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: 

• “ ‘Pod Save America’ ’s Jon Lovett on Trump: ‘The Threat of Jail Time Sharpens the Mind,’ ” an episode of The New Yorker Radio Hour

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:

• “After Six Months of War, Trump Is Still Losing to Iran,” by Ishaan Tharoor
• “Is the Smithsonian Really Trying to Destroy America?,” by Julian Lucas
• “A Trump Grift Too Far?,” by John Cassidy
• “Donald Trump Is Still Trying to Make It Harder to Vote,” by Amy Davidson Sorkin
• “The Show That’s Charting a Post-Trump Future,” by Jon Allsop
• “How Far Will the Trump Administration Go to Deport Mahmoud Khalil?,” by Andrew Marantz

“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. 

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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:

• “What Does It Even Mean to Be a Moderate?,” by Jon Allsop
• “Donald Trump Is Still Trying to Make It Harder to Vote,” by Amy Davidson Sorkin
• “How Far Will the Trump Administration Go to Deport Mahmoud Khalil?,” by Andrew Marantz
• “Nayib Bukele’s Content Machine Is Reshaping Latin America,” by Daniel Castro
• “How Trump Is Trying to Weaken Migrant Children’s Legal Defense,” by Ruth Marcus

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:

• “A.I. Is Now a Major Election Issue,” by Benjamin Wallace-Wells
• “If A.I. Takes the Jobs of Young People, How Will They React?,” by Jay Caspian Kang
• “What Does the Humbling of Leopold Aschenbrenner Mean for the A.I. Bubble?,” by John Cassidy
• “Is D.N.C. Chair the Worst Job in Washington?,” by Ruby Cramer
• “The Delusions of John Roberts,” by Margaret Talbot

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:

• “Are Psychedelics Right-Wing Now?,” by Michelle Lhooq
• “The Delusions of John Roberts,” by Margaret Talbot
• “The Great Delegalization,” by Dara Lind
• “A.I. Is Now a Major Election Issue,” by Benjamin Wallace-Wells
• “An Israeli Satirist’s Bid to Save His Country’s Democracy,” by Bernard Avishai

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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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: 

• “Will Left-Wing Democrats Reinvent the Party or Hurt Its Chances in November?,” by Isaac Chotiner
• “Which Way Should the Democratic Party Go Now?,” by Benjamin Wallace-Wells
• “An Idea for Democrats to Keep It Together in 2028,” by Bill McKibben
• “Can Zohran Mamdani Sway the Commie Corridor’s ‘Civil War’?,” by Naaman Zhou
• “The Woman Who Made the Machine That Made Zohran Mamdani,” by Molly Fischer

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 Jane Mayer interviews Andrew Weissmann, a former prosecutor for the Department of Justice who served as a lead member of the Mueller investigation, about what meaningful legal accountability in the Trump Administration looks like. He points to a fix that would raise the bar for federal grand-jury indictments, and explains why he believes that Donald Trump’s disputed I.R.S. settlement may not survive legal scrutiny. He also makes the case, drawn from his new book, “Liar’s Kingdom: How to Stop Trump’s Deceit and Save America,” for treating political lying itself as a problem that the law can address. “We have to be thinking about big, bold ideas,” Weissmann says.

This week’s reading:

• “The Future, Made in China,” by Evan Osnos
• “How Roy Cohn Taught Donald Trump Everything,” by Kai Bird and Susan Goldmark
• “Why Donald Trump Talks So Much About Foreign Election Interference,” by David D. Kirkpatrick
• “The Electability of Abdul El-Sayed,” by Jason Zengerle

Tune in to The Political Scene ⁠wherever you get your podcasts⁠.

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Michigan’s Senate seat is a must-win for Democrats hoping to take control of the Senate in 2026. The midterms are reflecting a surge of energy behind left-leaning Democratic candidates—sometimes known as the Mamdani effect—challenging their party’s establishment and its tarnished image. Abdul El-Sayed, a former health official, firmly supports Medicare for All and the abolition of ICE. He’s ahead of his moderate Democratic rival, Haley Stevens, in most polls. But that has some Democrats worried that El-Sayed is too radical to win the general election in a state that narrowly voted for Trump in 2024. El-Sayed talks with David Remnick about being “radicalized in medical school,” the trap of expressing righteous anger as an Arab candidate, how Robert F. Kennedy’s anti-science views have taken such a hold on the public, and why AIPAC and other lobbying groups have spent sixty million dollars opposing him in this election.  

Further reading and listening: 

• “Michigan Is the Next Big Test for the Democratic Party,” by Jason Zengerle
• “Can the Democrats Get It Together?,” by Amy Davidson Sorkin
• “Governor Gretchen Whitmer on COVID-19, Trump, and the Accusations Against Joe Biden,” an episode of The New Yorker Radio Hour

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 reflects on the stories they’ve been following this summer, touching on the “power mourners” at Lindsey Graham’s funeral, Anthony Fauci’s diaries and Senate hearing, and China’s usurping of the U.S. in global power. Plus, the hosts share what books they’re reading. 

This week’s reading:

• “The Outlandish Case Against James Comey,” by Ruth Marcus

• “Which Way Should the Democratic Party Go Now?,” by Benjamin Wallace-Wells

• “Will Left-Wing Democrats Reinvent the Party or Hurt Its Chances in November?,” by Isaac Chotiner

• “How Donald Trump Silenced the Voice of America,” by Marc Fisher

Tune in to The Political Scene wherever you get your podcasts.

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The New Yorker contributor Mike Spies joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss the story of a woman who lost two partners to suicide by firearm and then spent years in a legal battle with the National Rifle Association over her late partner’s retirement savings. They talk about the role that gun ownership and decades of messaging from the N.R.A. played in her second partner’s descent into paranoia, extremism, and abuse. They also explore the link between firearm access and suicide, how gun-rights organizations have sought to cast doubt on research connecting the two, and the current state of the debate over gun rights and gun safety.

This episode mentions suicide and suicidal thoughts. If you are having thoughts of suicide, call or text 988 or chat at 988Lifeline.org. 

This week’s reading:

• “A Woman Lost Two Partners to Guns—Then the N.R.A. Came to Collect,” by Mike Spies
• “Trump’s Isolationism Is Losing the Great E.V. Race,” by Bill McKibben
• “The Department of Labored Content,” by Brady Brickner-Wood
• “How Netanyahu’s Top General Became His Strongest Challenger,” by David Remnick
• “Which Way Should the Democratic Party Go Now?,” by Benjamin Wallace-Wells

Tune in to The Political Scene wherever you get your podcasts.

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