Category: 3-SometimeCommentary

In the year since President Trump roared back to power, one of the most surprising story lines of his second term has been a series of public ruptures between him and the movement he created.

Robert Draper, who covers domestic politics for The New York Times, discusses the growing tensions inside the MAGA movement and what they tell us about what the American right might look like in a post-Trump world.

Guest: Robert Draper, who covers domestic politics.

Background reading: 

• After an interview with a white nationalist, Tucker Carlson has continued to fracture the right.
• Marjorie Taylor Greene strove both to be the ultimate Trump warrior and to be taken seriously. She wound up in political exile.
• Nick Fuentes is a white nationalist problem for the right.

Photo: Doug Mills/The New York Times

For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. 

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Paris Marx is joined by Ben Wray to discuss the Europe’s capitulation to pressure from the United States on Nexperia, as well as on digital protections and labor rights that could have big implications for the future of work.

Ben Wray is a researcher specializing in the platform economy. He writes the Gig Economy Project newsletter and his most recent report for the ETUC is called Uberisation.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is made in partnership with The Nation. Production is by Kyla Hewson.

Today’s sponsors are ExpressVPN and ⁠Aura Frames. Get four months free by visiting ExpressVPN.com/TWSU. Exclusive $35 off Carver Mat at ⁠https://on.auraframes.com/PARIS⁠. Promo Code PARIS

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Ben wrote about the brief attempt by the Dutch to nationalize Nexperia.

• In leaked documents from 2012-2017 Uber executives recognize their own illegal activity and refer to themselves as ‘pirates’.

• Spain recently ordered Meta to pay €479m fine for breaching EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)

Holiday dread is real enough—fraught family gatherings, forced merriment, and the persistent myth that December is the peak month for suicide. In truth, it's the lowest month for suicides, even as the season brings elevated risks of car crashes, cardiac emergencies, and alcohol-related ER visits. Sadie Dingfelder joins for an Is That Bulls**t? to explain why winter depression rises even as suicide rates fall, and how the "holiday spike" myth keeps circulating. Plus: Trump's tariff rhetoric collides with economic reality, and Texas politics gets reshaped by counter-mobilization.

Produced by Corey Wara

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This episode takes a visit to the goonverse — a strange online world where hundreds of thousands of people spend hours chasing a “goon state,” a trance-like high reached through marathon porn consumption. Ravi talks with reporter Daniel Kolitz, whose Harper’s article on this community has become a viral sensation: horrifying, riveting, and impossible to look away from. Together they explore what this subculture reveals about loneliness, post-lockdown life, and the dangers of instant, unlimited online pleasure crowding out real-world connection. It’s disturbing, darkly funny, and a warning sign about where we’re all heading.

Daniel Kolitz’s The Goon Squad, (Harper’s, Nov 2025) 

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• The "Trump's Take" tracker at the Center for American Progress
• Tim and Andrew's 'Bulwark Take' after Trump's rally Tuesday night
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Hello!

This is a good episode of the show and about something we’ve been thinking about for a while: What is the role of organized religion going forward and will we see a return to the church as the cruelty of politics, technology, and the general malaise of modern life start to overwhelm us? Our guest, Matt Sitman, has thought a ton of about this. He’s the co-host of Know Your Enemy and on the editorial board of Dissent. He’s written and thought about religion for a long time, including a big story in the New Republic from 2021 about the religious left and a very moving plea from 2017 in Dissent.

We talked about a lot: the Catholic church and its right wing converts, the alienation of tech, Tyler’s theory about whether AI was the antichrist, the need for community, and the question of how we build a moral framework in a time when everyone’s just on their f*****g phones all the time.

Enjoy!