The Intercept Briefing

Trump says he wants to end U.S. wars abroad, while he threatens to use emergency powers to further militarize U.S. immigration enforcement. On Twitter, Trump advocates isolationism, while embracing lifelong warmongers like John Bolton and Benjamin Netanyahu.  Investigative reporter and historian Gareth Porter analyzes Trump's pledge to pull troops from Syria and Afghanistan. He breaks down why Isr...

Introducing Murderville, a new investigative podcast from The Intercept.  Episode 2: The Trial. Devonia Inman goes on trial for his life. But there’s really no evidence against him. Witnesses keep changing their stories. And the jury never hears about an alternate suspect — a man who was just arrested for a brazen murder of two prominent community members. The full seven-episode Murderville series...

Introducing Murderville, a new investigative podcast from The Intercept.  Episode 1: Murder at Taco Bell. A murder in the small southern town of Adel, Georgia, sent Devonia Inman to jail 20 years ago.  He was accused of robbing and shooting a woman named Donna Brown in a Taco Bell parking lot.  He swore he was innocent and there were good reasons to believe him. And while he awaited trial, three m...

Dan Kaufman, author of "The Fall of Wisconsin: Conservative Conquest of a Progressive Bastion and The Future Of American Politics," digs into the history, analyzes the latest Republican conspiracy and lays out why we all should study the Wisconsin model.  Longtime criminal justice reporters Liliana Segura and Jordan Smith talk about their gripping new true crime podcast, Murderville, which tells t...

Jeremy Scahill details the crimes of George H.W. Bush, the sick propaganda of the corporate media memorials; and the trail of blood, death, and tears Bush leaves behind.  Independent journalist Arun Gupta covers decades of Bush, from his time at the helm of the CIA, to the presidency. Gupta discusses Bush’s support for Manuel Noriega and his eventual invasion of Panama, the pardoning of Iran-Contr...

Decades of CIA death squads, economic warfare, coups, and support for authoritarian rule played a central role in the exodus of refugees from Central America. Donald Trump is now threatening to shoot the fleeing victims. Honduran professor Suyapa Portillo Villeda analyzes how Washington created the crisis.  Jeremy Scahill details the history of John Negroponte and the Contra death squads in Nicara...

The Chicago-based hip-hop artist Vic Mensa not only raps about Chicago police killings of black and brown people, about apartheid in Palestine, the poisoning of the water in Flint, Michigan, but he also goes to where the silence is and speaks out.  In the aftermath of the police shooting of Laquan MacDonald, Mensa was in the streets and gave voice to the movement that led to the conviction of seco...

Columbia University professor Bernard Harcourt lays out the multi-decade history of paramilitarized politics in the U.S., how the tactics of the “War on Terror” have come back to American soil, and why no one talks about drone strikes anymore.  Academy Award-winning director Michael Moore talks about his recent visit from the FBI in connection to the pipe bomb packages and who he thinks should run...

Journalist Chris Hedges has spent the past 15 years trying to ring the alarm about the dangers of the U.S. political system and the impact of a corporate and financial coup d’etat that happened long ago. He talks about the growing power of “Christian fascists,” predicts a major financial crash and offers ideas on how to fight back. In 1923, a year after Mussolini took power in Italy, one radical a...

NYU’s Ruth Ben-Ghiat, and Yale’s Jason Stanley discuss Trump’s brand of authoritarianism and dissect the similarities and differences between Trump and fascist leaders Mussolini and Hitler.  Actor Ty Jones, Producing Artistic Director at The Classical Theatre of Harlem, perform’s Langston Hughes’s poem “Let America Be America Again.”  Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting’s Adam Johnson breaks down h...

Journalist Rula Jebreal, who conducted one of the last interviews with Jamal Khashoggi before he was executed, discusses possible motives for his murder and shares audio from the interview. Sam Husseini, a journalist who once asked a top Saudi official to defend the legitimacy of his regime, joins for a roundtable on the history of U.S. support for Saudi Arabia, the intentional amnesia of the poli...

Glenn Greenwald is host and he breaks down the rise of the most extreme right-wing candidate in the democratic world and explains why Brazil’s young and fragile democracy leaves it far more susceptible to a return of military rule.  Glenn is joined by the Vice Presidential candidate on the Worker’s Party ticket running against Bolsonaro, Manuela d’Ávila, for a wide-ranging interview about Bolsonar...

Chicago claps back in a live show recorded in the Windy City. Poet, scholar, and author Eve Ewing, revolutionary educator Bill Ayers, activist Charlene Carruthers, and journalist Jamie Kalven discuss the murder conviction of the Chicago Police officer who gunned down Laquan McDonald, the neoliberal tenure of Mayor Rahm Emanuel, and the war on Chicago’s public schools.  Plus, musician Malcolm Londo...

Most analysis of Donald Trump’s election to the U.S. presidency in 2016 focuses on immediate causes and, of course, its effects. In a recent speech, NYU history professor Nikhil Pal Singh took a longer historical view, sketching three arcs of U.S. history that have yielded the durable commitments to racism, militarism, and unequal class power that have sharpened over the past two decades.  Conside...

If the Democrats retake the House, Rep. Hank Johnson will be the chair of a subcommittee that has subpoena power to continue the investigation of Kavanaugh. He explains his position on Kavanaugh and also Justice Clarence Thomas and his history of alleged sexual harassment of Anita Hill.  Former White House lawyer, Supreme Court clerk and current constitutional law professor Kate Shaw and Democracy...

Famed dissident Noam Chomsky breaks down the Trump presidency; the defeat of the U.S. in Afghanistan; what he believes is a just position on Syria’s civil war; and the agenda of Vladimir Putin and Russia. He also discusses the impact of big social media companies and explains why a life of resisting and fighting is worth it.  Jeremy Scahill analyzes Trump’s U.N. speech and gives context to the sel...

One year ago, Hurricane Maria ravaged Puerto Rico, but U.S. colonialism prepared the ground for the deadly crisis.  Journalist Juan González exposes how Wall Street, the bipartisan Washington political machine, and climate change conspired to kill thousands of Puerto Ricans.  The Intercept’s Naomi Klein outlines the neoliberal economic attack on Puerto Rico and a shock doctrine in motion.  Puerto...

Constitutional law professor Zephyr Teachout is running to be the New York Attorney General, and has vowed to put Trump and his organization in her legal sights if she wins. She talks about why she believes Trump may have violated the emoluments clause and her plan to undermine his potential pardons.  Socialist academic Dr. Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor talks about socialism, capitalism and what real re...

Russian-American journalist Masha Gessen analyzes the fallout from the Trump-Putin summit, what Putin actually wants from Trump, and the indictment of 12 Russian GRU officers. The Intercept’s Micah Lee offers a technical analysis of the indictment of Russian intelligence operatives. NYU professor Nikhil Pal Singh talks about the ahistorical analogies used to describe Trump and l’affaire Russia. Ex...

We're off this week, but we'll be back with a new episode of Intercepted on July 25th. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, 33, is running for governor of Michigan on a campaign of creating a single-payer health care system, raising the minimum wage to $15, legalizing marijuana, and a sweeping overhaul of the state’s criminal justice system. He discusses his campaign, his views on the Democratic Party, the Flint water catastrophe, and why he believes he can accomplish his agenda despite the powerful...

Legendary reporter Seymour Hersh on what he thinks of Donald Trump, his analysis of the Trump/Russia story, and some wild stories from his new memoir, “Reporter.” ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt recounts the latest on the immigrant families that are being ripped apart and separated indefinitely, and shares personal stories of the victims he represents in a nationwide class action suit against the Trump...

The Intercept’s Ryan Devereaux talks about his recent reporting in the border state of Arizona and paints a harrowing picture of the human toll of family separations by ICE. Alice Speri lays out her investigation of sexual abuse by ICE officers and contractors in immigration detention centers.  Sohail Daulatzai discusses his new book," With Stones in Our Hands: Writings on Muslims, Racism and Empi...

As TV pundits gasped at the sight of the North Korean and U.S. flags side by side and Trump treating Kim Jong-un as an “equal,” most Koreans supported the summit. UC Santa Cruz professor Christine Hong talks about the significance of this moment, how the U.S. has sabotaged peace in the past and what an end to the war might look like. Tom Engelhardt, editor of TomDispatch, shares an essay on Americ...

 While Paul Manafort enjoyed the comforts of his Hamptons mansion on house arrest, Winner was denied bond, kept in a jail and has been subjected to a public smear campaign by Jeff Sessions’ Justice Department. She was the first whistleblower charged under President Trump and her treatment is unprecedented. Former drone technician-turned-whistleblower Lisa Ling talks about the campaign to free Winn...