The Intercept Briefing

Workers at Amazon, Instacart, and Whole Foods have gone on strike demanding safe work conditions. Amazon has already fired one organizer and continues to pump out misinformation and propaganda as Jeff Bezos continues to rake in billions of dollars. We hear from the fired Amazon manager Christian Smalls and talk to Jacobin magazine reporter Meagan Day about her reporting on the conditions of some e...

As Congress continues to negotiate a bailout, Republicans seem intent on exploiting the crisis to enrich Wall Street, while Democrats offer meek resistance. Matt Bruenig of the Peoples Policy Project breaks down the various proposals in Congress, compares the U.S. plans with other countries’ responses, and lays out some of the tenets of what a bailout for the people should look like. Meanwhile, th...

After weeks of downplaying the seriousness of the virus and at times implying it was a hoax, the Trump administration has announced a series of government responses to the crisis. While some actions, such as expanded testing, emergency aid to states and production of medical supplies, are aimed directly at protecting public health, serious questions abound about the economic survival of millions o...

The U.S. failed to respond quickly to the coronavirus and as it spreads, it is likely to overwhelm the outdated and overwhelmingly privatized health care infrastructure. Author Naomi Klein and Jeremy Scahill discuss the bipartisan ruling coalition that created and supported a health system where profits are more important than public health; how the corporate vultures are circling the crisis, and...

With Michigan and other states voting in primaries today, the justice movements backing the Sanders campaign are making the case that nominating Joe Biden to take on Donald Trump is a grave risk. Poet Aja Monet and organizer Astra Taylor discuss the mini-manifesto from a multi-generational, multi-racial coalition of feminists: “ Rising for a Global Feminist Future with the Movement to Elect Bernie...

It’s Super Tuesday and the battle lines are drawn in a campaign that will not only determine who will face Donald Trump in the general election, but also the future of the Democratic Party. The Intercept’s Lee Fang discusses who is funding and running the Biden campaign, the role of dark money in the attack against Sanders, and the looming influence of super delegates. As the Democratic establishm...

As Bloomberg launches a massive attack ad campaign against Sanders ahead of the South Carolina and Super Tuesday primaries, Sanders is facing a multi-pronged battle against the most powerful political and economic forces in the country. From Columbia, South Carolina, Rev. Jesse Jackson discusses the red-baiting of Sanders, offers his views on Democratic Socialism, and suggests Bloomberg should hav...

Billionaire former mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg, has announced he is going to unleash a spate of attack ads against Sanders; while Pete Buttigieg and Joe Biden are harping about comments Sanders made on 60 Minutes where he praised Cuba’s literacy efforts. The red-baiting attacks on Sanders are most definitely going to increase this week ahead of the South Carolina primary Saturday and...

Last month, The Intercept's research editor Margot Williams reported from Camp Justice at Guantanamo Bay during an extraordinary moment in the 40th pre-trial hearing for the five men accused of plotting 9/11. The men are being charged with crimes that can result in the death penalty and pre-trial hearings have been continuing in this case since 2012. During this hearing, the architect of the CIA's...

As Bloomberg nears a half a billion dollars in paid ads for his presidential campaign, he is intensifying his attacks on Bernie Sanders. Meanwhile, the red-baiting smears against Sanders are resurfacing as he surges in national polls. NYU Professor Nikhil Pal Singh, author of "Race and America’s Long War," dissects the record of Bloomberg, what his candidacy says about the state of electoral polit...

Consumer advocate and former presidential candidate Ralph Nader talks about the state of the Democratic primary, the corporate DNC panic over Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and what would happen to the Democratic party if Sanders wins. Nader also discusses a phone call he had with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi just before the impeachment process began. As Michael Bloomberg buys his way into the...

While the Iowa Democratic Party has thoroughly fumbled reporting official results of Monday’s caucuses, Sen. Bernie Sanders’s campaign has released figures showing a significant lead.  The Intercept’s Washington D.C. bureau chief Ryan Grim reports from the ground in Iowa and traces the rise of today’s progressive moment to Rev. Jesse Jackson’s 1988 presidential campaign. Producers Jack D’Isidoro...

Donald Trump’s legal team, including Allan Dershowitz and Ken Starr, argue that the president cannot be impeached for abusing his power. As the battle over Bolton testifying before the Senate intensifies, The Daily Beast’s Spencer Ackerman discusses the longterm impact of the trial on extreme executive power. He also describes his report that Saudi Arabia plotted to kidnap a critic of the regime o...

Donald Trump’s impeachment trial is already unfolding as a Mitch McConnell-coordinated farce. The charges against Trump are serious, but they beg the question of why Congress has never impeached a president for war crimes. None of the three Senate trials of a president was for imperial crimes committed in plain sight, despite a long history of presidents invading countries, killing civilians, and...

Jeremy Scahill hosts a live discussion in New York on the unfolding crisis with Intercept senior columnist Mehdi Hasan, reporter Murtaza Hussain, national security editor Vanessa Gezari, and senior news editor Ali Gharib. They discuss what the latest developments mean for Iran and the U.S. and how tensions have rapidly escalated since Donald Trump came to office. Will Trump’s current posture hold,...

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Former senior health insurance executive-turned-whistleblower Wendell Potter explains McKinsey’s role in our insurance nightmare and how Pete Buttigieg is using industry talking points to attack Medicare for All. Potter also discusses his career working for insurance giants, soaring medical costs in the U.S. and his role in killing Hillary Clinton’s health care initiative in the 1990s. Propublica...

Monday marked the five year anniversary of the release of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s executive summary on the CIA’s torture program. The former top Senate Intelligence Committee investigator, Daniel Jones and his team combed through 6.3 million pages of CIA records. Jones discusses the years-long battle with the Bush and Obama administrations to make public the findings of this still-clas...

As Washington D.C. remains focused on the Trump impeachment, Daniel Jones, the former top Senate Intelligence Committee investigator into the CIA torture program discusses the years-long battle with the Bush and Obama administrations to make public the findings of his still-classified 7,000 page report. Jones, the subject of the new feature film, The Report, starring Adam Driver and Annette Bening...

Other podcasts make money from advertising and corporate sponsors. We don’t have ads — Intercepted is powered by its members. All donations are welcome. You can make a one-time gift or become a sustaining member.   If you become a sustaining member at $10/month, we’ll send you our stylish Intercepted t-shirt. This is a community effort. Your donation, no matter the amount, makes a difference. Gene...

Jeffrey Sterling was indicted in 2010 on charges under the Espionage Act for allegedly leaking sensitive national security information to then-New York Times reporter James Risen. Sterling discusses his time as a CIA case officer and how his internal complaint about Operation Merlin, a half-baked CIA scheme that had tried to disrupt Iran’s nuclear weapons development, led to his firing. Sterling e...

Iranian-American author and analyst Hooman Majd discusses a century of history marked by intervention and threats from major world powers. Beginning with Britain, Russia, and Germany battling for control of Iran’s oil, Majd and Jeremy Scahill discuss the CIA coup against Mohammed Mossadegh in 1953, the Islamic revolution, and the seizure of the U.S. embassy in Tehran in 1979 and how Washington has...

Early Monday morning, a few minutes past midnight, The Intercept published a major series of investigative stories based on a cache of more than 700 pages of secret Iranian intelligence files detailing years of “painstaking work by Iranian spies to co-opt the country’s leaders, pay Iraqi agents working for the Americans to switch sides, and infiltrate every aspect of Iraq’s political, economic, an...

As right-wing forces attack indigenous Bolivians and allies of Morales, the Trump administration says the toppling of the democratically-elected government “preserves democracy.” Anthropologist and Bolivia scholar Bret Gustafson offers a nuanced analysis of how the coup unfolded, who benefits from the crisis, and what is at stake for the overwhelmingly indigenous population. Brazil’s former presid...

On this special episode of Intercepted, Jordan Smith and Liliana Segura discuss the case of Rodney Reed. The state of Texas has set an execution date of November 20 for Reed. He has been on death row since 1998, following his conviction in the murder of a young woman named Stacy Stites in April of 1996. There is an overwhelming amount of evidence in this case that Reed is innocent, and a very comp...