Why Is This Happening? The Chris Hayes Podcast

Donald Trump and the Republican Party have made significant inroads among Latino voters. At the same time, vitriolic ads are continually being released that feature racist and demagogic depictions of immigrants, especially Latino ones. And, if you remember, despite Trump’s relentless anti-immigrant rhetoric, he won a higher percentage of the Latino vote in 2020 than he did in 2016. With less than...

With just a few weeks until the election, you’ve probably noticed that Vice President Harris has been doing a lot of media. How does she decide which outlets to give interviews to? What does the process look like behind the scenes? Lucky for us, we have the perfect guest to unpack the ins and outs of campaign press strategy, particularly in an election as consequential as this one. Symone Sanders-...

Election Day is around the corner and Vice President Kamala Harris could become the first woman, first Black woman, and first South-Asian to sit in the Oval Office. In light of this moment, we’re resharing our 2020 series “Kamala: Next in Line,” from MSNBC and Wondery. Hosted by Joy Reid, "Next In Line" is an intimate and immersive look into what drives Harris, what her critics say about her, and...

It’s been one year since the devastating October 7th attacks by Hamas into Israel. It’s a truly awful anniversary to observe for numerous reasons. In the past year, there’s been immeasurable horror, violence, destruction and death. It is estimated that at least 40,000 people have died in Gaza and there are still over a hundred hostages. Our guest this week survived the attacks on October 7th and t...

Comprehensive border and immigration reform has eluded policymakers in the U.S. for decades. As global turmoil and conflict grows, questions and concerns still remain about the economic, security, and humanitarian justification and rationale for immigrants, asylum seekers and refugees seeking entry into the U.S. Vitriolic rhetoric, which has largely impeded meaningful progress, has only intensifie...

We’re getting closer and closer to the election. And a lot of weird stuff has been happening. Our guest this week points out that Trump has been going “all in” for the “weird vote,” by choosing JD Vance as his running mate and elevating figures like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Dave Weigel covers politics and writes the “Americana” newsletter for Semafor. He’s written about how the Trump-Vance coalition...

This week’s episode is a bit of a crossover. We’re sharing the fourth and final episode of MSNBC’s “The Threat of Project 2025” special series for the How to Win podcast. In this episode, Chris speaks with Grist climate reporter Zoya Teirstein for her take on Project 2025’s impact on climate and the environment, especially in communities already suffering from climate-related catastrophes. Then, D...

We’re thrilled to share a mashup of our MSNBC Live: Democracy 2024 event that we recently held at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. The whole day was a celebration of you, our viewers and listeners. It was the first of its kind in-person, interactive experience. We so enjoyed meeting so many of you. But if you couldn’t join us in person, you’re in luck – we’re sharing key conversations in this episod...

North Carolina is one of the most interesting swing states in this election. Democrats have not won the Tar Heel state at the presidential level since 2008 when Barack Obama won it. It was a close race in 2020 and recent polling has shown Harris and Trump neck and neck in the state. There’s a lot to unpack about what’s going on. Anderson Clayton is the chair of the North Carolina Democratic Party....

During this year’s DNC, President Biden reflected on numerous accomplishments and discussed his track record. One of the signature pieces of legislation of the Biden presidency, and of Democrats in this era, is the Inflation Reduction Act, also known as the IRA. This August marked the 2-year anniversary of the landmark federal law. Our guest this week teamed up with his students to track the cumul...

The Democratic national convention was a whole vibe this year. History was made during the electric four-day convention, which culminated with Vice President Harris accepting the Democratic Party’s nomination, the first black woman and person of South Asian decent to do so. Lucky for us, our own Alex Wagner, host of “Alex Wagner Tonight” on MSNBC, joined us fresh off her flight from Chicago to unp...

Could the answer to building a more just society lie in 50-year-old ideas? Our guest this week points to the ideas of John Rawls, one of the greatest political philosophers, as a blueprint of sorts for building a more equitable society. Daniel Chandler is the research director of the Programme on Cohesive Capitalism at the London School of Economics. He’s also an economist, philosopher and author...

Chris just got back from vacation. It just so happened that he was way during one of the most remarkable periods in American presidential political history. There’s a lot to unpack with our guest this week. Heather McGhee is a New York Times bestselling author of “The Sum of Us” and the board chair at Color of Change, the nation’s largest online racial justice group. She joins WITHpod to discuss t...

We’ve seen a wave of campaigns in school districts and municipalities across the country to ban literary works over the past few years.  One instance of this is the subject of MSNBC Films’ "To Be Destroyed," the latest installment of "The Turning Point" documentary series from Executive Producer Trevor Noah. The feature documentary explores a South Dakota community's fight against book banning aft...

There’s a lot of unprecedented things going on nowadays. And with everything going on, it can be tempting to distort the moment we’re in and to view things as totally new and completely abrupt. Our guest this week has written about the source of historical continuity, particularly in the 1990s, that has brought us to our current moment. John Ganz is the author of “When the Clock Broke: Con Men, Co...

Why does it seem so hard to build big things nowadays? Our guest this week points out that no one project embodies that cynicism quite like Boston’s Big Dig. Boston’s Central Artery/Tunnel Project, commonly known as the Big Dig, was the most complex and technically challenging highway project in American history. Ian Coss is host and creator of “The Big Dig” podcast, produced by GBH, which unpacks...

The Democratic Party coalition is a complicated one to say the least. A growing number of Democrats have called on President Joe Biden to withdraw from the 2024 presidential election in recent weeks. Those encouraging him to step aside have cited concerns about his fitness for office and ability to win reelection. Jamelle Bouie is a New York Times opinion columnist and is a co-host of the Unclear...

Another year, another pretty wild Supreme Court term. SCOTUS recently ended its term with a number of big decisions including ruling that former president Donald Trump is immune from prosecution for his “official acts” in office. And it also overturned the Chevron doctrine, reversing a 40-year-old precedent that afforded federal agencies a degree of discretion in interpreting ambiguous laws. As al...

Could the future of libraries as we’ve known them be completely different? Our guests this week say so. Megapublishers are suing the Internet Archive, perhaps best known for its Wayback Machine, to redefine e-books as legally different from paper books. A difference in how they are classified would mean sweeping changes for the way libraries operate. Brewster Kahle is a digital librarian at the In...

Project 2025, also known as the Presidential Transition Project, is a collection of policy proposals from The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. The group’s 920-page “Mandate for Leadership” is an extremely granular playbook that includes sweeping policy changes aimed at reshaping and dismantling American government. It’s pretty alarming. With so much at stake, we thought it would be...

Democratic Rep. Jasmine Crockett is one of the most interesting figures in Congress. You may have been introduced to her in recent weeks following a House committee during which Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene insulted her appearance. The verbal spat between the two took the internet by storm and became a viral moment. But that exchange, and her clapback, is only one part of her story as a...

We’re sharing another episode in our WITHpod 2024: The Stakes series, in which we choose specific areas of policy and talk to an expert about Trump and Biden’s records on the topic. We couldn’t think of a better person than our guest this week to help unpack the two candidates’ stances on antitrust. Timothy Wu is the Julius Silver professor of law, science and technology at Columbia University. He...

One of the most pressing challenges for candidates and campaigns today is how to win in a world where disinformation is so pervasive. Why is the information environment in this election year so hard to parse? Our guest this week has written about the keys to winning campaigns for more than a decade. Sasha Issenberg is a journalist and author of numerous books including his latest, “The Lie Detecti...

Its been four years since the murder of George Floyd at the hands Minneapolis police officers and the unrest that was unleashed in the wake of his death. And now we’re in a moment where another global protest movement is flourishing in denouncement of the Israeli war in Gaza. This week, we’re taking a look at the historical lineage and efficacy of protests, as well as ways we might rethink mobiliz...

We’re back with another episode of our WITHpod 2024: The Stakes series, in which we choose specific areas of policy and talk to an expert about Trump and Biden’s records on the topic. This week, we’re discussing what’s at stake for an area of top salience: climate and energy. There’s a lot to unpack. David Roberts is the founder of the Volts podcast, newsletter and community. He joins WITHpod to d...