In Ohio over the weekend, Donald Trump delivered one of his most unhinged and dangerous rally speeches yet: He used appallingly dehumanizing language about migrants, saluted the Jan. 6 rioters as patriots and heroes, and predicted a “bloodbath” if he loses the election. We talked to New Yorker staff writer Susan Glasser, the author of an excellent new piece about Trump’s use of violent and authoritarian language at rallies like this one, about why the media urgently needs to do better at conveying the full threat to democracy that Trump poses. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On Thursday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer gave an extraordinary speech lacerating Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel over the horrific civilian toll in Gaza. This is an important moment in U.S. politics: The highest ranking Jewish Democrat stood strongly for Palestinian rights at a time when the war in Gaza is badly dividing the Democratic coalition. To navigate these complexities, we talked to Randi Weingarten of the American Federation of Teachers, which is promoting a peace effort called Standing Together, and Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne, who writes regularly about intra-coalitional tensions among Democrats. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg has prominently argued that it’s premature to freak out about Donald Trump’s lead in the polls. Rosenberg’s case is partly that the Democratic Party is strong and has been winning lots of elections lately, as readers of his “Hopium Chronicles” well know. But there’s another, less-appreciated side to his analysis: That the people who make ads and run campaigns and do politics for a living know that Trump’s unfathomably high pile-up of negatives is, in the end, probably insurmountable for him. So we chatted with Rosenberg about this side of his theory — and about why the Biden team appears quietly confident of victory. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week, a group of prominent “Never Trump” Republicans and conservatives announced that they will spend $50 million to defeat Donald Trump this fall. The group, Republican Voters against Trump, hopes to appeal to independents and moderate Republicans who backed him in 2020 and might be persuaded not to in 2024. But how big is this pool of voters, and what’s the best way to reach them? We chatted with strategist Sarah Longwell, who runs the group and regularly conducts focus groups to figure out what really makes these elusive voters tick. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Over the weekend, The New York Times published a news analysis entitled, “The Biden-Trump rerun: A nation craving change gets more of the same.” This has become a constant refrain in the press: One of the candidates is running on an explicit set of promises to destroy American democracy, yet the press keeps calling this a “rerun” of 2020, almost as if it’s all a sporting event. We chatted with Mark Jacob, a former veteran journalist who writes the “Stop the Presses” newsletter, about all the insidious ways that press coverage is sanitizing the threat posed by Donald Trump and MAGA. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Have you heard of Bridget Ziegler? A co-founder of the far right Moms for Liberty, she is embroiled in a three-way sex scandal involving her husband, Florida GOP chair Christian Ziegler. Now some Florida parents are running brutal ads attacking her, even as the Moms for Liberty movement is unexpectedly losing ground everywhere. We chatted with journalist Jennifer Berkshire, the author of a forthcoming book on our cultural battles over education, who explained the bigger, deeper story here: The right are the ones now on the defensive in the school wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. triggered an online explosion with a very weird defense of himself for spending time with Jeffrey Epstein. Everyone laughed, but we think this saga is revealing: It opens a window on his underappreciated appeal to disaffected young men. So we chatted with Natalia Mehlman Petrzela, a New School professor who specializes in politics and culture and has dissected the Kennedy phenomenon in surprising ways. Petrzela helped us uncover the darker undercurrents driving Kennedy’s popularity and the ugly truths it reveals about our politics. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Texas is a state that keeps breaking the hearts of Democrats everywhere. But hopes are rising again this week, after Representative Colin Allred, a former NFL player and civil rights lawyer, captured the Democratic nomination to unseat Senator Ted Cruz. Six years after Beto O’Rourke fell three points short of beating Cruz, what will be different this time? We chatted with Allred about his path forward, how Democrats can compete in rural America, and why Republicans have turned the border into a fantasy zone. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Earlier this week, Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico signed a handful of gun control bills in the face of a terrible spate of gun violence in her state that has drawn national attention. Lujan Grisham is smack in the middle of some big trends in our politics right now: The transformation of the southwest, the success of Democrats in border states, and the rise of the female Democratic governor in the era of Donald Trump. We chatted with Lujan Grisham about all these things—and a whole lot more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On Monday, the Supreme Court ruled 9 to zero that Donald Trump will not be disqualified from appearing on the ballot in Colorado, despite having engaged in insurrection. Coupled with the court’s willingness to hear Trump’s demand for full immunity from prosecution for insurrection-related crimes, all this raises serious questions about whether it is functionally placing Trump beyond accountability. We chatted with New Republic writer Matt Ford, author of a new piece eviscerating the court’s latest ruling, about the deeper falsehoods about Trump and the MAGA movement that the court is advancing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices