During the height of Roy Cohn’s friendship with Donald Trump, according to the historian Kai Bird, “they were on the phone with each other a dozen times a day.” Bird’s new book, “American Scoundrel,” details Cohn’s profound influence on Trump—whom he met as a young real-estate heir in the nineteen-seventies—and how Cohn is “haunting” politics in our time. “I had written about Roy Cohn in [previous biographies] as this nefarious, minor, awful figure who was disruptive and divisive and unethical. And I suddenly realized that the establishment that I’d been writing about for forty years is gone. Their values and culture, the politics, the bipartisanship . . . that’s all gone,” he tells David Remnick. “Roy Cohn explains something about the dark side of America that I just didn’t understand.” They discuss Cohn’s early career as a prosecutor and his role as the “mastermind” of the McCarthy purges; his service as a lawyer and fixer for Mafia members, politicians, and celebrities; and an allegation of being involved in sex trafficking.

Further reading and listening: 

The Political Scene draws on the reporting and analysis found in The New Yorker for lively conversations about the big questions in American politics. Join the magazine’s writers and editors as they put into context the latest news—about elections, the economy, the White House, the Supreme Court, and much more. New episodes are available three times a week. 

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The Washington Roundtable will be back next week. In the meantime, we’re pleased to bring you the Season 2 premiere of “Master Plan,” the award-winning investigative podcast from The Lever. In its second season, titled “The Kingmakers,” the host, David Sirota, a former speechwriter for Bernie Sanders and an Oscar-nominated co-writer for “Don’t Look Up,” examines the decades-long building of an all-powerful American Presidency.

This episode explores how Richard Nixon’s secret expansion of the Vietnam War, along with his attempts to seize the power of the purse from Congress sparked a constitutional crisis and a backlash, setting the stage for many of the legal battles that dominate today’s political landscape. 

We hope you’ll enjoy it. For the rest of “Master Plan” ’s second season, follow and listen to the show:

https://play.megaphone.fm/lzjeitnbt6ikozz2aydzrw

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The New Yorker contributing writer Eren Orbey joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss the trial of Lindsay Clancy, who is accused of murdering her three children during a period of severe postpartum mental-health struggles. They talk about the tragedy at the center of the trial and the question of whether Clancy’s mental state at the time meets the legal standard for a lack of criminal responsibility. They also discuss Eren’s experience reporting on the case in 2024, including his extensive conversations with Clancy’s now ex-husband, Patrick; the intense public reaction to the case and the proliferation of conspiracy theories surrounding it; and how cultural understanding—and misunderstanding—of women’s mental health and postpartum psychosis have shaped the coverage and discourse.

This week’s reading:

The Political Scene draws on the reporting and analysis found in The New Yorker for lively conversations about the big questions in American politics. Join the magazine’s writers and editors as they put into context the latest news—about elections, the economy, the White House, the Supreme Court, and much more. New episodes are available three times a week. 

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In the 2026 midterm elections, close finishes in crucial swing states have put a spotlight on the divide between the Democratic Party’s moderate and progressive wings. Jon Lovett straddles that divide. He was a longtime speechwriter for Hillary Clinton and then for Barack Obama, but, as a host of the podcasts “Pod Save America” and “Lovett or Leave It,” he’s been critical of the Party’s establishment. Lovett sat down with David Remnick to answer listeners’ questions about the midterms and what they suggest about the 2028 Presidential election. In a “broad trend,” Lovett says, centrist Democrats “put up candidates, and they say, ‘Vote for us, or else.’ And [voters] just keep picking ‘or else.’ . . . Across the board, I don’t know what this establishment of the Democratic Party stands for, and neither does the country.”

Further listening: 

The Political Scene draws on the reporting and analysis found in The New Yorker for lively conversations about the big questions in American politics. Join the magazine’s writers and editors as they put into context the latest news—about elections, the economy, the White House, the Supreme Court, and much more. New episodes are available three times a week. 

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The Washington Roundtable’s Susan B. Glasser interviews General David Petraeus about where the conflicts in Iran and Ukraine might be headed and what they can tell us about the future of warfare. They discuss the fleets of inexpensive drones which have upended traditional combat, how the impending arrival of A.I.-powered automated systems might “revolutionize” the battlefield, and what institutional overhauls Petraeus believes are urgently needed at the Pentagon in order to respond. “We need to do a lot to catch up,” Petraeus says. “But there are vested interests in the military-industrial-congressional-complex that are gonna fight tooth and nail for any actions that change force structure, reduce the aircraft they have on their ramp in their congressional district, or production of manned ships, manned tanks, or whatever else it is, and this is gonna be a fight.”

This week’s reading:

“How I Became a Subaru Socialist,” by Jay Caspian Kang

“Can Head Start Be Deregulated Out of Existence?,” by Jessica Winter

The Political Scene draws on the reporting and analysis found in The New Yorker for lively conversations about the big questions in American politics. Join the magazine’s writers and editors as they put into context the latest news—about elections, the economy, the White House, the Supreme Court, and much more. New episodes are available three times a week. 

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The New Yorker contributing writer Jon Allsop joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss the shifting meaning of the word “moderate” in the 2026 election season. They talk about recent primary results in Michigan and Wisconsin, and what the contests reveal about Democratic voters’ appetite for establishment candidates versus the Party’s progressive insurgency. They also explore how labels like “moderate” and “centrist” map onto mainstream American opinion on issues such as ICE, U.S. support for Israel, and universal health care, as well as how the progressive wing might adjust its messaging ahead of the midterms—and what the outcome could mean for the Party’s direction as it looks toward the 2028 Presidential race.

This week’s reading:

The Political Scene draws on the reporting and analysis found in The New Yorker for lively conversations about the big questions in American politics. Join the magazine’s writers and editors as they put into context the latest news—about elections, the economy, the White House, the Supreme Court, and much more. New episodes are available three times a week. 

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1. The data centers that power artificial intelligence are being built at a rampant pace, and are spurring resistance all over the country. Apart from public concerns about A.I.’s impact on jobs, privacy, and other aspects of life, data centers consume vast amounts of electricity and water. New York has passed a moratorium on new data centers; fourteen other states have considered restrictions. The Vermont senator Bernie Sanders is taking this fight to the national level. He and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have introduced legislation that calls for a nationwide moratorium on data centers to allow time for more research and public input on the issue. The furor, Sanders tells David Remnick, cuts across political divisions. The opponents “are conservatives, they are progressives, they are moderates,” he adds. “They’re saying, What the hell are we doing? What is this gonna contribute to? Is this gonna result in my kid not being able to have a job? Is this gonna result in my not having any privacy? Why am I aiding these large corporations owned by the wealthiest people in the world who [couldn’t] care less about me? Let’s stand up.” 

2. Since a famous case against a California utility, the name Erin Brockovich has become synonymous with a fighter taking on big polluters. Earlier this year, Brockovich began receiving e-mails from people worried about the construction of A.I. data centers, which is happening at a frenetic rate all over the country. People expressed concerns about the loss of farmland and natural areas; disruptions to the water table; deleterious noise; and substantial usage of electricity and water, leading to rising utility bills. She speaks with David Remnick about her mapping project to document data-center construction and environmental complaints. “In my thirty years,” she tells Remnick, “I’ve never really seen the people show up like they are at a very local level.”

The Political Scene draws on the reporting and analysis found in The New Yorker for lively conversations about the big questions in American politics. Join the magazine’s writers and editors as they put into context the latest news—about elections, the economy, the White House, the Supreme Court, and much more. New episodes are available three times a week. 

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The Washington Roundtable’s Evan Osnos interviews the former Commerce Secretary and Rhode Island governor Gina Raimondo about a problem she’s been working on since she left the Biden Administration: how to make sure that the A.I. revolution does not leave American workers behind. Drawing on her father’s experience of losing his factory job in the wake of outsourcing to China, Raimondo warns against repeating the mistakes of the past and argues that the U.S. needs a plan to help workers navigate the A.I. transition. “We can’t put the toothpaste back in the bottle. A.I. is out there,” Raimondo says. “We want to harness the good, but be intentional about having a plan and safeguards for the bad.” She also discusses why Democrats should focus not just on affordability but on the politics and promise of prosperity and the American Dream.

This week’s reading:

The Political Scene draws on the reporting and analysis found in The New Yorker for lively conversations about the big questions in American politics. Join the magazine’s writers and editors as they put into context the latest news—about elections, the economy, the White House, the Supreme Court, and much more. New episodes are available three times a week. 

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The journalist Michelle Lhooq joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss her reporting on ibogaine, a psychedelic that has recently been embraced by the right—including President Donald Trump. They talk about the movement to promote research into ibogaine as a treatment for mental illness; the unlikely coalition of drug advocates, Republican politicians, and veterans who helped bring the drug into the political mainstream;  and Trump’s executive order expediting the F.D.A. approval of psychedelic therapies. They also discuss how the politics of psychedelics have shifted over the years, and whether the success of the ibogaine initiative could signal a broader shift toward the acceptance and legalization of more psychedelics and other drugs.

This week’s reading:

The Political Scene draws on the reporting and analysis found in The New Yorker for lively conversations about the big questions in American politics. Join the magazine’s writers and editors as they put into context the latest news—about elections, the economy, the White House, the Supreme Court, and much more. New episodes are available three times a week. 

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

One of the biggest stories of this election cycle is the emergence, for the first time in a long time, of socialism as a force on the national stage. Inspired perhaps by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Zohran Mamdani, D.S.A. candidates are running in congressional and state-level races all over the country. But some of those candidates, David Remnick thinks, talk more like F.D.R. Democrats than like students of Marx. How socialist is democratic socialism, and how does it square with the future of the Democratic Party? Remnick talks with a co-chair of the D.S.A., Megan Romer, who recently went viral for a lightning round of questions pitched at her on Fox News. Romer defends controversial D.S.A. positions on workers’ ownership of the means of production, U.S. support of Israel, the war in Ukraine, and defunding the police.  

Further reading: 

The Political Scene draws on the reporting and analysis found in The New Yorker for lively conversations about the big questions in American politics. Join the magazine’s writers and editors as they put into context the latest news—about elections, the economy, the White House, the Supreme Court, and much more. New episodes are available three times a week. 

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices