Claim OwnershipBrian Lehrer: A Daily Politics Podcast
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Daily thoughtful conversation about the latest news and politics.
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President Trump is making moves to deploy national guard troops to cities like Chicago and Portland, OR. On Today's Show:Kyle Cheney, senior legal affairs reporter for Politico, talks about how states are reacting and why a federal judge keeps blocking the plan for Portland.
As the federal government shutdown continues, how is the White House using it for political leverage?On Today's Show:Russell Berman, a staff writer at The Atlantic talks shares the latest shutdown news. Note: This conversation was recorded on Friday morning about a developing story.
It's the second day of the latest federal government shutdown over funding.On Today's Show:Politico congressional reporter Nicholas Wu talks about the latest on the impasse, who is getting blamed for the shutdown, and what it will take to end it.
Universities have had to contend with a climate of protest, and pressure from the Trump administration to crack down on it. On Today's Show:Christopher Eisgruber, president of Princeton University and the author of Terms of Respect: How Colleges Get Free Speech Right (Hachette, 2025), talks about issues of free speech and campus politics at Princeton, and the university's relationship with the Trump administration.
As Artificial Intelligence technology develops, and as nations vie for technical dominance, the UN has been considering its role. On Today's Show:Vilas Dhar, president of the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation and member of the UN Secretary-General’s Advisory Body on AI, talks about the two new institutions created by the United Nations to study and discuss the risks and opportunities of artificial intelligence, and his goals for governing this emerging technology so that it serves the public good.
Learning institutions, from public schools to universities, have been the site of several political fights in recent times. On Today's Show:Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the author of Why Fascists Fear Teachers: Public Education and the Future of Democracy (Thesis, 2025), talks about her new book and explains why she says education protects democracy.
The prospect of a government shutdown is growing as Democrats are threatening to not help Republicans on the Hill pass a spending bill by the September 30 deadline. On Today's Show: Deirdre Walsh, congressional correspondent for NPR's Washington Desk, talks about the politics of the potential shutdown and related news from Congress.
Jimmy Kimmel's brief suspension and, as of yesterday evening, illustrates some of the thornier challenges around the ideal of free speech.On Today's Show:Greg Lukianoff, attorney, president and CEO of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression and the author of several books on free speech, offers his thoughts on how he says both the political left and right weaponize crackdowns on speech, and why he thinks that is a problem for everyone's rights.
After President Trump and his public health chief raised concerns about the use of acetaminophen while pregnant, we look at what the science has to say.On Today's Show:Chelsea Cirruzzo, Washington correspondent for STAT News, talks about the results of last week's meeting of the federal advisory committee on vaccines and other public health news.
On today's episode, Richard Gowan, Director of UN and Multilateral Diplomacy at the International Crisis Group, shares insights on what to expect at the UN General Assembly, including President Trump's Tuesday address, the war in Gaza and the role of the United Nations worldwide.
Trump's administration has been using pressure to tamp down criticism by some major network late night hosts. On Today's Show:Elie Honig, senior legal analyst at CNN, New York Magazine columnist, former state and federal prosecutor and author of several books, including When You Come at the King: Inside DOJ’s Pursuit of the President, From Nixon to Trump (Harper, 2025), explores investigations by the Department of Justice of presidents and other high-ranking officials throughout the years, and how the system may be tested during Trump's second presidency, as well as his efforts to control narratives about his administration.
With the cancellation of Stephen Colbert's late night show, and the news that ABC has temporarily suspended Jimmy Kimmel, we explore the changing landscape and moving goalposts of 'free speech.'On Today's Show:Two Atlantic staff writers, Ashley Parker and Adam Serwer share highlights and discuss the latest from the world of politics, where President Trump's administration and its allies have taken aim at critics of Charlie Kirk in the wake of his assassination.
The Trump administration's recent lethal strikes on purported drug boats in Venezuela drew widespread condemnation from experts in international law. On Today's Show:Brian Finucane, senior adviser at the International Crisis Group and a non-resident senior fellow at Reiss Center on Law and Security at NYU Law, talks about the strikes and the legal issues around them.
