The Political Scene | The New Yorker

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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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Jia Tolentino on the Celebr...

03.27.2023

The prescription drug Ozempic was designed to help people with Type 2 diabetes manage their disease, and, under the name Wegovy, to treat obesity. But it has been embraced recently as a tool for weight loss, and many celebrities are ...

The Political Scene | The New Yorker episodes:

03.27.2023 Jia Tolentino on the Celebrity Obsession with Ozempic The prescription drug Ozempic was designed to help people with Type 2 diabetes manage their disease, and, under the name Wegovy, to treat obesity. But it has been embraced recently as a tool for weight loss, and many celebrities are ...
03.24.2023 Trump’s Potential Trials Are a One-Man “Stress Test of the Legal System” It’s the end of a week in which former President Donald Trump said that he would be indicted by the Manhattan District Attorney, Alvin Bragg, for a hundred-and-thirty-thousand-dollar hush-money payment to the adult-film star Stormy Daniels—and still no charge. But ...
03.23.2023 Donald Trump Braces for an Indictment in the Stormy Daniels Case This week, reports circulated that the former President Donald Trump would be indicted for paying hush money to the adult-film star Stormy Daniels in 2016. But on Wednesday—the day that the indictment was expected—the New York grand jury declined to ...
03.20.2023 What Happens if the Supreme Court Ends Affirmative Action? In Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority appears likely to strike down affirmative action, in a decision expected by this summer. The practice of considering race as a tool to counteract discrimination has been in ...
03.18.2023 We’re Living in a World Created by the Iraq War Reverberations of the global “war on terror”—launched by the Bush Administration following the attacks of September 11, 2001—have rippled throughout the world, taking hundreds of thousands of lives and costing trillions of U.S. dollars. This week marks the twentieth anniversary ...
03.13.2023 Masha Gessen on the War Against Trans Rights Masha Gessen has long written about Russia, and recently the war in Ukraine. But Gessen also has a deep background reporting on L.G.B.T.Q. rights. A dual citizen of Russia and the U.S., Gessen fled Russia when they were targeted by ...
03.09.2023 Introducing: “In The Dark” We’re pleased to announce that “In The Dark,” the acclaimed investigative podcast from American Public Media, is joining The New Yorker and Condé Nast Entertainment. In its first two seasons, “In The Dark,” hosted by the reporter Madeleine Baran, has ...
03.08.2023 The “Woke History” Wars James Sweet, a professor of African history and the former president of the American Historical Association, wrote an essay last year that sparked a significant clash in the world of academia about the role of politics in history and vice ...
03.06.2023 The Russian Activist Maria Pevchikh on the Fate of Alexey Navalny Well before launching the horrifying campaign against Ukraine a year ago, Vladimir Putin had been undermining Russia as well: normalizing corruption on a massive scale, and suppressing dissent and democracy. One of the darkest moments on that trajectory was the ...
03.04.2023 The Fox News Defamation Lawsuit: “Money, Ideology, Truth, Lies—It’s All Right There” The Dominion Voting Systems defamation lawsuit against Fox News stems from the 2020 election and Donald Trump’s refusal to accept defeat. At stake is nearly $1.6 billion in damages. Filings released in the case contain a trove of e-mails and ...
03.01.2023 How ChatGPT Will Strain a Political System in Peril In November, Open AI introduced ChatGPT, a large language model that can generate text that gives the impression of human intelligence, spontaneity, and surprise. Users of ChatGPT have described it as a revolutionary technology that will change every aspect of ...
02.27.2023 COVID-19 at Three: Who Got the Pandemic Right? As the COVID-19 pandemic approaches its fourth year, we can begin to gain some clarity on which countries, and which U.S. states, had the best outcomes over time. In a conversation with David Remnick, Dhruv Khullar, a contributing writer and ...
02.25.2023 Is Ukraine the Next Battle in American Politics? This week, Joe Biden visited Kyiv to mark the one-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion, and promised more American support for Ukraine. Although the United States has approved tens of billions of dollars of aid for Ukraine, largely with bipartisan support, ...
02.23.2023 What Does It Mean to Be “Indigenous”? In the past fifty years, a movement has formed to unite native and aboriginal peoples around the world under one umbrella term: Indigenous. But “indigeneity” is a slippery concept. Some groups qualify because they were the first people in their ...
02.20.2023 A Year of the War in Ukraine In the year since Russia’s invasion, Ukrainians have shown incredible fortitude on the battlefield. Yet an end to the conflict seems nowhere in sight. “Putin’s strategy could be defined as ‘I can’t have it—nobody can have it.’ And, sadly, that’s ...
02.18.2023 The Glass Ceiling, Still Intact: Women and Power in Washington The California senator Dianne Feinstein announced her retirement this week. First elected in 1992, she became one of the most powerful senators in the chamber and was often spoken of as a possible Presidential contender, although she never ran. Also ...
02.15.2023 A Historic Earthquake in Turkey, and the Saga of a Spy Balloon More than forty thousand people are dead after back-to-back earthquakes in Turkey and Syria last week. It’s a new level of disaster in a region that has been pummelled by violence and terrorism. As a Syrian refugee in Turkey told ...
02.13.2023 Salman Rushdie On Surviving the Fatwa Thirty-four years ago, the Ayatollah Khomeini, the Supreme Leader of Iran, issued a fatwa calling for the assassination of the novelist Salman Rushdie, whose book “The Satanic Verses” Khomeini declared blasphemous. It caused a worldwide uproar. Rushdie lived in hiding ...
02.10.2023 What Biden Didn’t Say in the State of the Union President Biden gave a boisterous second State of the Union address earlier this week, sparring with Republicans over Social Security and Medicare. Designed to advance the President’s agenda, a State of the Union address is always overstuffed. But there were ...
02.08.2023 A New Primary Calendar Changes the Race for the Presidency This week, the Democratic Party upended its primary schedule for 2024. Instead of the Iowa caucuses, South Carolina will now go first, giving more deciding power to Black voters. Is this an attempt to realign the Democratic Party’s priorities—or a ...
02.06.2023 Chuck D on How Hip-Hop Changed the World Forty years ago, Chuck D showed listeners how exciting, radical, and unpredictable hip-hop could be. His song “Fight the Power” became a protest anthem for a generation, and a Greek chorus in Spike Lee’s film “Do the Right Thing.” The ...
02.03.2023 An "Anger Olympics" Between Trump and the Rest of the 2024 Republican Field The Republican Nikki Haley is widely expected to announce a Presidential run later this month. As a former U.N. Ambassador and South Carolina governor, Haley brings strong credentials to a sparse Republican field. The defeated former President Donald Trump is ...
02.01.2023 How the Memphis Police Controlled the Narrative of Tyre Nichols’s Killing Last Thursday, the Memphis Police Department announced that it was firing five police officers who beat a man named Tyre Nichols to death during a traffic stop. Shortly afterward, all five officers were jailed and charged with murder. Then the ...
01.30.2023 What Does “Woke” Mean, and How Did the Term Become So Powerful? For years, many on the right have been lambasting a certain kind of progressive sensibility denoted with the term “political correctness”—endless fodder for Rush Limbaugh and others in the nineteen-nineties. But those semi-comic tirades were nothing compared with the serious ...
01.27.2023 Why Chief of Staff Is “the Hardest Job in Washington” The White House chief of staff is the second most powerful but hardest gig in Washington, D.C. Dick Cheney blamed the job for giving him his first heart attack, during the Ford Administration. A hapless chief of staff can break ...
01.25.2023 The Competing Narratives of the Monterey Park Shooting Last weekend, a man shot and killed eleven people at a ballroom-dance studio in Monterey Park, California, an Asian enclave outside of Los Angeles. Then, less than forty-eight hours later, in Half Moon Bay, California, another man shot and killed ...
01.23.2023 The Local Paper That First Sounded the Alarm on George Santos George Santos is hardly the first scammer elected to office—but his lies, David Remnick says, are “extra.” Most Americans learned of Santos’s extraordinary fabrications from a New York Times report published after the midterm election, but a local newspaper called ...
01.20.2023 Examining Biden's Second Year, and Tax Avoidance for the Rich President Biden has faced remarkable challenges in his first two years in office, from the overturning of the national right to abortion and the management of the U.S.’s COVID response, to the invasion of Ukraine. The staff writers Susan B. ...
01.18.2023 The Fraudster Mentored by New York’s Mayor A few days before Christmas, the New York City pastor Lamor Whitehead—known to some as the “Bling Bishop”—was federally indicted for a number of alleged crimes. Among the charges was that Whitehead, a close friend of New York’s mayor, Eric ...
01.16.2023 Bob Woodward on His Calls with Trump Bob Woodward has been writing about the White House for more than fifty years, going toe to toe with nearly every President after Richard Nixon. Woodward is every inch the reporter, not one to editorialize. But, during his interviews with ...
01.13.2023 House Republicans Launch Their Campaign Against the Bidens The House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government was launched on Tuesday, with Representative Jim Jordan, a combative ally of Donald Trump and a co-founder of the far-right Freedom Caucus, at the helm. This powerful new committee ...
01.11.2023 A January 6th for the “Trump of the Tropics” On Sunday, a mob of protesters ransacked Brazil’s capital, claiming that the recent Presidential election had been rigged. The riots, eerily reminiscent of the United States Capitol attack, were carried out in the name of Brazil’s former President, Jair Bolsonaro, ...
01.06.2023 Kevin McCarthy’s Week in “Purgatory” By Thursday evening, Kevin McCarthy had lost eleven votes for Speaker of the House, the longest series of inconclusive ballots for the role since 1859. Until the next Speaker is selected, nothing can happen in the House of Representatives: no ...
