Would a Govt Shutdown Fight Authoritarianism?

Democrats in the Senate are debating whether to allow the government to shut down when it runs out of funding later this month.On Today's Show:Zack Beauchamp, senior correspondent at Vox and the author of The Reactionary Spirit: How America's Most Insidious Political Tradition Swept the World (PublicAffairs, 2024), talks about what's at stake in the debate over whether to go along with the Republican plan to fund the government or withhold their votes in protest.

On today's show: Kelly Drane, research director at Giffords Law Center, Ned Parker, investigative reporter at Thomson Reuters, and McKay Coppins, staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of Romney: A Reckoning (Simon & Schuster, 2023), talk about guns and the state of political violence in America, after conservative activist Charlie Kirk was shot and killed at an event on a Utah college campus.

On Today's Show:Ben Casselman, chief economics correspondent for The New York Times, talks about the adjustments to hiring numbers showing 911,000 fewer jobs were created in the 12 months before March 2025, as listeners share their real-world job search stories.

After a string of losses in lower courts by the Trump administration, in an unsigned order on Monday, the Supreme Court lifted a restriction on ICE from conducting indiscriminate stops and raids in Los Angeles that have been decried as racial profiling. On Today's Show:Lindsay Nash, professor of law at Cardozo Law, co-director of the Kathryn O. Greenberg Immigration Justice Clinic and co-director of the Center for Immigration Innovation, offers legal analysis of the ruling, and its implications for previously established protections against racial profiling.

Cristian Farias, legal journalist who writes for Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, and other publications, and the host of The Bully’s Pulpit, a podcast of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, talks about the many legal issues the Trump administration is running into, related to sending the National Guard in to LA and DC, deportations and more. 

Recent developments on the world stage may be shifting the geopolitical calculations of the Israel-Hamas war. On Today's Show:Jane Arraf, international correspondent covering the Middle East for NPR, talks about the latest developments in Gaza as Israel clamps down on volunteer doctors and threatens more restrictions on humanitarian aid amid reports of famine.   

With the Epstein case and the possibility of other powerful abusers still at large, we look at the latest.On Today's Show:Jacob Shamsian, legal correspondent at Business Insider, talks about the latest developments in the Epstein saga as several survivors of Jeffrey Epstein urge Congress to act.

We look at how the media, including social media, is part of President Trump's approach to politics.On Today's Show:Ben Smith, co-founder and editor-in-chief of Semafor, and the author of Traffic: Genius, Rivalry, and Delusion in the Billion-Dollar Race to Go Viral (Penguin Press, 2023), shares his analysis for how the president has come for civil servants, and what it might mean for the government bureaucracy in the future.

Congress is returning from its summer recess to a host of issues of national and international importance.On Today's Show:U.S. Senator Andy Kim (D-NJ) talks about his work in the Senate and the issues in New Jersey as congress returns to work, including his recent trip to Asia, deportations and immigrant detention, further rescission demands, and why he's supporting Zohran Mamdani.

On Today's Show:Nick Miroff, staff writer for The Atlantic who covers immigration and the Department of Homeland Security, talks about the changes at the immigration enforcement agency and how the $75 billion budget bump will be spent.