Engagement Party

Mass deportations, a weaponized justice department, purges of civil servants: these are among the plans that former President Trump and his allies are making for a second term in the White House. CNN national correspondent Kristen Holmes has been traveling to Trump’s rallies and she has an analysis of what’s in the works for MAGA 2.0. Call and leave us your Assignments: (202) 854-8802 or email The...

The number of Americans who would say that they’re “extremely proud to be American” is at a record low, according to a recent Gallup poll. Perhaps that’s not surprising, given widespread political divisiveness across the country. Today – in time for Thanksgiving – Audie sits down with writer, comedian, and activist Baratunde Thurston to talk about what it means to be patriotic in an age of growing...

New polling shows that Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley has moved into second place in New Hampshire, behind Donald Trump. Haley's momentum hasn’t gone unnoticed by the anti-Trump fundraisers looking for a horse to back. Audie talks with CNN Political Commentator Kevin Madden about the state of the race, and what Haley needs to do to maintain her momentum. Madden has worked on several...

We are revisiting the public school culture wars – this time, from the perspective of students. What have we learned from the kids who are fighting against book bans? How has the war over books sparked a backlash to the so-called parents’ rights movement?   We call up two busy teen activists – Da’Taeveyon Daniels in Texas and Eliza Lane in Florida – to find out. And CNN correspondent Elle Reeve, w...

Ahead of President Biden's meeting with Chinese President Xi, CNN spoke to Americans who are being hounded and harassed by the Chinese government's brazen online disinformation campaign. Correspondent Donie O’Sullivan reported the story and joins Audie to walk through the lengths Beijing will go to silence online critics, even those on US soil.  Donie O’Sullivan is a CNN Correspondent. Read his fu...

Last year the Army missed its recruitment goal; it had 65,000 spots to fill and came in 10,000 short. Audie talks with a former recruiter about what he saw as some of the challenges the Army faces when it comes to recruitment, including cultural shifts around everything from marijuana use to mental health. And we hear from Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth about how the Army is responding to...

New polling shows President Biden trailing Donald Trump in key battleground states, and that has many Democrats worried about his re-election prospects. Can anything be done to turn the numbers around? Or should the President bow out? Audie talks with CNN Senior Political Commentator and longtime Obama advisor David Axelrod who’s said that the President must decide whether it’s wise to run given t...

Dive into the world of online detectives tracking down January 6th insurrectionists. How did a dedicated community of digital sleuths help the FBI bring thousands to justice? Audie sits down with Ryan Reilly, the author of "Sedition Hunters: How January 6th Broke the Justice System," for a journey through the realm of modern digital investigations. Call us with your Assignments: ‪(202) 854-8802‬....

Lawyers who represented former President Donald Trump face a tough choice: cooperate with prosecutors or face the wrath of the MAGA movement. CNN’s senior reporter of crime and justice Katelyn Polantz is here to break down the different factions of Trump associates and their perilous paths ahead. What’s to become of "The Kraken," "The Pound Sand Club," and... Mark Meadows? Call and leave us your p...

Book sales — in general — are down, but one genre is bucking that trend: romance. Romance novel sales surged a whopping 52% in 2022. So what’s behind the popularity? How did romance become the reigning champion among fiction genres in America? To find out we talk with Leah Koch and Bea Hodges-Koch, owners of The Ripped Bodice, a single-genre bookstore focused on romance novels.  To learn more abou...

More than a decade ago, Kevin McCarthy, Paul Ryan and Eric Cantor pitched themselves as the future of the Republican Party. They even gave themselves a nickname: The Young Guns. Now those dreams are dashed, The Young Guns are scattered to the wind, and House Republicans are rudderless, unable to elect a Speaker ten months into their majority. How did we get here? S.E. Cupp, a conservative politica...

Thousands of people have already been killed in the Israel-Hamas conflict. And Israel has told residents of northern Gaza to evacuate roughly 20 miles to the south for their own safety. This week Audie talks with CNN’s Yahya Abou-Ghazala as he shares the stories of the people who have been told to flee, and what it’s been like trying to get stories out of Gaza right now.  Read Yahya’s recent stori...