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has issued a report on the state of children's health.On Today's Show:Julie Rovner, chief Washington correspondent, KFF Health News and host of the What the Health? podcast, talks about the details of the report and where it fits into the Trump administration's MAHA initiative.
Almost immediately after Charlie Kirk was shot and killed, videos were circulating on social media, and many people saw the gruesome crime without meaning to just by logging on.On Today's Show:Adam Clark Estes, senior technology correspondent at Vox, talks about how little content moderation big tech companies are doing these days, how the algorithm fed off people pausing to watch the video, and how content like this may traumatize vast swaths of people.
Democrats in the Senate are debating whether to allow the government to shut down when it runs out of funding later this month.On Today's Show:Zack Beauchamp, senior correspondent at Vox and the author of The Reactionary Spirit: How America's Most Insidious Political Tradition Swept the World (PublicAffairs, 2024), talks about what's at stake in the debate over whether to go along with the Republican plan to fund the government or withhold their votes in protest.
On today's show: Kelly Drane, research director at Giffords Law Center, Ned Parker, investigative reporter at Thomson Reuters, and McKay Coppins, staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of Romney: A Reckoning (Simon & Schuster, 2023), talk about guns and the state of political violence in America, after conservative activist Charlie Kirk was shot and killed at an event on a Utah college campus.
On Today's Show:Ben Casselman, chief economics correspondent for The New York Times, talks about the adjustments to hiring numbers showing 911,000 fewer jobs were created in the 12 months before March 2025, as listeners share their real-world job search stories.
After a string of losses in lower courts by the Trump administration, in an unsigned order on Monday, the Supreme Court lifted a restriction on ICE from conducting indiscriminate stops and raids in Los Angeles that have been decried as racial profiling. On Today's Show:Lindsay Nash, professor of law at Cardozo Law, co-director of the Kathryn O. Greenberg Immigration Justice Clinic and co-director of the Center for Immigration Innovation, offers legal analysis of the ruling, and its implications for previously established protections against racial profiling.
Cristian Farias, legal journalist who writes for Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, and other publications, and the host of The Bully’s Pulpit, a podcast of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, talks about the many legal issues the Trump administration is running into, related to sending the National Guard in to LA and DC, deportations and more.
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because Dems love voter fraud
I am very confused. why did we just listen to him say the days and dates?
seems to me that if they weren't a danger to anyone, then they should have never been incarcerated in the first place.
we need to support our health care workers who have children and other family responsibilities
trump's Russian playbook
3 minutes in and I am very confused.....
i call false equivalency. the dems level of desire for witnesses in the clinton impeachment versus the trump impeachment are apples and oranges, and not, as you say, a product of political expediency. the clinton impeachment senate had special prosecutor starr's ~massive~ investigation to work from, which included an enormous number of depositions from any and all witnesses, along with infamous reams of documents. in the trump case, the house was forced to do the investigation on their own, and were denied access to almost every single document and witness. so obviously, witnesses are a magnitude more essential now than before.
I'm thinking that when trump says to his sycophants that he needs a big tough guy event that segways into his rallies , a kickoff to his 2020 campaign, they think this Iranian general is the ticket. they could blow him up, surgically, with no collateral damage, and insto presto trump's next political ad shoots itself. how shortsighted...this one act has taken a divided Iran and unified them under 1 bloody ideology of America's destruction. way to go trump.
Jesus of Nazareth was accused of blasphemy, not treason.
yes
This Is true Xmas cheer! “When this comes out...Ukraine will look like spilt milk“ Michael Moore.
she sounds rational but I don't trust it
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
who knows what the truth is but this is seriously the craziest saga with really bad actors who keep acting bad
Ok...so does this mean Michael Isikoff is saying "nevermind" to his own book? Since apparently nothing in the Steele dossier is corroborated?
just found this show and I must say that in the midst of severe division and ugliness that pervades us currently, this show presented a constitutional perspective that really adds to this conversation of impeachment. thanks and great work.
Hilarious and expected that you only interview liberals. Can you get anymore biased??? #FakeNews #Trump2020 #AMERICAFirst #BuildTheWall #EndLiberalism
Just say something for something else. Translate the Latin & have done with it.