The Real News Podcast

Bending to economic coercion and political pressure from the Trump administration, once-venerable institutions like Columbia University have compliantly become third-party collaborators in the assault on our constitutional rights. In this episode of the Marc Steiner Show, Marc speaks with Amy E. Greer and Zal K. Shroff, two members of former Columbia student Mahmoud Khalil’s legal team, about how...

In this episode of Inequality Watch, investigative journalists Taya Graham and Stephen Janis are joined by renowned economist Dr. Richard Wolff to break down how extreme wealth inequality is reshaping politics, economics, and democracy itself. First, Dr. Wolff explains how extractive economies concentrate wealth, fuel authoritarianism, and lock societies into destructive systems that benefit the u...

Hundreds of children are currently incarcerated at the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, TX, and the stories leaking out to the public about the conditions inside are shocking. We speak with Stephanie Koithan, journalist and Digital Content Editor of the San Antonio Current .  Additional links/info: Stephanie Koithan, San Antonio Current , “ Two-month-old baby ‘choking on his own vo...

Since the beginning of 2026, US forces have killed people in Caracas, Venezuela, on boat strikes in the Pacific, and in Minneapolis, Minnesota.  This is a new era, where US law enforcement kill people in plain sight and then blame it on the victims, accusing them of being agitators or terrorists — domestic or foreign — whether they are in fishing boats in the Caribbean and Pacific or protesting on...

On Nov. 24, 2025, in a major and hardwon victory, Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh members finally returned to work at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette after more than three years on strike. Then, on Jan. 7, 2026, workers were notified that Block Communications Inc.—the company that owns the Post-Gazette as well as the Toledo Blade , the Buckeye Sports Network, and a number of TV stations in Ohio and Kent...

The Trump administration is deliberately plunging Cuba into a national and humanitarian crisis, and the US-imposed blockade of oil imports is wreaking havoc on daily life for Cubans. In this urgent episode of The Marc Steiner Show, Marc speaks with Cuban journalist and documentary filmmaker Liz Oliva Fernández about the unfolding nightmare in Cuba and what the international community can do to sto...

The longest-running nurses strike in New York City history has come to an end—for some. Nurses at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, however, overwhelmingly voted this week to reject a tentative agreement and to stay on strike until their demands for safer staffing and more job security are met. In this unscheduled strike update episode, TRNN Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez speaks with Beth Loudin...

An estimated 31,000 health care workers in California and Hawaii walked off the job on Jan. 26 in their ongoing battle with healthcare giant Kaiser Permanente to address workers’ demands for safe staffing, more manageable workloads, and a livable wage. The United Nurses Associations of California / Union of Health Care Professionals (UNAC/UHCP) strike is now in its third week, and more than 3,000...

Feb. 3, 2026 marked the three-year anniversary of the Norfolk Southern train derailment and chemical disaster in East Palestine, OH—one of the worst industrial disasters in US history. Over the last three years, residents have been exploited and abandoned by Norfolk Southern, the government, opportunistic politicians, sensationalist media outlets, and self-serving attorneys. On the three-year anni...

Hospitals in Gaza have been destroyed, medical supplies blocked, and doctors killed or detained—leaving children amputated without anesthesia, patients dying from infections, and families facing starvation and freezing conditions. Dr. Karameh Kuemmerle, Dr. Nidal Jboor, and Dr. Maysa Hawwash, founders of  Doctors Against Genocide , explain what’s happening inside Gaza and the West Bank, why silenc...

Over the last two decades, Vladimir Putin has transformed his government in Russia from a managed democracy into an authoritarian regime. Many now view it as neofascist. Abroad, it has launched war after war to rebuild Russia’s former empire, while, at home, it has crushed the democracy movement, repressed all protests against Putin’s imperialist war in Ukraine, and jailed thousands of political p...

It’s been three years since a Norfolk Southern “bomb train” carrying toxic chemicals derailed in the small town of East Palestine, Ohio, on the night of Feb. 3, 2023. Three days later, Norfolk Southern pressured local authorities to make the disastrous and completely unnecessary decision to vent five giant carloads of vinyl chloride into a ditch and set the contents on fire, releasing a massive ch...

Judge Brian Jackson of the U.S. District Court has certified a class action lawsuit against Angola Prison on behalf of men forced to perform punitive farm labor under unconstitutional conditions and in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Under this ruling, the court certified two specific groups: a primary class encompassing all persons currently or potentially assigned to the...

On January 3, 2026, the United States invaded Venezuela and kidnapped president Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores. It was the first U.S. invasion of a Latin American country since the 1989 invasion of Panama.  The United States fired missiles and bombs that blew out windows and hit residential apartment blocks. Helicopters. Explosions. Firebombs. They cut electricity. They destroyed a medi...

Hundreds of union nurses, federal workers, and local residents gathered outside the Veterans Affairs central office building in Washington, DC, on Jan. 28, to hold a vigil for Alex Pretti and all who have been killed by ICE. The vigil was one of many events organized or co-sponsored by National Nurses United, the nation’s largest union and professional association of registered nurses, which has f...

Non-unanimous jury verdicts were a Jim Crow–era policy designed to silence Black jurors and secure convictions even when the state failed to prove its case. In 2026, over 1,000 people remain imprisoned in Louisiana after being convicted by non-unanimous juries. In this episode of Rattling the Bars, Mansa Musa speaks with Erica Navalance, Associate Director of Strategic Criminal Litigation at the P...

On Friday, Jan. 23, around 50,000 people in Minneapolis, MN, engaged in a historic mass strike and day of protest to demand an end to ICE terror and President Trump’s federal siege of Minnesota. Then, on Saturday, Jan. 24, an ICE agent shot and killed Alex Pretti, volunteer ICE observer and a registered union nurse who worked for the Veterans Health Administration. In this episode, we speak with M...

The Third Circuit Court of Appeals handed the Trump administration a victory this month in its ongoing attempt to deport Syrian-born Palestinian activist, husband, father, and former Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil. Khalil remains in the country for now and the legal battle is far from over, but the future of free speech in the US hangs in the balance. This week on  The Marc St...

In the hours after the Jan. 3 US invasion of Venezuela, social media was inundated with fake videos and images. Some showed Venezuelans holding huge rallies in favor of the US invasion. Others showed US troops landing or firing from helicopters. Others showed Maduro being kidnapped. Not all were AI. Some were old, showing anti-government rallies from years past. Or from other places—other invasion...

The Trump administration’s federal invasion and occupation of the state of Minnesota continues to sow chaos in the Twin Cities, but grassroots resistance to ICE and Trump has also exploded. And on Friday, Jan. 23, unions, community organizations, small businesses, faith communities, and Minnesota residents of all kinds will participate in a mass strike, a day of “No work, no school, and no shoppin...

Returning citizens are being funneled into exploitative temp jobs that pay poverty wages, deny them basic labor protections, and deepen the state’s control over their lives long after they’ve served their time. This week, Mansa Musa speaks with Katherine Passley and Maya Ragsdale, Co-Executive Directors of Beyond the Bars, about how Florida’s temp industry traps the most vulnerable workers and ope...

The state of Minnesota is under siege by our own federal government, and residents—immigrant and US-born alike—are living in fear. With the deployment of over 3,000 federal agents to Minnesota in recent weeks,  this is the Trump administration’s largest and most violent so-called “immigration enforcement” operation yet—and with President Trump threatening to invoke the Insurrection Act in Minnesot...

Today, people are protesting across the United States. They’re rallying. They’re walking off their jobs to mark the one-year anniversary of the inauguration of president Donald Trump.  It’s part of a nationwide protest called the “ Free America Walkout .” It’s organized by the Women’s March , the group that led the huge women’s marches against Trump in his first term. More than 400 events, rallies...

The Trump administration has said that the “second phase” of the ceasefire in Gaza is now in effect, but the fire has yet to cease. “What's happening now is that we are still being settled silently, we are still being killed slowly, away from the world's cameras,” Eyad Amawi, a father living in Gaza and a representative of the Gaza Relief Committee, tells The Marc Steiner Show this week. “That's t...

Thousands have marched against Trump’s invasion of Venezuela. And leaders are leading the charge against U.S. intervention in the region, in some unexpected places. But Trump is now also pointing elsewhere in the region. Cuba, Colombia and Mexico are in his sights. Today, host Michael Fox looks at the response around the world to Trump's invasion of Venezuela. He also takes a deep dive into Trump’...