The Intercept Briefing

• “Trump Has Appointed Himself Judge, Jury, and Executioner”

  In September, The Intercept broke the story of the U.S. military ordering an additional strike on an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean.Since then, U.S. boat strikes have expanded to the Pacific Ocean. The Intercept has documented 22 strikes as of early December that have killed at least 87 people. Alejandro Carranza Medina, a Colombian national, was one of the dozens of people killed in these strikes. His family says he was just out fishing for marlin and tuna when U.S. forces attacked his boat on September 15. On behalf of Medina’s family, attorney Dan Kovalik has filed a formal complaint with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.“We're bringing a petition alleging that the U.S. violated the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man, in particular, the right to life, the right to due process, the right to trial, and we're seeking compensation from the United States for the family of Alejandro Carranza, as well as injunctive relief, asking that the U.S. stop these bombings,” Kovalik told The Intercept.In the midst of this massive scandal, the so-called Department of War is cracking down on journalists’ ability to cover U.S. military actions. Back in October, Secretary Pete Hegseth introduced major new restrictions on reporters covering the Pentagon. In order to maintain press credentials to enter the Pentagon, journalists would have to sign a 17-page pledge committing to the new rules limiting press corps reporting to explicitly authorized information, including a promise to not gather or seek information the department has not officially released.This week on The Intercept Briefing, host Jessica Washington speaks to Kovalik about Medina's case. Intercept senior reporterNick Turse and Gregg Leslie, executive director of the First Amendment Clinic at Arizona State University Law, also join Washington to discuss the strikes off the coast of Latin America, subsequent attacks on shipwrecked survivors, and the administration’s response to reporting on U.S. forces and the Pentagon.Leslie raised concerns about the administration’s attempts to erase press freedoms. “It's just that fundamental issue of, who gets to cover the government? Is it only government-sanctioned information that gets out to the people, or is it people working on behalf of the United States public who get to really hold people to account and dive deep for greater information? And all of that is being compromised, if there's an administration that says, ‘We get to completely put a chokehold on any information that we don't want to be released,’” says Leslie. “You just don't have a free press if you have to pledge that you're not going to give away information just because it hasn't been cleared. It just shouldn't work that way, and it hasn't worked that way. And it's frightening that we've gotten an administration trying to make that the norm.”With a president who regularly targets journalists and critics, Turse adds, “What's to stop a lawless president from killing people in America that he deems to be domestic terrorists? … These boat strikes, the murders of people convicted of no crimes, if they become accepted as normal. There's really nothing to stop the president from launching such attacks within the United States.”Listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing onApple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.You can support our work at theintercept.com/join. Your donation, no matter the amount, makes a real difference. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• Lethal Illusion: Understanding the Death Penalty Apparatus

  As of December first, officials across the U.S. have executed 44 people in 11 states, making 2025 one of the deadliest years for state sanctioned executions. In this week’s episode we talk to Malcolm Gladwell, whose new podcast series dives into one case to understand how the system operates and the reality that who gets sentenced to die often depends on things that have nothing to do with guilt or innocence. Intercept reporter Liliana Segura also joins the conversation. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• REBROADCAST: The Housing Hunger Games

  This week on The Intercept Briefing: What does it mean to work full-time in America and still not afford a place to live? We're resharing our conversation with journalist Brian Goldstone, whose new book “There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America,” examines this growing crisis. Goldstone's book — a finalist for the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction — reveals how people holding down jobs are increasingly living in their cars, motels, shelters, or on the streets. This episode originally aired August 29, 2025.Episode Description: Homeless sweeps have become the go-to, bipartisan performance of “doing something” about the U.S. housing crisis — a spectacle embraced by Democrats and Republicans, city halls, and the White House alike. But sweeps are not a solution. They’re a way to make homelessness less visible while the crisis deepens.The roots stretch back decades. President Ronald Reagan’s Tax Reform Act of 1986 pulled the federal government out of building and maintaining public housing, paving the way for a fragmented patchwork scheme of vouchers and tax credits. The result is the system we live with today — one that does little to stem the tide.Last year, more than 700,000 people were officially counted as homeless, the highest number ever recorded. Nearly 150,000 of them were children. And that number leaves out the “hidden homeless”: families doubling up in cramped apartments or bouncing between motels.“What causes homelessness, in the 1980s as now, is a lack of access to housing that poor and working-class people can afford,” says Brian Goldstone, journalist and author of the new book “There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America.”This week on The Intercept Briefing, Goldstone tells host Laura Flynn that the housing emergency is no accident; it’s the product of deliberate political choices: “It's an engineered abandonment of not thousands, not hundreds of thousands, but millions of families.”Listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.You can support our work at theintercept.com/join. Your donation, no matter the amount, makes a real difference. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• Robert Reich Thinks Democrats Are On the Brink of a New Era

  The Labor Department reported September jobs numbers on Thursday, showing employers added 119,000 jobs to the economy but also an increase in unemployment to 4.4 percent. “The September report shows fairly good job growth, but every other report we have for October shows a slowdown,” says Robert Reich, the former secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton.“Real wages — that is, wages adjusted for inflation — are going down for most people. The bottom 90 percent of Americans are in very bad shape,” says Reich. This week on The Intercept Briefing, host Akela Lacy speaks to the professor, author, and longtime commentator about the economy and the state of Democratic Party politics under Trump. “The only people who are doing well, who are keeping the economy going through their purchases, are the top 10 percent, and they're basically doing well because they're the ones who own most of the shares of stock,” says Reich. “What happens when and if the stock market implodes?”Reich has been beating the drum on poverty and inequality for decades. And while that message took some time to hit the mainstream, it seems to be hitting home now more than ever, but Democratic leadership continues to fall flat in conveying they understand the urgency of the economic hardships ordinary Americans face.The answer, Reich says, is new leadership. He is disappointed in Democrats who caved to Trump on the government shutdown. “It's another example of the Democrats not having enough backbone,” Reich says. “I think Chuck Schumer has to go. And Jeffries too.” He adds, “I'm 79 years old. I have standing to speak about the fact that there is a time to move on. And I think that the Democratic leaders today should move on.”Listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing.You can support our work at theintercept.com/join. Your donation, no matter the amount, makes a real difference. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• Saikat Chakrabarti’s Plan for the Political Revolution

  It’s the end of an era. Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who counts among her legacies in Congress successfully undercutting the push for Medicare for All, announced last week that she is retiring from Congress. The two-time former speaker of the House made her announcement after Democrats made remarkable gains in nationwide elections, campaigning on affordability and standing up to the Trump administration.“We are in this era where we need new ideas, we need new leaders, we need people who are going to push the party in a new direction,” says Saikat Chakrabarti, who is running to replace Pelosi and represent San Francisco in Congress, making economic inequality and corporate power the focal point of his politics. This week on The Intercept Briefing, host Akela Lacy speaks to Chakrabarti, the co-founder of the progressive outfit Justice Democrats who helped run the primary campaign of one of its first candidates, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, becoming her first chief of staff.Answering Lacy's question as to how he'll get it done, Chakrabarti says, “In the 1930s, we had a really powerful, far right in this country. We were actually seeing Nazi rallies in Madison Square Garden, it was filling the stadium. And the way we defeated that was FDR came in with the New Deal movement. He built this whole new economy and a whole new society that improved people’s lives so dramatically, it just killed this idea that you need an authoritarian to do it for you.” FDR “wasn’t advocating for going back to a pre-Great Depression era. He was advocating for something new. So that’s the way we get it done, and I see some movement towards that.”Chakrabarti has been openly calling for House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., to be primaried and tells The Intercept that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer should be too, following the end of the longest government shutdown in U.S. history, after eight Democratic senators — none who are up for reelection — joined forces with Republicans to pass a spending package.“My goal, honestly, is to replace a huge part of the Democrat establishment,” says Chakrabarti. “I'm calling for primaries all across the country. ... I think we actually have to get in there and be in a position of power where we can do all that, so it's not going to be this constant compromising with the establishment, trying to figure out how we can push.” He adds, “I tried the pushing strategy — that's what Justice Democrats was: We were trying to elect people to try to push the Democratic Party to do the right thing. It's not going to work. We have to replace them.”Listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.You can support our work at theintercept.com/join. Your donation, no matter the amount, makes a real difference. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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