Republican strategists say President Trump needs a reset in his State of the Union tonight, with new NPR polling showing 60% of Americans think the country is worse off than a year ago. Mexico is still reeling from cartel violence after a military operation killed the country's biggest drug lord, El Mencho, and triggered a wave of retaliation, raising questions about whether the government can take on the cartels without fueling even more violence. And an NPR investigation finds the Justice Department removed or withheld dozens of pages from the Epstein files database that include allegations mentioning President Trump, even as the administration says it has released everything.
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Today’s episode of Up First was edited by Rebekah Metzler, Rebecca Rosman, Megan Pratz, Mohamad ElBardicy, and Alice Woelfle.
It was produced by Ziad Buchh and Nia Dumas.
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(0:00) Introduction (02:16) Trump State of the Union Strategy (05:57) Mexico Cartel Violence (09:43) Epstein Files Naming Trump
James Davies lives in the Maryland area, and started his career at the crossroads of tech and the auto industry. His first girlfriend's father owned some car lots - so he went to work there, wrote some software, and propelled his success at those dealerships. He notes that the auto industry was fun and has a lot of moving parts, but was pretty taxing personally. Outside of tech, he is married with 2 kids. He grew up around construction, so he enjoys getting his hands dirty and building things. In fact, he is fixing up the barn of the recent home he bought - framing, doing the plumbing, and making it livable.
James was working for the state department as a consultant, and was a customer of his current venture. He was chosen to implement the solution, which turned out to be a successful project. Post that project, he was approached by the company to lead projects on the east coast and eventually landed in the CEO role.
Choctaw homicide detective Perry Antelope works on a missing persons case alongside the Choctaw Lighthorsemen tribal police in Devon Mihesuah’s (Choctaw) new mystery novel, “Blood Relay“. The story of the disappearance of a young athlete is set against the backdrop of the competitive bareback horse relay racing. The fictional fast-paced thriller also takes on the real-life issue of missing and murdered Indigenous relatives and the evolving jurisdictional complexities between federal, state, and tribal law enforcement in Oklahoma. Mihesuah, a historian and the Cora Lee Beers Price Teaching Professor at the University of Kansas, continues her tradition of creating strong leading women. She’s the author of the detective Monique Blue Hawk series (“Document of Expectations”, “Dance of the Returned“ and “The Hatak Witches“) and the 2024 collection of horror stories, “The Bone Picker“. She authored several non-fiction titles including “Recovering Our Ancestors’ Gardens: Indigenous Recipes and Guide to Diet and Fitness”. We add Mihesuah’s Blood Relay to our Native Bookshelf.
Imagine you're getting ready for a job interview. What do you do to prepare? You may have your sibling do a mock interview. You might also panic-buy a professional looking workbag.
Now, imagine you learn your interviewer is an artificial intelligence bot. This is becoming a more common occurrence. Employers are outsourcing not just the screening of applications to artificial intelligence, but also the interviewing.
Ray Smith, workplace reporter at The Wall Street Journal, wrote about how to prepare for this experience after esting a couple job interviews with an AI. He said it was nerve-racking.
Earlier this month the Trump administration revoked the endangerment finding, which gave the federal government a legal basis for regulating greenhouse gas emissions. The move is already being disputed in court. If the repeal is successful, who are the economic winners and losers?
“How We Survive” host Amy Scott talks with Stanford professor Chris Field to unpack the history and legal implications of the endangerment finding and how its repeal – though framed as saving Americans money – could lead to higher costs and a competitive disadvantage for the U.S. Later in the episode we turn to one specific winner (or loser, depending on who you ask): the U.S. auto industry. Amy talks with Rachel Muncrief from the International Council on Clean Transportation to find out if market forces and global competition will continue to push carmakers to innovate on cleaner vehicles or if this could seriously slow progress.
The United States has been building up a military presence around Iran for weeks, even as negotiators from both countries plan to meet later this week in hopes of finding a diplomatic solution to the escalating tensions.
David E. Sanger, a national security correspondent for The New York Times, explains what President Trump hopes to achieve through potential military action, and why he has chosen this moment.
Guest: David E. Sanger, the White House and National Security Correspondent for The New York Times.
Facing his worst approval ratings as president, Donald Trump prepares to pitch Americans on his vision for a second year in office. British police arrest a former government official after emails showing his correspondence with Jeffrey Epstein. And Americans in Mexico hunker down as cartel violence rages.
A.I. agents are here. Have they changed your life yet? The release of agents like Claude Code marked a new pivot point in the history of A.I. We are leaving the chatbot era and entering the agentic era — where A.I. is capable of completing all kinds of tasks on its own, and even collaborating and communicating with other A.I.
It isn’t clear yet whether these models actually make their users meaningfully more productive. But the technology is continuing to improve; there are few signs that it is close to plateauing. So what might this new era mean for our economy, our labor market and our kids?
Clark is a co-founder of Anthropic, the company behind Claude and Claude Code. His newsletter, Import AI, has been one of my go-to reads to track the capabilities of different models over the years. In this conversation, I ask him to share how he sees this moment — how the technology is changing, whether it is leading to meaningful changes in how we work and think, and how policy needs to or can change in response to any job displacement on the horizon.
This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Rollin Hu. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris with Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Isaac Jones and Aman Sahota. Our executive producer is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Marie Cascione, Annie Galvin, Kristin Lin, Emma Kehlbeck, Jack McCordick, Marina King and Jan Kobal. Original music by Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The director of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser.
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Podcast production by Elena Schwartz, Paige Osburn, Anna Phillips, Madeline Ducharme, and Rob Gunther.
