What A Day

The New York City Board of Elections on Tuesday confirmed Zohran Mamdani, a 33-year-old state assemblyman, beat former Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the city's Democratic primary for mayor. And not by a thin margin – the results show Mamdani won by 12 points after the ranked choice vote count. The decisive victory puts Mamdani in pole position to win November’s general election and become the city’s next mayor, though Cuomo and current Mayo...

The Senate passed President Donald Trump's spending bill on Tuesday after Vice President JD Vance arrived to break a 50-50 tie. The bill is now headed back to the House where Republican Speaker Mike Johnson can only afford to lose three members and still pass the bill by a party line vote. To learn more about what this means for Republicans' big beautiful bill and the looming July Fourth deadline, we spoke with Nicholas Wu, a congr...

As Republicans in Congress look to gut Medicaid with President Donald Trump’s supposed “Big Beautiful Bill,” the Supreme Court ended its session ruling on United States vs. Skirmetti that Tennessee could bar gender-affirming care for minors. The ruling itself centered on whether or not such a ban would violate the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause. In a 6–3 decision, with the three liberal justices dissenting, the court deci...

It’s make-or-break week for Congressional Republicans and their big policy and spending legislation, a.k.a. President Donald Trump’s ‘One Big Beautiful Bill.’ Trump says he still expects to see the final package on his desk by this Friday, even as new estimates from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office show the latest version of the bill could add more than $3 trillion dollars to the national debt over the next decade. Is th...

The Supreme Court will issue a slew of major opinions today on what’s expected to be the final day of its current term. Still outstanding are decisions in cases over President Donald Trump’s birthright citizenship order, a voting rights challenge in Louisiana, LGBTQ books in schools, and more. On Thursday, the court also paved the way for states to bar Planned Parenthood from receiving Medicaid funds, even for services not at all r...

President Donald Trump addressed leaders at a NATO summit in the Netherlands Wednesday as the tenuous ceasefire between Israel and Iran continued to hold for a second day. Trump said the U.S. would be holding talks with Iran sometime next week, though he added he didn’t think a new nuclear agreement was actually necessary because ‘the war’s done.’ While the administration continues to fight reports that Iran’s nuclear program remai...

What does national leadership really look like? Despite all of President Donald Trump's rhetoric, it's not like running a business. It's not even like running a state. It's running a massive apparatus that employs millions of people and also a military, while dealing with every other country that needs to or wants to deal with your country. Frequently, it also requires doing all of that in the the middle of a crisis. Former New Zea...

Iran fired missiles at a U.S. military base in Qatar Monday in retaliation for American strikes on three nuclear enrichment sites, marking another major escalation in the growing Middle East conflict. The Qatari government said U.S. forces were able to intercept those missiles. And President Donald Trump downplayed the strikes on Truth Social, writing Iran had alerted the government ahead of time and now "gotten it all out of their...

The United States is going to war in the Middle East again… maybe. President Donald Trump announced Saturday the U.S. had bombed three of Iran’s main nuclear facilities, adding, “NOW IS THE TIME FOR PEACE!” But while multiple members of the administration spent Sunday insisting the U.S. is not out for regime change, Trump later undermined them in another Truth Social post floating the idea. The extent of the damage inflicted on Ira...

A few weeks ago, What A Day took a trip to the Cascade PBS Ideas Festival in Seattle, Washington, for a conversation with former Democratic Minnesota Senator Al Franken.

His path to politics is a fascinating one. He transitioned from being a writer and performer on Saturday Night Live, a role he held from 1975 to 1980 and from 1985 to 1995, to a prominent figure in the political arena.

Franken's journey took a significant turn when h...

The Supreme Court is staying busy with decisions. The High Court issued a 6-3 ruling on Wednesday in United States v. Skrmetti, upholding a Tennessee law that banned gender-affirming care for transgender minors. Leah Litman joins us to unpack what affect the court's ruling will have on Tennessee and a slew of other states across the country. Litman is the author of the recent NYT Best Seller "LAWLESS: How the Supreme Court Runs on ...

Tensions continue to escalate between Iran and Israel as the two countries swap missile fire. Israel claims to have killed multiple high-level Iranian officials and has asked for US military support. President Donald Trump is making posts online that vaguely gesture he might give it to them while Republicans argue about whether we should get involved. Pod Save the World’s Tommy Vietor joins the show to try and make sense of all the...

A federal appeals court will decide if President Donald Trump's deployment of National Guard troops to Los Angeles in response to anti-immigration raid protests will continue. We spoke with Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass ahead of the appeals court ruling for insight on the Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids, protests, and what her city can do to reset in this moment.

And in headlines: ICE is reportedly running out of money, the...

In towns and cities across the country, from blue cities to red states, from Idaho to Georgia and pretty much everywhere else, folks gathered to show their opposition to the Trump Administration. They were standing up against immigration raids with masked federal agents, to devastating cuts to Medicaid, to the President of the United States, quote-unquote “honoring” the United States Army with a birthday parade. If you marched this...

Congress is reeling after Democratic US Senator Alex Padilla was forcibly removed and handcuffed – all for the crime of trying to ask Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem a question. There are lots of moving parts to this story, so to help us understand what happened to the California Senator, we spoke with his counterpart, US Democratic Senator Adam Schiff of California.

And in headlines: the US Supreme Court drops some fresh ne...

The Supreme Court has been busy releasing opinions. Last week, it ruled against a ten billion dollar lawsuit from Mexico against American gun manufacturers. The Mexican government had alleged that US gun companies were fueling cartel violence south of the border. But in a unanimous opinion, liberal Justice Elena Kagan wrote that the lawsuit didn’t reach the burden required by a 2005 law. The court declined to take up two other gun ...

You know how people are always saying, "What happens in California often doesn't stay here"? They're so right! Case in point: home insurance. When natural disasters happen, home insurance is how folks are able to rebuild. But when natural disasters happen over and over again, like the wildfires in California, home insurance companies become overwhelmed. And it's not just a California issue. In Iowa and Oklahoma, residents are curre...

The Trump Administration has decided that diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts are themselves a form of discrimination. And last week, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that members of majority groups can also experience discrimination. But what if the entire frame of "discrimination" is the wrong one? Brando Simeo Starkey, author of "Their Accomplices Wore Robes: How the Supreme Court Chained Black America to the Bottom of a...

People protesting against Immigration Customs Enforcement raids in Los Angeles and President Trump’s crackdown on immigration clashed with the National Guard over the weekend. Ruben Vives, a general assignment reporter with the LA Times, helped us break down what's happening across the city right now.

And in headlines, Republicans are still trying to persuade Americans the Big Beautiful Bill is somehow going to save us money, a Mary...