Democrats in Washington have seemed almost paralyzed by the onslaught of far-right appointments and draconian executive orders coming from the Trump White House. But some state governors seem more willing to oppose the federal government than congressional Democrats are. In January, Governor Tim Walz, of Minnesota, tweeted, “President Trump just shut off funding for law enforcement, farmers, schools, veterans, and health care. . . . Minnesota needs answers. We’ll see Trump in court.” He’s only one of many Democratic governors challening the federal government. Walz joins David Remnick to offer his analysis of why Democrats lost the 2024 election, why the Party has been losing support from men, and what Democrats need to do now that Donald Trump is back in the White House.
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34:47
Richard Brody Presents the 2025 Brody Awards
David Remnick is joined by Alexandra Schwartz, the co-host of the podcast Critics at Large, and The New Yorker’s august film critic Richard Brody. They talk about the past year in film and predict the victors of the Academy Awards. Brody dismisses “The Brutalist”—a film that merely uses the Holocaust “as metaphor”—and tells Remnick that “Wicked” might win Best Picture. “I think there’s a huge desire for cinematic comfort food that makes a billion dollars.” Continuing the Radio Hour’s annual tradition, Brody discusses nominees and selects the winners of the coveted award that we call The Brody.
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16:15
John Fetterman on Trump’s “Raw Sewage,” and What the Democrats Get Wrong
Since the election, Senator John Fetterman—once a great hope of progressives—has conspicuously blamed Democrats for the electoral loss. Fetterman tells David Remnick that the Democratic Party discouraged male voters, particularly white men. He has pursued a lonely course of bipartisanship by meeting with Trump at Mar-a-Lago before his Inauguration, joining Truth Social, and voting to confirm Pam Bondi as Attorney General—the only Democrat to do so. But, despite Trump’s relatively high approval ratings, he lambasts the Administration for the “chaos” it is currently sowing in America. Fetterman sympathizes with voters’ widespread disgust with contemporary politicking. “Unlimited money has turned all of us in some way into all OnlyFans models,” he says. “We’re all just online hustling for money.”
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34:35
Celebrating 100 Years: Jia Tolentino and Roz Chast Pick Favorites from the Archive
Staff writers and contributors are celebrating The New Yorker’s centennial by revisiting notable works from the magazine’s archive, in a series called Takes. The writer Jia Tolentino and the cartoonist Roz Chast join the Radio Hour to present their selections. Tolentino discusses an essay by a genius observer of American life, the late Joan Didion, about Martha Stewart. Didion’s profile, “everywoman.com,” was published in 2000, and Tolentino finds in it a defense of perfectionism and a certain kind of ruthlessness: she suggests that “most of the lines Didion writes about Stewart, it’s hard not to hear the echoes of people saying that about her.” Chast chose to focus on cartoons by George Booth, who contributed to The New Yorker for at least half of the magazine’s life. You can read Roz Chast on George Booth, Jia Tolentino on Joan Didion, and many more essays from the Takes series here.
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16:15
The A.C.L.U. v. Trump 2.0
In Donald Trump’s first term in office, the American Civil Liberties Union filed four hundred and thirty-four lawsuits against the Administration. Since Trump’s second Inauguration, the A.C.L.U. has filed cases to block executive orders ending birthright citizenship, defunding gender-affirming health care, and more. If the Administration defies a judge’s order to fully reinstate government funds frozen by executive order, Anthony Romero, the A.C.L.U.’s executive director, says, we will have arrived at a constitutional crisis. “We’re at the Rubicon,” Romero says. “Whether we’ve crossed it remains to be seen.” Romero has held the job since 2001—he started just days before September 11, 2001—and has done the job under four Presidents. He tells David Remnick that it’s nothing new for Presidents to chafe at judicial obstacles to implement their agendas; Romero mentions Bill Clinton’s attempts to strip courts of certain powers as notably aggressive. But, “if Trump decides to flagrantly defy a judicial order, then I think . . . we’ve got to take to the streets in a different way. We’ve got to shut down this country.”
USA