A Politics of Fear Defines Trump’s First Hundred Days in Office
The Washington Roundtable discusses the first hundred days of President Trump’s second Administration, and the fear, pain, and outrage reverberating through U.S. politics. The clinical psychologist and longtime Department of Justice official Alix McLearen is helping distressed government workers connect with service providers during this time. She joins the roundtable to discuss how a politics of fear is shaping the lives of federal employees and ordinary citizens alike, and strategies for coping when psychological forces like fear and trauma become governing principles. This week’s reading:
“Waiting for Trump’s Big, Beautiful Deals,” by Susan B. Glasser
“The Conservative Lawyer Defending a Firm from Donald Trump,” by Ruth Marcus
“The Immigrant Families Jailed in Texas,” by Jack Herrera
“The Cost of Defunding Harvard,” by Atul Gawande
“Donald Trump’s Deportation Obsession,” by Jonathan Blitzer
“The Guerrilla Marketing Campaign Against Elon Musk,” by Anna Russell
“The Supreme Court Finally Takes On Trump,” by Ruth Marcus
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.
Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
--------
30:38
Pope Francis’s Legacy and the Coming Conclave
Paul Elie, who writes about the Catholic Church for The New Yorker, joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss the life and legacy of Pope Francis, his feuds with traditionalist Church figures and right-wing political leaders, and what to expect from the upcoming papal conclave to determine his successor. This week’s reading:
“The Down-to-Earth Pope,” by Paul Elie
“Pope Francis’s Tangled Relationship with Argentina,” by Graciela Mochkofsky
“The Mexican President Who’s Facing Off with Trump,” by Stephania Taladrid
“The Cost of Defunding Harvard,” by Atul Gawande
“The Supreme Court Finally Takes On Trump,” by Ruth Marcus
Tune in to The Political Scene wherever you get your podcasts.
Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
--------
31:17
How Science Fiction Led Elon Musk to DOGE
Elon Musk, who’s taking his chainsaw to the federal government, is not merely a chaos agent, as he is sometimes described. Jill Lepore, the best-selling author of “These Truths” and other books, says that Musk is animated by obsessions and a sense of mission he acquired through reading, and misreading, science fiction. “When he keeps saying, you know, ‘We’re at a fork in the road. The future of human civilization depends on this election,’ he means SpaceX,” she tells David Remnick. “He means . . . ‘I need to take these rockets to colonize Mars and that’s only going to happen through Trump.’ ” The massive-scale reduction in social services he is enacting through DOGE, Lepore thinks, is tied to this objective. “Although there may be billions of [people] suffering here on planet Earth today, those are miniscule compared to the calculation of the needs of the billions of humans that will one day ever live if we can gain escape velocity from planet Earth. . . . That is, in fact, the math that lies behind DOGE.” Lepore’s BBC radio series on the SpaceX C.E.O. is called “X-Man: The Elon Musk Origin Story.”
Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
--------
19:06
Will the Supreme Court Yield to Donald Trump?
Ruth Marcus resigned from the Washington Post after its C.E.O. killed an editorial she wrote that was critical of the paper's owner, Jeff Bezos. She ended up publishing the column in The New Yorker, and soon after she published another piece for the magazine asking "Has Trump's Legal Strategy Backfired?" "Trump's legal strategy has been backfiring, I think, demonstrably in the lower courts," she tells David Remnick, on issues such as undoing birthright citizenship and deporting people without due process. Federal judges have rebuked the Administration's lawyers, and ordered deportees returned to the United States. But "we have this thing called the Supreme Court, which is, in fact, supreme," Marcus says. "I thought the Supreme Court was going to send a message to the Trump Administration: 'Back off, guys.' . . . That's not what's happened." In recent days, that Court has issued a number of rulings that, while narrow, suggest a more deferential approach toward Presidential power. Marcus and Remnick spoke last week about where the Supreme Court—with its six-Justice conservative majority—may yield to Trump's extraordinary exertions of power, and where it may attempt to check his authority. "When you have a six-Justice conservative majority," she notes, there is"a justice to spare."
Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
--------
27:31
Donald Trump Gets a “Spanking” from the Bond Market
The Washington Roundtable is joined by Mark Blyth, a professor of international economics and public affairs at Brown University, to discuss how the bond market forced Donald Trump to retreat on some tariffs, and the risks of the President’s escalating trade war with China. “Ultimately, they can take the pain more than you can,” Blyth says, of the Chinese government. “They have locked down their cities for a year or more. They can deliver food through the window through drones. They don’t care if you cut them off from certain things. So getting into that fight is very, very destructive.”This week’s reading:
“Trump’s Do-Over Presidency,” by Susan B. Glasser
“The Conservative Legal Advocates Working to Kill Trump’s Tariffs,” by Cristian Farias
“At the Smithsonian, Donald Trump Takes Aim at History,” by David Remnick
“The Trump Show Comes to the Kennedy Center,” by Katy Waldman
“The Other Side of Signalgate,” by Rozina Ali
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.
Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
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.
UK