How do Americans feel about Israel? Broadly, there is deep sympathy for Israel and its response to Hamas in Gaza. But polling shows that among America’s more diverse, younger generation, attitudes toward both Israel and Palestinians are more complicated.  Harry Enten, Senior Data Reporter at CNN, is here to parse the numbers and tease out some conclusions.  Oct. 15 CNN Poll: Americans are deeply s...

Writer Roxane Gay comes from a generation of what you might call “very online.” She gained international fame because she had a distinctive voice that stood far from the madding crowd on social media. This week Audie talks with Roxane about her new collection of essays, “Opinions,” how her opinions have changed, what it's like to become famous for sharing them, and how social media changed the way...

The political landscape has never been more confusing, and to some, even overwhelming. How do we determine fact from fiction? What keeps fact-checkers up at night? And what’s a democracy to do when even the professionals aren't believed? Today, we have Daniel Dale, a CNN senior reporter who rose to prominence for fact-checking former President Donald Trump, and Matthew Facciani, a postdoctoral res...

Big news: The Assignment is expanding to twice a week! Starting October 10th, The Assignment takes on politics. Every Tuesday we will go beyond the horserace — talking with journalists with a sharp understanding of this political moment. This is in addition to our regular Thursday podcast, where we talk with people whose lives intersect with the headlines.  To kick off our weekly political pod, we...

How do you take a story everyone thinks they know, and look at it through a new lens? What role – if any – does the identity of the translator play in the retelling of a story? And what is it like telling your own story after spending much of your career interpreting – and being interpreted by – others?  This week, Audie chats with Emily Wilson. Wilson is the translator of Homeric epics like “The...

Between student protests, controversial speakers, and debates over “safe spaces,” complaints about free speech on campus are louder than ever. How do school leaders respond to these gripes? And how do they balance freedom of expression – and the idea that speech can be violence?  We have two college presidents from the front lines of this debate: Roslyn Clark Artis of Benedict College and Michael...

In recent years, Greek life faced a crisis as the pandemic cast a shadow on recruitment, and the “abolish Greek life” movement grew across campuses. But then came #RushTok — a flurry of TikToks documenting the sorority recruitment process among university campuses, especially in the South. One tag, in particular, soared to remarkable heights: #BamaRush. It chronicled the rush process at the Univer...

Is there a coin shortage in the U.S.? Is there an increase in kids smoking weed at school? And: what’s the deal with Montana politics?   All of these questions were asked by you, our listeners. Throughout the life of this podcast, we’ve asked you to pick up the phone and leave us Assignments – and you have delivered. We love getting these messages. We took these three Assignments and called up thr...

For Labor Day — the unofficial end of summer and the official holiday celebrating the American worker — we are checking in on the state of the striking actors and writers demanding more from the studios they work for. When the Writer’s Guild of America (WGA) and Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) went on strike earlier this year, no one was...

Imran Ahmed is a man in the middle of the disinformation wars. He is the CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), an organization dedicated to researching online hate speech and disinformation. Audie talks with him about how he came to the work, the lawsuit filed against him by Elon Musk’s X Corp. (formerly Twitter), and what it all means for the debate over “free speech” versus “hate...

Devastating wildfires like the ones in Maui could become more common in our future due to a host of several factors, including climate change. But what about the folks who are already grappling with the fact that climate change is here? This week, we break down the connection between climate change and wildfires with climate scientist Dr. Daniel Swain. Then, Audie talks with former wildland firefi...

Have you heard about the “puriteens”? That’s the nickname for Gen Z’ers who are uncomfortable with sex and sexuality, and discuss that discomfort, largely online. Well, the media is obsessed with them and what their #thoughts mean for the state of their sex lives. But how accurate is that label? Is this a real thing? Our Assignment this week: unpacking the “puriteen” label.  We called up Constance...

When Audie Cornish first crossed paths with David Axelrod, she was a young radio reporter with no clout and he was the big-shot campaign manager of then-candidate Barack Obama. No wonder she couldn't get an interview. Today as colleagues at CNN, they can finally sit down and compare a few notes on that historic time in American politics. This conversation leads us into a special episode of The Axe...