01.04.2023 In the Trenches with the Foreigners Fighting for Ukraine Luke Mogelson, a contributing writer at The New Yorker, is one of the rare reporters who has seen the war in Ukraine from the front lines. He recently spent two weeks embedded with a group of fighters from around the ...
01.02.2023 Did Black Lives Matter Change Broadway? During the protests that followed the murder of George Floyd, Broadway theatres were among the many institutions to announce a commitment to equity and protecting Black lives. But for many Black performers, the promise rang hollow. Frustrated by what he ...
12.30.2022 The Biggest Stories of 2022 2022 was the year that the contours of the post-pandemic world started to heave into view. Critical aspects of domestic and international politics were reordered. The staff writers Susan B. Glasser, Jane Mayer, and Evan Osnos gather for their weekly ...
12.28.2022 The Queer Children’s Books Targeted by Conservative Lawmakers In 2022, three hundred and forty pieces of legislation in twenty-three states targeted L.G.B.T.Q. rights. The most high-profile was Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill—officially the Parental Rights in Education Act—introduced by Governor Ron DeSantis. The law limits the discussion of ...
12.26.2022 As Poet Laureate, Tracy K. Smith Hit the Road Tracy K. Smith was named Poet Laureate in 2017, at the beginning of the fierce partisan divide of the Trump era. She quickly turned to her craft to address the deep political divisions the election laid bare, putting together a ...
12.23.2022 The January 6th Report and Donald Trump’s Criminal Referrals On Monday, the House select committee investigating January 6th voted unanimously to refer Donald Trump to the Department of Justice for criminal investigation over the attack on the Capitol, including a charge of insurrection. The staff writers Susan B. Glasser, ...
12.22.2022 David Remnick on the January 6th Committee’s Final Report After a nearly eighteen-month investigation, which included televised hearings and more than a thousand interviews, the January 6th Committee is set to release its final report. As indicated by the executive summary, the report will lay bare who is to ...
12.17.2022 Nancy Pelosi’s Legacy, and Kevin McCarthy’s Challenges Nancy Pelosi has been one of the most powerful people in Washington for decades. As the first woman to serve as Speaker of the House, she shaped and passed monumental pieces of legislation—from Obamacare to the Inflation Reduction Act—often with ...
12.14.2022 Could Kyrsten Sinema's Party Switch Be Good for Democracy? Last week, the Arizona senator Kyrsten Sinema announced that she would be leaving the Democratic Party and registering as an Independent—a decision that seems especially dramatic given the Democrats’ slim majority. Yet Sinema is joining a growing bloc of about ...
12.12.2022 Politico’s New Owner on the Opportunity for “Nonpartisan” Media For Washington insiders and people in the media, Politico publishes some of the wonkiest reporting inside the Beltway. It’s not what you’d call a mass-market publication, but it’s highly influential—it was Politico that obtained and published Samuel Alito’s draft opinion ...
12.09.2022 Trump Calls to “Terminate” the Constitution, and Kyrsten Sinema’s Party Switch It’s been a busy week in national politics: Raphael Warnock triumphed over Herschel Walker in the Georgia runoff, Kyrsten Sinema left the Democratic caucus in the Senate, and the Democrats proposed a new calendar for the 2024 Presidential primaries. There ...
12.08.2022 DeSantis vs. Trump: A “Fight to the Death” for Florida Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, won reëlection by a stunning nineteen-point margin. With that kind of popularity—in a state with twenty-nine electoral votes—he seems well positioned to run for President. To do so, he must win supporters away from Donald Trump, ...
12.05.2022 A Supreme Court Case That Could Upend Elections J. Michael Luttig is a retired judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals and a prominent legal mind in conservative circles, close with figures including Clarence Thomas and William Barr. On January 5, 2020, he got a call from Vice-President ...
12.02.2022 The Historical Echoes of Trump’s Dinner with a White Supremacist All week, Washington, D.C., has been talking about Donald Trump’s dinner with Nick Fuentes, a notorious white supremacist and Holocaust denier. A wave of prominent Republicans have repudiated the dinner and anti-Semitism, including Senators Mitch McConnell and Mitt Romney. Trump’s ...
11.30.2022 Do COVID Protests in China Pose a Threat to Xi Jinping? Anger over China’s “Zero-COVID” policy erupted in protests this week. It’s a startling and nearly unheard-of challenge to President Xi’s power, a short time after he secured a third term in office. The anger over Zero COVID is unique, the ...
11.25.2022 Can America’s Aging Leadership Deliver the Future? Many of the most important and powerful people in Washington, D.C., are on the older side. Joe Biden turned eighty last week. Mitch McConnell is also eighty. Nancy Pelosi, who recently stepped away from a leadership position in her party, ...
11.23.2022 Hollywood’s Backlash to “Wokeness” Supposedly, things in Hollywood have been changing for women and people of color. After the #MeToo, #OscarsSoWhite, and Black Lives Matter movements, leaders in the entertainment industry promised a lot: new kinds of stories were going to be told, by ...

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