As the US continues to pursue Wikileaks founder Julian Assange’s extradition from the UK, an explosive story from Yahoo News has revealed that top officials including the then CIA Director Mike Pompeo discussed extraditing and even assassinating him. Michael Isikoff, one of the reporters on that story, joins Ryan Grim to discuss Assange’s fate as well as his recent portrayal in the FX show American Crime Story, which dramatizes his role in the revelation of the Monica Lewinsky affair.https://join.theintercept.com/donate/now  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Deconstructed with Mehdi Hasan

Michael Isikoff on Julian Assange and Monica Lewinsky

On Sunday, a former Facebook data scientist went on 60 Minutes to accuse the company of defrauding its advertising customers and deliberately engineering social division and ethnic strife. Then on Monday, the entire Facebook product family went offline for six hours: Instagram, Whatsapp, and of course Facebook.com itself.Then on Wednesday, big tech critic and antitrust advocate Jonathan Kanter got a highly favorable reception from the Senate Commerce Subcommittee, suggesting that he will likely be confirmed as head of the antitrust division at the Justice Department. So where does all this leave Zuckerberg, Inc.? Conservative Partnership Institute Policy Director Rachel Bovard and economist and author Matt Stoller join Ryan Grim to discuss where big tech antitrust is headed.https://join.theintercept.com/donate/now  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Facebook's Very Bad Week Just Got Worse

This week, progressives in the House of Representatives were able to stall an effort by the centrist dark money group No Labels to separate the infrastructure portion of President Biden’s reconciliation bill from the tax reform and social spending components, hoping that the latter could then be defeated at a later date. One of the leaders of the effort, New Jersey representative Bonnie Watson Coleman, joins Ryan Grim to discuss where the fight to pass the bill goes from here.https://join.theintercept.com/donate/now  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Hold the Line: The Progressive Caucus Makes Its Stand

In December, Congresswoman Marcia Fudge was nominated to head the Department of Housing and Urban Development by president-elect Biden. Former Ohio state senator and surrogate for both the 2016 and 2020 Bernie Sanders campaigns Nina Turner quickly emerged as the candidate to beat in the race to fill her seat. Yet when the dust of the primary had cleared on August 3rd, Shontel Brown, the favored candidate of the Democratic Party establishment, was victorious. Turner joins Ryan Grim to discuss what went wrong, her future political ambitions, and what progressives can learn from the race.https://join.theintercept.com/donate/now  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Nina Turner on Her Loss and Future

The next few weeks will be crucial for the Democrats’ $3.5 trillion reconciliation package, which is central to Joe Biden’s agenda. Pennsylvania congressman Brendan Boyle of the House Ways and Means Committee joins Ryan Grim to discuss how the bill could reshape the American economy.https://join.theintercept.com/donate/now  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Tax the Rich

It’s become a familiar pattern for West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin: first, announce your opposition to a Biden legislative priority. Second, extract some concessions on the theory that this will attract Republican support. Finally, announce that you’ve had a change of heart and can support the bill, which is of course meaningless since the longed for Republican votes never materialize and no floor vote ever happens. Now Manchin appears to be doing the same old dance with Biden’s budget plan. Whatever the merits of this political strategy, it has certainly turned Manchin into the and most talked-about Senator among DC pundits. But who is he really, and what do West Virginians think of him? West Virginia native Stephen Smith, founder of West Virginia Can’t Wait, joins Ryan Grim to discuss his state’s senior senator.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

King Manchin

More than 45 dead after remnants of Hurricane Ida slammed the Northeast. In Louisiana, where the hurricane hit days before, hundreds of thousands remain without electricity. Meanwhile, massive fires in the West have burned for weeks. Amid all this catastrophe, we continue building new infrastructure to prop up a fossil fuel industry, barreling us toward one climate disaster after another. The most egregious example at the moment is energy company Enbridge’s Line 3 project. Intercept reporter Alleen Brown and attorney and founder of the Giniw Collective Tara Houska join Ryan Grim to discuss Line 3. It's a massive pipeline that snakes across the Canadian border, through Minnesota wetlands, and under the Mississippi River, all so it can transport tar sands oil — the dirtiest of the dirtiest energy — to be refined and, for much of it, exported.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Line 3 and a Week of Climate Catastrophe

A suicide bombing at Hamid Karzai airport in Kabul on Thursday struck crowds that had gathered in hope of escaping the country. ISIS-K, an Afghanistan-based offshoot of the Islamic State, claimed responsibility for the attacks. Journalist Andrew Quilty joins Ryan Grim to talk about the history of ISIS-K and the aftermath of the attacks. Then, Minnesota congresswoman Ilhan Omar discusses the situation confronting refugees from Afghanistan looking to come to the U.S.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Andrew Quilty and Ilhan Omar on Afghanistan

A media consensus has quickly emerged around the Biden administration’s Afghanistan withdrawal, and it goes like this: whatever its merits in the abstract, in its execution the whole thing has been a chaotic debacle. On this week’s Deconstructed, Ryan Grim talks to journalist and author Anand Gopal and to politician and former US army major Richard Ojeda. They discuss what the media are missing, and why the Afghanistan exit is long overdue.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Anand Gopal And Richard Ojeda On Afghanistan

This week the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, released the first part of its latest report on the state of the Earth’s climate. It details with greater certainty than ever before the links between human activity and extreme weather patterns: fires, floods, and rising sea levels. Journalist David Wallace-Wells and sociologist Dana Fisher join Ryan Grim to discuss the takeaways from the new report.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The Era of Climate Denial is Over

Last week, congress failed to pass an extension to the COVID-19 eviction moratorium. In response several members of the house, including congresswomen Cori Bush and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, camped out on the steps of the capitol in an effort to pressure the Biden administration into executive action. Congresswoman Bush joins Ryan Grim to discuss this week’s action and how her own life story has informed her understanding of poverty and eviction.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Cori Bush on the Shame and Power of Poverty

The assasination earlier this month of Haitian president Jovenel Moïse is raising new questions about the threat posed by international mercenaries. It also casts a new light on a story The Intercept published last month that revealed the existence of a 2020 coup plot against the newly elected president of Bolivia, Luis Arcé — successor to the country’s long-serving leftist president Evo Morales. As in Haiti, the plot would have seen foreign mercenaries deployed against an elected leader. Ryan Grim and Laurence Blair, who worked together on that story, look back on their reporting.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The Coup That Wasn't

We'd like to introduce you to American ISIS, a new podcast from The Intercept and Topic Studios. American ISIS offers the most detailed account yet of an American who lived and died inside the Islamic State. This is the first episode. Listen to the full eight-episode documentary podcast on audible.com/AmericanISIS.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Introducing American Isis

Last Friday President Biden announced a sweeping executive order aimed at ending what he called a 40-year “experiment of letting giant corporations accumulate more and more power.” Attorney and law professor Zephyr Teachout joins Ryan Grim to discuss the resurgence of antitrust under the Biden presidency.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Antitrust Makes a Comeback

25 years before he first ran for the Democratic presidential nomination, 31-year-old Dennis Kucinich was elected mayor of Cleveland, Ohio — at the time, that made him the youngest mayor of a major city in the country. His tenure would be dominated by the fight to prevent the privatization of the city’s public electrical utility, a fight that would pit Kucinich against powerful politicians, the Cleveland Trust bank, and even the mob. Kucinich tells the story of the fight to save Municipal Light in his new book, “The Division of Light and Power.”  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

How “The People’s Mayor” Saved Public Power

Journalist Mehdi Hasan is known around the world for his televised takedowns of presidents and prime ministers. In this new podcast from The Intercept, Mehdi unpacks a game-changing news event of the week while challenging the conventional wisdom. As a Brit, a Muslim and an immigrant based in Donald Trump's Washington D.C., Mehdi offers a provocative perspective on the ups and downs of American—and global—politics.

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Deconstructed with Mehdi Hasan

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