Lyt til The Political Scene | The New Yorker

Paul Elie, who writes about the Catholic Church for The New Yorker, joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss the life and legacy of Pope Francis, his feuds with traditionalist Church figures and right-wing political leaders, and what to expect from the upcoming papal conclave to determine his successor.  This week’s reading: * “The Down-to-Earth Pope [https://www.newyorker.com/news/postscript/the-down-to-earth-pope-francis],” by Paul Elie * “Pope Francis’s Tangled Relationship with Argentina [https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-lede/pope-franciss-tangled-relationship-with-argentina],” by Graciela Mochkofsky * “The Mexican President Who’s Facing Off with Trump [https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/04/28/claudia-sheinbaum-profile],” by Stephania Taladrid * “The Cost of Defunding Harvard [https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-lede/the-cost-of-defunding-harvard],” by Atul Gawande * “The Supreme Court Finally Takes On Trump [https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-lede/the-supreme-court-finally-takes-on-trump],” by Ruth Marcus  Tune in to The Political Scene wherever you get your podcasts [http://swap.fm/l/tny-tps-extref]. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices [https://dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices]

Elon Musk, who’s taking his chainsaw to the federal government [https://www.newyorker.com/podcast/the-new-yorker-radio-hour/atul-gawande-on-elon-musks-surgery-with-a-chainsaw], is not merely a chaos agent, as he is sometimes described. Jill Lepore [https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/jill-lepore], the best-selling author of “These Truths [https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393357424]” and other books, says that Musk is animated by obsessions and a sense of mission he acquired through reading, and misreading, science fiction. “When he keeps saying, you know, ‘We’re at a fork in the road. The future of human civilization depends on this election,’ he means SpaceX,” she tells David Remnick. “He means . . . ‘I need to take these rockets to colonize Mars and that’s only going to happen through Trump.’ ” The massive-scale reduction in social services he is enacting through DOGE, Lepore thinks, is tied to this objective. “Although there may be billions of [people] suffering here on planet Earth today, those are miniscule compared to the calculation of the needs of the billions of humans that will one day ever live if we can gain escape velocity from planet Earth. . . . That is, in fact, the math that lies behind DOGE.”  Lepore’s BBC radio series on the SpaceX C.E.O. is called “X-Man: The Elon Musk Origin Story [https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0d7q0h8/episodes/player].” Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices [https://dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices]

Ruth Marcus resigned from the Washington Post after its C.E.O. killed an editorial she wrote that was critical of the paper's owner, Jeff Bezos. She ended up publishing the column in The New Yorker, and soon after she published another piece for the magazine asking "Has Trump's Legal Strategy Backfired?" "Trump's legal strategy has been backfiring, I think, demonstrably in the lower courts," she tells David Remnick, on issues such as undoing birthright citizenship and deporting people without due process. Federal judges have rebuked the Administration's lawyers, and ordered deportees returned to the United States. But "we have this thing called the Supreme Court, which is, in fact, supreme," Marcus says. "I thought the Supreme Court was going to send a message to the Trump Administration: 'Back off, guys.' . . . That's not what's happened." In recent days, that Court has issued a number of rulings that, while narrow, suggest a more deferential approach toward Presidential power. Marcus and Remnick spoke last week about where the Supreme Court—with its six-Justice conservative majority—may yield to Trump's extraordinary exertions of power, and where it may attempt to check his authority. "When you have a six-Justice conservative majority," she notes, there is"a justice to spare." Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices [https://dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices]

The Washington Roundtable is joined by Mark Blyth, a professor of international economics and public affairs at Brown University, to discuss how the bond market forced Donald Trump to retreat on some tariffs, and the risks of the President’s escalating trade war with China. “Ultimately, they can take the pain more than you can,” Blyth says, of the Chinese government. “They have locked down their cities for a year or more. They can deliver food through the window through drones. They don’t care if you cut them off from certain things. So getting into that fight is very, very destructive.” This week’s reading: * “Trump’s Do-Over Presidency [https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-trumps-washington/trumps-do-over-presidency],” by Susan B. Glasser * “The Conservative Legal Advocates Working to Kill Trump’s Tariffs [https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-lede/the-conservative-legal-advocates-working-to-kill-trumps-tariffs],” by Cristian Farias * “At the Smithsonian, Donald Trump Takes Aim at History [https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/04/14/at-the-smithsonian-donald-trump-takes-aim-at-history],” by David Remnick * “The Trump Show Comes to the Kennedy Center [https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-lede/the-trump-show-comes-to-the-kennedy-center],” by Katy Waldman * “The Other Side of Signalgate [https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-lede/the-other-side-of-signalgate],” by Rozina Ali To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker, visit newyorker.com/podcasts. To send in feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com [themail@newyorker.com] with “The Political Scene” in the subject line. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices [https://dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices]

The former senator Sherrod Brown, of Ohio, joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss the tumult that Trump’s tariffs have inflicted on the global economy, and why progressives should not merely oppose the President’s trade policy but offer a clear alternative. “I've heard economists talk about these tariffs upending the global order on trade. Well, to a lot of workers, anything’s better than the global order on trade. It’s our policy problem as a country, and it’s our political problem for Democrats,” Brown says. They also discuss his latest project, The Dignity of Work Institute [https://www.dignityofworkinstitute.org/], a think tank dedicated to advocacy for the working class.  This week’s reading: * “‘I Am Seeing My Community of Researchers Decimated [https://www.newyorker.com/news/deep-state-diaries/i-am-seeing-my-community-of-researchers-decimated],’” by E. Tammy Kim * “The Other Side of Signalgate [https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-lede/the-other-side-of-signalgate],” by Rozina Ali * “The Trump Show Comes to the Kennedy Center [https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-lede/the-trump-show-comes-to-the-kennedy-center],” by Katy Waldman * “At the Smithsonian, Donald Trump Takes Aim at History [https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/04/14/at-the-smithsonian-donald-trump-takes-aim-at-history],” by David Remnick To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker, visit newyorker.com/podcasts [http://newyorker.com/podcasts]. To send feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com [themail@newyorker.com]. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices [https://dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices]