Is Trump losing it? (the war of course)

In the end, Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, or Doge, sort of just … fizzled out. So did Musk save the taxpayer any money? What happened the people who lost their jobs in the mass bureaucratic culling? What services were affected? Will Americans ever trust their government again? Jonathan Freedland speaks to author Sasha Abramsky about his new book, American Carnage: How Trump, Musk, and DOGE Butchered the US Government, and about what lasting legacy of Doge will be

Donald Trump says the US has won its war with Iran. Iranian officials responded to this by mocking him. This week, Jonathan Freedland speaks to Susan Glasser of the New Yorker about analysis suggesting Trump is losing his touch when it comes to sealing the deal, winning elections or just having the energy to run the White House

This is episode one of Off Duty, a new Guardian Investigates podcast series by Melissa Segura. On the evening of 29 December 2011, the police officer Clifton Lewis was moonlighting as a security guard at a Chicago minimart when two men walked in. They shot Lewis several times, then took off with his gun and police star. A week later, police had their suspects: four men affiliated with a gang called the Spanish Cobras. For hours, under intense police questioning, they all denied doing it. But that did not seem to matter. You can find the rest of the series on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your podcasts

Donald Trump has told his Nato allies: ‘We don’t need you.’ He also threatened to ‘massively blow up’ the world’s largest gasfield, despite Americans already having to deal with higher prices. This week, Jonathan Freedland speaks to Kamala Harris’s former national security adviser, Philip Gordon, about what this all means for the Iran war and Trump’s ‘America First’ policy

Since coming back into office, Donald Trump has sent troops to Venezuela, Iran and US cities. He has threatened to deploy them to Greenland in order to get what he wants. But what do the people who serve think of their commander-in-chief? If they wanted to, could they disobey his orders? This week, Jonathan Freedland speaks to Janessa Goldbeck, a former Marine and the chief executive of Vet Voice Foundation

If you’ve been listening to the Trump administration this week, you would be forgiven for being confused about who started the war, why America got involved and what the end game is. This week, the foreign policy expert Ali Vaez tells Rachel Leingang what it was like to take part in war game exercises for the Pentagon and how they compare with what he has seen play out this week. Then the Guardian’s Andrew Roth talks us through the inner chaos in the Trump administration and Congress over Trump’s decision to go to war with Iran

The US and Israel launched a joint military operation against Iran on Saturday, killing Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Why did Trump decide (again) to attack Iran during negotiations on a nuclear deal with the Islamic Republic? How does he sell a new war in the Middle East, with potential US casualties, to people at home? What happens next for Iran? In this special collaboration with Today in Focus, Annie Kelly speaks to the Guardian’s diplomatic editor, Patrick Wintour.

The governor of California, Gavin Newsom, is widely regarded as one of the Democratic party’s leading contenders for the 2028 presidential election. He has also published a new book, Young Man in a Hurry, reflecting on his childhood and his path to the governor’s mansion. This week, Jonathan Freedland speaks to Newsom about why he believes the Democrats suffered such heavy losses in 2024, why the party needs to be less judgmental, and whether he intends to run for president in 2028

Donald Trump made history again on Tuesday evening, delivering the longest State of the Union address on record. But while the president declared the ‘golden age of America’, many Democrats boycotted the event, telling the country Republicans are ‘making your life harder’. The Guardian’s Jenna Amatulli talks to Rolling Stone’s Nikki McCann Ramírez about Trump’s claims, the Democrats’ rebuttal, and how the speech will land with a divided nation

On Tuesday, we learned that the US civil rights leader Jesse Jackson had died at the age of 84. Tributes flooded in from political figures across the aisle for the Baptist minister who twice ran for the Democratic presidential nomination. This week, the Guardian’s Jenna Amatulli speaks to George Chidi about how Jackson transformed the Democratic party and empowered minority communities at the ballot box, and what Jackson might have thought about the party today as it takes on Donald Trump