Slate News

President Trump announced on Truth Social that he was banning CNN, Politico, and MSNow from the White House because he didn't like their coverage. Within days, a federal judge ordered the outlets be reinstated—but the White House dragged its feet. Hours later, reporters were still locked out and a state dinner with President Xi of China went ahead without them. Jameel Jaffer of the Knight Firs...

Artificial intelligence is pitched as a potential economic powerhouse—and also a potential bringer of the apocalypse. Can two economic and military rivals cooperate enough to fulfill the former (and former only)? Guest: Scott Singer , fellow and co-director of the China AI Initiative at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Want more What Next TBD? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-fr...

This week, Emily Bazelon, John Dickerson, and guest host Juliette Kayyem discuss what we learn from Trump's escalating battle with the press and its track record in the courts, the likely outcomes of this week's Trump-Xi summit with former New York Times Beijing Bureau Chief and host of Face-Off: the US vs. China , Jane Perlez , and the role of voter trust as the midterm elections approach...

Donald Trump announced that he was banning CNN, Politico and MS NOW at kind of a weird time—it’s not like he thought they were doing a great job last year or in his first term or...ever. But with the announcement of something called “Trump TV,” suddenly it all makes sense: it could just be a First Amendment-violating exercise in branding. Guest: Oliver Darcy , founder and lead author of Status New...

Donald Trump’s in-roads with Latino voters was one of the surprises of his 2024 victory, carrying places like southern Texas’s 15th district by 18 points. But singer-turned-congressional candidate Bobby Pulido thinks those gains are temporary, and that Democrats have a chance, with sensible policies, to take the district and Congress. Guest: Bobby Pulido , congressional candidate for Texas’s 15th...

Trans rights have become something that’s argued about in the abstract—are Democrats too far out on a limb defending them? Did they cost the Democrats 2024? Should they be more moderate in 2026? But the real-world effects of changing laws are anything but abstract, affecting the basics of public life like your ID and whether you can use the bathroom. Guest: M Gessen , opinion columnist for the New...

Donald Trump owes his political career to saying what no other politician would. But now that he’s standing alone in full-throated support of data centers and artificial intelligence, he looks less like a populist, and more like a liability for Republicans trying to win elections. Guests:  Jim Newell , Slate senior politics writer and author of The Surge . Patrick Reis , Slate politics editor...

What it means that Macklemore decided he’d rather keep speaking out for Palestine than continue opening for Ed Sheeran. Guest: Soraya Nadia McDonald , cultural critic and writer.  Want more What Next? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening to the whole What Next family and across all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe today on Apple Podcasts by clicking “Try Free” at the top...

This week: Everyone is talking about A.I. safety as OpenAI shares more alarming security breaches. Felix Salmon , Elizabeth Spiers , and Emily Peck examine the complicated reality of trying to slow down the A.I. frontier. Then, the hosts discuss Fed chair Kevin Warsh’s unexpected vote to raise rates—in defiance of Donald Trump. And finally, with the SEC opening the door to tokenized equities, they...

You’ve seen the headlines about the lists, the claims, the THREE times this same executive order about voting by mail has gone to the Supreme Court. But is Trump’s interference with  mail-in voting settled—at least with respect to the midterms? Our go-to election law expert, Richard Hasen of UCLA School of Law, joins Dahlia to unpack what just happened and how this postal chaos alters voters’...

David Plotz talks with journalist Annie Lowrey about her new book The Time Tax: How the Government Wastes Our Time—and How to Fix It , an investigation into the hours Americans lose to broken bureaucracy, from 12-hour tax filings to multiyear waits for housing vouchers and building permits. Lowrey traces the waste to what she calls the “ordeal mechanism,” the deliberate friction built into some pr...

Don Trump Jr.’s wedding had everything: a private island, fireworks, a Funfetti cake airlifted in from Florida—everything but the groom’s dad. But that’s the advantage of being rich, you can pay for the wedding of your drea—oh wait, one of Putin’s buddies was footing the bill. Ah well, nevertheless… This episode is member-exclusive. Listen to it now by subscribing to Slate Plus. By joining, not on...

Why did the “Hugging Face Incident” scare A.I. researchers so much? And if they are so confident artificial intelligence needs to be slowed down, why aren’t they slowing it down? Guest: Nate Soares, President of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, co-author of “ If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies ” Want more What Next TBD? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening to the whole W...

This week, Emily Bazelon, John Dickerson, and David Plotz discuss whether this week's Supreme Court intervention rejecting Trump's mail-in ballot restrictions will prevent midterm chaos, explore the fast-evolving dynamics of public and political anxieties about AI, and dissect remarkable new reporting from ProPublica exposing the Putin-adjacent Russian oligarch who paid for much of Donald Trump Jr...

Those concerned that the Trump administration will interfere with the upcoming midterm elections can breathe a little easier this week, as the Supreme Court threw out their plan to have the Post Office muck up mail-in voting. But are we out of the woods yet? Guest: Ari Berman , Mother Jones' national voting rights correspondent. Want more What Next? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listen...

Childcare is expensive and who wouldn’t want to spend more time with their kids? Giving parents money to stay home, on its face, would seem to make sense. But a proposal from the Trump administration isn’t enough to help most stay-at-home parents—and it comes with some glaring downsides. Guests: Dr. Jessica Calarco, Professor of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of four b...

In this Money Talks: Roy Swan joins Elizabeth Spiers to turn the assumption of a zero-sum economy on its head. Swan, the director of the Ford Foundation’s mission investments program, explains why the idea that someone has to lose in order for you to win is not just costing societally, but economically—and how positive impact and positive returns aren’t mutually exclusive. Swan’s new book is Posit...

The GOP just held a midterm convention that was centered around the one thing their base seems to really like: Donald Trump.  The only problem is that pretty much everyone outside the GOP is blaming Trump for rising inflation, a foreign war, and a stagnating economy—and, oh yeah, Trump won’t be on the ballot.  Guest: Greg Sargent, host of “ The Daily Blast ” podcast and a staff writer at...

There are thousands of people protesting the Trump family every day—but they aren’t Americans, and they aren’t protesting Donald. Guest: Imogen West-Knights , Slate contributing writer based in London. Want more What Next? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening to the whole What Next family and across all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe today on Apple Podcasts by clicking “Try...

This week: The new book Money to Burn goes deep on private-equity behemoth Apollo Global Management and its billionaire cofounder and former CEO, Leon Black. Felix Salmon , Elizabeth Spiers , and Emily Peck are joined by author William D. Cohan to talk about his reporting on Black’s investment empire and what it means for Wall Street to be dominated by private equity. They also get into Black’s tr...

Capitulation under Trump 2.0 has been devastating to the rule of law. To review a couple of lowlights: One of the nation’s leading lawyers, Brad Karp, cut a deal with Donald Trump in the first days of the bully-in-chief’s second administration that turned out to constitute five flabby bullet points on an unsigned piece of paper. Chief Justice John Roberts is pretending the president is a generic R...

After OpenAI agents hacked a rival company this summer, the word from Silicon Valley was “That’s it! They’re almost ready to kill us all!” But…are they? Really? Guest: Paul Ford, co-founder of the AI start-up Aboard , technology writer.   Want more What Next TBD? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening to the whole What Next family and across all your favorite Slate podcasts....

This week, Emily Bazelon, John Dickerson, and David Plotz discuss why Republicans are holding an unusual midterm convention and what it says about the state of the race at the homestretch, talk about the new book Profiles in Cowardice: A Study of Collaboration in the Trump Era with author Jacob Weisberg , and reflect on memories and historical consequences on the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 terro...

America didn’t start down the path to a president who is unaccountable to even the Constitution under Trump. He’s the culmination of a change that dates back to September 11, 2001. Guest: Ben Wizner , Deputy Legal Director and Director, Center for Democracy ACLU Want more What Next? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening to the whole What Next family and across all your favorite Slate...

Thousands of immigrants who were in America legally were suddenly rendered unemployable and subject to deportation after the Supreme Court ruled that the Department of Homeland Security could end temporary protected status. The effect on Springfield, Ohio’s Haitian community has been devastating. Guest: Carl Ruby , senior pastor at Central Christian Church in Springfield, Ohio. Want more What Next...