Since the Supreme Court’s landmark June 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization overturned Roe v. Wade and federal abortion protections, a wave of state legislatures have rushed to impose bans and restrictions. According to the Guttmacher Institute, 41 states now have abortion bans in effect, including 12 with total bans. 

“We hear about the endless, supposedly unintentional consequences of abortion bans like rising maternal mortality, child rape victims forced to travel across state lines, increased risk of criminalization, pregnant victims coerced by their abusers, all of that,” says journalist Kylie Cheung, author of “Coercion: Surviving and Resisting Abortion Bans.” “But I very much argue that these aren't unintended consequences.” 

This week on The Intercept Briefing, Cheung joins host Jessica Washington to trace the direct line from the Dobbs decision to state-sanctioned gender-based violence and control. 

“This is what abortion bans function to do, which is to police and control pregnant people, to feed cycles of abuse, to be this tool in the toolbox of abusers. To enact racial violence and economic subjugation and essentially lower women and pregnant people and people who can become pregnant to this lowered class in our society,” says Cheung. “And that is not unintentional at all.

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As the Israeli government weighs, once again, expanding its genocidal military campaign in Gaza, the enclave is sliding into a full-scale famine.

“We're seeing a purely manmade famine,” says Bob Kitchen, vice president of emergencies at the International Rescue Committee. “The Gaza Strip is surrounded by very fertile farming territory. All of the countries around Gaza have more than enough food.” 

This week on the Intercept Briefing, Intercept reporter Jonah Valdez speaks with Kitchen about what U.N.-backed hunger experts have called a “worst-case scenario.” Kitchen lays out how Israel’s ongoing war, combined with severe restrictions on humanitarian aid and commercial access, has created near-impossible conditions for food and medical supplies to enter Gaza — accelerating a crisis that could soon be irreversible.

“The only thing that's changed is the war, the restrictions on humanitarian aid, the restrictions on the market economy where commercial traffic can't get in,” says Kitchen. “That's the only thing that is driving the hunger right now.”

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Nationwide protests. Racist discrimination. Militarized police. These were the characteristics used to describe America during the long hot summer of 1967, when riots swept through more than 150 cities. They still describe America today, as the government has responded to protests against racist policing and immigration raids with militarized police forces backed by the Marines and the National Guard. 

It all sounds eerily similar to the America of more than half a century ago, when a presidential commission diagnosed the country’s problem: racism, particularly in policing, was causing widespread political unrest. 

“When a protest becomes that broad-based — cutting across gender lines and ethnic lines — then I think you have the opportunity to realize this is a true political movement,” says Rick Loessberg, an urban historian and the former planning commissioner for Dallas County, Texas, and the author of “Two Societies: The Rioting of 1967 and the Writing of the Kerner Report.”

“This is not just a group or a segment of the population letting off steam,” says Loessberg, “which was what was one of the explanations that was used in the 1960s. This is something else that's much, much deeper and much more significant.”

This week on The Intercept Briefing, host Akela Lacy speaks with Loessberg about what America learned — and didn’t learn — from our history of racist policing and political unrest.

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More than 1,000 Palestinians seeking food have been killed by Israeli forces in just the last few months, according to the United Nations. Israel’s blockade on aid, ongoing bombardment, and the dismantling of independent relief efforts have pushed Gaza to the brink of mass famine. At least 600,000 people are suffering from severe malnutrition, and aid groups warn of a manufactured humanitarian catastrophe.

“It's not about the distribution of food, it's not about humanitarian aid. It's about creating — luring Palestinians who are desperate into the south, putting them into a closed military zone,” says Chris Hedges, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and former Middle East bureau chief for the New York Times.

This week on The Intercept Briefing, host Jordan Uhl speaks with Hedges about how we got here and what’s at stake. Hedges spent seven years covering the conflict between Israel and the Palestine, much of that time in Gaza. He’s the author of 14 books, the most recent being “The Greatest Evil Is War” and “A Genocide Foretold.”

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During Donald Trump’s first term, the Supreme Court made some effort to check his power. But that era is over. The court has ruled that Trump cannot be prosecuted for actions he took as president, including for his role in the January 6 attack on the Capitol, and it just wrapped its latest term by restricting lower courts' power to block his unlawful orders on issues like birthright citizenship, abortion care, and immigrants’ basic rights. 

“What the Supreme Court did is it limited lower courts’ ability to use what has been the most effective tool that lower courts have to reign in the Trump administration's lawlessness, which is to block a policy on a nationwide basis,” says Leah Litman, author of the new book, “Lawless: How the Supreme Court Runs on Conservative Grievance, Fringe Theories, and Bad Vibes.” 

This week on The Intercept Briefing, newsroom counsel and correspondent Shawn Musgrave speaks with professor and attorney Litman and politics reporter Jessica Washington about how the Supreme Court’s right-wing supermajority is laying the legal foundation for unchecked executive lawlessness — and signaling to Trump that it won’t stand in his way. 

Listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. 

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On the Fourth of July, President Donald Trump signed into law a bill that constitutes one of the largest transfers of wealth in history — taking money away from working people and giving it to the nation’s elite. 

The bill is the culmination of years of giveaways that have allowed corporations and billionaires to tighten their grip on the government. The law triples the budget for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, slashes taxes for the most wealthy, and pays for it all by cutting health care for as many as 20 million people and gutting funding for public education and meals for school children. 

“ The reconciliation process goes hand-in-hand with all the executive orders that we've been seeing,” says Rep. Summer Lee, D-Pa. “It goes hand-in-hand with all of the different things that DOGE was pretending to uncover. It goes hand-in-hand with so much of Project 2025. So this is all just one kind of super villain packed into this — what they call this one big bill — that's like thousands of pages.” 

This week on The Intercept Briefing, Lee speaks to host Akela Lacy about what Democrats are doing to meet the moment and how they can break through Republican messaging on the bill. 

“ Democrats are screaming into a void,” Lee says. “The reality is that we have been talking about Medicaid, and it's very hard to break through in a 24-hour news cycle and this big bubble where we are in a sea of red coverage, conservative media, conservative narratives, disinformation, misinformation. And to break through in that moment takes more than just us.”

At the heart of it all is one core problem: the power of money in politics, Lee says. She introduced a bill to ban super PACs, the kind of groups that helped elect Trump and have pushed Democrats to the right. 

“ You cannot have a democracy and super PACs,” Lee says. “If you are able to influence and shape the politics, shape information — what information gets out, which information doesn’t — because you have more money, then we don't have a level playing field.”

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This week on The Intercept Briefing, we're re-sharing a conversation we first aired on March 7, 2025 – a conversation that’s only grown more relevant since it first aired. 

It’s a deep dive into the right-wing Christian ideologies shaping Donald Trump’s inner circle, featuring journalist and author of “Wild Faith,” Talia Lavin, and Intercept politics reporter Jessica Washington. 

As Trump consolidates power — with the backing of a hardline Congress and a Supreme Court increasingly aligned with his agenda — understanding the religious forces behind his movement is more important than ever.

We’ll be back next week with a new episode.

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This week on The Intercept Briefing, host Akela Lacy speaks to Iranian American author Hooman Majd about the Israel–Iran ceasefire, Trump’s role in escalating the conflict, and whether diplomacy can survive.

Listen to the full episode of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

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A tenuous ceasefire between Israel and Iran announced Monday appears to be holding. President Donald Trump made the announcement after unilaterally dragging the U.S. into the conflict and authorizing strikes on three Iranian nuclear sites using 30,000-pound bunker busters. 

Israel attacked Iran on June 13, just days before Iran and the U.S. were set to resume talks in Oman over the country’s nuclear enrichment program.

“ You don't have to be anti-war to understand that diplomacy in this case would've been better,” said Hooman Majd, an Iranian American writer and the author of three books on Iran. Majd is a contributor to NBC News and covered the 2015 Iran deal for the network. 

This week on The Intercept Briefing, Majd joins host Akela Lacy to discuss what's left of the path to diplomacy after years of sabotage, from Israel's aggressive military posture to Trump's withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear deal.  

You can hear the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

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This week on The Intercept Briefing, host Jordan Uhl talks with journalists Taylor Lorenz and Akela Lacy about how online disinformation is distorting public understanding of major events — from political violence to immigration to potential war with Iran. In this chaos-driven ecosystem, the right — and Trump especially — know how to thrive.

Listen to the full episode of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

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In the wake of the political assassination of Minnesota lawmaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, prominent right-wing figures moved quickly to assign blame. Utah Sen. Mike Lee pinned the killings on “Marxism.” Elon Musk pointed to the “far left.” Donald Trump Jr., the president’s son, said it “seems to be a leftist.”

But the facts quickly told a different story: The suspect, 57-year-old Vance Boelter is a Trump supporter who held radical anti-abortion views. 

“There's an entire right-wing media machine aimed at pushing disinformation around breaking news events and specifically attributing violence to the left,” says Taylor Lorenz, independent journalist and author of “Extremely Online: The Untold Story of Fame, Influence, and Power on the Internet.” “You see this over and over and over again, no matter who is perpetrating the violence.” 

“The reality is that the vast overwhelming majority of political violence in recent years has come from the right,” adds Akela Lacy, The Intercept’s senior politics reporter. “It basically treats that fact as if it's not real, as if it doesn't exist,” she says — a dynamic that then fails to address the root causes.

This week on The Intercept Briefing, host Jordan Uhl talks with Lorenz and Lacy about how online disinformation is distorting public understanding of major events — from political violence to immigration to potential war with Iran. In this chaos-driven ecosystem, the right — and Trump especially — know how to thrive.

You can hear the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

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ICE agents are arresting day laborers and raiding businesses across the country. They didn’t expect community resistance. This week on The Intercept Briefing, Salvador Sarmiento, the campaign director and lawyer for the 70-member National Day Laborer Organizing Network, and Jonah Valdez, reporter for The Intercept joined host Jordan Uhl to discuss the wave of ICE operations sweeping Los Angeles that have sparked a week of protests and the militarized response from law enforcement.

Attorney Isabella Salomão Nascimento also talks to us about our First Amendment right to protest.

You can hear the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

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Across the country, demonstrators are preparing for a weekend of protests against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations, Donald Trump's planned June 14 military parade, and Trump himself.

Ground zero for these demonstrations is likely to be Los Angeles, where heavily armed ICE agents have carried out raids at churches, graduations, parking lots, and scores of other gathering spots recently.

“ The level of armament that these guys are wearing is out of a GI Joe movie,” said Salvador G. Sarmiento, the campaign director and lawyer for the 70-member National Day Laborer Organizing Network. “It seems like the federal police is just driving around willy-nilly — dressed up as a goon squad — picking up people that they see on a street corner.” 

“The federal government [is] violently taking people from their work sites in military fashion,” added Jonah Valdez, reporter for The Intercept.

This week on The Intercept Briefing, Sarmiento and Valdez joined host Jordan Uhl to discuss the wave of ICE operations sweeping Los Angeles that have sparked a week of protests and the militarized response from law enforcement.

As people head to the streets again this weekend, protesters should be informed about their constitutional rights and safety options. The episode also features practical advice from attorney Isabella Salomão Nascimento.

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Trump plays the working-class hero while Democrats cling to corporate donors. David Sirota, Jessica Washington, and Ilyse Hogue discuss how to turn the tide. You can hear the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

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At a recent rally at U.S. Steel in Pennsylvania, Donald Trump stood in front of a row of workers in hard hats and safety vests and proclaimed, “We're right now on the verge of passing the largest working class tax cuts in American history.” He framed his “Big Beautiful Bill” — a massive tax cut for the wealthy — as a blue-collar blessing. 

The sleight of hand is classic Trump, and what makes his appeal to voters enduring. “The Republican Party is building the multiracial working class coalition that the Democrats have always said that they want to build,” says David Sirota, founder of The Lever and a former Bernie Sanders speechwriter. 

This week on The Intercept Briefing, host Jordan Uhl speaks to Sirota and politics reporter Jessica Washington about how Trump has successfully used culture-war grievances to win over working-class voters, and why the Democratic Party continues to hemorrhage support.

The episode also features Ilyse Hogue, the former president of NARAL Pro-Choice America and the co-creator of a new $20 million project called Speaking With American Men, or SAM. The initiative aims to understand — and win back — young male voters who’ve drifted to the right. “ A lot of what we heard from people is that they feel invisible to the Democratic coalition,” she says. 

You can hear the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

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“Catch and revoke” — the phrase sounds like something from a dystopian thriller, but it's Secretary of State Marco Rubio's very real characterization of the Trump administration's new one-strike visa cancellation policy targeting foreign students. A State Department spokesperson said that "full social media vetting" will be used for visa interviews and will be ongoing while the student remains in the U.S. for studies.

On this week's episode of The Intercept Briefing, host Akela Lacy speaks to anthropologist Sophia Goodfriend and Chris Gelardi, a reporter for New York Focus investigating surveillance and the criminal legal system. They unpack how AI and surveillance technology are being weaponized to silence dissent on American campuses and fuel the deportations of immigrants nationwide.

"In the past few months, as we see the expansion of government surveillance, the crackdown of ICE on both legal residents and undocumented people in this country, we see these technologies lending a veneer of algorithmic efficiency to increasingly draconian policies," says Goodfriend.

To understand more about the tech infrastructure powering deportations and what this digital crackdown means for everyone, listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

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LATE SUNDAY NIGHT, police in El Salvador arrested one of President Nayib Bukele’s sharpest critics, Ruth Eleonora López, an anti-corruption attorney who has spent years exposing government abuses. “[She] is one of the strongest voices in defense of democracy,” says Noah Bullock, her colleague and the executive director of Cristosal, a human rights group operating in northern Central America, including El Salvador. 

López, a university professor and former elections official, heads Cristosal’s anti-corruption unit. She has also been an outspoken critic of Bukele’s crackdown on gang violence that has resulted in “arbitrary detentions, human rights violations,” and the imprisonment of people not connected to gangs, according to Cristosal. 

The organization has documented widespread abuses in the country’s prison system. “There's a clear pattern of physical abuse, and on top of that, a clear pattern of systematic denial of basic necessities like food, water, bathrooms, medicine — medical care in general," says Bullock. “Those two factors have combined to cause the deaths of at least 380 people” in custody in recent years. That’s a prison system “that's been contracted by the U.S. government,” Bullock adds. 

This week on The Intercept Briefing, Bullock speaks to host Jessica Washington about López’s continued imprisonment and what her work and detention reveals about the Trump administration’s interest in El Salvador’s prison system. Facing vague corruption charges, López has seen her family and lawyer but not yet a judge. 

“The type of jails and the prison system that the United States has contracted is one of a dictatorship — one that operates outside of the rule of law,” says Bullock. 

But El Salvador isn't the only country the U.S. is looking to partner with to outsource immigration detention. “Now in addition to El Salvador, the U.S. has reportedly explored, sought, or struck deals with at least 19 other countries,” says Nick Turse, national security fellow for The Intercept. 

“Many of these countries,” says Turse, “have been excoriated by not only human rights groups and NGOs, but also the U.S. State Department.”

“ These policies did not leap fully formed from the head of Donald Trump,” says Turse. They have a legacy largely stemming from the post-9/11 counterterrorism policies of the George W. Bush administration. “The Trump administration has expanded the Bush and Obama-era terrorism paradigm to cast immigrants and refugees as terrorists and as gang members,” says Turse.

Listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

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As Elon Musk steps away from the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, the chaotic legacy of his aggressive assault on federal agencies continues to reverberate throughout the government. Musk’s goal — slashing $1 trillion from the federal budget — has fallen far short. At most, it has cut $31.8 billion of federal funding, a number that the Financial Times reports is “opaque and overstated.” Notably, the richest man on Earth’s businesses have received a comparable amount of government funding, most of it going to SpaceX, which remains untouched by DOGE’s budget ax.

Stepping in to carry the torch is Russell Vought, the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, and a key architect of Project 2025, the sweeping conservative playbook to consolidate executive power. Under his stewardship, DOGE will continue its mission to dismantle the federal government from within.

”Access to all of this information gives extraordinary power to the worst people,” says Mark Lemley, the director of Stanford Law School’s program in law, science, and technology. Lemley is suing DOGE on behalf of federal employees for violating the Privacy Act. 

This week on The Intercept Briefing, Lemley and Intercept newsroom counsel and reporter Shawn Musgrave join host Jordan Uhl to take stock of the legal challenges mounting against the Trump administration’s agenda. As the executive branch grows more hostile to checks on its powers, the courts remain the last, fragile line of defense. 

“ There have now been hundreds of court decisions on issues, some involving the Privacy Act, but a wide variety of the Trump administration's illegal activities,” says Lemley. In partnership with the Electronic Frontier Foundation and State Democracy Defenders, Lemley’s suit accuses the U.S. Office of Personnel Management of violating the federal Privacy Act by handing over sensitive data to DOGE without consent or legal authority.

Listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

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Donald Trump’s all-caps executive order on policing — “STRENGTHENING AND UNLEASHING AMERICA’S LAW ENFORCEMENT TO PURSUE CRIMINALS AND PROTECT INNOCENT CITIZENS” – is less about policy and more about intent. And that intent is clear: To give Trump direct control over local law enforcement and further shield police from accountability. 

As journalist and author of “Rise of the Warrior Cop” Radley Balko puts it, “It’s a statement of intent and whether or not Trump is able to do a lot of the more pernicious and unconstitutional things he wants to do.” 

The executive order calls for “military and national security assets” to assist in local policing, directs federal resources and protections for state and local law enforcement, and enhances police protections, among other proclamations. But it reflects a deeper ambition. 

“He wants more federal militarized law enforcement under his thumb instead of under the thumb of governors or mayors,” says Balko. “He wants to use them to help with immigration deportations. He wants help with cracking down on protest.” And the concern and fear, says Balko, is that Trump will also “use law enforcement to go after his critics and people he perceives to be his enemies.” 

This week on The Intercept Briefing, Balko joins senior reporter Akela Lacy and host Jessica Washington to break down the Trump administration’s push to federalize local law enforcement and “unleash” police who already face minimal meaningful restraint.

Listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

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