Politics Weekly America

This week, Paul Dans, the leader of the controversial Project 2025, resigned and signalled in a company email that work on it was ‘winding down’. The project had become a manifesto of rightwing policies that would serve as a guide for the next Republican president. However, there is a significant stumbling block: Donald Trump wants nothing to do with it. Joan E Greve and Rachel Leingang discuss wh...

Kamala Harris enjoyed a brief period of excitement as Democrats rallied behind her presidential bid ahead of November’s election. Only a few days in, however, she is being asked questions over her stance on Israel and the war in Gaza. With fewer than 100 days left, Joan Greve speaks to the former adviser to Barack Obama and co-host of Pod Save The World, Ben Rhodes, about the state of play for Nov...

Joe Biden has withdrawn from the presidential race after weeks of pressure to quit. Four months before Americans head to the polls, Biden has endorsed his vice-president Kamala Harris to be the new nominee. Jonathan Freedland is joined by politics reporter Nikki McCann Ramírez to discuss what happens next. Will Democrats rally around Harris, who has already had endorsements from fellow Democrats,...

After the attempted assassination of Donald Trump over the weekend, the Republican national convention gathered in Milwaukee this week to welcome him as the party’s presidential nominee. But not all eyes were on the former president. Standing next to him, above the chanting crowd, was his newly appointed candidate for vice-president, JD Vance. It was a surprising move for the Ohio senator and auth...

On Saturday night in London, word came through that Donald Trump had been injured during one of his rallies in Pennsylvania. A shooter, who killed another person and seriously injured others, was killed by Secret Service agents. As the US comes to grips with what just happened, Jonathan Freedland and Sidney Blumenthal discuss what this tragedy means for the former president’s image with less than...

Back in December Donald Trump said the quiet bit out loud when he announced he wanted to be a dictator – if only on day one. Looking around the world in the 21st century, autocracy is getting a new lease of life – authoritarian regimes are working together, and the danger to democracies like the United States is getting closer to home. This week, Jonathan Freedland is joined by the political comme...

As Americans celebrate Independence Day, Democrats are scrambling after a pretty disastrous week for the party – and arguably US-democracy. On Monday, the US supreme court handed Donald Trump a victory by ruling that former presidents are entitled to some degree of immunity from criminal prosecution. Stemming from this, the judge overseeing the former president’s criminal case in New York postpone...

Donald Trump and Joe Biden took to the debate stage in Atlanta, Georgia, for their first head to head of this year’s presidential campaign. Jonathan Freedland and Nikki McCann Ramirez of Rolling Stone look at who did better on the night

In this year’s presidential election, there is hardly a more divisive issue than immigration. Earlier this month, President Biden signed an executive order to temporarily limit asylum claims on the southern border, but just two weeks later he announced a citizenship pathway for hundreds of thousands of undocumented spouses. In his speech, he said: ‘I’m not interested in playing politics with the b...

On Tuesday, Hunter Biden was found guilty on all three criminal charges relating to buying a handgun while being a user of crack cocaine. His father – the president – was firm in his support for his son, but also in his belief in the justice system. After Donald Trump was convicted in a New York court last month, rightwing pundits and Republican politicians were lining up to accuse the Biden admin...

Reports surfaced a few weeks ago that the supreme court justice Samuel Alito had flown an upside-down US flag outside his home days after insurrectionists flew similar flags when they stormed the Capitol on 6 January 2021. Alito has blamed his wife, saying he wanted her to take down the flag down after a dispute with neighbours. Democrats want Alito to recuse himself from any supreme court case in...

Donald Trump has made history again, becoming the first US president, sitting or former, to be a convicted criminal. Late on Thursday a New York jury found him guilty on all 34 counts of falsifying records to cover up a sex scandal. Within minutes of leaving the courtroom, Trump said he would appeal. On a historic night for American politics, Jonathan Freedland and Sam Levine look at what the verd...

Last week it was announced that Donald Trump and Joe Biden would finally hit the debate stage for a rematch. While voters contemplate which of the pair stands to lose more by going head to head, another candidate is working hard to try to join them – Robert F Kennedy Jr. The controversial independent candidate doesn’t even have the backing of his famous political family, but he’s polling nationall...

This week, it was Donald Trump’s former fixer Michael Cohen’s turn to take the stand in the hush-money trial in New York. Cohen walked the jury through the steps he says he took to make any potential story that would damage Trump’s image go away, in advance of the 2016 election. The defence is trying to chip away at Cohen’s credibility, to sow seeds of doubt among the jury listening to his testimo...

It was the moment Donald Trump was dreading. The former president could only sit and watch as the adult film actor Stormy Daniels told her version of events from an alleged sexual encounter they had in 2006. Prosecutors say that Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen shuttled a $130,000 hush-money payment to Daniels less than two weeks before the 2016 presidential election, to keep her from talking t...

This week, Donald Trump gave an interview to Time magazine confirming the fears many have about what he would do were he to win back the White House in November. He found time to lay out his vision of a Trump presidency 2.0 despite having to appear in a New York court for a case that this week cost the former president even more money. On top of that, a potential Trump vice-president admitted she...

The annual White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner returns this Saturday for a night of comedy ‘roasting’ – where the great and the good are ruthlessly mocked in celebration of the freedom of the press. In recent years, however, the night has taken on a different tone, with the atmosphere of warm self-deprecation and bipartisan bonhomie replaced by something more scathing and serious. This...

Last week the Arizona supreme court upheld a law first passed in 1864, which, if it goes into effect, will ban almost all abortions in the state. Democrats were quick to denounce the ruling, but some prominent Republicans were not happy with it either, including Donald Trump. Since the overturning of Roe v Wade nearly two years ago, individual states have had the ability to restrict abortion right...

Criticism of Israel’s war strategy has been growing in recent months, but last week there was a marked shift in tone from western leaders after seven aid workers were killed by an Israeli strike. The most notable change has come from the US president, Joe Biden, who this week turned on Benjamin Netanyahu, declaring Israel’s approach to the war a ‘mistake’. This week, Jonathan Freedland speaks to a...

Several recent polls have suggested that Donald Trump may be on course to receive more support from Black voters than any Republican presidential nominee in history. Some have argued the polling isn’t representative enough. This week, Jonathan Freedland speaks to the historian and author Leah Wright Rigueur about whether or not Trump can really win over more Black voters than Joe Biden can afford...

Donald Trump is embroiled in a balancing act between several criminal and civil trials, which could cost him millions of dollars and potentially even put him behind bars. On top of that, there’s the small issue of a presidential campaign. So the question is: can he afford to do it all? This week Jonathan Freedland speaks to Erica Orden, of Politico, to discuss the highs and lows Trump experienced...

In the run-up to this year’s election, President Joe Biden has warned that American democracy is at stake. But when it comes to the democratic process of an entire nation, might the solution be local? In an age of declining print media, losses of local newspapers and journalists are creating ‘news deserts’: areas bereft of a local paper. But does this matter, or is local news just a collection of...

In January, voters in New Hampshire answered a phone call from what sounded like President Joe Biden. What turned out to be an AI-generated robocall caused a stir because it was trying to convince Democratic voters not to turn up to polling stations on election day. In response to this scam, just a couple of weeks later, the US government outlawed robocalls that use voices generated by artificial...

Pundits saw it as one of the least exciting Super Tuesdays in American history. Nevertheless, it gave us some answers. Nikki Haley, who surprised everyone by beating Trump in the Vermont primary election decided it wasn’t enough to keep her in the race, and on Wednesday, she dropped out. Despite President Biden and Donald Trump winning easily in most states so far, there is a growing trend that ne...

We wanted to bring you this episode from our new series, Black Box. In it, Michael Safi explores seven stories and the thread that ties them together: artificial intelligence. In this prologue, Hannah (not her real name) has met Noah and he has changed her life for the better. So why does she have concerns about him? If you like what you hear, make sure to search and subscribe to Black Box, with n...