The Powers That Be: Daily

Julia Ioffe joins Peter with the latest from the Iran front, where Trump this week declared the war is actually over—and in the very next breath threatened to start bombing again if the regime refuses to sign a one-page memo laying out a peace process and nuclear deal. Julia tries to make sense of the mixed signals and where things really stand.

Eriq Gardner joins Peter to dig into the Justice Department’s first-ever commodities fraud case tied to a prediction market—and how it could reshape how Kalshi, Polymarket, and sports leagues police insiders across sports, media, and politics. Then they turn to Gavin Newsom’s $787 million defamation suit against Fox News, and why a Delaware judge just kept it alive.

Lauren Sherman joins Peter with notes from last night’s Met Gala—the usual spectacle of celebrities and couture, with one increasingly hard-to-ignore addition: tech money. Lauren explains that while Anna Wintour may not like their outfits, she certainly likes their checkbooks. Then the duo discuss ‘The Devil Wears Prada 2’ and the lineup of brands that queued up for a cameo.

Jon Kelly and Peter reunite to break the fourth wall and discuss their own pivot to video. (Yes, you can now watch The Powers That Be, thank you very much...) The besties also debate some uncomfortable topics lingering from last week's WHCA Dinner melee before assessing the Jeff D'Onofrio era at The Washington Post.

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Trey Yingst, the leading war correspondent on Fox News, joins Dylan to talk about building one of the most prominent social media presences in TV news—and what his multiplatform reach means not just for his own profile but for Fox News as a whole. Yingst reflects on covering some of the world’s most consequential conflicts, including the U.S.-Iran war and the Israel-Gaza conflict, and makes the case for why social media and traditional broadcasting are more complementary than competitive. He also weighs in on maintaining journalistic integrity across platforms and the urgent, often overlooked issue of protecting journalists working in dangerous regions.

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Bill Cohan joins Peter to chew over the aftershocks from last weekend’s White House Correspondents' Dinner, where the chaos inside the ballroom is still reverberating through the nation’s power corners. Then Bill turns to his latest reporting on Sam Bankman-Fried, who's still angling for a way out of prison—and how the staggering scale of his financial losses could factor into his legal battle.

Leigh Ann Caldwell joins Peter to break down the Supreme Court’s recent blow to the Voting Rights Act, ruling that Louisiana must eliminate a majority-Black congressional district—which was quickly followed by Florida passing a new congressional map that could wipe out four sitting Democrats before the year is out. Then Leigh Ann weighs in on the escalating tension between John Thune and Mike Johnson, where the friction between the two chambers appears to have reached a new low. 

Julia Ioffe joins Peter to dig into the power struggle reshaping the Pentagon, where Pete Hegseth’s promotion of Christopher LaNeve to Army Chief of Staff is raising serious questions. Julia explains how LaNeve’s swift ascent from obscurity—and the purge of popular generals that made room for it—has fueled growing suspicions that he’s become Hegseth’s instrument of choice in Hegseth’s instrument of choice in his campaign to consolidate control over the military.

Dylan Byers joins Peter to assess the state of political media in the wake of the attempted Trump assassination at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner—and the perplexing normalization of political violence in the Trump era. Then Dylan previews looming changes at 60 Minutes and weighs into Bari Weiss’s ambition to franchise the most-watched news show on television.