The Political Scene | The New Yorker

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 tumultuous years in recent memory. Isaac Chotiner, the primary contributor to The New Yorker’s Q. & A. segment, has been following it all. He joins the show to reflect on his favorite interviews of the year, and to discuss 2024’s two biggest stories: the violence in Gaza and the reëlection of Donald Trump. Chotiner also talks about Joe Biden’s legacy, and his view on how Biden’s Presidency will be regarded by history. This week’s reading: The Year in Brain RotLuigi Mangione and the Making of a Modern AntiheroSyria After AssadIn South Korea, a Blueprint for Resisting Autocracy? Tune in to The Political Scene wherever you get your podcasts. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

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Immigration has been the cornerstone of Donald Trump’s political career, and in his second successful Presidential campaign he promised to execute the largest deportation in history. Stephen Miller, Trump’s key advisor on hard-line immigration policy, said that the incoming Administration would “unleash the vast arsenal of federal powers to implement the most spectacular migration crackdown,” possibly involving the use of the military. “I do think they’re going to strain the outer limits of the law on that,” the staff writer Jonathan Blitzer tells David Remnick. “We’re entering unprecedented territory.” Blitzer unpacks some of the anti-immigrant rhetoric, and explains measures that the new Administration is likely to take. “I.C.E. has a policy that discourages arrests at schools, hospitals, places of worship, courts,” he says. That policy can change and, he believes, will. “You’re going to see arrest operations in very scary and upsetting places.” The aim, he thinks, will be “to create a sense of terror. That is going to be the modus operandi of the Administration.” Blitzer is the author of “Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here,” a definitive account of the immigration crisis.

The Washington Roundtable discusses Donald Trump’s transition back into the White House, the world he will inherit in 2025, and his provocative nomination of Pete Hegseth to be Secretary of Defense. In their final Roundtable episode of 2024, Susan B. Glasser, Jane Mayer, and Evan Osnos also reflect on the twists and turns of the past year in politics, including what to make of President Joe Biden’s legacy. This week’s reading: The Scandal of Trump’s Cabinet Picks Isn’t Just Their Personal FailingsPete Hegseth’s Secret HistoryThe Demise and Afterlife of Donald Trump’s Criminal CasesBiden’s Pardon of Hunter Further Undermines His LegacyStopping the PressThe Immigrants Most Vulnerable to Trump’s Mass Deportation Plans Entered the Country LegallyTo 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.

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 felony. Now that Trump is President-elect, and with the Supreme Court having granted sitting Presidents broad immunity, the Justice Department’s efforts to hold Trump accountable appear to be over. Even so, Trump’s legal saga has radically changed American law and politics, the New Yorker staff writer Jeannie Suk Gersen argues. “These prosecutions forced the Supreme Court to at least answer the question [of Presidential immunity],” Gersen says. “It will affect the kind of people who run for President, and it will affect how they think of their jobs.” This week’s reading: Pete Hegseth’s Secret HistoryStopping The PressThe Fundamental Problem with R.F.K., Jr.,’s Nomination to H.H.S.Did the Opioid Epidemic Fuel Donald Trump’s Return to the White House?“Biden’s Pardon of Hunter Further Undermines His LegacyA Coup, Almost, in South Korea,To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker, visit newyorker.com/podcasts. To send feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com.

Since the founding of the nation, just 116 people have served as Supreme Court Justices; the 116th is Ketanji Brown Jackson, appointed by President Biden in 2022. Jackson joined a Court with six conservative Justices setting a new era of jurisprudence. She took her seat just days after the Dobbs decision, when Justice Samuel Alito’s majority opinion overturned Roe v. Wade. She wrote a blistering dissent to the Harvard decision, which ended affirmative action in college admissions, in which she accused the majority of a “let-them-eat-cake obliviousness” to the reality of race in America. She also dissented in the landmark Presidential-immunity case. Immunity might “incentivize an office holder to push the envelope, with respect to the exercise of their authority,” she tells David Remnick. “It was certainly a concern, and one that I did not perceive the Constitution to permit.” They also discussed the widely reported ethical questions surrounding the Court, and whether the ethical code it adopted ought to have some method of enforcement. But Jackson stressed that whatever the public perception, the nine Justices maintain old traditions of collegiality (no legal talk at lunch, period), and that she sometimes writes majority opinions as well as vigorous dissents. Jackson’s recent memoir is titled “Lovely One,” about her family, youth, and how she got to the highest position in American law. 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.

The Washington Roundtable discusses how people in D.C. and across the country are preparing themselves for Donald Trump’s second Presidency, and what tools citizens have to protect their rights and push back on abuses of power. The American Civil Liberties Union has called attention to the strategies of litigation, legislation, and mobilization—strategies that are proven to work. David Cole, a former legal director of the A.C.L.U. and a professor of law and public policy at Georgetown University, joins Susan B. Glasser, Jane Mayer, and Evan Osnos to discuss the checks and balances that exist as guardrails in government and civil society, and how those may be utilized in the coming four years. This week’s reading: What Could Stop Him?The New York Review of BooksThe Explosion of Matt Gaetz and Other Early Lessons in Trump 2.0Donald Trump’s Administration Hopefuls Descend on Mar-a-LagoThe Pain Creating a New Coalition for TrumpThe Technology the Trump Administration Could Use to Hack Your PhoneDonald Trump’s U.F.C. Victory PartyUnderstanding Latino Support for Donald TrumpTo 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.

The New Yorker staff writers Dexter Filkins and Clare Malone join Tyler Foggatt to examine Donald Trump’s appointments of former congressman Matt Gaetz and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., to his Cabinet.Gaetz, who has been nominated for Attorney General, is one of Trump’s most vociferous defenders and the former subject of a sex-trafficking investigation run by the Department of Justice. (Gaetz has denied all allegations.) Trump has chosen Kennedy to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, giving one of the world’s most prominent anti-vaccine activists broad powers over public health. How would these men reshape the legal and medical infrastructures of our federal government? And will they even be confirmed? This week’s reading: “How Far Would Matt Gaetz Go?R.F.K., Jr.,’s Next Move“Why Is Elon Musk Really Embracing Donald Trump?Trump’s Cabinet of WondersThe Most Extreme Cabinet Ever To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker, visit newyorker.com/podcasts. To send feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com.

American voters have elected a President with broadly, overtly authoritarian aims. It’s hardly the first time that the democratic process has brought an anti-democratic leader to power. The political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, who both teach at Harvard, assert that we shouldn’t be shocked by the Presidential result. “It’s not up to voters to defend a democracy,” Levitsky says. “That’s asking far, far too much of voters, to cast their ballot on the basis of some set of abstract principles or procedures.” He adds, “With the exception of a handful of cases, voters never, ever—in any society, in any culture—prioritize democracy over all else. Individual voters worry about much more mundane things, as is their right. It is up to élites and institutions to protect democracy—not voters.” Levitsky and Ziblatt published “How Democracies Die” during Donald Trump’s first Administration, but they argue that what’s ailing our democracy runs much deeper—and that it didn’t start with Trump. “We’re the only advanced, old, rich democracy that has faced the level of democratic backsliding that we’ve experienced. . . . So we need to kind of step back and say, ‘What has gone wrong here?’ If we don’t ask those kinds of hard questions, we’re going to continue to be in this roiling crisis,” Ziblatt says.

The second Trump Administration might dramatically reshape the foundations of the federal government for decades to come. Meanwhile, the Democratic Party is reckoning with what could be interpreted as a generational rebuke of its platform and presentation. But is this the beginning of a mass political realignment in the United States? And how will politicians communicate their platforms in a world where the “attention economy” has so radically shifted? Author, political commentator, and MSNBC host Chris Hayes joins guest host Andrew Marantz for an election postmortem and to discuss where the Democrats go from here. This week’s reading: Donald Trump, ReprisedThe Tucker Carlson Road ShowDoes Hungary Offer a Glimpse of Our Authoritarian Future?Why We Can’t Stop Arguing About Whether Trump Is a FascistWhy Was It So Hard for the Democrats to Replace Biden Tune in to The Political Scene wherever you get your podcasts.

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 assassination of the UnitedHealthcare C.E.O. Brian Thompson. The case seized public imagination, and there has been a torrent of commentary celebrating Mangione and denigrating Thompson, including fan edits of the alleged shooter to posts sharing personal anecdotes of denied health-insurance claims. “Mangione is going to be seen as a folk hero across the aisle,” the New Yorker staff writer Jia Tolentino tells Tyler Foggatt. What does the lionization of a suspected murderer say about the health of our society? This week’s reading: How Daniel Penny Was Found Not Guilty in a Subway Killing That Divided New YorkA Man Was Murdered in Cold Blood and You’re Laughing?What Will Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy Accomplish with Doge?The Fall of Assad’s Syria 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 Washington roundtable is joined by David Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker, to discuss how Donald Trump, a convicted felon and sexual abuser, won both the Electoral College and the popular vote—a first for a Republican President since 2004. Democrats lost almost every swing state, even as abortion-rights ballot measures found favor in some conservative states. On this crossover episode with The New Yorker Radio Hour, they discuss Kamala Harris’s campaign, Trump’s overtly authoritarian rhetoric, and the American electorate’s rightward trajectory. This week’s reading: Donald Trump’s Revenge2016 and 2024How Donald Trump, the Leader of White Grievance, Gained Among Hispanic VotersThe Reckoning of the Democratic PartyHow America Embraced Gender WarDonald Trump’s Second Term Is Joe Biden’s Real Legacy 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.

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 President of the United States. The former President, who in the past year alone has been convicted of a felony and has survived two assassination attempts, campaigned largely on a platform of mass deportations, trade wars, and retribution for his detractors. On Tuesday, he secured the Presidency thanks to a surge of rural voters, high turnout among young men, and unprecedented gains with Black and Latino populations. What does a second Trump term mean for America? Clare Malone and Jay Caspian Kang, who’ve been covering the election for The New Yorker, join Tyler Foggatt to discuss how we got here, and the uncertain future of the Democratic Party. This week’s reading: Donald Trump’s Revenge,”The Americans Prepping for a Second Civil WarWhat’s the Matter with Young Male Voters?Tune in to The Political Scene wherever you get your podcasts.

In recent weeks and months, dozens of prominent security and military officials and Republican politicians have come out against Donald Trump, declaring him a security threat, unfit for office, and, in some cases, a fascist. Way out in front of this movement was Liz Cheney. Up until 2021, she was the third-ranking Republican in Congress, but after the January 6th insurrection she voted to impeach Trump. She then served as vice-chair of the House Select Committee on the January 6th attack. She must have expected it would cost her the midterms and her seat in Congress, which ended up being the case when Wyoming voters rejected her in 2022. Since then, Cheney has gone further, campaigning forcefully on behalf of Vice-President Harris. David Remnick spoke with Cheney last week at The New Yorker Festival, shortly after Jeff Bezos, owner of the Washington Post, blocked its planned endorsement of Harris. “It absolutely proves the danger of Donald Trump,” Cheney said. “When you have Jeff Bezos apparently afraid to issue an endorsement for the only candidate in the race who’s a stable, responsible adult, because he fears Donald Trump, that tells you why we have to work so hard to make sure that Donald Trump isn’t elected,” Cheney told Remnick. “And I cancelled my subscription to the Washington Post.”

The Washington Roundtable discusses the 2024 election with the historian Michael Beschloss, before a live audience at The New Yorker Festival, on October 26th. He calls this election a “turning point” as monumental as the election of 1860—on the eve of the Civil War—and that of 1940, when the U.S. was deciding whether to adopt or fight Fascism. “I think Donald Trump meets most of the parts of the definition of the word fascist,” Beschloss says. “You go through all of American history, and you cannot find another major party nominee who has promised to be dictator for a day, which we all know will not be only for a day.” But, if Trump does return to the White House, he adds, there is still hope that the rule of law, public protest, and the presence of state capitals free of federal domination will allow the U.S. to resist autocracy. This week’s reading: Garbage Time at the 2024 Finish LineSafeguarding the Pennsylvania ElectionThe Fight Over Truth in a Blue-Collar Pennsylvania CountyStanding Up to TrumpThe Trump Show Comes to Madison Square GardenThe Obamas Campaign for Kamala HarrisTrump’s Health, and Ours 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.

At Donald Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden this past weekend, the comedian Tony Hinchcliffe called Puerto Rico an “island of garbage.” In the swing state of Pennsylvania, which is home to nearly half a million people of Puerto Rican descent, the fallout from Hinchcliffe’s offensive remarks threatens to shift the balance of the Latino electorate. The New Yorker contributing writer Geraldo Cadava joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss the public response to the rally and why the Republican Party has appealed to Latino voters in recent years. “In all of the interviews of Latino Republicans that I’ve done over the past several years, they will point to real concerns they have about crime, safety, charter schools, immigration, the economy that they feel like the Democrats haven’t had an answer for,” Cadava says. This week’s reading: The Political Journey of a Top Latino Strategist for Trump“The Radio Station That Latino Voters TrustDonald Trump and the F-WordThe Trump Show Comes to Madison Square GardenBidenomics Is Starting to Transform America. Why Has No One Noticed? Tune in to The Political Scene wherever you get your podcasts.

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 showing shaky support among Black men, one man she absolutely had to talk to was Lenard McKelvey, much better known as Charlamagne tha God. As a co-host of the syndicated “Breakfast Club” morning radio show, Charlamagne has interviewed Presidential candidates such as Harris, Hillary Clinton, and Joe Biden, as well as New York City’s embattled Mayor Eric Adams and many more. He tells David Remnick that he received death threats just for speaking with Harris—“legitimate threats, not . . . somebody talking crazy on social media. That’s just me having a conversation with her about the state of our society. So imagine what she actually gets.” Charlamagne believes firmly that the narrative of Harris losing Black support is overstated, or a polling fiction, but he agrees that the Democrats have a messaging problem. The author of a book titled “Get Honest or Die Lying,” Charlamagne says that the Party has shied away from widespread concerns about immigration and the economy, to its detriment. “I just want to see more honesty from Democrats. Like I always say, Republicans are more sincere about their lies than Democrats are about their truth!”

The Washington Roundtable discusses the avalanche of disinformation that has taken over the 2024 election cycle, including an A.I. video meant to slander Tim Walz and claims that the votes are rigged before they’re even counted. Will this torrent of lies tip the election in favor of Donald Trump? Is there a way out of this morass of untruth? “I think the lies are clearly winning,” the staff writer Evan Osnos says. “But I would also say that that doesn’t mean that we should abandon the tools that are available.” Osnos notes recent defamation rulings against Rudy Giuliani and Fox News over false statements about the 2020 election as cases in point. This week’s reading: Donald Trump and the F-WordCan Older Americans Swing the Election for Harris?What’s the Matter with Young Male Voters?Door-Knocking in Door CountyWhat Would Donald Trump Do to the Economy?The Tight-Knit World of Kamala Harris’s Sorority 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.

Since Donald Trump tried to challenge the 2020 election, the Republican National Committee has been hard at work building a network of poll watchers to observe ballot counting in counties across America. The program could help Trump and the R.N.C. challenge the results of the 2024 election should Trump lose, while also driving turnout among Republican voters who are skeptical of election integrity in the U.S. The New Yorker contributing writer Antonia Hitchens joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss how the R.N.C.’s poll-watching efforts may come into play on November 5th and beyond. This week’s reading: The U.S. Spies Who Sound the Alarm About Election InterferenceThe Election-Interference Merry-Go-Round To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker, visit newyorker.com/podcasts. To send feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com.

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 recent elections. Her statements and choices on the campaign trail couldn’t stand in starker relief against those of Donald Trump and his running mate, J. D. Vance, who recently called for defunding Planned Parenthood. Meanwhile, Harris “is the first sitting Vice-President or President to come to a Planned Parenthood health center, to come to an abortion clinic, and really understand the conversations that have been happening on the ground,” Alexis McGill Johnson, Planned Parenthood’s president and C.E.O., tells David Remnick. The organization is spending upward of forty million dollars in this election to try to secure abortion rights in Congress and in the White House. A second Trump term, she speculates, could bring a ban on mifepristone and a “pregnancy czar” overseeing women in a federal Department of Life. “Is that scary enough for you?” Johnson asks.