Between the drastic budget cuts and provisions in the Big Beautiful Bill, the Trump administration has found a way to drain Planned Parenthood and other reproductive health centers and cut off access to abortion services—as well as any other health care those clinics provided. 

Guests:  Shefali Luthra, reproductive health reporter at The 19th, author of Undue Burden: Life and Death Decisions in Post-Roe America.

George Hill, President and CEO of Maine Family Planning.

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Podcast production by Elena Schwartz, Paige Osburn, Anna Phillips, Madeline Ducharme, and Rob Gunther.

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Tracking a license plate across the country has never been easier, which is good news if your car has been stolen, but in an era of ICE and Border Patrol raids, these warrantless searches feel increasingly invasive—and unconstitutional.

Guest: Joseph Cox, co-founder of 404 Media and host of the 404 Media podcast.

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You can have enough ICE recruits or you can have standards for the shape that they’re in, but you can’t have both—this was just one lesson Donald Trump could have learned this week, in between hosting a summit of McDonald’s franchise owners and calling a reporter “piggie.”

Guest: Rebecca Onion, Slate senior staff writer.

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Podcast production by Elena Schwartz, Paige Osburn, Anna Phillips, Madeline Ducharme, and Rob Gunther.

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Trump promised to stop the “persecution” of the cryptocurrency industry. He did call off the SEC investigations that began under Biden, and pardoned Binance cofounder and ex-CEO Changpeng Zhao. But is the crypto industry ultimately better off because of that? 

Guest: David Yaffe-Bellany, tech reporter for the New York Times.

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Podcast production by Evan Campbell, and Patrick Fort.

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People have been talking about how the penny is more trouble than it’s worth for 50 years—so why drop it now? And—other than having nothing to put in our loafers—will it be missed? 

Guest: Caity Weaver, writer at The Atlantic.

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Podcast production by Elena Schwartz, Paige Osburn, Anna Phillips, Madeline Ducharme, and Rob Gunther.

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Ongoing civil war in Sudan has left tens of thousands dead, with millions displaced. A country of great natural resources, regional foreign governments have chosen sides—but foreign aid from the US that had mitigated some of the war’s damage is gone. 

Guest: David Miliband, president and CEO of the International Rescue Committee, former UK foreign secretary 2007-2010.

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Podcast production by Elena Schwartz, Paige Osburn, Anna Phillips, Madeline Ducharme, and Rob Gunther.

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You can’t really blame Donald Trump for thinking he could just handwave away the Epstein Files. But for the first time in what feels like forever, his base, the GOP, and his own desires don’t quite align. 

Guest: Will Sommer, senior reporter at the Bulwark. 

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Podcast production by Elena Schwartz, Paige Osburn, Anna Phillips, Madeline Ducharme, and Rob Gunther.

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Trump can’t seem to decide if the National Guard is needed in American cities to stop violent crime, or to assist ICE deportations, or something else entirely. And the lack of a clear and present crisis is starting to make some Guard members uncomfortable. 

Guest: Kat Lonsdorf, news reporter for National Public Radio.

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Podcast production by Elena Schwartz, Paige Osburn, Anna Phillips, Madeline Ducharme, and Rob Gunther.

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The parent company of Facebook and Instagram, Meta, doesn’t (just) have a scam problem—with 10 percent of its revenue coming from scam ads, and a third of all successful scams in America using a Meta platform at some point, it’s more an interdependence with scammers.

Guest: Jeff Horwitz, tech reporter for Reuters.

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They don’t cut cleanly along party lines, but data centers, and where they get built, became an election issue in Virginia. With so many more data centers to build, are we looking at a new trend? 

Guest: Margaret Barthel, reporter covering northern Virginia for WAMU. 

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Podcast production by Evan Campbell, and Patrick Fort.

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