The Brian Lehrer Show

The United States and Saudi Arabia reached a landmark 30-year civilian nuclear cooperation agreement, but within a day, President Donald Trump threw it into limbo by conditioning its approval on Saudi Arabia normalizing relations with Israel. Fred Kaplan, Slate's War Stories columnist, contributor to The iPaper and the author of many nonfiction books and his latest, a novel, A Capital Calamity (Miniver Press, 2024), breaks down the latest news on this, and the war with Iran, and what comes next.

Photo: WASHINGTON, DC - NOVEMBER 18: U.S. President Donald Trump (R) responds to a question where Crown Prince and Prime Minister Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia was asked about the death of Saudi journalist Jamal Ahmad Hamza Khashoggi during a bilateral meeting in the Oval Office of the White House on November 18, 2025 in Washington, DC. Trump is hosting the crown prince for meetings aimed at strengthening economic and defense ties, including the U.S. sale of F-35 fighter jets to Saudi Arabia. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

 

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

NYS Assemblymember Robert Carroll (D Brooklyn 44th) talks about his appointment by Gov. Hochul to the exploratory committee for a joint upstate/downstate bid for the Winter Olympics and why he thinks it would be good for the state.

Photo: Lake Placid is in the Adirondack Mountains in northern New York of USA. It covers an area of approximately 8.8 km2, with an average depth of 15 m. Whiteface Mountain can be seen to the north. It is the fifth highest mountain in New York State. The mountain’s east slope has been developed into a ski resort that hosted the alpine skiing competitions of the 1980 Winter Olympic Games. Picture was taken in winter showing the frozen lake with the snow covered mountain in the background. Via Getty Images.

 

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Greg Jackson, creator, host, and head writer of the popular US history podcast "History That Doesn’t Suck," associate professor and senior fellow at Utah Valley University’s Center for National Security Studies and the author of Been There, Done That: How Our History Shows What We Can Overcome (Simon & Schuster, 2026), looks at eight moments in America's 250 years when our politics were more divisive and how we moved past them.

Photo: Walter Lynwood Fleming Photograph by J. W. Black and Co., Boston., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Erin Mulvaney, national legal affairs reporter with The Wall Street Journal, shares her reporting on couples who add specific clauses to prenuptial agreements to protect the stay-at-home parent and establish equity in marriage.

Photo: Man carrying baby boy talking with woman leaving for work at home - stock photo

 

 

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Liza Weisberg, supervising attorney at the ACLU of New Jersey where she focuses on democracy and voting rights, and Mike Hayes, WNYC and Gothamist New Jersey politics reporter and the author of The Secret Files: Bill De Blasio, The NYPD, and the Broken Promises of Police Reform (Kingston Imperial, 2023), talk about the error in New Jersey that led to registering about 6,600 noncitizens to vote (only about 400 did so), and what it tells us about election security more broadly.

Photo: Governor Mikie Sherrill, Lt. Governor Dale Caldwell and MVC Acting Chair & Chief Administrator Rosalie Johnson hold a press conference announcing that New Jersey’s Motor Vehicle System led to voter registration of roughly 6,600 people, who indicated that they were not U.S. citizens, between June 2023 and June 2024, while in the media room of the statehouse in Trenton, N.J. on Tuesday, July 21, 2026. (Office of Governor / Tim Larsen)

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.