Diane Rehm: On My Mind

Diane Rehm started her career at WAMU 52 years ago as a volunteer.  In 1979, she began hosting WAMU’s local morning talk show, Kaleidoscope , which was renamed The Diane Rehm Show in 1984.  The Diane Rehm Show grew from a local program to one with international reach and a weekly on-air audience of nearly 3 million.  In 2016, Diane decided to step away from daily live radio, and brought her unique...

This is Diane’s final episode of On My Mind . She will be moving on from WAMU on May 2, after more than 50 years at the station.  So, who better to have as her guest for this last interview than Susan Page?  Susan Page and Diane have both traced the comings and goings of Washington for decades, Page at USA Today, Diane in public radio. And they often had the good fortune of sitting down together t...

Maryland Congressman Jamie Raskin was first elected to the House in 2016, just as Donald Trump ascended to the presidency for the first time. Since then, few Democrats have worked as aggressively to hold the president accountable for what he sees as violations of law and constitutional order.  Raskin led the second impeachment trial of President Trump for his actions on January 6th and now acts as...

Can the courts act as a check on the Trump administration’s power?  Though this question is not new, it has taken on an urgency as the case of a Maryland man accidentally deported to a prison in El Salvador has highlighted the White House’s increasingly combative stance towards the judiciary.  This week Trump’s team appeared to flout a unanimous decision by the Supreme Court that said the governme...

President Trump announced yesterday he is delaying the reciprocal tariffs he had imposed on dozens of countries for 90 days. But, he said, he is ratcheting up pressure on China , which he has accused of ripping off the United States for decades.  This came a week after “Liberation Day,” when Trump declared a national emergency to pave the way for the most sweeping trade duties since 1910. This mov...

Johnson & Johnson was founded in the late 1800s and grew into one of the most trusted brands in America for its baby powder, Tylenol, Band-Aids, then cutting edge pharmaceuticals. Today, the company is worth more than $380 billion. But behind the success, says investigative journalist Gardiner Harris, lies a wake of deceitful and dangerous corporate practices that have threatened the lives of...

The pressure campaigns of the Trump administration are beginning to bear fruit.  Last week saw two major institutions acquiesce to the president’s demands after actions taken by the White House threatened to undermine their budgets, workforce and, in some cases, ability to perform core business.  The first was Paul Weiss , a major law firm that some accuse of trading pro bono work on behalf of Tru...

Nearly 7 million Americans are living with Alzheimer’s disease. By 2050, this number is projected to rise to nearly 13 million.  For years, research into the disease remained underfunded -- and patients who received a diagnosis had few options when it came to treatment. But in recent years, that has begun to change.  “There are exciting developments in the research field at each stage of our lives...

Donald Trump’s love-hate relationship with the news media was on full display throughout his first term. He screamed “fake news” at negative coverage and labeled journalists the “enemy of the people.” But lately, he has taken his campaign beyond the court of public opinion, filing lawsuits against ABC , CBS , The Des Moines Register , and the Pulitzer Board . David Enrich is the business investiga...

In the weeks preceding President Trump’s address to a joint session of Congress Tuesday night, the administration was busy – taking an axe to federal agencies, imposing tariffs on neighboring countries, and reversing course on U.S. support for Ukraine. But we heard little about these issues from the president in this speech.  What the president did do was tick off a list of accomplishments, includ...

On February 7, billionaire Elon Musk posted a message on his social media platform X: “CFPB RIP,” along with a tombstone emoji. In the days that followed, the workings of the government’s financial industry watchdog created in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis essentially ground to a halt.  More than a hundred and fifty employees were let go, with more layoffs expected. Donald Trump has e...