The Assignment with Audie Cornish

New polling shows President Biden trailing Donald Trump in key battleground states, and that has many Democrats worried about his re-election prospects. Can anything be done to turn the numbers around? Or should the President bow out? Audie talks with CNN Senior Political Commentator and longtime Obama advisor David Axelrod who’s said that the President must decide whether it’s wise to run given the political headwinds he’s facing. David Axelrod is the host of CNN’s The Axe Files. Download it wherever you get your podcasts. And we’d love to hear from you! What do you want us to cover? Call and leave us your Assignments: (202) 854-8802  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Dive into the world of online detectives tracking down January 6th insurrectionists. How did a dedicated community of digital sleuths help the FBI bring thousands to justice? Audie sits down with Ryan Reilly, the author of "Sedition Hunters: How January 6th Broke the Justice System," for a journey through the realm of modern digital investigations.Call us with your Assignments: ‪(202) 854-8802‬. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Lawyers who represented former President Donald Trump face a tough choice: cooperate with prosecutors or face the wrath of the MAGA movement. CNN’s senior reporter of crime and justice Katelyn Polantz is here to break down the different factions of Trump associates and their perilous paths ahead. What’s to become of "The Kraken," "The Pound Sand Club," and... Mark Meadows?Call and leave us your political Assignments: (202) 854-8802.Polantz: Mark Meadows walks tightrope, complying with Trump prosecutors while maintaining GOP influence    Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Book sales — in general — are down, but one genre is bucking that trend: romance. Romance novel sales surged a whopping 52% in 2022. So what’s behind the popularity? How did romance become the reigning champion among fiction genres in America? To find out we talk with Leah Koch and Bea Hodges-Koch, owners of The Ripped Bodice, a single-genre bookstore focused on romance novels. To learn more about how CNN protects listener privacy, visit cnn.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

More than a decade ago, Kevin McCarthy, Paul Ryan and Eric Cantor pitched themselves as the future of the Republican Party. They even gave themselves a nickname: The Young Guns. Now those dreams are dashed, The Young Guns are scattered to the wind, and House Republicans are rudderless, unable to elect a Speaker ten months into their majority. How did we get here?S.E. Cupp, a conservative political commentator for CNN, breaks down what happened to the Young Guns – and why being called “the future of the party” is really a curse.Video: They were the future of the GOP. Then MAGA came.Call and leave us your Assignments: ‪(202) 854-8802‬.To learn more about how CNN protects listener privacy, visit cnn.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thousands of people have already been killed in the Israel-Hamas conflict. And Israel has told residents of northern Gaza to evacuate roughly 20 miles to the south for their own safety. This week Audie talks with CNN’s Yahya Abou-Ghazala as he shares the stories of the people who have been told to flee, and what it’s been like trying to get stories out of Gaza right now. Read Yahya’s recent stories: They followed evacuation orders. An Israeli airstrike killed them the next day. In Gaza, Palestinians have no safe place from Israel’s bombs Listen to CNN’s daily podcast about the conflict, Tug of War “Israel at War”. To learn more about how CNN protects listener privacy, visit cnn.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

How do Americans feel about Israel? Broadly, there is deep sympathy for Israel and its response to Hamas in Gaza. But polling shows that among America’s more diverse, younger generation, attitudes toward both Israel and Palestinians are more complicated. Harry Enten, Senior Data Reporter at CNN, is here to parse the numbers and tease out some conclusions. Oct. 15 CNN Poll: Americans are deeply sympathetic toward Israelis and see their military response to Hamas attacks as justified  Call and leave us an Assignment: ‪(202) 854-8802‬ To learn more about how CNN protects listener privacy, visit cnn.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Writer Roxane Gay comes from a generation of what you might call “very online.” She gained international fame because she had a distinctive voice that stood far from the madding crowd on social media. This week Audie talks with Roxane about her new collection of essays, “Opinions,” how her opinions have changed, what it's like to become famous for sharing them, and how social media changed the way we all think about criticism and professional opinion.To learn more about how CNN protects listener privacy, visit cnn.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The political landscape has never been more confusing, and to some, even overwhelming. How do we determine fact from fiction? What keeps fact-checkers up at night? And what’s a democracy to do when even the professionals aren't believed?Today, we have Daniel Dale, a CNN senior reporter who rose to prominence for fact-checking former President Donald Trump, and Matthew Facciani, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Notre Dame. He studies people who fall victim to misinformation and how to best engage with them in a compassionate way.Call us with your political Assignments: ‪(202) 854-8802‬.To learn more about how CNN protects listener privacy, visit cnn.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Big news: The Assignment is expanding to twice a week! Starting October 10th, The Assignment takes on politics. Every Tuesday we will go beyond the horserace — talking with journalists with a sharp understanding of this political moment. This is in addition to our regular Thursday podcast, where we talk with people whose lives intersect with the headlines. To kick off our weekly political pod, we’ve invited CNN Political Director David Chalian to talk about how he covers this tumultuous political moment, the role of the media as truth tellers, and how he’s revamped his weekly podcast, The CNN Political Briefing, which drops every Friday. To learn more about how CNN protects listener privacy, visit cnn.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices