As Donald Trump’s campaign of trans panic and anti-Latin American sentiment buoyed him back to the White House, Emilia Pérez looked like a film to meet the moment. Then audiences started actually seeing it and...yikes.

Guest: Michael Schulman, staff writer at The New Yorker and author of Oscar Wars: A History of Hollywood in Gold, Sweat, and Tears.

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

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Among his recent executive orders, Donald Trump moved to halt aid to South Africa over a land law and extended political asylum to South Africa’s white Afrikaner population.

Where does Trump’s seemingly spotty understanding of South Africa come from? How could having close advisors who grew up in apartheid-era South Africa, like Elon Musk, influence him?

Guest: Chris McGreal, writer for The Guardian US who reported from South Africa during the end of apartheid.

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

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As Donald Trump has demonstrated, losing an election is no reason to admit you lost an election. In fact, in North Carolina, the Republican challenger, who lost a race for the state’s Supreme Court, is testing a bold new strategy of disqualifying ballots until he gets the result he wants. And if he succeeds, it could start a trend.

Guest: Mark Joseph Stern, Slate senior writer covering courts and the law. 

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

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Donald Trump has a lot of similarities—and something of a bromance—with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. And those who wish to resist Trump’s Orbán-like, right-wing strongman tendencies could learn something from the resistance in Hungary. 

Guest: Gábor Scheiring, former member of the Hungarian parliament and assistant professor of comparative politics at Georgetown University Qatar.

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

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Using Github, you can watch as government websites are brought into compliance with Donald Trump’s executive orders. Out goes the word “equity;” in comes “fair.” And health and science data, once publicly available, disappears.

Guest: Jason Koebler, cofounder of 404 Media.

Jeremy Prokop, data science advisor in the Midwest

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Elon Musk is supposed to be running several companies and a new government department—so why is he also spending money to pretend to be good at video games?

Guest: Drew Harwell, tech reporter for the Washington Post.

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You can’t doubt the enthusiasm of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency. You can question the legality of some of their early moves. 

Guest: Makena Kelly, senior writer at WIRED. 

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Podcast production by Evan Campbell, Patrick Fort, and Cheyna Roth.

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Last week, Donald Trump announced that Guantanamo Bay would be used to house the “worst criminal illegal aliens” and claimed that it would be drastically scaled up to hold as many as 30,000 people. In addition to its infamous role in the War on Terror, it’s the latest use of Gitmo as an immigration deterrent—and legal grey zone.

Guest: Andrea Pitzer, author of One Long Night: A Global History of Concentration Camps. 

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

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Why did the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which gives money to humanitarian causes around the world and accounts for roughly half of one percent of the federal budget, end up in DOGE’s crosshairs? And is its abrupt closure legal?  

Guests: Franco Ordoñez, White House Correspondent for NPR. Fred Kaplan, Slate’s war stories correspondent.

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

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America hadn’t had a major commercial airline crash since 2009 until the mid-air collision over the Potomac. Is this a sign of a larger problem that will require government intervention—and will Congress prioritize safety over convenience for their constituents and themselves?  

You can read Dan’s 2023 article, “Everyone Seems to Agree a Major Plane Crash is Coming. Why?” on Slate.

Guest: Dan Kois, writer at Slate and author of five books.

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

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