The Political Scene | The New Yorker

The Washington Roundtable is joined by Robert Kagan, a historian and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, for a conversation about the pressures facing American democracy, the security of elections, and how these domestic tensions interact with the collapse of international norms. Nearly a decade after his prescient 2016 column for the Washington Post, “This is How Fascism Comes to America,” Kagan contends that the ...

The New Yorker staff writer Dexter Filkins joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss Marco Rubio’s reëmergence as one of the most powerful, and most transformed, figures in Donald Trump’s second term. They talk about Rubio’s unlikely ascent to the dual roles of Secretary of State and national-security adviser, his journey from outspoken Trump critic to loyal enforcer, and what that evolution reveals about how power operates inside th...

U.S. intervention in other countries, whether overt or covert, is by no means new, and Daniel Immerwahr notes that the open embrace of expansionism by the President and associates such as Stephen Miller goes back to the nineteenth century. Immerwahr is a professor at Northwestern University and the author of the 2019 best-seller “How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States.” He discusses Trump’s disdain f...

The Washington Roundtable discusses Donald Trump’s use of force in Venezuela, his desire to take over Greenland, and the historical echoes of the Administration’s new imperialist projects. The panel also considers Trump’s brand of “narcissistic unilateralism” and the increased risks of global conflict when foreign policy is based on one man’s whims. “Donald Trump wants to write his name into history,” the staff writer Susa...

The New Yorker staff writer Jon Lee Anderson joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss the U.S. military operation that captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and brought him to the United States to face narco-terrorism charges. They talk about the unprecedented nature of the raid, the shaky intelligence and legal rationale behind it, and what the operation reveals about the Trump Administration’s increasingly coercive approach...

Across the country, data centers that run A.I. programs are being constructed at a record pace. A large percentage of them use chips built by the tech colossus Nvidia. The company has nearly cornered the market on the hardware that runs much of A.I., and has been named the most valuable company in the world, by market capitalization. But Nvidia’s is not just a business story; it’s a story about the geopolitical and technol...

The writers Charles Duhigg, Cal Newport, and Anna Wiener join Tyler Foggatt for a conversation about artificial intelligence and the promises, myths, and anxieties surrounding it. The discussion was recorded before a live audience at The New Yorker Festival this fall. They explore the gap between Silicon Valley’s sweeping claims and what generative A.I. can actually do today, how people are using the technology for work, c...

The Republican Susan Collins has held one of Maine’s Senate seats for nearly thirty years, and Democrats, in trying to take it away from her, have a lot at stake. Graham Platner, a combat veteran, political activist, and small-business owner who has never served in office, seemed to check many boxes for a progressive upstart. Platner, who says he and his wife earn sixty thousand dollars a year, has spoken passionately abou...

The New Yorker staff writer Isaac Chotiner joins Tyler Foggatt to reflect on several of the most notable interviews he conducted in 2025. They discuss competing theories about the origins of political violence over the past year, how to understand President Trump’s approach to power in his second term, and the challenges of covering an Administration that rarely appears to be driven by a coherent ideological framework. The...

In the course of his long career, Leon Panetta was a lieutenant in the Army, a congressman from California, Bill Clinton’s White House chief of staff, Barack Obama’s director of the C.I.A., and later, his Secretary of Defense. David Remnick talks with Panetta about the current Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, the legality of the ongoing Navy strikes targeting civilian boats off the coast of Venezuela, and the problem wi...

The Washington Roundtable discusses what surprised them in 2025, reflecting on the major shock-and-awe events that defined the first year of Donald Trump’s second term: the capitulation of major law firms, universities, and media companies; the evisceration of foreign aid; the sudden threats of war against Venezuela; and much more. The panel also considers the shape and state of resistance to Trumpism in 2025. “There is th...

The New Yorker staff writer Andrew Marantz is joined by the political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, who teach at Harvard, and Lucan A. Way, who teaches at the University of Toronto, for an installment of “How Bad Is It?,” a monthly series on the health of American democracy. In a new essay for the journal Foreign Affairs, “The Price of American Authoritarianism,” the scholars of government assert that Pres...

The New Yorker staff writer Katy Waldman joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss how the Kennedy Center, the premier performing-arts hub in Washington, D.C., has been transformed under President Trump’s second term—and under his chaotic and unprecedented chairmanship of the organization. They talk about this year’s Kennedy Center Honors, which featured a group of honorees that reflect the President’s personal tastes, as well as the...

As a California congressman, Adam Schiff was the lead manager during the first impeachment proceedings against Donald Trump. He later served on the January 6th committee. Trump has castigated him as “Shifty Schiff” and demanded that the Justice Department investigate him. In a conversation with David Remnick, Schiff discusses the current inquiry into his mortgage by federal authorities; the Supreme Court’s primary role in ...

The Washington Roundtable discusses President Donald Trump’s health and the signs of his age-related decline: a noticeably reduced work schedule, fewer public appearances, and more rambling, profanity-laden outbursts. The panel examines how this undermines Trump’s self-styled image of strength and vigor, what lessons about aging Presidents can be drawn from the Biden and Reagan Administrations, and why America may be facin...

The New Yorker staff writer Jon Lee Anderson joins Tyler Foggatt to talk about the Trump Administration’s military strikes on alleged Venezuelan drug boats in the Caribbean. They discuss the questionable intelligence and rationale behind the operation, the legal concerns raised by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s alleged order to leave no survivors in a September strike, and whether the attacks feels more performative than...

Only thirty per cent of the American public identifies with the MAGA movement, according to a recent NBC poll, but that coalition remains intensely loyal to Donald Trump in the face of scandals and authoritarian measures. Defections seem rare and come with the risk of reprisal, even from the President himself. Rich Logis is trying to make them less rare with his advocacy organization, Leaving MAGA. The nonprofit’s  website...

The “Jeopardy!” host and former contestant Ken Jennings joins Tyler Foggatt to talk about America’s favorite game show. The wide-ranging conversation took place before a live audience onstage at the annual New Yorker Festival, on October 25th. Jennings discussed his historic seventy-four-game winning streak, how contestants’ game strategies have changed over the years, his relationship with the former longtime host Alex Tr...

Both major parties are experiencing a crisis of leadership in Washington. President Trump’s flip-flopping on the Epstein files acknowledges that, on this issue, at least, he has lost control of MAGA. For the Democrats, the collapse of their consensus on the government shutdown deepens a sense that the current leadership is ineffective. For all the talk of unity, the Party is profoundly divided on what message to convey to ...