The Political Scene | The New Yorker

For decades, the United States backed efforts to achieve a two-state solution—in which Israel would exist side by side with the Palestinian state, with both states recognizing each other’s claim to contested territory. The veteran negotiators Hussein Agha, representing Palestine, and Robert Malley, an American diplomat, played instrumental roles in that long effort, including the critical Camp David summit of 2000. But, in their new book, “Tomorrow Is Yesterday,” they conclude that they were part of a charade. There was never any way that a two-state solution could satisfy either of the parties, Agha and Malley tell David Remnick in an interview. “A waste of time is almost a charitable way to look at it,” Malley notes bitterly. “At the end of that thirty-year-or-so period, the Israelis and Palestinians are in a worse situation than before the U.S. got so heavily invested.” The process, appealing to Western leaders and liberals in Israel, was geared to “find the kind of solutions that have a technical outcome, that are measurable, and that can be portrayed by lines on maps,” Agha says. “It completely discarded the issue of emotions and history. You can’t be emotional. You have to be rational. You have to be cool. But rational and cool has nothing to do with the conflict.” “What Killed the Two-State Solution?,” an excerpt from Agha and Malley’s new book, was published in The New Yorker. New episodes of The New Yorker Radio Hour drop every Tuesday and Friday. Follow the show wherever you get your podcasts. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

The Washington Roundtable discusses the fatal shooting of the right-wing activist and Donald Trump ally Charlie Kirk, who was killed on Wednesday during a speech on a college campus. The panel considers whether the United States risks tumbling into a spiral of political violence, and how the Administration might use this moment to justify a crackdown on political opponents. This week’s reading: Did Trump Just Declare War on the American Left?MAGA Reacts to the Assassination of Charlie KirkCharlie Kirk’s Murder and the Crisis of Political ViolenceThe Epstein Birthday Book Is Even Worse Than You Might RealizeTune in wherever you get your podcasts. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Fergus McIntosh, the head research editor at The New Yorker, joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss how the magazine is approaching fact -checking in the second Trump era. They talk about how the spread of disinformation and deepfakes has changed the work of verifying facts; why Trump has been more aggressive, in his second term, about restricting the release of government data; and what makes his particular style of spreading falsehoods so difficult to counter. This week’s reading: The Latest Phase in Trump’s War on DataInside the Chaos at the C.D.C.Social Media Is Navigating Its Sectarian PhaseBrazil Braces for a Verdict on Its Ex-President—and on Its DemocracyDoes Society Have Too Many Rules?Tune in to The Political Scene wherever you get your podcasts. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Speculation, analysis, and commentary circulated all summer, after the announcement, in June, that Anna Wintour would step back from her role as the editor-in-chief of American Vogue. This changing of the guard is uniquely fraught, because Wintour’s name has become nearly inextricable from the magazine, to a degree almost unknown today. And, as New York Fashion Week was set to begin, Wintour spoke with David Remnick about choosing her successor, the Vogue.com editor Chloe Malle. “It felt like this was the right time,” she says. With an unusual number of new creative directors in positions at major fashion houses, “It seemed like a good moment to bring in someone with a different perspective and a different generation who could look at things in a new way.” Wintour was appointed editor-in-chief in 1988, and generations of designers have come up under her famously acute and decisive judgments. She comes from a publishing family; her brother is a well-known journalist, and her father was the editor of the London Evening Standard. She credits him with steering her into a career in fashion, even suggesting that the teen-age Anna write down “editor of Vogue” as her career aspiration on a school form. “Working my first jobs in London, there [was] no money, there’s no staff, there’s no teams, so that you have to learn how to do everything,” Wintour says. “So, when I came to the States and there was a shoe editor and an underwear editor and a fabric editor, it was all so siloed. I felt very confident because I sort of knew how to do everything.” Wintour is also known for bringing politics to Vogue; she’s a noted Democratic supporter and donor. “I’ve been impressed by Governor Newsom, I think he’s certainly making a stand, and obviously I’m sure there’ll be many other candidates that will emerge, hopefully soon.” But, in this political environment, Remnick asks, “How do you make a case that fashion is important?” Fashion, she replies, “is always important. It’s a question of self-expression and a statement about yourself. . . . And, forgive me, David, but how boring would it be if everybody was just wearing a dark suit and a white shirt all the time?” New episodes of The New Yorker Radio Hour drop every Tuesday and Friday. Follow the show wherever you get your podcasts. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

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 news of this summer, discussing President Trump’s imposition of tariffs on nearly every major U.S. trading partner; his deployment of the National Guard on the streets of the capital; and his purges of agencies including the Department of Justice, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. They also discuss what Trump might use emergency powers to do in the near future. “You don’t acquire all this power, and go to all this effort, and then not start to use it,” Glasser says. This week’s reading: How Many Court Cases Can Trump Lose in a Single Week?Trump’s Department of Energy Gets SciencedTexas Democrats’ Weapons of the WeakDo State Referendums on Abortion Work?Tune in wherever you get your podcasts. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

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. Attorney General Pam Bondi. They talk about Bondi’s political origins and her unprecedented reshaping of the Justice Department, and how she delivers on President Trump’s desire to use the legal system for revenge and retribution. They also touch on Bondi’s mishandling of the Jeffrey Epstein case, which has drawn the ire of both Democratic politicians and core parts of the President’s base. This week’s reading: Pam Bondi’s Power PlayTexas Democrats’ Weapons of the WeakDo State Referendums on Abortion Work?Why Don’t We Take Nuclear Weapons Seriously?How Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.,’s Anti-Vax Agenda Is Infecting AmericaTune in to The Political Scene wherever you get your podcasts. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

The term “culture wars” is most often associated with issues of sexuality, race, religion, and gender. But, as recent months have made plain, when Donald Trump refers to the culture wars, he also means the arts. He fired the board of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, which Republicans want to rename for him. His Administration fired the national archivist and the Librarian of Congress, and pressured the director of the National Portrait Gallery to resign; it is reviewing the entire Smithsonian Institution, looking for what the President calls “improper ideology.” Some view these moves as low-hanging fruit for Trump, and a distraction from bad press about Jeffrey Epstein, the Putin meeting, and tariffs. But Adam Gopnik believes that interpretation is a misreading. The loyalty purge at institutions such as the National Portrait Gallery is a key part of his agenda. “Pluralism is the key principle of a democratic culture,” Gopnik tells David Remnick. Could we be following the path of Stalinist Russia, where a head of state dictated reviews of concerts, Remnick asks? “I pray and believe that we are not. But that is certainly the direction in which one inevitably heads when the political boss takes over key cultural institutions, and dictates who’s acceptable and who is not.” Gopnik recalls saying after the election that “Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert would be next.” “You would see them disappear,” he added. “Each time, we find a rationale for it or a rationale is offered. And it’s much easier for us to swallow the rationale than to face the reality.” Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

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 how a decade of reliance on anti-Trump rhetoric has left Democrats reactive and directionless. They consider why groups that Democrats once counted on—from young people to communities of color—are shifting rightward, and what new strategies politicians from Gavin Newsom to Zohran Mamdani are testing to prove that the Democratic Party stands for more than opposition to Trump. This week’s reading The Trump Administration’s Efforts to Reshape America’s PastHow Former Biden Officials Defend Their Gaza PolicyThe Endless August RecessThe Enormous Stakes of Trump’s Effort to Fire the Fed Governor Lisa CookWhat’s Life Like in Washington, D.C., During Trump’s Takeover?Tune in to The Political Scene wherever you get your podcasts. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

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 by the staff writer Dexter Filkins. China has developed advanced weapons that rival or surpass America’s; and at the same time, drone warfare has fundamentally changed calculations of the battlefield. Ukraine’s ability to hold off the massive Russian Army depends largely on a startup industry that has provided millions of drones—small, highly accurate, and as cheap as five hundred dollars each—to inflict enormous casualties on invading forces. In some other conflict, could the U.S. be in the position of Russia? “The nightmare scenario” at the Pentagon, Filkins tells David Remnick, is, “we’ve got an eighteen-billion-dollar aircraft carrier steaming its way toward the western Pacific, and [an enemy could] fire drones at these things, and they’re highly, highly accurate, and they move at incredible speeds. . . . To give [Secretary of Defense Pete] Hegseth credit, and the people around him . . . they say, ‘O.K., we get it. We’re going to change the Pentagon procurement process,’ ” spending less on aircraft carriers and more on small technology like drones. But “the Pentagon is so slow, and people have been talking about these things for years. . . . Nobody has been able to do it.” Read Filkins’s “Is the U.S. Ready for the Next War?” New episodes of The New Yorker Radio Hour drop every Tuesday and Friday. Follow the show wherever you get your podcasts. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

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 Administration’s broad claims of executive power. Rosen, a professor at George Washington University Law School, hosts the “We the People” podcast and is the author of “The Pursuit of Happiness: How Classical Writers on Virtue Inspired the Lives of the Founders and Defined America.” This episode originally aired on March 7th, 2025 Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

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 American democracy. Their guest is David D. Kirkpatrick, whose new investigation details the many ways President Donald Trump has profited during his second term—from a reported private jet gifted by Qatar to soaring valuations of Trump Media and a flood of crypto ventures. They discuss whether these attempts at self-enrichment amount to ordinary political corruption or whether they represent tools for consolidating power which could accelerate democratic backsliding in the United States, much like in kleptocracies and oligarchies abroad. This week’s reading: How Much Is Trump Profiting Off the Presidency?Can Donald Trump Police the United States?Pam Bondi’s Power PlayThe Troubling Lines That Columbia Is DrawingThe Texas Democrats’ Remote ResistanceTune in to The Political Scene wherever you get your podcasts. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Mohammed R. Mhawish was living in Gaza City during Israel’s invasion, in the immediate aftermath of the October 7th attack. He witnessed the invasion for months and reported on its devastating consequences for Al Jazeera, The Nation, and other outlets. After his home was targeted in an Israeli strike, which nearly killed him, he fled Gaza. In The New Yorker, he’s written about mental-health workers who are trying to treat a deeply traumatized population, while themselves suffering from starvation, the loss of loved ones, their own injuries—and the constant, remorseless death toll around them. “They were telling me, ‘We cannot wait for the war to stop to start healing—or for ourselves to heal—to start healing others,’” Mhawish relates to David Remnick. “I understood they were trying to heal by helping others heal.” New episodes of The New Yorker Radio Hour drop every Tuesday and Friday. Follow the show wherever you get your podcasts. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

The New Yorker staff writer Jonathan Blitzer joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss how Donald Trump’s second-term immigration agenda has shifted from border enforcement to an unprecedented campaign of interior deportations. They talk about the expansion of detention through military bases and state-run facilities, the changes to long-standing arrest protocols, and the strategic transfers designed to separate detainees from their families and lawyers. Plus, they examine how these tactics have eroded due-process protections, why Democrats have struggled to mount an effective response, and whether public outrage could slow the Administration’s most aggressive deportation measures. This week’s reading Can Democrats Fight Back Against Trump’s Redistricting Scheme?How Much Is Trump Profiting Off the Presidency?Can Donald Trump Run a Mile?What Happens to Public Media Now?What If A.I. Doesn’t Get Much Better Than This? Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

From the attempt to end birthright citizenship to the gutting of congressionally authorized agencies, the Trump Administration has created an enormous number of legal controversies. The Radio Hour asked for listeners’ questions about President Trump and the courts. To answer them, David Remnick speaks with two regular contributors: Ruth Marcus, who writes about legal issues and the Supreme Court, and Jeannie Suk Gersen, who teaches constitutional law at Harvard Law School. While the writers disagree on some significant questions—such as the Supreme Court’s recent ruling in Trump v. CASA, which struck down the use of nationwide injunctions—both acknowledge the unprecedented nature of some of the questions from listeners. “They never taught you these things in law school, because he’s pushing on areas of the law that are not normally pushed on,” Marcus tells Remnick. New episodes of The New Yorker Radio Hour drop every Tuesday and Friday. Follow the show wherever you get your podcasts. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

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 American democracy. Their guest is Roy Wood, Jr., the host of the satirical program “Have I Got News for You,” on CNN. The group discusses the significance of CBS’s cancellation of “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” a recent episode of “South Park” that is searingly critical of Donald Trump, and the President’s deployment of lawsuits and the administrative state to try to intimidate his critics in the media and entertainment industries. “There's always going to be these petty, ticky-tack battles that the Administration fights,” says Wood. “But I don't think that's gonna stop the comedians from doing what Trump hopes this would do, which is silence them.” This week’s reading: South Park” Skewers a Satire-Proof PresidentWhat the Cancellation of Stephen Colbert’s ‘Late Show’ MeansHow the Israeli Right Explains the Aid Disaster It CreatedShould Police Officers Be More Like U.F.C. Fighters?Is Brazil’s Underdog Era Coming to an End? Tune in to The Political Scene wherever you get your podcasts. To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker, visit newyorker.com/podcasts. To send feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

The city of Los Angeles has declared itself a sanctuary city, where local authorities do not share information with federal immigration enforcement. But L.A.—where nearly forty per cent of residents are foreign-born—became ground zero for controversial arrests and deportations by ICE. The Trump Administration deployed marines and the National Guard to the city, purportedly to quell protests against the operation, and the Secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, spoke of the government’s intention to “liberate” Los Angeles from its elected officials. This week, David Remnick talks with the city’s mayor, Karen Bass, a former congressional representative, about the recent withdrawal of some troops, and a lawsuit the city has joined arguing that the Trump Administration’s immigration raids and detentions are unconstitutional. (A federal judge has issued a temporary restraining order against the government.) “I’ve described L.A. as a petri dish,” Bass says. The Administration “wanted to . . . show that they could come in and do whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted, and however they wanted. They were putting every other city in America on notice: ‘mess with us will come for you.’ ” Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

The Washington Roundtable’s Evan Osnos interviews Katie Drummond, the global editorial director of Wired, about the publication’s scoop-filled coverage of DOGE, and what Elon Musk’s experience in Washington taught Silicon Valley leaders. “They know that they can operate with relative impunity, and they are now lining themselves up next to a President who will allow that to continue to happen,” Drummond says. Plus, a discussion of how artificial intelligence will shape our society and democracy, and transform the workforce in the years to come. This week’s reading: Trump Redefines the Washington ScandalDonald Trump’s Tariff DealmMaker-In-ChiefAre the Democrats Getting Better at the Internet? To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker, visit newyorker.com/podcasts. To send in feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com with “The Political Scene” in the subject line. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

The New Yorker contributor Jon Allsop joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss how President Trump’s refusal to release the Epstein files has fractured his base, and how the Democratic Party has increasingly weaponized the Epstein conspiracy theory in its attempt to combat the MAGA movement. How do we proceed given that our country’s politics are increasingly defined by conspiratorial thinking? This week’s reading: Donald Trump, Jeffrey Epstein, and Three Conspiracy-Theory TheoriesBehind Trump’s Jeffrey Epstein ProblemWhat the Cancellation of Stephen Colbert’s ‘Late Show’ MeansColdplaygate Is a Reminder That There’s No Escaping Going ViralIn an Age of Climate Change, How Do We Cope with Floods? To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker, visit newyorker.com/podcasts. To send feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

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 after the financier was convicted for hiring an underage prostitute, for which he served a brief and extraordinarily lenient sentence, Epstein remained a playboy, a top political donor, and a very good friend of the very powerful—“a sybarite,” in the words of the journalist Michael Wolff, “in that old -fashioned sense [that] ‘my identity comes from breaking all norms.’ ” Wolff got to know Epstein and recorded, he estimates, a hundred hours of interviews with him. After Epstein was arrested again, in 2019, and was later found dead in his jail cell in what was ruled a suicide, it has been an article of faith within MAGA that his death was a conspiracy or a coverup, and the Trump campaign promised a reveal. Attorney General Pam Bondi initially asserted that she had Epstein’s so-called “client list” on her desk and was reviewing it, but now claims that there is nothing to share. Do the Epstein files have something incriminating about the President? “The central point from which this grew is the [Bill] Clinton relationship with Epstein,” Wolff tells David Remnick. But the MAGA believers “seem to have overlooked the Trump relationship [with Epstein], which was deeper and longer.” The men were “probably the closest friend either of them ever had,” until they reportedly fell out over real estate in 2004. Now Trump is frantically trying to control the narrative, pretending that he barely knew Epstein. This, Wolff thinks, “may be the beginning of Donald Trump’s lame-duck years.” Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

The Washington Roundtable’s Jane Mayer interviews Leah Litman, a law professor at the University of Michigan, a co-host of the “Strict Scrutiny” podcast, and the author of “Lawless: How the Supreme Court Runs on Conservative Grievance, Fringe Theories, and Bad Vibes.” Litman analyzes the wave of victories that the Court has given President Trump’s second Administration—on both its regular docket and its so-called shadow docket—and how outside influence seeps into the Court’s decision-making. Plus, how to parse the dissenting Justices’ language to understand what is happening behind closed doors at the Court. This week’s reading: Trump Has a Bad Case of Biden on the BrainCan Trump Deport People to Any Country That Will Take Them?Sick Children Will Be Among the Victims of Trump’s Big BillDonald Trump, Jeffrey Epstein, and Three Conspiracy-Theory Theories To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker, visit newyorker.com/podcasts. To send in feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com with “The Political Scene” in the subject line. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices