In short
The episode argues that Trump has seized “emergency powers” and is using them to dismantle checks and balances, expand militarized governance (National Guard troops in Washington, D.C.), and systematically weaken federal health and other institutions. It also discusses how courts and governors are pushing back, but opposition is fragmented.
Guests (backgrounds)
Susan Glasser (host; New Yorker political journalist). Jane Mayer (New Yorker staff writer; investigative reporter). Evan Osnos (New Yorker staff writer; author/journalist covering politics and foreign affairs).
Key claims
The “emergency” framework enables a permanent suspension of restraints; purges at CDC/HHS will reduce federal workers by ~300,000 by year’s end; vaccine rollbacks (polio/polio vaccines) are a major threat; federal troops in cities are intimidation and a likely pretext for future election-era coercion; courts are issuing rulings against Trump, but Supreme Court outcomes are uncertain.
Notable examples
CDC/HHS firings; Department of War renaming; National Guard deployment; rulings blocking emergency-based immigration and limiting domestic military use; appeals court rejecting broad tariff emergency; Harvard case on anti-Semitism funding cuts; raids/investigations targeting John Bolton, Adam Schiff, and Lisa Cook.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VOCurrent State of Politics in D.C.
0:59 to 2:07
Discussion of the current political situation and Trump's actions.
“Welcome to The Political Scene, a weekly discussion about the big questions in American politics.”
Erosion of Government Agencies
2:07 to 3:19
Examination of the purges and changes within federal agencies under Trump.
“And in some ways, being away for a few weeks gives you a sense to look more clearly at what we didn't see at the beginning of the summer.”
The Presence of Troops in the Streets
3:19 to 4:47
Analysis of the implications of having National Guard troops in D.C.
“three things that you think have really leapt out over the course of the summer that, you know, we should be paying more attention to going forward?”
Fear and Intimidation in Society
4:47 to 6:39
Discussion on the fear induced by the military presence and its historical context.
“I don't mean to minimize the fact that that is inconsequential to people's lives, carjackings especially.”
The Permanent State of Emergency
6:39 to 8:07
Exploration of the legal implications of declaring a permanent state of emergency.
“People actually have to fear that at this point.”
Impact on Public Health Policy
8:07 to 10:51
Discussion on the potential consequences of dismantling health agencies.
“And then to Jane's point about everything is an emergency, even when it's not.”
Historical Context of Trump's Policies
10:51 to 14:01
Analysis of Trump's policies in the context of American history and public health.
“But in addition, let's say, I think there's the possibility that if we're living in a state of constant emergency, you might see troops during elections.”
Trump's Regressive Vision
14:01 to 15:19
Explore Trump's vision of reversing progressive policies and returning to earlier economic principles.
“Basically, Donald Trump is at war with the progressive era.”
The State of Opposition
16:03 to 22:52
Discuss the lack of organized opposition to Trump and the rise of individual activism.
“The app gives you free access to our entire archive of catalogs, along with our word scramble game Shuffalo and the mini crossword.”
Judicial Checks on Trump's Power
22:52 to 28:05
Examine recent court rulings that challenge Trump's emergency powers and policies.
“Let's talk about other parts of society.”
Show all 13 chapters
Analyzing Trump's Power Dynamics
28:05 to 30:11
Discussion on Trump's potential actions and the impacts of political constraints.
“Jane, I think that's a really important observation.”
The Implications of Trump's Actions
30:11 to 33:14
Exploring the consequences of Trump's decisions on the economy and midterms.
“The political scene from The New Yorker will be right back.”
Justice Department and Political Prosecutions
33:14 to 36:54
Examining the politicization of the Justice Department under Trump.
“I think from what I've read that he's quite concerned at the possibility of losing the House of Representatives, which could then hold hearings into what he's doing.”
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00I wanted to go around the table and have sort of praise for each other the way, kind of like a Trump cabinet meeting. Yeah, three hours of.
0:11Evan Osnos:Jane, I would put your giant face on the wall of my labor department anytime. You both belong on Mount Rushmore. I would hack off George Washington from Mount Rushmore to make way for both of you guys. All right. Anyway, really nice to see you. All of us have had our experiences of going around the country this summer to different places, you know, Red America, Blue America, and running into some of our listeners. And I want to thank all of those listeners because I know that for us in this, it's a very disorienting and debilitating time. And it makes a huge difference to know that there are real, actual people out there listening.
0:51Evan Osnos:God, this is very sappy, except that now we have to, like, bring them down. All right, now we're going to the rest of the world.
0:56Jane Mayer:Ashes.
0:59Evan Osnos:Welcome to The Political Scene, a weekly discussion about the big questions in American politics. I'm Susan Glasser, and I'm joined, as ever, by my colleagues Jane Mayer and Evan Osnos. It's great to be back with you both. Hi, Jane. Hi, Susan. Hi, Evan.
1:15Jane Mayer:Great to see you guys.
1:16Evan Osnos:Great to see you.
1:20So, exhale.
1:21Evan Osnos:Here we are. Labor Day has passed. We're back. and all eyes, it turns out, are on Washington, D.C. We're coming to you from the heart of occupied Washington. The National Guard is in the streets and there is, let's just say, a strange mix of political theater and absurdity in the air, but also a sense of real menace and a lot of questions about where Donald Trump and his administration are heading. So let's just reset the table as it were. And let's talk about both what's been happening over the last couple months, but where we think things are headed. From my perspective, this has been a moment of almost shocking clarity.
2:08Evan Osnos:And in some ways, being away for a few weeks gives you a sense to look more clearly at what we didn't see at the beginning of the summer. And I think that the agenda of the Trump administration is really coming into much sharper relief. You know, which part are they proceeding with which part was hot air. Just this week, purges at the Centers for Disease Control, sense that vaccines are headed, you know, for the government ash heap of history, objectors to Donald Trump's effort to purge the government of people who don't agree with him being silenced, people literally being fired for producing government economic reports that Donald Trump doesn't like.
2:49Evan Osnos:New numbers suggest that by the end of this year, there will be about 300 ,000 fewer federal workers on the government payroll. Congress in all this is absent, missing, or an outright enabler of its own sort of dismantlement. Let's talk a little bit in a concrete way about what's eroded, what's holding firm, and how Trump's opponents are taking on and meeting or not meeting this moment. Evan, I want to start with you. What are two or three things that you think have really leapt out over the course of the summer that, you know, we should be paying more attention to going forward?
3:25Jane Mayer:Well, I think we can't race past the remarkable fact that we are talking on a day when there are, in fact, National Guard troops in the streets of Washington, D.C. On some level, this is intuitively obvious. It was almost inevitable. I mean, his poll numbers are down on a whole range of things like the economy, inflation, immigration. And so the natural instinct, if you're somebody like Donald Trump, is to say, send in the troops. And there is a strangeness about it, because where are they? If you're in the city, they are places where tourists are, actually. They're like at the train station, they're at the National Mall, they're at the monuments.
4:04Jane Mayer:They're actually not in the high crime areas. There was a piece in The Washington Post that just pointed this out. And there's a piece of this that is really bonkers, actually. I mean, there was a quote from Stephen Miller that I just kind of can't get past, which is he says he was rejoicing that dear leader had put these troops on the streets. And he said, I'm reading here, you have people who can walk freely at night without having to worry about being robbed or mugged. They're wearing their watches again. They're wearing jewelry again. They're carrying purses again. People have changed.
4:37Evan Osnos:Stephen Miller is worried about our purses, right, James?
4:40Jane Mayer:Purses for all. Purses in every pot. So that's a kind of cartoonish representation of what they're doing. Now, look, there are places where crime is down, and that is a good thing. I don't mean to minimize the fact that that is inconsequential to people's lives, carjackings especially. But I do end up lingering on this. You know, there is a quote I remember from Ben Franklin that said something like those who will give up liberty for the sake of temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. And will have neither, basically. That was his point. I mean, listen, when you live here, especially we've all lived here for quite some time, I think, you know, what jumps off the page to us is this business of this claim that there's a national emergency here in crime is completely a pretext.
5:29We know there's crime here. There happens to be a lot less crime than there used to be. I was a police reporter for the Washington Star in the 1980s. I looked up the statistics. There were 100 more murders a year when I was covering crime in the city than there are now. And so it's a fake. It's a show of force. And in any other state, it would be probably violating the federal law. But because of the unique status of Washington, D.C., it's unclear, but it seems possibly legal that you can put troops in the streets like this. Just walking around, it's confusing because, of course, the soldiers are nice young men who've come here and we want to be hospitable, but they're carrying guns.
6:15They're carrying weapons of war that are meant to be used to kill the enemy. And that's very intimidating. I mean, I have wondered often in reading history, why did people put up with something like stormtroopers? Why didn't they stop it? And I think what I can tell you from our little occupied city, the reason is there's fear. There's actual intimidation and fear. And people are afraid, you know, go up to a soldier and take their picture, maybe confront them. You might be whisked away. People actually have to fear that at this point. And I've talked to a lot of people who are feeling that way.
6:54Evan Osnos:Yeah, well, those words, right, you know, fear, weapons and soldiers in the streets. We've come a long way in a short period of time. And it's notable, you mentioned the legal basis of this. And when I'm thinking about like, where is this all headed? Trump has repeatedly spoken of the troops in D.C. and the earlier troops in Los Angeles, not as a one-off response to events, but as a guidebook, a playbook for where things are going. We're having this conversation, by the way, on a day when Donald Trump is about to sign an order changing the name of the Department of back to the Department of War.
7:30And well, first of all, he's always liked that.
7:34Evan Osnos:Why? Because it rolls back the clock, which is something that is a lot of Donald Trump's agenda is rolling back the clock. Second of all, it's about what he imagines to be a form of aggressiveness, muscularity, strength. But we all know that you give someone, especially an aspiring strong man, a hammer, and he's going to find nails. And so you create a Department of War, you need a war to wage. And I think this is the shift we've seen over the last couple months is a beginning of perhaps more clarity for the public that the agenda here is the war within. It is the enemy within. And then to Jane's point about everything is an emergency, even when it's not.
8:13Evan Osnos:And looking forward, that's the thing I wanted to ask you guys about is this notion of what's the emergency and what do you do now that you've gotten all this power, right? Because we know it isn't an emergency, but what happens when it is and Americans are already acclimatized to having troops in the streets. They're already acclimatized to the president claiming the power to upend the entire global economy, similarly citing an emergency that doesn't actually exist with a trade deficit that might go up, in fact, as a result of his policies. You know, Evan, what do you think?
8:48Jane Mayer:Well, what's so interesting, and you, I think, have helped us declare this clearly, which is that by having a Department of War, you put us on a permanent war footing. This is part of the reason why they got rid of the Department of War after World War II is to say, no, no, our natural posture should be of defense. We no longer need to go out and find dragons to slay. So when you've now declared that the war is a permanent condition, that requires an elevated, constant, chronic emergency. And what is an emergency in legal terms? It is a holiday from the ordinary restraints of checks and balances of the federal system that impose these counterweights on forces of power.
9:27Jane Mayer:There comes a point when I think that architecture of emergency will be put in service of things that are even hard to anticipate. The one that is on my mind, and this gets to your question, Susan, about what is kind of loomed largest for me over the summer, it was the steady but systematic dismantling of the federal health agencies. Take the Health and Human Services back in April. They announced that they were going to fire 10 ,000 people. This, by the way, is on top of 10 ,000 who were said to have chosen to leave under the fork in the road. So we're talking now we're getting up into 20 ,000 plus people from the CDC.
10:07Jane Mayer:HHS. You can go down the list of the places that keep us safe. There will come a point when this has an impact on our public health. And at that point, then what does Donald Trump's apparatus of emergency allow him to do? Because the great irony at the core of this is that the ideological case he made to rise to power was that he was going to get government out of your lives in all of these intrusive ways. But of course, the practical effect today, what we're seeing is a a government that has taken over big chunks of corporate America. It has taken over the trade policy by imposing tariffs. It is now literally taking over some parts of police functions in big American cities.
10:49Jane Mayer:So that's where it's headed. I mean, I think what could be more threatening than eliminating vaccines in Florida for schoolchildren, just the thought of the idea that polio might be back and spreading through the United States is just beyond imagination. But in addition, let's say, I think there's the possibility that if we're living in a state of constant emergency, you might see troops during elections. You might see very intimidating troops during the midterm. That's something to worry about. And you also might see a pretextual act of war also, as we in a way just saw with the obliteration of a supposedly drug-carrying boat a thousand miles off the coast of the United States.
11:37Complete violation of international law. That's an act of war by our new war department in legal terms. Pretty much anything's possible when everything is a national emergency.
11:49Jane Mayer:Susan, what about you? What do you think?
11:51Evan Osnos:Yeah, no, Evan, I agree with you very much that the thing that really starts to get into people's lives is not, you know, performative, all caps, social media postings. But, you know, in Trump 2.0, what you're seeing is an array of really disruptive actions that are acclimatizing Americans to a dangerous state that, you know, when a real emergency hits, you know, he will have powers that he didn't even claim to have on January 20th. And by the way, Jane, on polio, on the vaccines, this one to me is such a gut punch. This was arguably the greatest public health accomplishment of the 20th century.
12:34Evan Osnos:Talk about polio. My grandfather actually was the executive director of the Polio Foundation, which later became the March of Dimes. When the vaccines were successfully tested and deployed, saving millions and millions of lives in the United States and around the world, he was helped to supervise the trials for those vaccines. And the notion that, you know, in his grandchildren's time, we would have a Kennedy, no less, being the person who would be the architect of blowing up this public health apparatus is something that that's really scary and might not be for us. But our children, our grandchildren, this is a world that they're going to inherit.
13:17Evan Osnos:That's going to be a lot less safe. It's dangerous. You know, it's also a strange clash with the other message coming out of the administration about how we need more children, this pro-natalist thing. Meanwhile, we're spreading childhood diseases that actually kill children. I guess, you know. Health is for rich people. And for the survival of the fittest. I think underneath this is a sort of a kind of a Darwinian mindset.
13:42Jane Mayer:We've talked before about how, to use Susan's term, this is rolling back the clock, but it is rolling it back really to a Gilded Age moment in which that was the dominant theory, was that you can't coddle the lowest people on the income ladder because that is – you're interfering with nature. I mean it is a bizarre and bankrupted idea.
14:03Evan Osnos:Basically, Donald Trump is at war with the progressive era. I mean, that's what – if you really look at Project 2025, it is not just rolling back the Great Society and the New Deal. It's going back to before the progressive era. I mean, Calvin Coolidge was the one who said, you know, the business of America is business. Well, it actually – just the other day, Donald Trump was waxing poetic about basically everything before 1913 being the greatest time in American history. Our country was the strongest, believe it or not, from 1870 to 1913. You know why? It was all tariff based. We had no income tax.
14:44Then in 1913, some genius came up with the idea of let's charge the people of our country, not foreign countries that are ripping off our country.
14:53Evan Osnos:Right. So basically, it's the income tax and the arrival of a different form of accountability on American business and American tycoons, business tycoons. That's the moment for Donald Trump, for Howard Lutnick, for Elon Musk. And it's not a frame of reference we've talked an awful lot about in our politics before. And so one of the questions, of course, is what can be done? What can be done about any of this? And we will get to that after a quick break. The political scene from The New Yorker will be right back.
15:32Hey listeners, this is Liz Mainz-Amanzadi, the New Yorker's Puzzles and Games editor. If you're someone who likes making lists and organizing your bookshelf, we think you'll love Catalogs, our new daily game that challenges you to put things in order based on a hidden rule. You might be asked to sort peppers by spiciness, world capitals by population, or Martin Scorsese movies by release date. You can play catalogs every day at newyorker.com slash games and in the New Yorker app for iOS or Android. Here's a helpful hint. The app gives you free access to our entire archive of catalogs, along with our word scramble game Shuffalo and the mini crossword.
16:12So download the New Yorker app for new games to play every day.
16:24Evan Osnos:Jane, let's talk about the opposition such as it is. I wonder if you guys have seen The Economist cover this week. To me, that really captured this moment. It is an image of this lone donkey standing on an American football field with a whole team of gigantic, puffed up, steroidal, is that a word, steroidal? Should be if it's not. Red helmeted football players about to crush this single poor donkey, America's missing opposition. Is that right? I do feel that there's been an absence of mass protest and there's an absence of leadership in the opposition. I do think that that donkey is not all alone.
17:13I think there are a whole lot of other donkeys and people uncomfortable from not just the Democratic Party, just ordinary Americans of maybe not even that political who do not find what's happening to be acceptable. But there's no organization pulling them together. There are individual voices and they're beginning to rise up. And there are individual judges who have been extremely brave. There are lawyers who are bringing cases. There is activism. It's more like individual acts. I think in a way, if I were looking at doing that cover, I might have instead the image of the single person in Washington, D.C., who was lobbing the subway sandwich.
18:00Sandwich man. Sandwich man at the feds because that's sort of the spirit right now, which is individuals who are fighting back.
18:08Evan Osnos:Evan, what do you think of the Gavin Newsom all caps tweets back at Donald Trump, the all cap tweeter, J.B. Pritzker out there very aggressively resisting the idea that Trump is going to send troops over his objections into the streets of Chicago? It's often interpreted through the lens of, you know, the 2028 presidential contest. But my question is, what does it mean right now?
Read the full transcript
18:34Jane Mayer:I think that it is easy to be kind of cynical about these guys and say, oh, well, it's just Newsom trying to position himself politically or here's Pritzker trying to elbow his way into the view of the camera. But it is actually a very important piece of the process because one of the reasons why I think it feels, as you say, Jane, as if it is just these kinds of sporadic individual actions is because of a void of leadership. Now, partly that's because the Democratic Party is frankly at sea and at war with itself about what it's going to stand for going forward. And it is at this point unpopular enough that it is just kind of in this constant state of what are our core commitments?
19:18Jane Mayer:What are we against and what are we for beyond just being against Trump? And then also in Washington, the Democrats here, because of the fact that the Republicans control three branches of government, mean that you can't do a whole lot except give speeches. And so the center of gravity is moved out to the governors. At the core of the problem is that when you're a president like Donald Trump, you can move faster than the rest of the government can. So, for instance, there hasn't even been a case before the Supreme Court testing the presence of federal troops in the streets. It just is a slow process.
19:51Jane Mayer:So he's able to go and put facts on the ground and sort of do fait accompli. And so what that means is that you have these governors who can, in their own places, begin to draw lines. And I think you're seeing some performing quite, I think, smartly under the circumstances. I was struck by Wes Moore and how he played some of this dynamic quite successfully by saying to Trump, you want to come to Baltimore? Let's go on a ride along with cops and see. So he essentially sort of turned – sort of forced it back on Trump. I think you're going to start to see some political innovation among contenders.
20:27And he sassed Trump. Totally successfully. Call them President Bonespurs because Wes Moore has been a soldier and that kind of thing. And I think people appreciate a little bit of cheekiness out there. I mean, just because the Democrats are out of power in Washington, I actually think it's kind of a failure of imagination of the leadership of the Democratic Party that they're unable to think of other ways to organize creatively and make noise creatively. I mean, even if you sort of look across the Atlantic at the shadow cabinet, you know, in Great Britain, there are ways that you can have counterpoint and argue back more with what we're seeing.
21:08And I'm struck in my conversations with friends who are involved in politics, national politics here, that there's kind of a mood of fatalism I'm seeing inside the beltway. Part of it is I'm hearing from people who run campaigns that they see these democracy issues as maybe working for the Democratic base. But for swing voters that they want to attract, they think it's just not worth it. Well, I mean, honestly, I think that's so patronizing and also shows who cares if it doesn't pull well up. It's important. Make the argument and maybe people will care. And I imagine they do care, but they're waiting for someone to articulate it well.
21:47Evan Osnos:Jane, I'm glad you brought that up because I think this gets at part of the thing that's so worrisome is that we're in such a polarized and highly partisan time that we now see things and almost all events, even in the Trump era, are filtered through the lens of what's going to happen in the next midterm election, in the next presidential election. And frankly, if your concern is for what's happening to the country and not what's happening to the Democratic Party, capital D, capital P, those interests, I think, have diverged. And so that's where I come back to this question of civil society and the state of resistance there, because I do think the organized Democratic Party is so absorbed in its internal fights as well as its own self-interest, which is about winning elections.
22:31Evan Osnos:And frankly, that's where Trump's polarization and division has worked for factions of the Democratic Party as well as for factions of the Republican Party. And so those are not necessarily the same conversation. And I hate that so much of Trump's radical or disruptive actions are filtered through the lens of what's going to happen in an election four years from now. Let's talk about civil society for a second. Let's talk about other parts of society. For example, the courts, Jane, which you've spent a lot of time thinking about in the last few years as you're working on your amazing book that we all can't wait to read.
23:05Evan Osnos:But let's talk about that because I was struck this week in writing my column for The New Yorker. Decision after decision continues to come down from federal district judges, from federal appeals courts in some cases, absolutely skewering the lies of the Trump administration, taking on those cover stories, saying in plain English terms from many of these federal judges, like Judge Breyer, Charles Breyer, brother of retired Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer. In the court case that you mentioned, Evan, about whether you can actually use the National Guard in Los Angeles over the objections of the state's governor.
23:44Evan Osnos:This is a very important case. And just this week, we had a ruling from Judge Breyer saying in no uncertain terms, no, it's a violation of the 19th century law that prohibits, for very good reasons, prohibits the U.S. military from being used in domestic law enforcement activities. And boom, there's that decision. Just in the last week, there's the decision from an appeals court saying that Donald Trump's invoking of emergency powers to impose tariffs on virtually every major U.S. trading partner in the world, that that's not legal. Boom. Multiple decisions that some of his extreme immigration policies were pushing the boundaries of law were not legal.
24:27Evan Osnos:Stopping children, literally pulling them off planes that they had already been loaded onto to be deported by themselves to a third country. There was a decision in the Harvard case, which, as you know, has now become a test case of Trump's attack on liberal academia. Judge in Boston writing in no uncertain terms that it It was unconstitutional what Trump was doing, which was using the smokescreen, I believe that was the word in the opinion, of fighting anti-Semitism to withdraw billions of dollars in federal scientific research grant funding. So on a variety of fronts, you see federal judges pushing back.
25:06Evan Osnos:But of course, we also know that the fate of these cases is really uncertain. So so much of Donald Trump's agenda right now is a big asterisk. Will these defeats for his agenda stand? Will the very Trumpified Supreme Court do anything about it and actually hand him an enormous array of victories on a broad number of fronts? Where do you stand at the end of the summer on this question of the courts and their ability to check Donald Trump? I mean, in some ways, the most remarkable of those rulings was the one that had to do with saying that it was illegal for him to declare the immigration situation an emergency because that ruling came out of the Fifth Circuit, which is maybe the most conservative circuit in the country.
25:52And it was a panel that had one Republican and one Democratic appointed judge voting against Trump. And then a Trump appointed judge was dissenting. But it's remarkable if the Fifth Circuit can rule against Trump. That means any circuit can. Going up to the Supreme Court, you know, it's a fool's game to predict what they would do. But it seems if you're standing back and trying to figure out what the pattern is so far, it looks to me like Chief Justice John Roberts is trying to avoid a face-to-face confrontation with Trump in which Trump might defy the court and undermine it by saying, forget it, I don't care what you think.
26:32He seems to be dividing the difference and taking baby steps as much as he can rather than big, bold ones. And they've upheld Trump on all number of things that are surprising lawyers across the country so far. There is not the sense that they're planning to take him on in something major, though. I wouldn't be surprised. It seems to be possible of those cases that the tariff case seems to me something that the court really might object to what Trump is doing in a way because it's obviously a conservative court. And the case is arguing that this is an illegal tax. And these are conservatives on the court who do not like taxes.
27:14And the case is being argued by Neil Kochel, who's an incredibly able Supreme Court litigator. And they have framed it very cleverly. So as taking on the issue of unconstitutional taxation rather than whether or not this is an emergency power. It's a smart way that they're taking it on. So, I mean, that seems to me like a possibility.
27:38Jane Mayer:And the risk is if it goes to the court and the court actually ends up siding with Trump, that has a broader implication, right? If they side with Trump, but if he also – if they side against Trump, then in some ways I think it would be a favor to Trump. If these tariffs are struck down, he will then be able to blame someone else for all the things that are wrong with this economy, which is really not booming the way he wants it to. He'll have a new foil and he loves a foil.
28:07Evan Osnos:Jane, I think that's a really important observation. In many ways, Donald Trump benefited enormously in his first term from the constrainers. We talked all the time, understandably, about the enablers, but actually the constrainers did him a big favor time and time again from stopping him from doing things that had he done, he would have owned the very bad consequences of. And this time, we can see in that three-hour and 17-minute cabinet meeting, there aren't a lot of constrainers left. And so if the courts end up performing at least a part of that function, will they actually be doing him a favor?
28:42Evan Osnos:What an interesting way. I will say your old friend Mitch McConnell, now a backbencher in Congress, what is he most concerned about? It's those tariffs. He actually gave a remarkable interview the other day in which he said he was so worried about Donald Trump's disrupting of the global economy and American foreign policy that it was the most dangerous period since the 1930s. And he wasn't talking about violations of people's human rights. He was talking about tariffs. He may have been alive in the 1930s. I think he was. He also, of course, has been very concerned about what's happening with polio vaccines because he had polio.
29:17Right, because he went through it.
29:17Evan Osnos:Well, and not to mention with Russia and Ukraine, it's again, I know we can't resist talking, going from the constrainers to the enablers. Mitch McConnell will go down in history, I suppose, as both. I think more of an enabler than a constrainer, starting all the way back to 2016 when he blocked Merrick Garland from being on the Supreme Court. History could have gone differently.
29:39Jane Mayer:You know, you could have, I mean, we all know how to procrastinate from finishing books, but if you really need to, you could do a little short book called The Enabler about McConnell. Just an idea, Jane.
29:48Evan Osnos:The problem is, though, if you do a book called The Enabler, people won't know who is it about. Is it a biography of Lindsey Graham? That's the genius of the marketing.
29:57Jane Mayer:It could be anybody. The entire Republican Congress.
30:01Evan Osnos:All right, well, when we come back, we will have a quick lightning round about what to expect from all this looking ahead this fall. The political scene from The New Yorker will be right back.
30:30Evan Osnos:Okay, so, Jane, you've already warned us. Fair warning. Looking in the crystal ball is a fool's errand, not just with the Supreme Court, but with Donald Trump. That being said, there are some through lines we all know with Donald Trump. He's old, very, very old, and he doesn't learn that many new tricks. So put on your Trumpologist hat, if not your crystal ball, and let's talk about, you know, what we think might play out over the next couple months with Trump. My fear that I'll start us off with is you don't acquire all this power and go to all this effort and then not start to use it, especially if you're worried about next year's midterms and losing the House or being constrained in some way.
31:14Evan Osnos:Maybe the court's weighing in. So it strikes me that Donald Trump is going to have a kind of compulsion to action over the next few months before the political imperatives of 2026 and a very unpopular president kick in. And what is he going to do with this call to action? What do you guys think?
31:33Jane Mayer:Well, I think you're absolutely right to be pointing to the fact that people are alert to the reality that the economy is actually getting wobbly. Inflation is a real problem. You see this in people's attitudes. I filled up my car the other day. It was$5 a gallon. This is no joke. I mentioned all this just to remind us.
31:53Evan Osnos:While you were driving to the supermarket to buy eggs? One egg, not plural. Don't even try olive oil.
32:00Jane Mayer:And the reason why we're talking about this is actually because we know it matters in people's lives. We know it matters in our politics. There is a line that keeps recurring to me these days. This is an Orwell quote. As I kind of see one fantastical claim or another coming out of it, whether it's Stephen Miller declaring purses for all or whatever. Orwell said, sooner or later, a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield. And I would append to that either on a battlefield or, as we learned in 2020, in a public health crisis, in a hospital room or somewhere else where the illusion of politics collides with the reality of our lived experience.
32:42Jane Mayer:And that is where I think this becomes acute rather than chronic. I mean, the strangest thing really has been that so far the one place where the MAGA base has bumped up against reality is the Jeffrey Epstein case. It was the least likely, I would have thought, but that seems to be where people are saying, wait, what you told us isn't true. Surprise, surprise. Looking ahead, I agree with both of you. I think you don't concentrate the kind of power that Donald Trump has without planning to use it in some way. We haven't seen enough of a break on him so far. I think from what I've read that he's quite concerned at the possibility of losing the House of Representatives, which could then hold hearings into what he's doing.
33:30And so I assume that he will do whatever he can to try to influence the elections.
33:36Evan Osnos:Yeah, I think it's fascinating to see how planning in advance they are for that in, you know, the sort of palater anti-Trump circles, right? People have tended to scoff at the idea of Donald Trump, you know, 3D chess master, no, you know, Mr. Checkers man. But you look at these moves to get Republican controlled state houses and governors moving on redistricting plans clearly designed with next year's midterm elections in mind. And it suggests a level of at least political tactics that are pretty savvy and designed to mitigate what history suggests will be a curbing of his authority in next year's midterm elections.
34:17Evan Osnos:So that's one thing to spotlight. And then I still have this question about when it comes to especially the taking over of the Justice Department and the FBI and going from a model where we at least strived for the appearance of independence in our law enforcement and our justice system in this post-Watergate era and sort of getting rid of all that, politicizing the Justice Department, purging career employees, overturning longstanding. norms and regulations in both the FBI and the Justice Department. Donald Trump has publicly called for the investigating and the prosecutions of a very long list of political opponents or even people who just stumbled into his line of sight.
35:05Evan Osnos:And people have been fired literally for doing their jobs as civil servants and prosecuting people who violently stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. People have lost their jobs for investigating the question, which our intelligence agencies found to be accurate, that Russia had intervened in the 2016 U.S. election. People have literally lost their jobs for documenting this as the Republican Majority Senate Intelligence Committee agreed had occurred. And so who is he going to prosecute? I'm so glad you brought this up. I mean, we haven't really had time to get into it, but really of the chilling things that happened since we were last together are these prosecutions.
35:54And one of them also, I think, really sent a chill through Washington was the raiding of John Bolton's house, which I think sent a message that nobody's safe. John Bolton is a very conservative, hawkish Republican who served as national security advisor to Trump in his first term. He's obviously a critic and dissenter, and that's why his house was being raided. And same with the investigations of Adam Schiff and Lisa Cook on these pretextual, minor, whatever they are, infractions. I mean, I hope everyone's read the piece in ProPublica that shows that three of Trump's cabinet officers have the same mortgage issues that Lisa Cook may have.
36:35You know, this is a very commonplace kind of thing and, again, a pretext.
36:39Jane Mayer:And it's worth noting, John Bolton didn't quietly go off and just absorb this. He came out swinging. So there's a lesson there in Trump comes from a world in which you punch back and that shows what some people are doing.
36:53Evan Osnos:And the fight is on. And I guess we'll leave it at that for this week. But there's going to be a lot of that to talk about over the next few months. And I'm very, very glad that we'll at least get to do it together. And before we go today, we do just want to take a moment to say thank you to our departing producer, Julia Nutter. Yeah. We're so grateful for the wit, intelligence, and yes, deft editing that she brought to this podcast every week. That's for sure. She's been terrific. And Julia, we are so excited for your next chapter. We'll definitely be cheering you on from here. Absolutely. Good luck, Julia.
37:29Jane Mayer:Yeah, thank you, Julia. Come see us in D.C.
37:31Evan Osnos:Please do. Now, this has been the political scene from The New Yorker. I'm Susan Glasser. We had research assistance today from Alex D 'Elia. And this episode was produced by Nora Ritchie, mixing by Mike Kutchman. Stephen Valentino is our executive producer. And Chris Banning is Conde Nast's head of Global Audio. Our theme music is by Alison Leighton Brown. Thank you for listening. We'll see you next Friday.
From the publisher
The Washington Roundtable, hosted by the staff writers Susan B. Glasser, Jane Mayer, and Evan Osnos, is back in season. The co-hosts reflect on the news of this summer, discussing President Trump’s imposition of tariffs on nearly every major U.S. trading partner; his deployment of the National Guard on the streets of the capital; and his purges of agencies including the Department of Justice, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. They also discuss what Trump might use emergency powers to do in the near future. “You don’t acquire all this power, and go to all this effort, and then not start to use it,” Glasser says.
This week’s reading:
- “How Many Court Cases Can Trump Lose in a Single Week?,” by Susan B. Glasser
- “Trump’s Department of Energy Gets Scienced,” by Bill McKibben
- “Texas Democrats’ Weapons of the Weak,” by Rachel Monroe
- “Do State Referendums on Abortion Work?,” by Peter Slevin
Tune in wherever you get your podcasts.
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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