What can we expect when President-elect Donald Trump begins his second term on Monday? This week on The Intercept Briefing, we ask Intercept reporters what’s on their radar as a new president and a Republican-controlled Congress take office. 

They’ll be watching the tentative ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas, the brazenness of oligarchs seeking to profit from the new administration, and threats to reproductive healthcare. Trump’s biggest policy promise has been immigration, with a campaign built around his pledge to conduct “the largest mass deportation operation” in U.S. history.

Now Congress is advancing measures that could help the administration achieve its deportation vision by expanding immigration authority to the states. Provisions in the Laken Riley Act, which passed the House of Representatives last week with support from dozens of Democrats, would mandate detention for unauthorized immigrants accused of shoplifting and theft. It would also grant state attorneys generals the power to sue the federal government over who is detained or released by U.S. immigration and Customs Enforcement and block people from specific countries from obtaining visas. Historically immigration has been the exclusive domain of the federal government — not states. 

“We've been trying to raise the alarm,” says Juliana Macedo do Nascimento, Deputy Director of Federal Advocacy for United We Dream, a nonprofit immigration advocacy organization.

“This would just totally change the way detention and deportation decisions operate,” says Shawn Musgrave, The Intercept’s Senior Counsel and Correspondent. “The Laken Riley Act doesn't have any provisions that change the powers of local law enforcement,” says Musgrave. But it implicitly “allow[s] an arresting officer to trigger an immediate detention for something like petty shoplifting.” 

To hear more of this conversation and understand what’s at stake, check out this week’s episode of The Intercept Briefing.

If you want to support our work, you can go to theintercept.com/join. Your donation, no matter what the amount, makes a real difference.

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The Supreme Court is poised to decide a landmark case on Friday that could reshape social media in America. At stake: TikTok must either break from its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, or cease U.S. operations entirely.

While the government frames this as a critical national security measure, the short-form video app and its creators and users see a direct challenge to First Amendment freedoms. This tension sits at the heart of a broader debate about digital communication and national interests.

On this week's Intercept Briefing, Alex Pearlman, aka Pearlmania500, whose videos reach nearly 3 million followers, says the issue is not the app but the way tech platforms operate. He says, “We want regulations of algorithms. We at least need to know what the rules are." And when it comes to the government’s crackdown on TikTok, he says, “Everything that they've accused TikTok of, Facebook has done, either domestically or internationally. Everything that they have screamed could happen with TikTok, when it came to the elections, Elon Musk did openly. And most people know that. Most people see that. And I think it's going to lend to further cynicism when it comes to our institutions and when it comes to how government can actually operate." 

Intercept senior counsel and correspondent Shawn Musgrave adds, “Tech competitors to TikTok have generally avoided saying very much about the ban. … But these companies obviously stand to benefit incredibly from knocking out their top competitor in the short-video space. It is not really a consideration before the court in the case itself, but I do think it's important to look at some of the background issues. That it's not just about national security and First Amendment. There are also really considerable economic interests here too."

Intercept politics reporter Jessica Washington says TikTok isn't just another social network — it's fostering political conversations that wouldn't exist anywhere else. “We've seen Twitter, which is now X, move really far to the right. I think anyone who's been on there in recent times can attest to that. We know YouTube also has a pretty right-leaning audience as well and an algorithm. And Facebook and Instagram are very different platforms than TikTok. So I think we lose a lot of those conversations that are happening, important political conversations in different regions, different areas of the world. Important conversations that young people are having with each other.”

To hear more of this conversation and understand what’s at stake, check out this week’s episode of The Intercept Briefing.

If you want to support our work, you can go to theintercept.com/join. Your donation, no matter what the amount, makes a real difference.

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Few journalists have ventured as deep into the shadows of American power as The Intercept's James Risen. A Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, Risen waged a remarkable seven-year battle against the federal government to protect his sources, risking imprisonment to defend press freedom.

As he prepares to retire from journalism, he joins this week's Intercept Briefing to reflect on his extraordinary career with longtime friend and colleague David Bralow, The Intercept’s general counsel.

Recently, Risen has written extensively on Donald Trump and the dangers he poses to American democracy and is working on a new book about Christian nationalism and extremism. He warns about what lays ahead: “Trump has appointed a bunch of lunatics and conspiracy theorists to positions of power and he's turned the government over to oligarchs, so I think it's gonna get bad really, really fast.”

And Risen foresees that reporters and news organizations are at even more peril than in the past because of changing public attitudes and the legal approach embraced by those in power. “The wealthy can now use libel law against the press endlessly, not to try to win cases, but just to financially exhaust news organizations,” he says. “In most libel cases brought against news organizations, the other side almost never really cares about winning. What they want to do is impose large costs on news organizations to defend against frivolous libel suits.”

To hear more of the conversation, check out this week’s episode of The Intercept Briefing.

If you want to support our work, you can go to theintercept.com/join. Your donation, no matter what the amount, makes a real difference.

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Originally aired November 15, 2024

In the wake of President-elect Donald Trump’s victory, Democrats and those on the left are grappling with what comes next.

On The Intercept Briefing podcast this week, columnist Natasha Lennard critiques the Democratic Party. “You can’t be both at once: You can’t be the party of Wall Street, and you can’t be the party of the working class,” Lennard says. By acquiescing to Silicon Valley and Wall Street, the Democrats failed again “to offer a robust politics that serves the working class."

Facing a second Trump term, Lennard says the way forward is a politics of everyday life and radical action that focuses on empowering grassroots movements and labor organizations. “When we look at what people can [do] — involving people at a local level, building community so that it is truly kind of a form of life to be in this politics, rather than just a donation, rather than just a vote, rather than just canvassing even.”

In conversation with Jessica Washington and Jordan Uhl, Lennard emphasizes the importance and resilience of the working class. "Nurses unions, food workers unions. Most of the working class in this country are women. And it is a profoundly multi-racial working class. And we have a working class of care workers. And a service economy. And an increasingly growing care economy," she says. "That needs investing in. That needs support. That needs building."

To hear more about the future of progressive politics, listen to this week's episode of The Intercept Briefing.

If you want to support our work, you can go to theintercept.com/join. Your donation, no matter what the amount, makes a real difference. If you haven’t already, please subscribe to The Intercept, wherever you listen to podcasts. And definitely leave us a rating or a review, it helps other listeners to find us.

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Among a president’s most profound responsibilities is the power to grant clemency. Now, as President Joe Biden's first term winds down, he faces mounting calls to use that authority to commute the sentences of the 40 men on federal death row.

Donald Trump's final months in office marked a stark shift in federal execution policy. After a 17-year hiatus, his administration executed 13 people — the most under any president in over a century. While Biden halted this practice, advocates warn that a second Trump term could restart executions. It's why they're urging Biden to take decisive action now to reduce death penalty sentences to life without parole.

On this week's episode of The Intercept Briefing, reporter Liliana Segura examines the gap between candidate Biden's promises and his actions as president. “By far the most significant thing that Biden could do and should do in my opinion is to make good on his stated opposition to the death penalty, which is something he ran on in 2020. Joe Biden said that he wanted to try to bring legislation to end the federal death penalty and, in fact, incentivize states to do the same. He had language in his campaign platform talking about how life without parole sentences were appropriate alternatives,” she says. 

According to Segura, the federal death penalty reaches far beyond the most notorious cases and its deterrent effect is questionable — challenging many Americans' assumptions. “This idea that the death penalty is a deterrent is like the myth that will not die. You know, I was in Indiana recently covering this midnight execution, and I'm looking at some of the rhetoric that is out there from the state attorney general, and he is banging that drum about, 'Oh, you know, this is a deterrent to crime.’ There's absolutely no evidence that that is true and there really never has been.”

To learn more about what Biden could do, listen to this week’s episode of The Intercept Briefing.

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The unexpected toppling this weekend of the Assad regime by rebel forces brought a swift end to Syria's 13-year uprising-cum-civil war and over half a century of authoritarian rule. Syrians around the world have celebrated the development, with thousands walking free from the regime's hellish prisons. 

But in the aftermath, the situation remains volatile. Israel has struck targets inside Syria and moved troops deeper into the occupied Golan Heights, while international powers jockey for influence. Mohammed al-Bashir, who led the rebels’ de facto government in northwest Syria, has been named interim prime minister.

Syrian journalist Rami Jarrah was among those celebrating Bashar al-Assad’s fall, but he’s worried about what happens in his country now. He reported from Syria during the early uprisings in 2011 and throughout the civil war, including Aleppo in 2016 during the intense bombardment. On this week’s episode of The Intercept Briefing, he says his own experience being detained and tortured by the Syrian government informs his concerns. “For a long time I had a serious grudge. I wanted revenge. Revenge that looked very ugly. And it’s why I understand how a situation like Syria, where there is this change of power, and how dangerous that can be because the things I was thinking about after what happened to me and what happened to loved ones of mine. I could not have been trusted to have authority in my hands if we’d gotten a hold of the perpetrators or even people that maybe just corresponded to the perpetrators. I don’t think I would have made sensible decisions. I think the last 4 or 5 years, I’ve been able to reflect,” he recounts.

He says Assad and his family fleeing to Russia gives Syria a chance to move forward in a productive way. Had Assad stayed and fought, “we could have fallen into a civil war very quickly. … I think him fleeing sends a crippling message to those that supported him,” Jarrah says. “It made it much more likely that there could be a reconciliation process between those that supported Assad and those that were victims of Assad’s system.”

To hear more of the conversation, listen to this week’s episode of The Intercept Briefing. 

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For years, Donald Trump has vowed to go after his critics and journalists. As he prepares to reenter the White House, he’s nominating loyalists, like incoming FBI director Kash Patel, who have pledged to do the same.

The Trump administration may soon have a new weapon to target perceived enemies. On this week’s episode of The Intercept Briefing, we discuss the Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act, or H.R. 9495.

Last month, the House passed H.R. 9495, which would give the Treasury Department secretary the authority to label any nonprofit — like The Intercept — a terrorist-supporting organization and take away its tax-exempt status, likely forcing them to shut down.

Noah Hurowitz, who has been covering the bill, says, “One thing that has come up a lot in my reporting on this, in talking to civil liberties experts and talking to nonprofits, is that the vagaries of the bill and the broad powers that it allows will likely have a chilling effect on free speech.”

Shawn Musgrave, The Intercept’s senior counsel and correspondent, points out the legal implications: “One of the things that I think is important to think about for a bill like H.R. 9495, which is framed around terrorism, [it] really reduces the level of due process and takes a lot of the guardrails off of the current system.”

Though it’s not likely that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., will bring it up for a vote this session, the legislation could resurface in January when Republicans control both houses of Congress. To learn more about the implications, listen to this week’s episode of The Intercept Briefing.

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Continued campus protests against the Gaza war have sparked heated debates around free speech, academic freedom, and the role of universities in addressing global issues. 

This spring saw an outpouring of students demanding that their institutions divest from Israel. Since then, universities have taken sometimes draconian measures to stop protests before they even begin.

On this week’s episode of The Intercept Briefing, Intercept reporters Akela Lacy and Jonah Valdez, who have been following the protest movements for months, discuss the latest developments and how college administrators are responding. 

Lacy followed one such case at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, where students were hit with severe charges for vandalism. “The school is trying to make an example of student leaders in the movement for Palestine to chill further speech,” Lacy says. “I want to emphasize the fact that these are felony charges for undergraduate students for a nonviolent offense that is putting paint on a building.”

Students and organizers who spoke with Valdez anticipate even greater hostility for protesters of every kind once Donald Trump takes office again in January. “This is what a lot of organizers were telling me leading up to Election Day was that there’s going to be so many other attacks on the rights of many other people," he says, "whether it’s reproductive rights, rights of trans people, LGBTQ community at large, rights of immigrants, all on top of the ongoing genocide and occupation of Palestine.”

To hear more about the chilling effects on free speech and protest, listen to this week’s episode of The Intercept Briefing.

The Intercept: "Class Struggle"

The Intercept: "No Room for Emergency"

The Intercept: "100 Days in Appalachia"

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As the clock winds down on the Biden presidency, Democrats have a limited window to act. Come January 20, Republicans will control the executive branch and both houses of Congress.

On this week's episode of The Intercept Briefing, Rep. Summer Lee, D-Pa., acknowledges the need for swift action, particularly on the war in Gaza, prison pardons, and immigration. “I’ve been on calls with advocacy groups around immigration,” she says. President-elect Donald Trump's promises to conduct mass deportation are “an imminent threat.” 

One tactic she’s employing to drive home the urgency is bringing Dreamers and their stories to meetings. “The people closest to the pain should be closest to the power, closest to the policy solutions. That is not just a cute saying," Lee says. "It is, I would say, a very lifesaving way of thinking about the policies and the solutions that we have for the very real problems that we face. We can't keep icing out the people who live it.”

But she is also planning beyond the next eight weeks and is determined to fight the Trump administration. “When you're playing, it's Friday night football, it's raining out, you should not leave that field and your jerseys white. You gotta get dirty,” she says. “Not a single voter wants to see us looking pristine when we're in the fight for our life right now.”

To hear more about how Lee and her colleagues on the left are planning to handle the next four years, listen to this week’s episode of The Intercept Briefing.

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In the wake of President-elect Donald Trump’s victory, Democrats and those on the left are grappling with what comes next.

On The Intercept Briefing podcast this week, columnist Natasha Lennard critiques the Democratic Party. “You can’t be both at once: You can’t be the party of Wall Street, and you can’t be the party of the working class,” Lennard says. By acquiescing to Silicon Valley and Wall Street, the Democrats failed again “to offer a robust politics that serves the working class."

Facing a second Trump term, Lennard says the way forward is a politics of everyday life and radical action that focuses on empowering grassroots movements and labor organizations. “When we look at what people can [do] — involving people at a local level, building community so that it is truly kind of a form of life to be in this politics, rather than just a donation, rather than just a vote, rather than just canvassing even.”

In conversation with Jessica Washington and Jordan Uhl, Lennard emphasizes the importance and resilience of the working class. "Nurses unions, food workers unions. Most of the working class in this country are women. And it is a profoundly multi-racial working class. And we have a working class of care workers. And a service economy. And an increasingly growing care economy," she says. "That needs investing in. That needs support. That needs building."

To hear more about the future of progressive politics, listen to this week's episode of The Intercept Briefing.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.