Diane Rehm: On My Mind

Donald Trump was indicted on 37 federal charges related to mishandling of classified documents at an arraignment in Miami this week.

A federal indictment is a first for a current or former president of the United States, though Trump was indicted on state criminal charges in New York earlier this year. In that complaint, he allegedly falsified business records related to "hush money" payments.

And yet, Donald Trump continues to lead the pack of candidates for the 2024 Republican nomination for president. This has left the rest of the GOP ping-ponging between defending the former president and acknowledging the seriousness of this latest round of charges brought by special counsel Jack Smith.

Susan Glasser is a staff writer at The New Yorker and co-author of the book, “The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021.” She walks Diane through the case against Trump and what it means for his future, as well as what it says about legal accountability in the U.S.

The GOP presidential field continues to balloon.

The number of candidates for the 2024 Republican nomination jumped by three this week with former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, former Vice President Mike Pence, and North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum throwing their hats into the race.

They join a crowded field that already includes former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, as well as the state’s senator, Tim Scott.

But most eyes remain on former president Donald Trump and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who many see as Trump’s main competitor.

Jonathan Weisman is a political reporter at The New York Times. He has been traveling the country listening to stump speeches and talking to GOP voters. He joins Diane to explain what he has learned, and what the current field says about today’s Republican party.

This week saw heightened tensions in the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. 

A wave of drone strikes hit the Russian capital Tuesday morning, bringing the war to Moscow for the first time. This, as Russian bombs continued to fall on Kyiv in a month that has seen relentless shelling of the city. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian military preps for a promised counteroffensive as it renews its push for NATO membership.

David Ignatius is foreign affairs columnist at the Washington Post. He joins Diane to lay out the state of play, and whether this could be a turning point in the war.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy says he will send lawmakers home for Memorial Day weekend, despite the fact no deal has been struck to raise the debt limit. This takes the country one step closer to what many describe as going over a fiscal cliff.  

The Treasury Department estimates June 1 as the day when the U.S. government will run out of money, triggering potentially catastrophic economic effects. Norm Ornstein joins Diane to explain where the negotiations stand, what option President Biden might have to raise the debt ceiling without Republican support, and how this all could have been avoided in the first place.

President Biden travels to Hiroshima this week for a meeting of the G-7. 

While there, he plans to acknowledge the devastation wrought by the atomic bomb dropped on the city by U.S. forces, but the White House says he does not plan to make any apologies for America's actions during World War II.

Though 78 years have passed since the United States unleashed the power of the atomic bomb on Japan, the weapon continues to cast a shadow over geopolitics. And questions linger as to whether the call to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki was the right one. 

Could the war have ended without the use of these nuclear weapons? Could the U.S. have merely tested the bomb on a desert island as a show of force? And was it necessary to drop the second bomb on Nagasaki?

Historian and author Evan Thomas explores these questions in a new book titled, “The Road to Surrender.” In it, Thomas goes back in time to tell the story of the leaders grappling with the “morally fraught decisions” about whether to use their new weapon of mass destruction, and how to put an end to a brutal war.

With the release of ChatGPT late last year, the power of artificial intelligence had been put into the hands of the general public in ways it had never been before. Suddenly it seemed the future had arrived. 

But along with fascination at the ability of the chatbot to mimic human writing, and even human thought, came questions – and concerns – from some of the biggest names in the tech industry.  

Cade Metz is a technology reporter for The New York Times and author of the book, “Genius Makers: The Mavericks Who Brought A.I. To Google, Facebook, and the World.” He joined Diane to help explain this moment in A.I. and where it might be headed.

It’s a story familiar to any working parent. You get a call. It’s your child’s school saying they are sick and to come get them. And you can’t because you’re at work.

Sometimes it’s just a bump on the head, but sometimes it’s serious.

For NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly the call came while flying in a Blackhawk helicopter in Iraq. And it was really serious.

She says this was a moment when she “hit a wall” and the choice became clear – her family needed her and that was more important than dropping into war zones. A few months later, she decided to leave her job as Pentagon correspondent at the network.

But as her kids grew, and their need for her waned, she went back to the newsroom, and found herself choosing the war zone.

Then came her eldest son’s senior year of high school. She realized something was coming to an end and wanted to be there for it. So she once again reshuffled her priorities to savor what she saw as the last months of living under the same roof as a family of four with her husband and two sons.

She tells this story in a new book “It. Goes. So. Fast: The Year of No Do-overs,” a memoir about work, family, and almost having it all.

Tucker Carlson’s firing Monday by Fox News sent shockwaves through the cable news landscape -- and the conservative media world.

One of the network’s best-known hosts, Carlson attracted massive audiences and wielded real political power, with a direct line to the White House and Donald Trump, when he was in office.

Shortly after word of Carlson’s departure leaked, another cable news star grabbed headlines. Longtime CNN host Don Lemon announced the network cut him loose, just weeks after he made waves with on-air sexist remarks.

So what do these high-profile exits say about the state of Fox, CNN, cable news and our information ecosystem more generally? NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik joins Diane to discuss.

A series of recent reports have pulled back the curtains on possible ethics violations by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

It started with an investigation by ProPublica that revealed the depth of a relationship between Thomas and a Republican mega-donor. This included decades of lavish gifts and paid vacations – none of which were disclosed.

Then came revelations of undercover real estate deals and continued claims of income from a company that had not existed for years.

Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern says this fits a pattern of behavior by Thomas, who most recently raised eyebrows when he refused to recuse himself from a January 6th case despite his wife Ginni Thomas’s participation in the “Stop the Steal” rally that day. “This isn’t a conservative problem, this isn’t a liberal problem, this is a Clarence Thomas problem,” Stern tells Diane. He is among a growing number of Court watchers who see this not only as a crisis for Justice Thomas, but for the legitimacy of the Supreme Court itself.

A 330 mile-walk from Washington, D.C. to New York City. That’s what journalist Neil King decided to embark on in the spring of 2021.

The idea started as a whim – but developed into an obsession. Recently recovered from a long bout with esophageal cancer and having watched the country become increasingly divided, King came to see the journey as a pilgrimage of sorts – a tour through our country’s past and present, and an opportunity for him to reconnect with what matters in life.

He documented his trip in a new book titled, “American Ramble: A Walk Of Memory And Renewal.”