Slate News

This week, Emily Peck, Felix Salmon, and Anna Szymanski discuss the reopening and reclosing of states amid COVID-19 spikes, visas and immigration in the United States, and the messy collapse of the German fintech company Wirecard. 

In the Slate Plus segment: Bill Ackman and SPACs.

Email: [email protected]

Podcast production by Jessamine Molli.

Twitter: @felixsalmon, @Three_Guineas, @EmilyRPeck

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Responding to protests around the country, the New York City Council passed the POST Act: Public Oversight of Surveillance Technology last week. The bill will require the NYPD to reveal the extent of their surveillance technology deployed within the city. For the first time, New Yorkers will get a clear picture of the technology being employed to watch and trace them. Experts say to expect the worst.

Guest: Ángel S. Díaz, counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice.

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Responding to protests around the country, the New York City Council passed the POST Act: Public Oversight of Surveillance Technology last week. The bill will require the NYPD to reveal the extent of their surveillance technology deployed within the city. For the first time, New Yorkers will get a clear picture of the technology being employed to watch and trace them. Experts say to expect the worst.

Guest: Ángel S. Díaz, counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice.

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Virginia Heffernan welcomes back Fordham law professor Jed Shugerman to get into the weeds about AG Bill Barr, Michael Flynn’s story up until this point, Geoffrey Berman of the Southern District of New York, and the Unitary Executive Theory.

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Emily, John and David discuss the rising numbers of COVID cases, the politicization of the DOJ, and they are joined by Slow Burn's Josh Levin to talk about the new season focused on David Duke.

Here are some notes and references from this week’s show:

Austan Goolsbee and Chad Syverson: “Lockdown, and Diversion: Comparing Drivers of Pandemic Economic Decline 2020, University of Chicago, Becker Friedman Institute for Economics Working Paper No. 2020-80.” 

Kasra Zarei and John Duchneskie for the Philadelphia Inquirer: “Coronavirus Cases Rise in States with Relaxed Face Mask Policies”

Carol D. Leonnig and Joshua Partlow for the Washington Post: “Dozens of Secret Service Officers and Agents Told to Self-quarantine After Trump’s Tulsa Rally”

Jonathan Martin, Alexander Burns, Matt Stevens for the New York Times: “Biden Takes Dominant Lead as Voters Reject Trump on Virus and Race”

Slate’s Slow Burn, Season 4: David Duke

Rising Out of Hatred: The Awakening of a Former White Nationalist by Eli Saslow

Here are this week’s cocktail chatters:

John: Maria Konnikova for Wired: “Poker and the Psychology of Uncertainty”; The Biggest Bluff: How I Learned to Pay Attention, Master Myself, and Win by Maria Konnikova

Emily: Christoph Koettl, Nilo Tabrizy, Muyi Xiao, Natalie Reneau and Drew Jordan for The New York Times: “How the Philadelphia Police Tear-Gassed a Group of Trapped Protesters”

David: Melissa Fay Greene for the Atlantic: “30 Years Ago, Romania Deprived Thousands of Babies of Human Contact”

Listener chatter from Fredrik Hilding @FHilding: Jessica Leigh Hester for Atlas Obscura’s Show & Tell podcast: “Show and Tell With Colored-Pencil Cartographer Anton Thomas”

Slate Plus members get a bonus segment on the Gabfest each week, and access to special bonus episodes throughout the year. Sign up now to listen and support our show.

For this week’s Slate Plus bonus segment David, Emily, and John discuss some of the nicer changes the pandemic has brought to their daily lives.

You can tweet suggestions, links, and questions to @SlateGabfest. Tweet us your cocktail chatter using #cocktailchatter. (Messages may be quoted by name unless the writer stipulates otherwise.)

The email address for the Political Gabfest is [email protected]. (Email may be quoted by name unless the writer stipulates otherwise.)

Podcast production by Jocelyn Frank.

Research and show notes by Bridgette Dunlap.

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It was Halloween night when Eric Umansky’s wife asked him to go see what was happening around the corner from their home. She had just seen an unmarked NYPD patrol car strike a black teenager and officers had pinned another group of black kids against the wall of the local theatre. Eric arrived on the scene just as three of those kids were being arrested – ages 15, 14, and 12.

Eric didn’t intend to step out of his home and into a months long reporting project, but that’s precisely what happened as he began to investigate what happened that Halloween night in Brooklyn. The story he surfaced puts in stark display the system that protestors all over the country are rallying to fix.

Guest: Eric Umansky, Deputy Managing Editor at ProPublica.

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Last week, comedian Laurie Kilmartin took to Twitter to talk jokingly about something that wasn’t funny –– her mom was dying. JoAnn Kilmartin, Laurie’s mother, had contracted the coronavirus in her nursing home and was on her deathbed only a few miles from Laurie’s home in southern California. The experience put in striking display her grief and anger, but also her wits and charm.

With the death toll in the United States passing 120,000 people this week, Laurie’s experience is resonating with those who have lost loved ones to the virus.

Guest: Laurie Kilmartin, comedian and author of Dead People Suck: A Guide for Survivors of the Newly Departed.

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This past weekend, Geoffrey Berman was suddenly removed from his office as the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. The removal itself began with Barr announcing on Friday night that Berman was resigning. That was a lie. Berman issued his own statement saying as much. This whole confusing two-day episode ultimately came to a close with Berman stepping down after ensuring his successor. So what do the events of this weekend tell us about Bill Barr’s justice department? And what could this mean for cases the SDNY was investigating that reached into Trump’s inner circle?

Guest: Jeremy Stahl, senior editor at Slate.

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Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Luis Cortes Romero, the attorney and DACA recipient who was part of the team that prevailed in this week’s DACA ruling. He will restore some of your faith in the American courts. And then Dahlia talks to Professor Pam Karlan about this week’s landmark LGBTQ employment rights case, in which she argued successfully for Title VII protections to apply to gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender employees.

In the Slate Plus segment, Mark Joseph Stern tries to help Dahlia figure out who this new Chief Justice John Roberts is and what that can tell us about the remaining (huge) opinions still to be issued this term.

Sign up for Slate Plus now to listen and support our show.

Podcast production by Sara Burningham.

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Professor Stephanie Kelton joins Emily Peck, Felix Salmon, and Anna Szymanski for a long awaited episode on Modern Monetary Theory. She answers their many questions about MMT and discusses her book The Deficit Myth: Modern Monetary Theory and the Birth of the People’s Economy.

In the Slate Plus segment: How we feel about the stock market. 

Email: [email protected]

Podcast production by Jessamine Molli.

Twitter: @felixsalmon, @Three_Guineas, @EmilyRPeck

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