Today Ruthie Blum joins the podcast to discuss Donald Trump's demand for Hamas to release all hostages by Saturday at noon. What happens next and what choices does Benjamin Netanyahu face? Give a listen.
It’s Trump’s third week in office and there is no shortage of news to report. Last week, RFK Jr., Kash Patel, and Tulsi Gabbard advanced in their congressional confirmation hearings for Health and Human Services secretary, FBI director, and Director of National Intelligence, and criticisms of Gabbard resurfaced over her meeting with former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad in 2017, and over her defense of Edward Snowden—who she refused to call a traitor.
Meanwhile, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited the United States, making him the first foreign leader invited to the new Trump White House. At a press conference with President Trump, he looked like the dog that caught the car when Trump announced that the U.S. would take control of Gaza, and that the 1.7 million people living there would be resettled elsewhere.
Trump also issued an executive order imposing a 90-day pause on foreign aid programs, which totaled around $70 billion in 2023. Meanwhile, Kanye has gone nuts again; Trump backed DOGE’s cost-cutting efforts and said Elon would be heading to the Pentagon next, causing shares of defense stocks like Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman to tumble; and the vibe shift came for the Super Bowl.
To unpack it all today is Newsweek opinion editor Batya Ungar-Sargon and political fundraising powerhouse Brianna Wu.
If you liked what you heard from Honestly, the best way to support us is to go to TheFP.com and become a Free Press subscriber today.
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Federal judges are starting to do something most elected Republicans won't: say no to Donald Trump and Elon Musk. The question now is, will Trump obey their orders? Jon, Lovett, and Tommy break down all the latest, including new onslaughts against the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the National Institutes of Health, and new allegations of Trump family grift. Then, Jon sits down with Strict Scrutiny's Leah Litman to unpack how Trump is testing the limits of presidential power and pushing constitutional guardrails to the brink.
For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email transcripts@crooked.com and include the name of the podcast.
A growing number of couples who are choosing to live apart together (LAT) seem to think so. These lovers are in a committed relationship but live or sleep separately.
Between 2000 and 2022, the percentage of married couples who decided to live apart grew by more than 40 percent. The trend has been driven mainly by older women.
New research from a U.K. household study found that older couples who decided to live in separate places have better mental health.
With Valentine's Day right around the corner, we discuss what living apart together looks like.
Kath joins us for our annual review of the Big Game spectacle. We give our appraisal of what this year’s ad slate says about the state of American culture, plus reactions to Kendrick Lamar’s halftime show, and how conservatives continue to be oppressed by the TV. Then the Washington Post’s Jeff Stein joins us to discuss his reporting on what exactly Elon Musk & the DOGE team are trying to do to the federal government.
Jeff’s piece on Elon & DOGE: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/02/08/doge-musk-goals/
If you’re in LA, check out Jacques & Grace’s Game Show Pig variety show at the Loge Room this Wednesday, 2/12: https://www.lodgeroomhlp.com/shows/game-show-pig/
Donald Trump’s latest move? Taking aim at the penny—finally addressing a pet peeve of mine and economists everywhere. Meanwhile, the NIH is slashing “indirect costs,” which will hurt actual vital research. And in today’s interview, Raphael S. Cohen of RAND joins to break down Israel’s battlefield successes and whether Iran truly holds deterrence power in the region.
President Donald Trump has dominated the news cycle in the earliest days of office, firing off rounds of executive orders, turning billionaire Elon Musk loose on the federal workforce, and blitzing the press.
But where is the opposition? Democrats lost big in 2024, ceding control of the Senate, House, and the presidency to the GOP. But as Trump continues to swing big at our governing apparatus, they've been more passive than some Americans would like.
Where does the party go from here? And what sort of plan do they have to respond to Trump's plans for the next four years?
The new administration has been routinely breaking the law, including on Friday when it announced it was cutting funding for universities doing medical research, specifically in violation of legislation passed by Congress last year. And over the weekend, Trump, Musk, and Vance signaled a willingness to ignore court orders—a federal judge on Monday declared that the White House was doing just that in response to his order lifting a freeze on grant spending. Meanwhile, Trump designated himself the Supreme Leader over the Kennedy Center, and canned the national archivist perhaps because the agency happened to notice he was hoarding classified documents. Plus, at a time when we could use some decent role models, Jalen Hurts showed what it's like to win without being petty and consumed by grievance.
How does the president's appearance at the Super Bowl connect to his aggressive moves against the federal government's overspending? It does in ways you wouldn't expect, and we try to explain. Give a listen.