Where It All Starts

FBI director Kash Patel has sued The Atlantic for $250 million. It comes after the magazine published an article alleging that Patel is frequently drunk on the job and that his security team has had difficulty waking him on multiple occasions. Still, The Atlantic isn’t backing down, writing in a statement, “We stand by our reporting on Kash Patel, and we will vigorously defend The Atlantic and our...

Happy Earth Day! While we celebrate efforts to save the earth, the Trump administration appears to be doing everything in its power to destroy it. At the same time, the Iran war has driven gas prices through the roof, making sustainable energy sources more appealing than ever. Dharna Noor, climate reporter for The Guardian, joins the show to discuss how President Donald Trump’s war of choice could...

The media and Democrats have been sounding the alarm on Trump's mental health for a decade. But now, even some of his biggest supporters are wondering : is Trump… okay? Maryland Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin agrees that Trump's recent behavior is alarming, which is why he's introduced a bill that could start the process of removing Trump from office involuntarily using the 25th Amendment. We discus...

President Donald Trump and Co. have historically claimed to be all about free speech. But maybe Trump only cares about free speech when he likes what's being said. Earlier this month, The Intercept reported that the Department of Justice is taking Reddit to court to force the massive social media platform to unmask one of its users. Why? Because Immigration and Customs Enforcement has been despera...

On Thursday, President Donald Trump announced that Israel and Lebanon had agreed to a 10-day ceasefire . The ceasefire could pause weeks of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah , a Lebanese militant group backed by Iran. The agreement followed the first direct talks between Israel and Lebanon since 1993 . Of course, there’s still a lot we don't know about the ceasefire or how it will affect Ameri...

Presidential hopefuls have already started jockeying for position in the 2028 race — look at the number of Democrats who published memoirs over the last year . But a lot can happen in two years. And across the aisle on the Republican side, there's a big orange obstacle: Donald Trump, the unpopular president who somehow still has a stranglehold on GOP primary voters . To talk more about the race fo...

Two members of Congress stepped down over allegations of sexual misconduct from former staffers on Tuesday — Texas Republican Rep. Tony Gonzales and California Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell . (Swalwell is also accused of sexual assault, and other women have come forward. He has denied the allegations .) Over and over, we see powerful people in politics — typically men — use their power to take adv...

Trump’s war in Iran is now 45 days old with no end in sight — which is a problem for Republicans. Because while midterms are always tough for the party in power , an unpopular war with no exit strategy isn’t helping. So how should Democrats running for office this year – and in coming years – respond? And what should they be running for? Because recently “we aren’t Trump” hasn’t been good enough....

A very tired-looking Vice President JD Vance emerged from 21 hours of high-stakes peace talks on Sunday to say no deal has been made to end the Iran war — a failure that comes with serious economic and political consequences. It’s an election year, and Congressional Republicans are getting jumpy with their majorities on the line. So, to help unpack what all of this means for the midterms, we spoke...

From the moment the U.S. and Israel launched strikes in Iran at the end of February, several people have been profiting from them because of extremely well-timed bets they made on the prediction market website Polymarket. In March, Polymarket barred trades based on, “stolen confidential information.” And yet people appear to still be making trades using insider information. Just this week, a group...

In the brief period since President Donald Trump announced a two-week ceasefire between Iran and the United States, Iran has claimed that the United States and Israel have violated its terms. As a result, Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz — again. According to Iranian state media, the 10-point framework Trump agreed to includes an end to Israeli attacks on Hezbollah in Lebanon, an end to all sancti...

President Donald Trump posted a disturbing threat on Truth Social on Tuesday morning. If Iran did not meet his demands by 8 PM Eastern, "​​A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again." But then, an hour and a half before his deadline , Trump said he’d agree to a two-week ceasefire — if Iran agreed to the “COMPLETE, IMMEDIATE, and SAFE OPENING of the Strait of Hormuz.” And...

The Iran War has a second front in Lebanon, where Israel has been fighting Hezbollah, a militia that launched missiles into northern Israel in retaliation for the killing of Iran’s Supreme Leader. Israel believes the group threatens its security and it is striking targets across Lebanon to stop it. Tarek Abou Jaoude, a research fellow specializing in Lebanese politics at Queen’s University Belfast...

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth is inserting Christian nationalism into the culture and policy of the armed forces, and that’s drawing concern both inside and outside the military. The Pentagon had spent years making non-Christians feel more welcome, but as Washington Post religion reporter Michelle Boorstein explains, Hegseth has rolled back that work in favor of a particular brand of evangelical C...

Attorney General Pam Bondi is out of a job. After multiple media reports stating she was headed to the green pastures of… somewhere else, President Trump officially announced her departure Thursday on Truth Social . So why is Bondi getting pushed out of her position? Was it the Epstein files debacle ? Or her inability to successfully prosecute Trump’s enemies ? To find out, we spoke with Ryan Barb...

The Supreme Court tackled a question Wednesday that most Americans probably thought was settled: are the American-born children of immigrants American citizens? The Constitution seems pretty clear -- Section 1 of the 14th Amendment reads in part, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherei...

Last month, Postmaster General David Steiner told Congress that the U.S. Postal Service is in danger of running out of money by the end of the year. One big reason for this: there’s just less mail being sent. Between 2008 and 2025, first-class mail volume declined by more than 50 percent. And the Postal Service reported losing roughly $9 billion dollars in each of the past two fiscal years. So wha...

Over the past decade or so, the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC , has become a massive gathering of right-wing power brokers — but this year, President Trump didn’t go . Neither did Vice President JD Vance nor Secretary of State Marco Rubio. The lackluster convention seemed to mirror a MAGA movement that’s looking increasingly unmoored. Ben Jacobs is a Washington-based political...

It’s been nearly four years since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, and sent the issue back to the states. Since then, more than a dozen states have essentially banned abortion, while others have severely limited access. Back in February, two Tennessee Republican legislators tried passing a law making it so that women who had abortions could be charged with homicide, which would make them...

Young voters are one of many groups that pushed Trump back into the White House in 2024. Some researchers saw this as a potentially massive realignment with game-changing implications for our politics — but one year into Trump's second term, it doesn't seem like it. Trump is 34 points underwater according to the Cook Political Report's poll aggregator . And those polls were taken before Trump laun...

On Wednesday, a California jury found Meta and YouTube each liable for harming the well-being of a young user who had sued the two companies. The plaintiff argued that the products had negatively impacted her mental health. This verdict follows a similar decision made by a jury in New Mexico earlier this week. Both decisions are part of a massive shift in how Americans are thinking about social me...

Ahead of the midterms, several Democrats are trying to seize on the affordability messaging that has been connecting with voters across the country by talking about lowering taxes. New Jersey Senator Cory Booker and Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen have introduced separate measures aimed at easing the tax burden on middle- and lower-income people. And Vermont Independent Senator Bernie Sanders an...

It’s been more than a month since the Department of Homeland Security shut down, and American airports are definitely feeling it. Now, President Donald Trump has sent ICE agents to at least 14 airports across the country. A Truth Social post over the weekend from Trump, said in part that ICE in airports will, “do Security like no one has ever seen before, including the immediate arrest of all Ille...

The MAGA Right is at war over the role that Israel has in American foreign policy and the war with Iran. If you listen to Tucker Carlson or former counterterrorism chief Joe Kent, you would think that President Donald Trump was bamboozled into this conflict, lured by the evil "Israel lobby." The way some on the American Right (and the American Left) are talking about Israel has edged into outright...

The Trump Administration’s crackdown on undocumented and documented immigrants hasn’t stopped — even for recipients of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA . Since Trump returned to the White House last year, his administration has made life harder and harder for the estimated half a million DACA recipients living in the US. The Trump Administration has said it’s deported nearly 100 DAC...