The Intercept Briefing

The WNBA is having a moment. Viewership is up. Attendance for this year’s WNBA All-Star Game surpassed the NBA’s All-Star Game. Games and events can be viewed in a record number of places, from broadcast to cable and streaming. And just this week, Angel Reese of the Atlanta Dream set a single-game record. 

But the stories about the WNBA capturing national attention in recent weeks are about none of that. Instead, the focus has been on two retired NBA players, including Enes Kanter Freedom, who showed up courtside at an August 23 Chicago Sky–Indiana Fever game we...

It’s been nearly three years into Israel's genocidal war on Palestinians, and still no step closer to its end. Since the latest “ceasefire” began in October 2025, Israel has continued to bombard Gaza and has killed more than 1,200 people, United Nations experts reported earlier this month. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu more recently rejected President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace agreement with Hamas for Israeli troops to withdraw from the Gaza Strip.

“The burden has really continued to devastate the healthcare system in general. So you're hearing from colleagues every day. They don't have the materials that they...

The stunning momentum of the insurgent left hit a roadblock this week when democratic socialist Francesca Hong narrowly lost her primary race for Wisconsin governor to Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, a moderate who garnered significant support from establishment Democrats.  

“The collective power of that Democratic establishment in a state, where there is a Democratic governor and there is a real Democratic Party establishment machine, all of that power was required to eke out a 0.4 percent victory in the party’s own primary against a previously unknown candidate running as a Democratic socialist,” The Lever’s David Sirota tel...

Over the course of Donald Trump's second term, Democratic voters have expressed dissatisfaction with their party over what many view as an inability to stand up to the president and his broader movement. That dissatisfaction with the establishment has manifested in primaries in coastal cities across the country, where the progressive movement appears to be ascendant. On Tuesday, that test played out in Midwestern states, Michigan and Missouri.

Within roughly two hours of polls closing, The Associated Press called the closely watched rematch between Cori Bush and Rep. Wesley Bell for the incumbent. In 2024, AIPAC and other...

On Tuesday, Abdul El-Sayed and Rep. Haley Stevens, D-Mich., will face off in the Michigan Democratic Senate primary. The race is the next biggest test of whether progressives can win statewide, particularly in purple territory.

The Michigan race is one of the most expensive primaries of the cycle. Outside groups have spent upward of $50 million in support of Stevens or against El-Sayed. Most of that money is coming from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and its affiliated groups — close to $30 million, which their largest investment ever in a single race, according to The AP.

“It's...

Within the span of a week, federal immigration agents shot and killed two people in Maine and Texas, and another was hit by a truck and killed in Florida after trying to avoid ICE agents. A fourth person recently died in ICE custody after reportedly being denied medication. 

Their deaths prompted yet another round of questioning as to how federal immigration agents have amassed so much power and so little accountability. This week on The Intercept Briefing, host Akela Lacy speaks with Naureen Shah, of the American Civil Liberties Union, and Nayna Gupta, of the American Immigration C...

President Donald Trump blew up the temporary ceasefire after the U.S. launched a series of airstrikes against Iran over the weekend. The two nations have continued to exchange strikes throughout the week, with Iran targeting U.S. allies in the Middle East, as Congress debates further entangling the United States military with Israel — a proposal that would give Israel enormous leverage over U.S. defense policy.

“This is a formula for a forever war,” national security reporter Spencer Ackerman tells The Intercept Briefing. A major champion of such forever wars was Sen. Lindsey Graham, who passed away o...

The Intercept Briefing is happy to share the first episode of journalist Rebecca Nagle's new podcast series, First America.

Episode Description: We’ve all been told the American Revolution was fought over taxation and representation. But that’s not what the Declaration of Independence says. According to our founders, in their own words, what they were most upset about was Native Americans. How did we all miss that? Rebecca sits down with historian Ned Blackhawk (Western Shoshone) to talk about how hunger for Indigenous land drove the Revolution. Welcome to First America, the true story of how...

Last spring, President Donald Trump issued the “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History” executive order, taking aim at federal parks, monuments, museums, and sites that have cast the United States’s “founding principles and historical milestones in a negative light.” On the Fourth of July this year, the White House published its 162-page “Saving America’s Story,” attacking the Smithsonian Institution directly for “anti-white activism,” “illegal alien activism,” “transgender activism,” and more broadly for adopting “an ideological framework that no longer treats the American story as a shared national inheritance to be taught or celebrated, but as a political instrument to divide...

The Democratic Party is once again in upheaval as Graham Platner, its unconventional nominee to knock out longtime Republican Sen. Susan Collins in Maine, faces a rape accusation that threatens to end his once-powerful campaign and endanger Democrats’ chances of flipping a key seat in the November midterm elections.

Platner, a Marine veteran and oyster farmer whose anti-establishment campaign had already weathered a series of scandals, has denied the rape allegation from ex-girlfriend Jenny Racicot, which Politico first reported on Monday. His campaign said the allegation was “coached and coordinated by out of state establishment operatives,” though it was...

A noise demonstration that took place outside of the Prairieland Detention Facility in Texas one year ago has resulted in decades of prison time for the anti-ICE activists involved. Federal judges sentenced eight defendants, who the government cast as antifa operatives, to between 30 and 100 years in prison for terrorism-related charges last week; seven more people were sentenced this week.

“There's a stunningly wide gap between what the Justice Department has put in its press releases and what top officials have said, versus the evidence that was actually presented at trial,” says Intercept reporter Matt Sledge, who has been...

All three congressional candidates that New York City Mayor Zohran Mamadani endorsed won their primaries on Tuesday. The races were widely viewed as a test of just how much influence the left would have in charting the next chapter for the Democratic Party — and a referendum on Mamdani's power.

“Mamdani is the one variable that truly matters,” Michael Lange, political writer and elections analyst of The Narrative Wars Substack, tells The Intercept Briefing as he breaks down the wins of Claire Valdez, Brad Lander, and Darializa Avila Chevalier by district. “You pair that type of broad cultural politica...

Over the last few years, the world has seen unspeakable violence, death, and devastation from Israel’s war on Gaza. During that time, global perception has shifted as the scale of Israel’s destruction grew, with the death toll climbing to more than 73,000 people. Since the October 2025 “ceasefire,” Israeli military attacks have killed more than 1,000 Palestinians in Gaza.

“Spending years building a movement for an end to this genocide around the slogan ‘Ceasefire now’ alone, it was successful in building quite a substantial following,” Tariq Kenney-Shawa, an associate fellow at Palestinian think tank Al-Shabaka, tells The Intercept Briefing. “It wa...

On Tuesday night, oyster farmer and combat veteran Graham Platner overwhelmingly sailed to victory in the Democratic Senate primary in Maine. His opponent, Gov. Janet Mills unofficially dropped out in late April, leaving Platner effectively unopposed. But a series of scandals rocked his candidacy, leaving his viability against Republican Sen. Susan Collins in November in question.

The veteran has repeatedly emphasized the way his combat trauma made him a worse version of himself, and how in later years he has been able to heal and evolve. In Maine, Democrats so far appear to have accepted that message...

Join The Intercept Briefing podcast on Tuesday, June 16, at 5 pm ET (2 p.m. PT) for a live episode. Intercept journalist Jonah Valdez and Tariq Kenney-Shawa, an Al-Shabaka U.S. policy fellow, will discuss the not-so-real ceasefires in Gaza, Iran, and Lebanon. You can RSVP here.

Episode Description: Hundreds of detained people launched a hunger and labor strike at Delaney Hall in Newark, New Jersey, over Memorial Day weekend to protest inhumane conditions at the immigration detention facility run by the for-profit company GEO Group. Protesters flocked to the scene to echo detainees’ pleas for release and bet...

Shark Tank’s Kevin O’Leary has been making the media rounds defending the 40,000-acre data center project he’s backing in northern Utah. Dismissing residents’ concerns over the environmental impacts and water demands of the proposed project in the drought-stricken Great Salt Lake region, O’Leary has claimed protesters are “bused in,” “misinformed,” and alleged that China has had a hand in orchestrating the public push back.

“The Stratos project in Utah is an example of data center largesse,” says Jim Walsh, the policy director of Food and Water Watch, an organization leading a campaign to stop the rapid develop...

Republican Rep. Thomas Massie was decisively ousted on Tuesday night in his Kentucky primary, a win for President Donald Trump, who had launched an all-out attack on the congressman for his role in pushing for the release of the Epstein files. But in Pennsylvania, the left had a lot to celebrate. Chris Rabb won by nearly 15 points in Philadelphia in a major win for progressives. And Bob Brooks, a retired firefighter and union head, sailed to victory with the support of both the left and moderates. 

Mysterious super PACs with ties to Republican donors poured millions into i...

RSVP for The Intercept Briefing Podcast’s Live Conversation on Gaza. Sign up to join us on Tuesday, May 19, at 5 p.m. ET/2 p.m. PT.

Join The Intercept Briefing podcast for a special live episode taping with Intercept journalist Jonah Valdez and Tariq Kenney-Shawa, an Al-Shabaka U.S. policy fellow and co-host of Al-Shabaka’s Policy Lab series.

Show description:

In 16 pages, the Trump administration’s new official counterterrorism strategy outlines in broad terms who it views as terrorist threats and priority targets, ranging from anti-fascist activists to ISIS and so-called narco-terrorists. The li...

The U.S. Supreme Court dealt a fatal blow to the Voting Rights Act, triggering a new wave of redistricting fights in the midst of midterm primary elections. Last week, the court struck down a Louisiana congressional map with a second majority-Black district. The decision requires there to be evidence of intentional racism to prove that a map is discriminatory, making it nearly impossible to successfully challenge racial gerrymandering. 

Following the 6-3 decision along partisan lines, Louisiana suspended its already active congressional primary, throwing out cast ballots. Alabama’s Republican governor took steps to gerrymander her state's map...

The White House Correspondents’ Dinner last weekend became the site of the third failed attempt to assassinate President Donald Trump. “I remember the feeling was very similar to when it was clear that the House had been invaded on January 6, 2021,” Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., who was in attendance, tells The Intercept Briefing. “Everybody was afraid that somebody had come in with an AR-15 or something like that.”

This week on the podcast, host Akela Lacy speaks to Raskin about his experience at the dinner and later being asked by CNN’s Dana Bash about whether he’s thinking twice...

It’s primary season, this time against a backdrop of heightened concerns and awareness of powerful figures skirting accountability for sexual abuse and misconduct. Survivors of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein have “made accountability for sexual abuse and sexual violence an electoral issue,” says Intercept politics reporter Jessica Washington. 

One of the biggest stories to shake up politics in recent weeks are sexual assault allegations that upended Rep. Eric Swalwell’s bid to become the next governor of California, forcing the Democratic front-runner to also resign from his House seat. “You also have to give some credit to Democrat...

Sen. Bernie Sanders forced a vote on Wednesday to block the sales of bombs and bulldozers to Israel. The resolutions failed mostly along party lines with a handful of defections to the Republican side, but a record number of Democrats voted against sending weapons to Israel.  

“A supermajority of Democrats oppose this war, are generally against America's global military interventions,” former Sanders foreign policy adviser Matt Duss tells The Intercept Briefing. Yet Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., joined 11 Democrats in voting against the measure to block the sale of 1,000-pound bombs to Israel, and seven Democr...

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Show description: As talks to end the U.S.–Israel war on Iran break down and President Donald Trump demands a naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, journalist Amy Goodman says that in times of war and conflicts, “What I care about is the answer, and I care that people in this country don't get health care at the same time that money goes to kill others in another country.”

This week on The Intercept Briefing, Goodma...

Vote here to help The Intercept Briefing win its first Webby Award for best news and politics podcast.

