The Intercept Briefing

The Taliban have taken over Afghanistan, forcing the U.S.-backed Afghan government out. This week on Intercepted: Intercept reporter Murtaza Hussain guides us through how the two-decade-long U.S. War in Afghanistan has concluded. With the U.S. having suffered what appears to be a stunning defeat, national security editor for The Intercept Vanessa Gezari, who also reported from Afghanistan for year...

Leaked audio reveals how chemicals hazardous to human health and the environment are fast-tracked and approved at the Environmental Protection Agency. This week on Intercepted, investigative journalist Sharon Lerner reports on how the chemical industry pressures the EPA to approve chemicals and pesticides that are dangerous to public health. Lerner speaks with whistleblowers from the agency, scien...

For more than six months, The Intercept’s Trevor Aaronson communicated with Russell Dennison, an American man who traveled to Syria and joined the Islamic State. This week on Intercepted: Aaronson, an investigative reporter, discusses American ISIS, the newest Audible Original podcast documentary from The Intercept and Topic Studios, in which he chronicles the story of Russell Dennison, one of the...

Water protectors are traveling in growing numbers to stand with the Anishinaabe-led movement to stop the construction of Line 3, a tar sands oil pipeline. This week on Intercepted: Intercept reporter Alleen Brown takes us to northern Minnesota, a flashpoint in the fight to halt the expansion of the fossil fuel industry as the climate crisis deepens. Direct actions and other protests against Line 3...

Domestic workers — nannies, house cleaners, and care workers — are one of the fastest-growing labor groups in the U.S. They are also some of the most undervalued and least-protected workers, a factor further exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic. This week on Intercepted: Vanessa Bee and Murtaza Hussain interview Ai-jen Poo, co-founder and executive director of the National Domestic Workers...

Last month, the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation uncovered a mass grave of 215 children on the grounds of a former residential school in British Columbia, Canada. This week on Intercepted: Naomi Klein speaks with residential school survivor Doreen Manuel and her niece Kanahus Manuel about the horrors of residential schools and the relationship between stolen children and stolen land. Doreen’s f...

When a police officer shoots and kills someone — and there aren’t any witnesses — can we trust the police to investigate themselves? This week on Intercepted: Antoine and Tammy Bufford's son, Cortez, was shot and killed by a St. Louis police officer in 2019. Nearly two years later, the city is still investigating Cortez’s case. No charges have been filed. And the Bufford family is still...

In the year since the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis and the mass mobilization of protest that followed — the largest collective gesture against police violence in this country’s history — there’s been a constant and energized call to defund or outright abolish policing as we know it in the U.S. This week on Intercepted: The U.S. has been grappling with this same cycle of violence...

A week ago, the Biden administration announced support for waiving intellectual property protection for Covid-19 vaccines. In response, Bio, a trade association representing biotechnology companies, issued a statement saying , "The United States has unfortunately chosen to set a dangerous precedent with these actions.” This week on Intercepted: Intercept investigative journalists Sharon Lerne...

If you went back and looked at every foreign policy decision Joe Biden made — every single one — would you be any closer to understanding him? This week on Intercepted: Our editor-at-large and senior correspondent Jeremy Scahill and reporter Murtaza Hussain examined the past 50 years of Biden’s decisions, poring over hundreds of pages of archival copies of the congressional record and reviewi...

While much of the public’s attention has been focused on the thousands of unaccompanied minors currently in U.S. custody, U.S. Customs and Border Protection has quietly begun a policy of dropping off asylum-seekers in remote border towns along the deadliest stretches of the U.S.-Mexico divide. This week on Intercepted: Intercept reporter Ryan Devereaux travels to the Arizona cities of Ajo and Tucs...

The Environmental Protection Agency under the Trump administration invited companies to retroactively amend emissions records of a deadly carcinogenic chemical. This week on Intercepted: Investigative reporter Sharon Lerner explains how 270,000 pounds of the chemical  ethylene oxide  vanished from the public record right after the EPA determined that it was more toxic than previousl...

Jury selection for the murder trial of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin continues after the city announced a $27 million settlement with George Floyd’s family. This week on Intercepted: Organizer and educator Mariame Kaba talks to lead producer Jack D’Isidoro about the case, efforts born out of the uprisings of this past summer, and the role hope plays in building a long-term abolitio...

Few anti-fascists were as influential on Portland’s recent protest scene as Sean Kealiher. He rarely missed a protest, and he would have been front and center last summer when the insurrectionary activism he had long advocated for became a staple on Portland streets. But he wasn’t. In October 2019, at 23, he was killed in front of the state Democratic Party building, which protesters van...

As Joe Biden took the oath of office this January,  Guatemalan security forces  at the Honduran border thwarted thousands of U.S.-bound migrants. While  decades-long American imperialism  has facilitated displacement throughout the region, the U.S. is increasingly outsourcing its deadly immigration policy. This week on Intercepted: The Biden administration announced it will beg...

A massive police database obtained by The Intercept provides groundbreaking insight into the pervasive surveillance state operated by the Chinese government to repress Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities. This week on Intercepted: A new report from The Intercept provides a raw glimpse into the persecution and sweeping internment of Muslims in the city of Ürümqi, the largest city in north...

Now that Donald Trump is gone from office, what’s next? This week on Intercepted: There are a slew of unanswered questions about the siege of the Capitol. Americans are being asked to believe that the national security apparatus — the same one that charged nearly 200 people en masse, including journalists and observers, with felony rioting when Trump was inaugurated in 2017, and has leveled federa...

In this special bonus episode of Intercepted, we take an in-depth look at one of the most consequential eras of modern history, the late 1980s and early 1990s. The Berlin Wall fell in 1989, as the Soviet Union crumbled. The Russian occupation of Afghanistan came to an end, thanks in no small part to the covert and overt involvement of the United States. Bill Clinton brought an end to 12 years of R...

A U.S.-backed militia that kills children may be America’s exit strategy from its longest war reported by journalist Andrew Quilty. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

President-elect Joe Biden’s Cabinet is being constructed in significant part from corporate Democrats and Obama-era national security hawks with a small side order of more progressive figures. This week on Intercepted: As Nancy Pelosi runs unopposed in her party for another term as speaker of the House, Congress has failed for many months to deliver meaningful aid to millions of American...

Donald Trump is now in the dying days of his presidency and is spending those days promoting the myth that he actually won the November election in a landslide. This week on Intercepted: As the clock ticks toward Joe Biden’s inauguration, Trump and Attorney General William Barr have been on a grotesque killing spree, green-lighting executions of federal prisoners at breakneck pace. The Interc...

The Intercept’s Senior Correspondent Naomi Klein argues why Democrats should forcefully defend the integrity of votes and condemn coup-plotting for what it is, and stop from blowing a mandate they’ve won Associate Producer Elise Swain follows the sentencing hearings for peace activists, known as Kings Bay Plowshares 7, who face federal prison for nonviolent protest. Associate Producer Elise Swain...

In his denial of science, Donald Trump has guided the U.S. far past the tipping point of mitigating the unfolding existential threat of the climate crisis. Under both Democratic and Republican administrations over decades, U.S. climate policy has fallen far short of the urgent action scientists have demanded. In crucial ways, Donald Trump has been far more dangerous than his deeply-flawe...

Donald Trump has run the White House like his family business with one primary aim: to enrich his brand, his family and his cronies. In part six of American Mythology, we examine how Trump and the GOP — at times with help from the Democrats — have opened the gates to the federal feeding trough for corporate greed and unaccountability. Throughout the 2016 campaign Trump claimed that, unlike Hillary...

While all eyes remain on the presidential election in November, Donald Trump has already secured a multi-generational victory with his radical reshaping of the judicial branch of government. In part five of “ American Mythology ,” we look at how the Trump administration has outsourced hundreds of federal judicial appointments to the right-wing Federalist Society and Heritage Foundation. The a...