The New Yorker presents a special conversation from Slate’s “Amicus” podcast, hosted by Dahlia Lithwick. Lithwick talks with Judge Margaret M. McKeown, of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, about McKeown’s new book, “Citizen Justice: The Environmental Legacy of William O. Douglas―Public Advocate and Conservation Champion.” The Washington Roundtable will return next week.

From “Amicus”: The Environmental Legacy of William O. Douglas

Join The New Yorker’s writers and editors for reporting, insight, and analysis of the most pressing political issues of our time. On Mondays, David Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker, presents conversations and feature stories about current events. On Wednesdays, the senior editor Tyler Foggatt goes deep on a consequential political story via far-reaching interviews with staff writers and outside experts. And, on Fridays, the staff writers Susan B. Glasser, Jane Mayer, and Evan Osnos discuss the latest developments in Washington and beyond, offering an encompassing understanding of this moment in American politics.

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When Raphael Warnock was elected to the Senate from Georgia in the 2020 election, he made history a couple of times over. He became the first Black Democrat elected to the Senate from the Deep South. At the same time, that victory—alongside Jon Ossoff’s—flipped both of Georgia’s Senate seats from Republican to Democrat. Once thought of as solidly red, Georgia has become a closely watched swing state that President Biden can’t afford to lose in November, and Warnock is a key ally. He dismisses polls that show younger Black voters are leaning toward Trump in higher numbers than older voters; Biden’s record as President, he thinks—including a reported sixty per cent increase in Black wealth since the pandemic—will motivate strong turnout. Warnock returns to Atlanta every Sunday to preach at Ebenezer Baptist Church, where he remains senior pastor, and he thinks of the election as a “moral and spiritual battle.” “Are we a nation that can send from the South a Black man and a Jewish man to the Senate?” he asks. “Or are we that nation that rises up in violence as we witness the demographic changes in our country and the struggle for a more inclusive Republic?” 

Senator Raphael Warnock on America’s “Moral and Spiritual Battle”

The Washington Roundtable: Susan B. Glasser and Jane Mayer speak with Sarah Longwell, a longtime G.O.P. strategist and publisher of the Bulwark. Longwell has conducted focus groups across the country for the past eight years, and her research provides an unparalleled look at what motivates certain Republican voters to stay with Trump and what causes others to abandon him. She’s applying that research to persuade a segment of Republican voters to change their vote to Biden, now that Trump has become a convicted felon. What can Democrats learn from her efforts, and from the Republican Party’s messaging tactics?
This week’s reading:
“Fighting Trump on the Beaches,” by Susan. B Glasser
“The Trials of a Never Trump Republican,” by Susan B. Glasser
“Joe Biden’s Last Campaign,” by Evan Osnos

To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker, visit newyorker.com/podcasts. To send in feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com with “The Political Scene” in the subject line.

A G.O.P. Strategist on the Republican Voters Who Could Abandon Trump

The New Yorker staff writer Rivka Galchen joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss a class at the University of Chicago with a tantalizingly dark title: “Are We Doomed?” It’s in the interdisciplinary field of existential risk, which studies the threats posed by climate change, nuclear warfare, and artificial intelligence. Galchen, who spent a semester observing the course and its students, considers how to contend with this bleak future, and how to understand the young people who may inherit it. 
This week’s reading:
“Are We Doomed? Here’s How to Think About It,” by Rivka Galchen 
“It’s a Climate Election Now,” by Bill McKibben

To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker, visit newyorker.com/podcasts. To send feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com.

What Do We Know About How the World Might End?

In “The Other Olympians: Fascism, Queerness, and the Making of Modern Sports,” the journalist Michael Waters tells the story of Zdeněk Koubek, one of the most famous sprinters in European women’s sports. Koubek shocked the sporting world in 1935 by announcing that he was transitioning, and now living as a man. The initial press coverage of Koubek and another prominent track star who transitioned, Mark Weston, was largely positive, but Waters tells the New Yorker sports columnist Louisa Thomas that eventually a backlash led to the 1936 Berlin Olympics instituting a sex-testing policy for women athletes. Any female athlete’s sex could be challenged, and cisgender women who didn’t conform to historical gender standards were targeted as a result. These policies slowly evolved to include chromosome testing and, later, the hormone testing that we see today. “And so as we talk about sex testing today,” Waters says, “we often are forgetting where these policies come from in the first place.”

The Trans Athletes Who Changed the Olympics—in 1936

The Washington Roundtable: Susan B. Glasser, Jane Mayer, and Evan Osnos discuss the consequences of a major moment in American history and politics: the first-ever trial and conviction of a former President in a court of law. Will Donald Trump’s guilty verdict threaten his campaign, or will it only shore up support from his party?  
 This week’s reading:
“The Revisionist History of the Trump Trial Has Already Begun,” by Susan B. Glasser
“Trump Is Guilty, but Voters Will Be the Final Judge,” by David Remnick
“When the Verdict Came In, Donald Trump’s Eyes Were Wide Open,” by Eric Lach

To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker, visit newyorker.com/podcasts. To send in feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com with “The Political Scene” in the subject line.

From “Amicus”: The Environmental Legacy of William O. Douglas

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