Slate News

Trump has called for elections to be “nationalized,” something neither the president, nor the federal government, has the authority to do. But as he’s already sent the FBI to raid Fulton County, Georgia’s election offices with director of intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, and with the midterms on their way, it’s time to ask how much damage a vindictive president could do.

Guest:  Ari Berman, voting rights reporter at Mother Jones...

Scamming attempts might seem to just come out of nowhere to suddenly appear in your WhatsApp, but a special economic zone in Laos has emerged as a hotbed of cryptocurrency schemes—where victims of human trafficking are trapped and forced to attempt more crime.

Guest: Andy Greenberg, senior writer for WIRED.

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This week: Anthropic released an update that seems to have tipped the scales against Software as a Service companies, erasing billions in market value. Felix Salmon, Elizabeth Spiers, and Emily Peck, unpack why there was such a massive market response to such a small AI plugin, and what it says about the future of tech investment. Then, Disney has finally named a new CEO in Josh D’Amaro. The hosts get what it says about the future ...

According to Marc Elias, Dahlia Lithwick’s guest on Amicus, “This week will be looked back on as a pivot point in terms of how the midterms play out.” Elias is a nationally recognized authority on voting rights, redistricting and campaign finance law. He is Chair of Elias Law Group and founder of Democracy Docket. 

In the past few weeks, Donald Trump’s election denialism has kicked into high gear, just as his poll numbers hit n...

He’s discontinuing Tesla’s signature models, taking SpaceX public, and putting more chips on A.I. and robotics. As Elon Musk prepares for his next phase, will he rein in any of his excesses? 

And in this week’s Plus segment: Elon in Epstein files.

Guest: Faiz Siddiqui, technology reporter for the Washington Post’s Business Desk, author of “Hubris Maximus: The Shattering of Elon Musk.”

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This week, Emily Bazelon, David Plotz, and guest host Juliette Kayyem discuss the juxtaposition between the devastating layoffs at The Washington Post and the exorbitant price owner Jeff Bezos and Amazon paid for the Melania movie, this week’s ominous foreshadowing of the Trump administration’s real threats to the 2026 elections with election law expert Nate Persily, and why the Clintons are facing deposition in House Epstein inves...

What Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime show means for Puerto Rico, Latin Americans in the U.S., and his haters.

Guest: Dr. Vanessa Díaz, associate professor of Chicana/o and Latina/o Studies at Loyola Marymount University and co-author of P FKN R: How Bad Bunny Became the Global Voice of Puerto Rican Resistance.

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Another 3 million pages of the Epstein files were released last Friday, with more big names named, more redactions, and more information that should have been redacted left unredacted. 

Guest: David Enrich, deputy investigations editor at the New York Times. 

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Melania, the documentary about the First Lady, is a lot like its subject: extremely expensive and fundamentally inscrutable. 

Guest: Heather Schwedel, staff writer at Slate, author of “Unfortunately, I Have to Recommend You See Melania”.

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In this Money Talks: Emily Peck is joined by Andrew Biggs, author of The Real Retirement Crisis, to talk about how the data contradicts the so-called "retirement crisis” in the US, what we misunderstand about the system, and what we should be thinking about when it comes to retirement savings. 

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Congress is supposed to have a legal right to tour ICE detention centers and provide oversight on these facilities, where 32 people died in 2025. But this representative’s attempt to tour a facility in her New Jersey district led to her being charged with assaulting a federal officer and facing a 17-year prison sentence.  

Guest:  LaMonica McIver is the U.S. representative for New Jersey's 10th congressional distr...

The Iranian government cut off nearly all internet access on January 8 as part of a crackdown on protestors, an example of why authoritarians attempt internet blackouts—and why they don’t always work the way authoritarians want them to.

Guest: Steve Feldstein, political scientist and senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in the Democracy, Conflict, and Governance Program.

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This week: Volatility in the Japanese bond market is threatening the global trade house of cards. Felix Salmon, Elizabeth Spiers, and Emily Peck, unpack the changes in Japan’s economy and why they have such a big worldwide impact. Then, they discuss the weakening US dollar and what Trump's fed chair nominee says about his administration. And finally, corporate messaging around social issues has all but gone away, but the recent hor...

Lawyers love legal reasoning. It promises a clean, clear path through sticky, tricky territory. But legal reasoning can enable grotesque real-world outcomes, like torture, or arresting journalists, or masked government agents detaining and disappearing people. On this week’s Amicus, Dahlia Lithwick is in conversation with Joseph Margulies, Professor of Practice of Government at Cornell University. Margulies litigated some of the bi...

In the wake of the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti during Trump’s immigration enforcement surge in Minnesota, the closest thing to “accountability” we’ve seen is Border Patrol’s Gregory Bovino being sent back to California. It’s not enough but it’s something.

Guest: Rob Gunther, What Next senior producer.

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In the immediate aftermath of the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minnesota, federal authorities presented very different accounts of what happened from what videos from witnesses showed. Did having footage from multiple angles of each shooting make the truth clear?

Guests: 

Jake Godin, researcher for Bellingcat.

Julia Angwin, investigative journalist, founder of Proof News and contributing opinion writer for Ne...

This week, Emily Bazelon, John Dickerson, and David Plotz discuss how the shocking killing of Alex Pretti by federal agents could represent a real turning point for Trump’s immigration enforcement policies, the cognitive dissonance about constitutional rights and conservative principles displayed by political leaders in the wake of Pretti’s killing, and a new book by guest Jason Zengerle: Hated by All the Right People: Tucker...

Just as public sentiment is turning on ICE and Border Patrol’s action in Minnesota, another spending bill is due in the U.S. Senate. Can the Democrats use the opportunity to put some restraints on Trump’s DHS? 

Guest: David Dayen, executive editor of The American Prospect.

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When the US won a bid to co-host the World Cup, Trump was midway through his first term. Eight years later, he’s back in office, and giving soccer fans eager to watch the tournament this summer good reasons to squirm.

Guest: Jon Arnold, sports journalist and author of the Getting CONCACAFed substack.

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