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On Monday, President Trump’s personal lawyer and Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove ordered prosecutors to drop federal corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams. Adams had been courting President Trump for weeks, including with a pre-inauguration visit to Mar A Lago, but the shape of the deal struck between the accused Mayor and the incoming administration came into clear view with a flurry of Department of Justice resignations on Thursday. On this week’s episode of Amicus, Dahlia Lithwick speaks to Harry Litman, a former U.S. attorney, and host and executive producer of the podcast Talking Feds. Harry explains why the so-called “Thursday Night Massacre” is not the kind of scandal even this administration can shrug off while yelling something about the “deep state” and “weaponization”.
Next, Dahlia turns to the chaotic, destructive and dangerous “spontaneous disassembly” of much of the federal government currently taking place at the hands of Elon Musk with guest Sam Bagenstos, former general counsel of the United States Department of Health and Human Services until December 2024, also former general counsel for the Office of Management and Budget from January 2021 until June 2022. Now a professor at the University of Michigan, Sam explains what happens when the federal government stops working, and why persistently asking whether or not we’re in a constitutional crisis is simply the wrong question.
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Emily Bazelon talks with author Rich Benjamin about his new book, Talk to Me: Lessons From a Family Forged by History. They delve into Rich’s complex family history— particularly the experiences of his grandfather, Daniel Fignolé. Fignolé was the president of Hatti in 1957 before being ousted by a coup that involved American influence. Rich and Emily discuss how the political upheaval had a lasting impact on Rich and his family, the immigrant experience of “internalizing America” and the lasting scars of trauma.
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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.
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Podcast production by Elena Schwartz, Paige Osburn, Anna Phillips, Madeline Ducharme and Rob Gunther.
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.
When the poet and writer Kaveh Akbar likes something, he really likes it. As a high school student, he got hooked on poetry. In college, it was alcohol. This week, Kaveh talks to Anna Sale about the factors that led to his sobriety, and he explains exactly how he manages a life that’s full of healthy, wonderful obsessions as well as problematic ones.
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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.
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.
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.
Jeremy Prokop, data science advisor in the Midwest
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