Claim OwnershipBrian Lehrer: A Daily Politics Podcast
Subscribed: 1,360Played: 229,451
Subscribe
© WNYC Studios
Description
Daily thoughtful conversation about the latest news and politics.
317 Episodes
Reverse
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.
Recent developments on the world stage may be shifting the geopolitical calculations of the Israel-Hamas war. On Today's Show:Jane Arraf, international correspondent covering the Middle East for NPR, talks about the latest developments in Gaza as Israel clamps down on volunteer doctors and threatens more restrictions on humanitarian aid amid reports of famine.
With the Epstein case and the possibility of other powerful abusers still at large, we look at the latest.On Today's Show:Jacob Shamsian, legal correspondent at Business Insider, talks about the latest developments in the Epstein saga as several survivors of Jeffrey Epstein urge Congress to act.
We look at how the media, including social media, is part of President Trump's approach to politics.On Today's Show:Ben Smith, co-founder and editor-in-chief of Semafor, and the author of Traffic: Genius, Rivalry, and Delusion in the Billion-Dollar Race to Go Viral (Penguin Press, 2023), shares his analysis for how the president has come for civil servants, and what it might mean for the government bureaucracy in the future.
Congress is returning from its summer recess to a host of issues of national and international importance.On Today's Show:U.S. Senator Andy Kim (D-NJ) talks about his work in the Senate and the issues in New Jersey as congress returns to work, including his recent trip to Asia, deportations and immigrant detention, further rescission demands, and why he's supporting Zohran Mamdani.
On Today's Show:Nick Miroff, staff writer for The Atlantic who covers immigration and the Department of Homeland Security, talks about the changes at the immigration enforcement agency and how the $75 billion budget bump will be spent.
In an executive order on Monday, President Donald Trump directed each state’s National Guard to be prepared to respond to civil disturbancesOn Today's Show:Dan Lamothe, U.S. military and Pentagon reporter at The Washington Post, breaks down the latest news and what this might mean for cities like Chicago, Baltimore and New York City.
Between a meeting with South Korean leaders, further tariffs, and foreign investments, this week has seen several headlines regarding Trump's economic agenda. On Today's Show:Lydia DePillis, New York Times reporter covering the American economy and Shawn Donnan, Bloomberg News senior writer, talk about the latest economic and tariff news, including U.S. investment in Intel, other deals involving foreign investment in U.S. businesses, and the Federal Reserve.
The left is taking a variety of different, somewhat disjointed approaches to counter-messaging the Trump administration. On Today's Show:Tom Nichols, staff writer at The Atlantic and an author of the Atlantic Daily newsletter, talks about national politics, including Democratic messaging strategies, like California Gov. Newsom's efforts to 'troll' Trump on social media.
In July, the Justice Department (DOJ) announced it had issued subpoenas to medical providers that had provided gender-affirming care to minors. On today's show: Washington Post reporter Casey Parks discusses one of those subpoenas, which was newly made public, and what it means for transgender healthcare.
As the Trump administration conducts a review of the content in the Smithsonian museums, the president wrote on social media earlier this week that the Smithsonian Institution was too focused on the horrors of slavery.On Today's Show:Douglas Brinkley, professor of history at Rice University, a CNN Presidential Historian, and a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, talks about what could be lost if the administration is able to censor what is presented to museumgoers.
Download from Google Play
Download from App Store
United States
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.