Show description: Vice President JD Vance is set to lead renewed negotiations with Iran this weekend to bring an end to the U.S.–Israel war on the country that stretched into a second month. The talks come after a roller coaster of a week, which began with President Donald Trump threatening genocidal war crimes against Iran. 

“A whole civilization will die tonight,” he wrote on social media, “never to be brought back again.” 

Trump urged Iran t...

Vote here to help The Intercept Briefing win its first Webby Award for best news and politics podcast.

Show description: After more than a month into the U.S.–Israel conflict with Iran, President Donald Trump addressed the nation directly for the first time on Wednesday about why he dragged the country into an unprovoked illegal war. During his wide-ranging speech, Trump made numerous false claims, including repeatedly emphasizing the nuclear threat Iran posed.

The reasons the Trump administration have given for partnering with Israel in this war have been varying and at times include re...

Donald Trump’s second term has been broadly defined by an overwhelming sense of chaos. Every week the U.S. finds itself in a new crisis of the president’s making. The war in Iran and the broader Middle East is stretching into its fourth week, as the administration prepares to send thousands of troops to the region for a possible ground invasion. The U.S. oil blockade on Cuba has plunged the country deeper into a humanitarian crisis. The Department of Homeland Security sent ICE to airports across the country on Monday to allegedly assist TSA agents who have...

From the White House to Iran’s former crown prince, proponents of the U.S.–Israel war on Iran sell it to the American people — and Iranians themselves — as a crusade for liberation. Instead, the regime remains in place as the death toll grows, environmental hazards proliferate, and civilian infrastructure is decimated. 

As if the destruction inside Iran itself wasn't enough, the war is starting to have serious ramifications for the global economy and, more to the point, expanding into neighboring countries.

Lebanon, in particular, has come into Israel’s crosshairs, with increasing Israeli incursions and missile...

In the last few days, President Donald Trump has said that the U.S-Israel war on Iran will end soon, after oil prices jumped and the growing regional conflict continued to shake markets. After a wave of heavy bombardments throughout Iran, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth promised another round, “The most fighters, the most bombers, the most strikes.” 

“Hegseth has, yes, said that it's going to be basically death and destruction from the air, and they're delivering that,” Hooman Majd, an Iranian American writer and journalist, tells The Intercept Briefing. 

“Killing civilians is a hallmark of American...

The Israel–U.S. military campaign in Iran has killed more than 1,000 people since the assault began on February 28. A war powers resolution in the Senate to curb President Donald Trump’s ability to drag the U.S. into the war failed on Wednesday. Similarly, a measure in the House failed on Thursday. 

“This war is just a few days old and it's escalating really quickly,” says Ali Gharib, senior editor at The Intercept. “It's becoming a regional conflict,” as Iran retaliates and targets U.S. bases as well as Israel and Gulf energy sites. This week on The Interc...

“The deliberate cruelty that they found humor in stood out to me,” says Jordan Uhl of Donald Trump’s Tuesday evening State of the Union. This week on the Intercept Briefing, co-hosts Uhl, Akela Lacy, and Jessica Washington disentangle Trump’s nearly two-hour-long speech so you don’t have to. 

“This is who these people are. In some ways, they're trying to sugarcoat what they're doing, but in other ways they're so blatant about doing really evil things around the world and being totally OK with it,” says Lacy, in reference to Trump talking about kidnapping Venezuelan President Nicol...

Cuba is spiraling into a humanitarian crisis. The country’s long-standing economic and political turmoil reached new heights this week as the effects of the Trump administration’s oil blockade took hold.

The president’s targeting of Cuba is part of the administration’s broader attacks on the region, where the U.S. kidnapped Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores earlier this year and has executed more than 140 people in boat strikes.

As the U.S. hurtles toward war with Iran and further military action in the Middle East and continues to fund I...

Cut through the noise with The Intercept’s reporters as they tackle the most urgent issues of the moment. The Briefing is a weekly podcast delivering incisive political analysis and deep investigative reporting, hosted by The Intercept’s journalists and contributors including Jessica Washington, Akela Lacy, and Jordan Uhl.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Attorney General Pam Bondi testified before the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday, defending the Justice Department’s widely criticized rollout of the Epstein files against accusations that her department is shielding powerful men, including President Donald Trump, at the expense of survivors. 

Democrats, who reviewed the unredacted files for the first time this week, revealed that the names of “wealthy, powerful men” were improperly redacted, while the names of victims were left exposed. 

This week on The Intercept Briefing, co-hosts Jessica Washington and Akela Lacy gave their rundown of the politics stories they’re watching right now...

The word “terrorist” wasn’t coined on September 11, 2001, but the defining event of the early 21st century ushered it in as the United States’ go-to term for demonizing outsiders and dissenters alike. The so-called “war on terror” transformed the way the U.S. wields power at home and abroad, enabling mass surveillance and a crackdown on the right to free speech. It became reflexive for the U.S. to disparage immigrants and protesters as supporters of terrorism.

President Donald Trump has embraced this model and manipulated it for his own ends, as author Spencer Ackerman points out. The Trump ad...

In the two months Minnesota has been under siege by federal agents, immigration officers have shot and killed two U.S. citizens, poet and artist Renee Good and ICU nurse Alex Pretti. Local and state law enforcement say they’ve been blocked from properly investigating the shootings of Good and Pretti. 

“The federal government has blocked our state BCA, so that's the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. They are the state law enforcement agency that has authority to investigate any kind of deadly use of force involving police,” says Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty, who is leading local investi...

The people of Iran are in the midst of one of the country’s biggest uprisings — and harshest government crackdowns — since the Iranian Revolution. 

It started with shopkeepers in bazaars closing their doors at the end of December in protest of the plummeting Iranian rial and economic distress. But demonstrations soon spread to universities and across the country to every single province. Working-class Iranians wanted relief — both from the inflation crisis and U.S sanctions.

This week on The Intercept Briefing, host Akela Lacy speaks with Hooman Majd, an Iranian American writer and journalist, who explains...

Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Jonathan Ross fatally shot Renee Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, in Minneapolis last week, unleashing a wave of anti-ICE protests and sentiment throughout Minnesota and the rest of the United States. 

On Wednesday evening, federal immigration agents shot and wounded a man in Minneapolis, adding to the tension in the Twin Cities. President Donald Trump threatened to send in troops to crush the unrest.

“What should be very clear to all Americans now is that there is no way to wage war on ‘illegal immigration’ without also waging war on Amer...

How long will the United States claim control over Venezuela? “Only time will tell,” President Donald Trump told the New York Times on Wednesday — potentially years. U.S. troops invaded the country over the weekend, kidnapping President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores. Maduro and Flores pleaded not guilty to narco-terrorism charges in New York on Monday. They now sit in a Brooklyn jail, awaiting trial. 

Trump and administration officials have justified ousting Maduro by claiming it was consistent with the Monroe Doctrine — a doctrine that through the years “has been expanded into something like a universal...

After OpenAI CEO Sam Altman launched ChatGPT in 2022, the race for dominance in the field of artificial intelligence hit warp speed. Silicon Valley has poured billions of dollars into developing AI, building data centers, and promising a future free from the chains of unfulfilling work across the globe.

But in “Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI,” tech reporter Karen Hao pulls back the curtain, unveiling the human and environmental cost of artificial intelligence and the colonial ambitions undergirding Silicon Valley's efforts to fuel the rise of AI.

This week on The In...

We're excited to share another episode of The Intercept’s new podcast Collateral Damage. The investigative series examines the half-century-long war on drugs, its enduring ripple effects, and the devastating consequences of building a massive war machine aimed at the public itself. Hosted by Radley Balko, an investigative journalist who has been covering the drug war and the criminal justice system for more than 20 years, each episode takes an in-depth look at someone who was unjustly killed in the drug war. 

Veronica and Charity Bowers, a young Christian missionary and her daughter, are killed when the Peruvian Air...