Slate News

The Supreme Court wrapped up a year of giving Trump and the Republican Party nearly everything they could want. And even in the final, birthright citizenship case, what is remarkable is not that Trump lost, but how close he came to winning that one too. Guest: Jay Willis , editor-in-chief at Balls and Strikes.  Want more What Next? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening to the wh...

It was a weird and wild ride as the Supreme Court handed down the last decisions of the term that started all the way back in October of 2025. We were so much younger then. After 58 argued cases and a steady, sneaky stream of shadow docket orders, the court issued its final four decisions Tuesday, and one justice was retired and unretired in short, confusing order.  The headline win: The cour...

The Gilded Age has nothing on the present when it comes to a huge—and growing—portion of wealth being controlled by a smaller and smaller group of men—and they’re doing their best to keep it that way. Must everything that goes up come down? Guest: Paul Krugman , Nobel Prize-winning economist and professor at City University of New York’s Graduate Center. Want more What Next? Subscribe to Slate Plu...

The end is nigh! Or, the end of this Supreme Court term is nigh, at least.   On the second to last day of this term, the court’s right wingers delivered a sweeping ruling that will reshape the federal government for years to come. In Trump v. Slaughter , the conservative supermajority voted 6-3 to allow the president to fire members of independent regulatory agencies—overturning Humphrey...

How far does Zohran Mamdani’s political approach and appeal carry beyond liberal strongholds in city centers?  Guest: Perry Bacon, staff writer at The New Republic and host of the TNR show Right Now With Perry Bacon .  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 Appl...

This week: Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan passed away at the age of 100. Today: Felix Salmon , Elizabeth Spiers , and Emily Peck examine Greenspan’s legacy and the way it’s being emulated by the Fed’s current chair, Kevin Warsh. Then, the hosts discuss succession at JPMorgan now that CEO Jamie Dimon’s latest heir apparent, Marianne Lake, has left the company. And finally they...

Donald Trump ran for office threatening to use mass deportations, closed borders, and emergency wartime powers to “clean up” American immigration. On Thursday, the Supreme Court’s right-wing supermajority gifted him with two stunning victories in that crusade—effectively reshaping life for more than a million people living in the country with temporary protected status, or TPS, and forcing asylum...

Across the nation, we’re getting ready for July 4, 2026: Taylor Swift’s wedding weekend. Also Donald Trump is either dying or dying to be thin, JD Vance is vying to seem human, and Bill Cassidy is determined to go out in a blaze of obsequiousness. This episode is member-exclusive. Listen to it now by subscribing to Slate Plus. By joining, not only will you unlock exclusive episodes of What Next —y...

Through stealing your job or simply tanking the stock market—whichever comes first—the rise of artificial intelligence (companies) is a very futuristic sounding problem. It may have some very old-fashioned sounding solutions however. Guest: Cory Doctorow , sci-fi author, journalist, blogger and author of “ The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Life After AI. ” Want more What Next? Subscribe to Slate Plus...

In this exclusive Opinionpalooza extra, Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern take stock of today’s truly horrendous decisions handed down by a right-wing Supreme Court supermajority that’s marching in perfect lockstep on immigration, gun rights, and almost everything else. Dahlia and Mark sort through the brutalizing, even lethal implications for asylum seekers and more than 1 million recipients...

This week, Emily Bazelon, John Dickerson, and David Plotz discuss Tuesday's NY congressional primaries won by three Mamdani-backed democratic socialists and what they could mean for the Democratic Party, two new Supreme Court immigration rulings siding with the Trump administration, and the ongoing Reflecting Pool debacle as the symbol of a presidency of obsessive ego and shiny objects. For this w...

Where do negotiations with Iran stand at the moment? Well, Iran’s out from under a more-than-four-decade-long sanction and could start making bank, plus it controls the Strait of Hormuz and hasn’t agreed to any concessions on its nuclear program. On the American side, JD Vance got to see Switzerland.  Guest: Tommy Vietor, co-founder of Crooked Media and co-host of the political podcasts Pod S...

Most people probably don’t think about the reflecting pool on the National Mall much, but Donald Trump sure does. His efforts to cosmetically raise it to his standards have been staggeringly expensive, and ineffective in surprising ways. It encapsulates the Trump presidency experience pretty succinctly. Guest : Christina Cauterucci , Slate senior writer Want more What Next? Subscribe to Slate Plus...

In this Money Talks: Emily Peck sits down with Soumaya Keynes and Chad P. Bown , co-authors of How to Win a Trade War , to discuss how recent conflicts have changed the rules of international trade and which strategy they believe is the key to “winning” a modern trade war.   Podcast production by Jessamine Molli. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

With lethal injection drugs getting harder and harder to procure, states are legalizing death by firing squad. It may seem like a return to a more barbaric time, but there’s reason to believe that execution methods like lethal injection or nitrogen gas are even less humane. But even moreso, it may force us to confront our feelings about the death penalty as a nation. Guests: Rev. Dr. Jeff Hood , C...

It has been 250 years and America still doesn’t know how to talk about the genocide of indigenous peoples that kicked the whole thing off. Guest: Rebecca Nagle, host of Pushkin’s First America podcast , Crooked's This Land podcast, and author of “ By The Fire We Carry: The Generation-Long Fight for Justice on Native Land ”. Want more What Next? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening t...

Emily Bazelon interviews Senator Chris Murphy about his new book Crisis of the Common Good: The Fight for Meaning and Connection in a Broken America . Murphy argues that Trump is not the root cause of America's political crisis—he's a symptom. The real diagnosis: a country ravaged by loneliness, disconnection, and the collapse of community. From gun violence to Jan. 6, Murphy traces our troubles b...

This week: We saw just how many people are willing to invest in Elon Musk. Felix Salmon , Elizabeth Spiers , and Emily Peck , look at what makes SpaceX’s massive IPO so strange and why investors are willing to overlook things like Musk’s obsession with going to Mars. Then, they discuss Donald Trump’s deal with Iran and what the war has done to Iran’s economy. And finally, Emily unpacks the origin...

The Supreme Court handed down a unanimous ruling this week in United States v. Hemani , holding that a marijuana user cannot be stripped of his Second Amendment right to own a firearm simply because he sometimes uses cannabis. Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote the majority opinion, leaning heavily on the founders' own well-documented love of alcohol to argue that responsible substance use has never histo...

Everyone needs a hobby. Unfortunately, instead of, say, model trains, the world’s first trillionaire’s seems to unwind by boosting calls for anti-immigrant violence on his social media platform. Guest: Nitish Pahwa , Slate staff writer covering business and tech. This episode is member-exclusive. Listen to it now by subscribing to Slate Plus. By joining, not only will you unlock exclusive episodes...

People are asking artificial intelligence large language models how to do everything—even how to harm themselves and others. And while companies claim there are guardrails in place for those situations, we’ve already seen real-world instances of an LLM’s advice being used to plan a mass shooting. Guest: Mark Follman, national affairs editor at Mother Jones and author of “ Trigger Points: Inside th...

This week, Emily Bazelon, John Dickerson, and David Plotz discuss what the U.S. is getting and what it is giving up with the deal to end Trump's Iran war, how Trump's UFC fight at the White House intentionally used the symbols of the presidency to divide rather than unite Americans, and the intensifying conflict between the government and powerful AI companies. For this week’s Slate Plus bonus epi...

Oil prices fell when Trump announced a deal had been struck with Iran, but don’t mistake that for things going back to “normal.” We left “normal” a long time ago. Guest: Justin Wolfers, economist and professor at the University of Michigan, and author and host of Platypus Economics . Want more What Next? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening to the whole What Next family and across a...

Both the US and Iran are talking up a deal that will end the war and re-open the Strait of Hormuz. So why is Israel so upset about it?  Guest: Gregg Carlstrom , Middle East correspondent for the Economist 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 click...

From the firing of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Charles Q. Brown Jr., to the removal of the first Black four-star general’s portrait from the Pentagon, to striking Black and women Naval officers’ names from the promotion list, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s vision for the future of the military seems to come at the expense of Black servicemembers and their careers—leading many to que...