Jen Psaki looks at Donald Trump's callous disregard for Americans who are struggling to cover living costs while he learns that "affordability" is an important political buzzword but all of his policies only make things more expensive.

Senator Ruben Gallego talks with Jen Psaki about the Republicans' cruel leverage tactics in the fight to manipulate Democrats into supporting a budget that will hurt tens of millions of people. Republicans have set up the argument to pit people who need food assistance against people who need health care subsidies. Earlier, Republican Senate Leader John Thune said the quiet part out loud when he disparaged Americans who need food and health care assistance, injecting further divisiveness into the debate.

Jen Psaki shares breaking news that the Supreme Court has agreed to a Trump administration request to temporarily block a lower court judge's order to resume full SNAP payments until the case can be heard by a circuit court. Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward, one of two groups presenting a coalition of states suing the Trump administration over SNAP cut, joins to discuss.

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Jen Psaki looks at some bizarre Republican hot takes explaining their poor performance in this week's elections, with addressing the cost of living in America coming almost as an afterthought.

Jen Psaki reports on the lengths Donald Trump's weaponized Justice Department went to in order to try to make an example of Sean Dunn, a Washington, D.C. resident who threw a sandwich at a Border Patrol officer. But in the end the jury would not play along and found Dunn not guilty.

Morris Katz, a senior advisor to the Mamdani campaign, talks with Jen Psaki about the importance of keeping candidates authentic and running a campaign that suits the district instead of following a universal blueprint.

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In the aftermath of an Election Day disaster, Donald Trump struggled to accept the reality of the fallout from his painful policies, though he did at least acknowledge that the shutdown of the federal government weighed against Republicans. Senator Chris Murphy joins Jen Psaki to discuss whether the clear message from voters is enough to motivate Republicans to re-open the government. 

Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro talks with Jen Psaki about the Democrats' resounding victories in the first elections of Donald Trump's second term, and points out that while there were differences between the Democratic candidates, one unifying element is that they all campaigned on solutions to specific problems voters are dealing with.

And New Jersey Governor-election Mikie Sherrill joins to discuss her electoral victory and what issues in her campaign resonated the most with voters.

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Jen Psaki offers a special preview of Tuesday's elections, including the important race for governor of Virginia with Jen Palmieri, former communications director for Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, Larry Sabato, director fo the University of Virginia Center for Politics, and political analyst Anthony Coley. Jim DeBoo, senior advisor to Governor Gavin Newsom, joins for a special focus on Prop 50 redistricting in California. New York City Comptroller Brad Lander discusses the energy and appeal of Democratic upstart and New York City mayoral frontrunner Zohran Mamdani. And Pennsylvania State Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta discusses the out-of-the-spotlight state supreme court race in Pennsylvania that has major national implications. 

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Jen Psaki shows Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson and Vice President JD Vance explaining out loud that the reason they don't want to fund food assistance to millions of Americans is because if they do, Democrats will have even less incentive to vote for the Republicans' budget bill, in effect admitting that they're deliberately causing pain to people they know Democrats care about as leverage to get their way on a bad budget bill.

House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries talks with Jen Psaki about Republicans trying to use the pain of tens of millions of Americans going without food as a means of manipulating Democrats to vote for their bad budget bill, and points out the irony that while Donald Trump has never met a law he didn't think he could ignore, he is trying to use the law as an excuse to avoid funding the food assistance program SNAP.

Curiously coinciding with a fictional TV movie about U.S. nuclear readiness, Donald Trump has taken a sudden interest in testing U.S. nuclear capability and, against conventional good judgment, has announced that interest out loud in public. Mark Hertling, former commanding general of United States Army Europe, joins Jen Psaki to discuss how nuclear issues are addressed when they're handled by a competent administration, and why it's a bad idea for U.S. leaders to muse about the possibility that the nuclear arsenal doesn't work.

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Jen Psaki shares reporting on the suspension of two federal prosecutors after they submitted a sentencing recommendation for January 6 rioter Taylor Taranto after his conviction on charges unrelated to the insurrection. The recommendation was refiled with alterations made in the references to January 6 and Donald Trump.

Jen Psaki relays reporting from "Retribution," the new book from Jonathan Karl, ABC News chief White House correspondent, which offers a look behind the scenes at how Donald Trump put together a Cabinet full of wildly unqualified sycophants. 

Sen. Ben Ray Lujan talks with Jen about shutdown drama in the Senate today as Republicans are freaking out that Democrats aren't caving like they usually do and Americans are suffering as a result of Trump's indifference and Republican deference to Trump.

Captain Dylan Blaha joins to discuss Trump's abuse of the National Guard.

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The Maine Senate race was rocked this month when revelations about the Democratic frontrunner Graham Platner threatened to completely upend the Democratic primary to select a candidate to try to unseat Susan Collins. Jen Psaki had Platner back on The Briefing to ask him directly about past offensive internet comments, a tattoo identified as being associated with Nazism and the state of his campaign in the wake of a tumultuous month.

Graham Platner, an upstart outsider who appears to still be leading the Democratic primary race for a chance to unseat Maine's Republican Senator Susan Collins, talks with Jen Psaki about weathering scandal on the campaign trail and succeeding as a Democratic candidate despite considerable resistance from powerful figures within the Democratic Party.

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In a move seen as a test run for intimidation tactics during the midterm elections, Donald Trump is reportedly sending poll watchers to a few polling places around the United States. Rick Hasen, professor of law and political science at UCLA, explains why the steps Trump is taking this year may only be a dress rehearsal for how he intends to disrupt the 2026 election which could cost him control of Congress.

Even though incompetence and corruption are endemic in the Trump administration and can often explain the shoddy work of Trump staffers, the poorly supported legal cases against James Comey, Letitia James, and Adam Schiff reveal that these cases are less about winning and more about trying to drag people who Donald Trump doesn't like through the mud. Michael Schmidt, investigative reporter for the New York Times, talks with Jen Psaki about the point of these political prosecutions being to smear the subjects, not actually win the cases.

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Jen Psaki observes that as Donald Trump gets more comfortable with his autocrat persona, the traits that made him a societal laughing stock all his life are coming to define his leadership style. And the mockery he has become has so diminished him that his opponents are emboldened to get in the way of his demolition of the United States.

Donald Trump's lackeys in Congress are trying to support his effort to exact revenge on the public servants who tried to hold him to account. Former special counsel Jack Smith is a prominent name on Trump's enemies list, so it's not surprising that Congressional Republicans would try to discredit him with their investigating-the-investigators hearings. Former federal prosecutor Andrew Weissmann talks with Jen Psaki about why Jack Smith is smart to agree to participate in the hearings on the condition that they be public.  

Jen Psaki addresses questions posed at the White House press briefing, giving more honest and direct answers than the White House is willing to offer on questions ranging from Donald Trump's desecration of the White House to Trump's pardoning of a crypto-criminal business associate.

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Jen Psaki reacts to Donald Trump's demolition of the White House's East Wing to make room for his vanity project ballroom, and takes heart in the increasing, and increasingly creative, ways that Americans are pushing back against Trump's authoritarian overreach. 

Rep. Jamie Raskin explains the maneuver Donald Trump is trying to pull off by getting the lawyers he installed at the top of the DOJ to agree to have the Justice Department pay him $230 million, the laws Trump is trampling, as well as what Congress can do to stop him if Democrats regain control of the House in 2026.

In what may be the most important story in the country right now, Democrats and democracy advocates are finding ways to counter Republican efforts to rig the 2026 midterm elections by gerrymandering states with Republican legislatures to take the voice away from Democratic voters and ensure Donald Trump's uninterrupted power by keeping the House in the hands of spineless sycophants. Jen Psaki explains.

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