Why Pam Bondi Is the Attorney General of Trump’s Dreams
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 Play,” by Ruth Marcus
“Texas Democrats’ Weapons of the Weak,” by Rachel Monroe
“Do State Referendums on Abortion Work?,” by Peter Slevin
“Why Don’t We Take Nuclear Weapons Seriously?,” by Rivka Galchen
“How Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.,’s Anti-Vax Agenda Is Infecting America,” by Isaac Chotiner
Tune in to The Political Scene wherever you get your podcasts.
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Donald Trump’s War on Culture Is Not a Sideshow
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.”
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The Democratic Party’s Identity Crisis
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 Past,” by Jill Lepore
“How Former Biden Officials Defend Their Gaza Policy,” by Isaac Chotiner
“The Endless August Recess,” by Antonia Hitchens
“The Enormous Stakes of Trump’s Effort to Fire the Fed Governor Lisa Cook,” by John Cassidy
“What’s Life Like in Washington, D.C., During Trump’s Takeover?,” by Margaret Talbot
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Dexter Filkins on Drones and the Future of Warfare
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.
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Is Trump the Roman Tyrant America's Founders Feared?
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
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Join The New Yorker’s writers and editors for reporting, insight, and analysis of the most pressing political issues of our time. On Mondays, David Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker, presents conversations and feature stories about current events. On Wednesdays, the senior editor Tyler Foggatt goes deep on a consequential political story via far-reaching interviews with staff writers and outside experts. And, on Fridays, the staff writers Susan B. Glasser, Jane Mayer, and Evan Osnos discuss the latest developments in Washington and beyond, offering an encompassing understanding of this moment in American politics.
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