Slate News

Oil-giant Exxon says publicly that it supports initiatives to fight climate change. But a new undercover investigation reveals the company’s quiet lobbying effort to stymie environmental protection legislation. Guest: Lawrence Carter, Senior Reporter & Special Projects Editor at Unearthed, a journalism project from Greenpeace U.K. If you enjoy this show, please consider signing up for Slate Plus. Slate Plus members get benefits like zero ads on any Slate podcast, bonus episodes of shows like Slow Burn and Dear Prudence—and you’ll be supporting the work we do here on What Next. Sign up now at slate.com/whatnextplus to help support our work. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Slate News feed! We’ll be sharing daily episodes from Slate’s podcasts What Next, What Next: TBD, The Waves, and A Word. Listen for everything you need to know about the news this week. Olympics officials have created an anti-doping system to crack down on cheaters. We have no idea if it’s working. And it’s ensnaring athletes for seemingly bizarre infractions. Guest: Lindsay Crouse, writer and producer for the New York Times Opinion section. If you enjoy this show, please consider signing up for Slate Plus. Slate Plus members get benefits like zero ads on any Slate podcast, bonus episodes of shows like Slow Burn and Dear Prudence—and you’ll be supporting the work we do here on What Next. Sign up now at slate.com/whatnextplus to help support our work.Podcast production by Mary Wilson, Davis Land, Danielle Hewitt, Elena Schwartz, and Carmel Delshad. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Slate News feed! We’ll be sharing daily episodes from Slate’s podcasts What Next, What Next: TBD, The Waves, and A Word. Listen for everything you need to know about the news this week. Donald Trump’s combination of bigotry, lies, and meanness led to a victory that stunned political pundits in 2016. Atlantic writer Adam Serwer would go on to coin the phrase that summed up Trump’s appeal: the cruelty is the point. Serwer has collected his essays chronicling the Trump era in the new book, The Cruelty is the Point: The Past, Present, and Future of Trump’s America, and joins host Jason Johnson to discuss it on this week’s episode of A Word. Guest: Adam Serwer, staff writer for The Atlantic and author of The Cruelty is the Point: The Past, Present, and Future of Trump’s America. Podcast production by Ahyiana Angel and Jasmine EllisYou can skip all the ads in A Word by joining Slate Plus. Sign up now at slate.com/awordplus for just $1 for your first month. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Slate News feed! We’ll be sharing daily episodes from Slate’podcasts What Next, What Next: TBD, The Waves, and A Word. Listen for everything you need to know about the news this week. On this week’s episode of The Waves, Slate Supreme Court reporters Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern join forces to dissect Amy Coney Barrett’s first term on the bench. They talk about how her confirmation hearings were shaped by Democrats’ desire to paint her as an enemy of health care, and how her recent decision upholding the Affordable Care Act has gotten her outsized praise. Then, they dissect her desire to be seen as an academic rather than a conservative, and unpack what we can expect from her in the years to come.RecommendationsDahlia: A Supreme Women Mug from Resistance By DesignMark: A Washington D.C. statehood tank top from DC Statehood Gifts & ApparelPodcast production by Cheyna Roth with editorial oversight by Susan Matthews and June Thomas. Send your comments and recommendations on what to cover to thewaves@slate.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this week’s episode of The Waves, Slate senior writer and host of Outward Christina Cauterucci and Julia Craven, Slate staff writer covering race, politics, and health disparities, talk about one woman: Kyrsten Sinema. From her wardrobe to her position on the filibuster, Sinema has been in the news a lot recently. The hosts talk about the Arizona senator’s political evolution—she moved from the Green Party to run as a progressive Democrat, but when she got to the U.S. Senate, she tacked toward the center—and whether she is currently exhibiting any signs of political coherence. Christina unpacks the high note of Sinema at the Capitol: her wardrobe, noting that the flashy fashions that once brought visual interest to the normally drab walls of Congress have taken a turn for the worse. As Sinema started to stymie Democratic plans, her “fuck off” ring and “dangerous creature” sweater took on a whole new meaning.After the break, Julia and Christina dive deep into the filibuster. While standing in the way of the Democrats’ ability to pass almost any legislation at all, Sinema has spouted inaccurate narratives of how the filibuster came into being. Julia and Christina talk about her earlier vote for John Lewis as House leader, and try to square that with her current position, which is holding up voting-rights legislation. But Sinema doesn’t seem to be listening to most of the criticism she’s getting for her position, instead dismissing parts of it as merely sexist. For Slate Plus members, Julia and Christina continue our new segment, Gateway Feminism, where they talk about one thing that helped make them feminists. For Julia, it’s her great-grandmother and her enduring belief that Julia could become anything she set her mind to. Christina started her career as a feminist when she revamped her co-ed soccar team jersey in protest of the team name: The Molar Men. RecommendationsChristina recommends celebrating Pride Month by educating yourself about queer politics. She suggests watching a conversation between Amy Walter and Sasha Issenberg hosted by Politics and Prose. Julia finally finished reading her first book in almost a year! She finished The Vanishing Half, by Brit Bennett, and highly recommends finishing books. But Julia holds zero judgment on wherever you are at in your reading journey.  Podcast production by Cheyna Roth with editorial oversight by Susan Matthews and June Thomas. Additional production assistance by Rosemary Belson.Send your comments and recommendations on what to cover to thewaves@slate.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Kendi joins the show this week to explain critical race theory, and why it has become such a political lightning rod. He also talks about how the backlash against critical race theory is threatening academic freedom, and specifically how it kept Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones from tenure at the University of North Carolina. Dr. Kendi is the host of a new podcast, Be Antiracist with Ibram X. Kendi. You can listen here: https://www.pushkin.fm/show/be-antiracist-ibram-kendi/Podcast production by Ahyiana Angel and Jasmine EllisYou can skip all the ads in A Word by joining Slate Plus. Sign up now at slate.com/awordplus for just $1 for your first month. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey Trumpcast listeners, here's another show from Slate: A Word, with Jason Johnson.  You’ve heard Jason on Trumpcast several times. Now, every Friday he brings his sharp analysis to discussions with policy-makers, journalists, entertainers, and other experts about America’s challenges around race, and ideas on the way forward. If you like the episode, subscribe to A Word right here in your podcast app.Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, marking her second anniversary in office, would only grant one-on-one interviews to journalists of color. Lightfoot said she was highlighting a lack of media diversity. Critics call it racist. Could this policy change the status quo, or just be a distraction? Jason Johnson is joined by Errin Haines, editor-at-large of The 19th*, a non-profit news outlet focused on women. They discuss why too many urban newsrooms remain overwhelmingly white, and whether Lightfoot’s move was a step toward equality, or a political stunt.Podcast production by Ahyiana Angel and Jasmine Ellis. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We’ve taken you on a Dantean journey in this series, revisiting the damage done to the Republic by the presidency of Donald Trump. Other the last five episodes, we’ve chronicled how norms were shattered; loopholes exploited; and the constitution’s ambiguities laid bare. But Jack Goldsmith and Bob Bauer, whose book “After Trump” gives the series its name, have not just catalogued damage. They’ve laid down practical plans for reconstructing the presidency.So the question now is, Can it be done?In this final episode of After Trump, we look at the prospects for the future. We examine opportunities to fix the problems exposed by Donald Trump’s tenure as President. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week’s violence across Israel and the occupied territories points to a new era in Israeli-Palestinian relations. Palestinian observers find themselves wondering: Is it a changing diplomatic paradigm, thanks to a growing movement to acknowledge the human rights of Palestinians and find lasting peace? Or is it something more frightening, more deafening -- is it the beginning of unbridled war?Guests: Yousef Munayyer, a fellow at the Arab Center Washington, and Mariam Barghouti, a writer based in Ramallah. If you like this episode, subscribe to What Next wherever you get podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It’s a cliché now that the Justice Department should be independent of the president. Everyone says it—constantly. There’s just one problem. As a legal and constitutional matter, this “independent” Justice Department is a lot of nonsense.For more of this show, go to AfterTrumpPod.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices