Checks and Balance from The Economist

If the election were held tomorrow, Donald Trump would probably be the favourite to win.  How should we be thinking about the race with a year to go? And how can the world outside of America prepare itself for the possibility of a second Trump term?

John Prideaux hosts with Charlotte Howard and Idrees Kahloon. They’re joined by Vanderbilt University’s John Sides and The Economist’s Ed Carr. 

Checks and Balance will be recording a live show in Philadelphia later this month.  Find out more and get your ticket here.

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On foreign policy, trade and immigration, the Republican Party wants America to push the world away. This is a departure, but also a return to what the party used to believe. How did the Republican Party go from isolationism to internationalism and then back again? And what does that mean for America’s foreign policy?

John Prideaux hosts with Charlotte Howard and Idrees Kahloon. They’re joined by Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, and The Economist’s Edward Carr.

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California is overhauling its mental-health system. The state exemplifies two broad shifts in mental-health care in America: the building of more beds and an expansion of involuntary treatment. What is the best way to treat severe mental illness?

John Prideaux hosts with Charlotte Howard and Idrees Kahloon. They’re joined by The Economist’s Aryn Braun, who speaks to Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, and Darrell Steinberg, the mayor of Sacramento. 

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In recent years the US has facilitated a warming in relations between Israel and its Arab neighbours but, after Hamas attacked Israel, that is under threat. What should America’s Middle East strategy be now?

John Prideaux hosts with Charlotte Howard and Idrees Kahloon. They’re joined by Economist colleagues Anton La Guardia, James Bennet and Josie Delap. 

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America doesn’t have enough homes. The “yes in my backyard”, or YIMBY, movement believes that making it easier to build is the best solution. To what extent would building more help solve America’s housing problem?

John Prideaux hosts with Charlotte Howard and Daniel Knowles. They’re joined by YIMBY activist Sonja Trauss and law professor Michael Allan Wolf. The Economist’s Stevie Hertz reports from New York. 

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Once again, Donald Trump won a primary debate by skipping it. Where is Mr Trump taking the Republican party next?

John Prideaux hosts with Charlotte Howard and James Bennet. They’re joined by historian Rick Perlstein, The Economist’s Andrew Miller and The Economist’s Adam O’Neal.

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“We have no greater friend, no greater partner, no greater ally than Australia,” declared Antony Blinken, America’s secretary of state, during a recent visit down under. Is that really true, and how is the threat from China reshaping America’s relationships in the Indo-Pacific? 

John Prideaux hosts with Charlotte Howard and Anton La Guardia. They’re joined by Eleanor Whitehead, The Economist’s Australia correspondent. 

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Joe Biden likes to boast that he is the most pro-union president in American history. His fondness for unions, though, has been tested by a wave of strikes. In office, President Biden has regularly voiced support for workers, and handed unions more power. But white working-class Americans, once his party’s reliable base, now mostly vote Republican. Can Democrats win back working-class voters?

The Economist’s Simon Rabinovitch assesses Joe Biden’s union credentials. The Economist’s James Bennet ponders one of the great “what-ifs” of American political history. And political scientist Ruy Teixeira considers how Democrats could solve their working class problem.

John Prideaux hosts with Charlotte Howard and Idrees Kahloon.

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Countries with a collective population of four billion will vote for leaders next year. There are fears that recent advances in generative artificial intelligence will make voters more vulnerable to deception than ever. But disinformation has long been a problem, well before the age of deepfakes and large-language models. How worried do we really need to be about AI’s potential to undermine democracy?

Chihhao Yu of the Taiwan Information Environment Research Centre explains the threat posed by Chinese misinformation campaigns. We go back to when sensationalist journalism drove America towards war. And Senator Josh Hawley explains why he wants AI to be regulated.

John Prideaux hosts with Charlotte Howard and Idrees Kahloon.

Runtime: 44 min

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The perfect weather and booming economy of the City of Angels has drawn in generations of California dreamers. But now America’s second-largest city is getting smaller—losing both population and businesses. As the Hollywood strike has revealed, the high costs of housing, living and running a business are pushing Angelenos away. Can the city reverse the big shrink? But is a smaller Los Angeles even a problem?

The city’s mayor Karen Bass and a picketing actor lay out the affordability problems facing the city, while Shannon Sedgwick of the Los Angeles County Economics Development Corporation explains what is behind the business exodus. We revisit the city’s past boom days, and Hans Johnson, of the Public Policy Institute of California, explores how to bring them back.

John Prideaux hosts with Charlotte Howard and Idrees Kahloon.

You can now find every episode of Checks and Balance in one place and sign up to our weekly newsletter. For full access to print, digital and audio editions, as well as exclusive live events, subscribe to The Economist at economist.com/uspod.

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