Guest: Jim Newell, Slate’s senior politics writer. Slate Plus members get bonus segments and ad-free podcast feeds. Sign up now. Learn more about your ad choices....

The U.S. military has long had a sexual assault problem. And the Marine Corps - the final service branch to gender-integrate - is no exception. Though multiple scandals have rocked the Marines, continued abuses make it clear that deeper changes are needed to make all service people safe. Guest: Erin Kirk-Cuomo, founder of #NotInMyMarineCorps. Slate Plus members get bonus segments and ad-free podcast feeds. Sign up now. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Democrats are divided over student debt forgiveness. President Joe Biden is trying to get $10,000-per-borrower canceled, while more progressive members of the party want $50,000 wiped out. So whom would these proposals help? And what can be done to keep the student debt crisis from happening all over again? Guest: Jordan Weissmann, Slate's senior business and economics correspondent. Slate Plus members get bonus segments and ad-free podcast feeds. Sign up now. Learn more about your ad...

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has attracted national praise for his buck-stops-here leadership throughout the pandemic. But he's made some major missteps in his coronavirus response - the lack of transparency around COVID-related deaths in nursing homes is only the latest example. And his efforts to evade scrutiny have drawn fire from critics and constituents. Guest: Jimmy Vielkind, reporter for the Wall Street Journal covering New York politics and government. Slate Plus members get bonus...

Over the last week, millions of Texans have been forced to live without power or heat. At least 16 have died since Monday. In a state that’s no stranger to extreme weather and high power demand, how did it all go so wrong? Guest: Josh Rhodes, research associate at the Webber Energy Group at the University of Texas at Austin Host Lizzie O’Leary Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Rush Limbaugh’s radio show provided a roadmap that the Republican Party has been following, more or less faithfully, for decades. Guest: Nicole Hemmer, author of Messengers of the Right and co-host of This Day in Esoteric Political History. Slate Plus members get bonus segments and ad-free podcast feeds. Sign up now. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the year since the pandemic began, the number of attacks against Asian Americans has skyrocketed. The most recent wave of assaults left a number of victims injured and one man dead. Many Asian American activists say the attacks reflect a pattern of violence “as old as America itself.” Guest: Kim Tran, an anti-oppression consultant and the author of the forthcoming book, The End of Allyship: A New Era of Solidarity. Slate Plus members get bonus segments and ad-free podcast feeds. Sign up...

Gustavo Arellano’s father is what he would call a ‘pandejo’ - someone who doesn't take COVID safety seriously. Since the beginning of the pandemic, Gustavo has been fighting the uphill battle to dissuade him of his skepticism. And two weeks ago, his father finally got vaccinated. We all know a ‘pandejo.’ What can we learn from Gustavo’s relationship with his father? Guest: Gustavo Arellano, columnist for the LA Times Slate Plus members get bonus segments and ad-free podcast feeds. Sign up...

For most of the last year, Clubhouse—the audio-only social media app—has been dominated by conversations about business, branding, and Elon Musk. But as users picked up the app around the globe, something extraordinary happened. Censors in mainland China overlooked it. And for two weeks in February, it hosted a series of unusual, unfiltered conversations. Han Chinese, Hong Kongers, Taiwanese, and Uighurs all flooded to the app to speak freely about authoritarianism, democracy, and...

On Tuesday, workers in an Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama started voting on whether or not to form a union. Amazon has been fighting the vote on multiple fronts. A “yes” vote could possibly spark unionization drives in warehouses all across the country. Guests: Jay Greene, tech reporter for the Washington Post Slate Plus members get bonus segments and ad-free podcast feeds. Sign up now. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As soon as the Democrats won a slim 50-50 majority in the senate, the jokes about President Joe Manchin started flying. The Senate's self described “conservative Democrat” from West Virginia is in a key position to influence legislation during the Biden administration. How will he wield that power? Guests: Jim Newell, senior politics reporter for Slate Ken Ward Jr., co-founder of Mountain State Spotlight and distinguished reporting fellow for Pro-Publica Slate Plus members get bonus segments...

After the insurrection at the nation's capitol on January 6th, the House of Representatives impeached Donald Trump for a second time. The only article charges him with high crimes and misdemeanors for inciting a riot. There's no shortage of evidence backing up that claim, but the politics make it an open question if the senate will convict. Guest: Dahlia Lithwick, host of Slate’s Amicus podcast Slate Plus members get bonus segments and ad-free podcast feeds. Sign up now. Learn more about...

The COVID-19 vaccine roll-out has been a mess across the country, but the failure has been particularly egregious in Philadelphia. The city entrusted a large part of its vaccine distribution to a start-up company run by a 22-year-old with zero medical experience. It wound up with a shuttered clinic and stolen vaccine doses. Guest: Nina Feldman, health reporter for WHYY. Slate Plus members get bonus segments and ad-free podcast feeds. Sign up now. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit...