The Intercept Briefing

An Israeli military operation in Gaza this week aimed at rescuing four hostages from Hamas killed over 270 Palestinians and wounded hundreds more. The Nuseirat refugee camp, where the attacks occurred, became a scene of horror as the injured sought care from Gaza's few remaining hospitals. Karin Huster, a Doctors Without Borders medical coordinator, witnessed the aftermath. She joins host Murtaza Hussain on Intercepted to discuss what she saw following the Israel Defense Forces attack alleged to involve grave war crimes, and the ongoing impact of the war on Gaza's civilian population.

Transcript coming soon. 

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After eight months of brutal fighting with no end in sight, the war in Gaza is at risk of metastasizing into a regional conflict. Recent tensions between Egypt and Israel — normally security partners who have cooperated in the blockade of Gaza — have thrown into stark relief the growing risks of a spillover from the war.

This week on Intercepted, security expert H. A. Hellyer discusses with co-host Murtaza Hussain the growing hostilities between the two countries, which have resulted in Egypt joining the International Court of Justice genocide case against Israel, threats to annul the Camp David peace accords, and even a fatal shooting incident between Egyptian and Israel troops.

The war in Gaza is at risk of exploding into a far greater war that could cause the destruction of the tenuous security architecture that has held the region together for decades.

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The past week in Gaza has seen a major escalation in Israeli attacks against the besieged and starving Palestinians trapped in a killing cage. The Biden administration has aggressively sought to portray itself as being increasingly at odds with Israel’s tactics, mostly focusing on U.S. threats to withhold some weapons shipments if Benjamin Netanyahu conducts an invasion of Rafah. But the cold reality is that Israel has already bombed and occupied large swaths of Rafah. 

The regime has ordered the forced exodus of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, not only from Rafah, but also from areas of northern Gaza, once again thrusting masses of civilians — many of whom are wounded, starving, dehydrated, and traumatized — on a desperate hunt for a place to pitch a makeshift tent as they await either death or a ceasefire.

Despite the White House leaking stories to insider media outlets about how Biden is fed up with his great friend Netanyahu, the U.S. has made clear it continues to arm and support the Israeli regime.

This week on Intercepted, Medea Benjamin, co-founder of the feminist antiwar organization Code Pink, speaks with Jeremy Scahill. Since the launch of the so-called war on terror in 2001, the 71-year-old activist has spent more than two decades disrupting congressional hearings, chasing members of Congress through the halls of the Capitol for answers, and traveling to countries the U.S. has labeled as enemies. Benjamin discusses her personal path to activism and the siege on Gaza, and offers a guide on how ordinary people can disrupt business as usual in the chambers of power in Washington, D.C.

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Evergreen State College, in Olympia, Washington, reached a deal with students to work toward divesting from “companies that profit from gross human rights violations and/or the occupation of Palestinian territories.” It is one of the few schools to reach deals with students protesting Israel's war on Gaza as demonstrations spread to more than 154 campuses nationwide.

This week on Intercepted, we bring you a special episode from inside the student movement for Gaza. Prem Thakker, a politics reporter for The Intercept, breaks down the campus protests and students' demands for schools to cut off financial ties with Israel and weapons makers. Thakker is joined by Gillian Goodman, a freelance writer and journalism graduate student at Columbia University. Gillian takes us inside the protest encampment at Columbia, which inspired similar demonstrations nationwide before it was violently dismantled by police.

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Last month, the famed American philosopher and gender studies scholar Judith Butler was thrust into the center of a controversy after remarks Butler made about the October 7 attacks in Israel. A longtime critic of Zionism and Israel’s war against the Palestinians, Butler had condemned the attacks in the immediate aftermath. But at a March roundtable in France, Butler offered a historical context for the Hamas-led operations and stated that the attacks constituted armed resistance. The blowback was swift, and Butler was criticized in media outlets across Europe and in Israel. This week on Intercepted, Butler discusses the controversy and their position on Hamas, Israel, and crackdowns on student protests.

Butler is currently a Distinguished Professor at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School. They are the author of several books, including “The Force of Nonviolence: An Ethico-Political Bind,” “Parting Ways: Jewishness and the Critique of Zionism,” and most recently, “Who's Afraid of Gender?”

For full show transcript visit the episode page.

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In the face of growing international pressure, the Biden administration has continued to double down on a policy of blanket support for Israel, even as it presses ahead with a possible military offensive against the town of Rafah that many observers have warned could trigger the largest humanitarian crisis of the war so far. This week on Intercepted, co-hosts Jeremy Scahill and Murtaza Hussain discuss the Biden administration's approach to the conflict with Thanassis Cambanis, director of the foreign policy think tank Century International. Cambanis explains how Biden’s policy toward Israel is pushing the entire Middle East to the brink of a regional war that could inflict far greater suffering than we have seen to date, in an area which U.S. policymakers claim to be trying to exit.

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The war in Gaza has been among the deadliest for civilians, including children, of any war in the 21st century. After spending five weeks volunteering and administering at a field hospital in Rafah, Mohammad Subeh, an American doctor, describes what he saw to Intercepted co-hosts Jeremy Scahill and Murtaza Hussain. Subeh spent weeks treating wounded Palestinian children, many of them orphaned by Israeli attacks. He also described treating those who survived the aftermath of “mass casualty incidents” in which dozens of civilians were killed or wounded; many of these attacks appeared deliberately targeted at civilians, Subeh says, rather than “indiscriminate.” As the Strip reels from the consequences of a breakdown of public health infrastructure following the destruction of most Gazan hospitals, Subeh says that ordinary civilians are paying a gruesome price for Israel's military assault.

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The conflict in Gaza has galvanized a new generation of young anti-war activists, in the same way that opposition to the Vietnam War and apartheid South Africa did in decades past. A backlash is now building in the United States, led by right-wing activist and pro-Israel groups aimed at eliminating any public dissent over U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East.

As the death toll of Palestinians rises, a new authoritarian climate is sweeping across the U.S. — particularly on college campuses, which have transformed into laboratories for censorship and surveillance. Intercepted host Murtaza Hussain discusses this new political reality with Sahar Aziz, distinguished professor of law at Rutgers Law School and author of a new report on free speech and discrimination in the context of the Gaza conflict.

Intercepted has been nominated for a Webby award under the category of Best News and Politics podcast. Help us win by casting your vote today.

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The Israeli military assault on Gaza has continued for nearly six months, with word of an impending attack on the densely populated town of Rafah. Against this backdrop, a shadow war has continued to play out between Iran and a network of militant groups on one side, and the U.S. and Israel on the other. Iran today supports and arms not just Hamas, but also groups like Lebanese Hezbollah, the Houthis, and various Syrian and Iraqi militia groups. Aside from the U.S. itself, Iran today is likely the most important outside power in the Gaza war, though its role is often ignored. This week on Intercepted, host Murtaza Hussain discusses the role of Iran in the region with historian Arash Azizi. The author of "What Iranians Want: Women, Life, Freedom," Azizi also discusses political developments in the country in the aftermath of recent elections.

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Warning: This interview contains graphic descriptions of violence and death.

Throughout the past five and a half months, Israel has waged a full-spectrum war against the civilian population of the Gaza Strip. The United States and other Western nations have supplied not only the weapons for this war of annihilation against the Palestinians, but also key political and diplomatic support.

The results of the actions of this coalition of the killing have been devastating. Conservative estimates hold that more than 31,000 Palestinians have been killed, including 13,000 children. More than 8,000 people remain missing, many of them believed to have died in the rubble of buildings destroyed in Israeli attacks. Famine conditions are now present in large swaths of the Gaza Strip.

For months, doctors across Gaza have performed amputations and other high-risk procedures without anesthetics or proper operating rooms. Antibiotics are in short supply and often unavailable. Communicable diseases are spreading, as hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are forced to live in makeshift shelters with little access to toilets or basic sanitary supplies. Israel has repeatedly blocked or delayed aid shipments of vital medical supplies to Gaza. Basic preventative medical care is nearly nonexistent, and medical experts predict that malnutrition will condemn a new generation of young Palestinians to a life of developmental struggles. 

The result of the onslaught against medical facilities is that there is only one fully functional hospital remaining in the territory, the European Hospital in Khan Younis. Dr. Yasser Khan, a Canadian ophthalmologist and plastic surgeon, just left Gaza where he spent 10 days at the hospital performing eye surgeries on victims of Israeli attacks. It was his second medical mission to Gaza since the war began last October. On this special Intercepted, Dr. Khan speaks to Jeremy Scahill about what he witnessed. 

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As the official death toll in Gaza passes 31,000 people, including more than 13,000 children, the Israeli state is continuing its mass-killing operations in the besieged strip. The U.N. secretary-general is warning that famine is spreading in Gaza, and Tel Aviv remains defiantly committed to its distinctly offensive war of collective punishment.

While the Biden administration is growing more vocal in its public calls for a pause in Israeli military actions, it has also made clear it has imposed no “red lines” over military action. The Netanyahu government maintains it will escalate its attacks in Rafah, even as the White House is calling for Israeli officials to consider a smaller-scale operation to target Hamas fighters and leadership.

This week on Intercepted, Palestinian human rights lawyer Diana Buttu discusses the disconnect between the rhetoric of Western leaders and the predictable results of their sustained military backing of Israel. Buttu also analyzes the political debates within Palestine and the role of Hamas and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party, and the thousands of arrests of Palestinians in the West Bank since October 7. She also discusses the significance of Palestinian resistance leader Marwan Barghouti, who is currently serving multiple life terms in an Israeli prison but whose freedom Hamas says it is committed to winning in a future exchange of captives. Barghouti, who is often characterized as Palestine’s Nelson Mandela, was reportedly beaten in prison this week.

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After six months of a sustained U.S.-backed Israeli war of annihilation against the Palestinians of Gaza, President Joe Biden says he now has a “red line.” Asked about Israel’s threatened full-scale invasion of Rafah, Biden said, “You can't have another 30,000 Palestinians dead as a consequence of going after [Hamas],” Biden told MSNBC. “There are other ways to deal with Hamas.”

The White House has taken no action to halt the transfer of arms and other support to Israel’s war and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has openly said that he, not Biden, will decide whether to occupy Gaza. As the Ramadan holiday begins, the humanitarian reality of the people in Gaza has descended into horror. Israel’s deliberate starvation campaign is intensifying the already indescribable suffering wrought by constant bombing and ground operations. The decimation of the health infrastructure and the attacks against hospitals have resulted in the collapse of basic health services.

This week on Intercepted, Yara Asi, author of “How War Kills: The Overlooked Threats to Our Health,” joins Jeremy Scahill and Murtaza Hussain for a discussion on the health impacts of the war, the dehumanizing narratives Israel has deployed to justify its mass-killing operations, and the U.S. plans for building a port off the Gaza coast. Asi is an assistant professor at the University of Central Florida in the School of Global Health Management and co-director of the Palestine Program for Health and Human Rights at Harvard University.

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The U.S. State Department this week congratulated Pakistan's new prime minister on assuming power, following elections that were marred by widespread allegations of rigging, voter suppression, and violence targeting supporters of imprisoned former prime minister Imran Khan. On a special crossover episode of Intercepted and Deconstructed, hosts Murtaza Hussain and Ryan Grim discuss the aftermath of Pakistan's February 8 election, as well as growing calls inside the U.S. to hold Pakistan's military-backed regime accountable for its ongoing suppression of democracy. Hussain and Grim also discuss U.S. interests in the region, and the historical ties between the Pakistani military and its supporters in Washington.

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The Israeli government is on the brink of a long-feared military offensive against the town of Rafah, where more than 1 million Palestinian civilians have taken shelter from the Israeli campaign in Gaza. An attack on Rafah could trigger the worst humanitarian catastrophe of the war so far, including a potential ethnic cleansing of Gaza as Palestinians are pushed into Egypt. This week on Intercepted, hosts Jeremy Scahill and Murtaza Hussain discuss the current state of the war as well as the ongoing Palestinian campaign for political unity with Dr. Mustafa Barghouti, a physician and general secretary of the Palestinian National Initiative. Barghouti speaks about the current humanitarian crisis in Gaza, the role of the U.S. in facilitating the war, and his own political future and that of the Palestinian national movement in the wake of this crisis.

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On Friday, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced plans for a ground invasion of Rafah, where at least 1.3 million Palestinians are sheltering; the vast majority are refugees who have fled their homes. Israel’s most recent bombardments on Rafah have killed at least 14 people in a set of strikes on Thursday and upward of 100 on Monday. This week on Intercepted, guest host Sharif Abdel Kouddous — a contributing writer for The Intercept — and Tareq Baconi discuss Israel’s latest assault on Gaza, the history of Palestine, and prospects for the future. Baconi is the president of the board of Al-Shabaka: The Palestinian Policy Network, a former senior analyst for the International Crisis Group on Israel/Palestine, and author of “Hamas Contained: The Rise and Pacification of Palestinian Resistance.”

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The U.S.-backed Israeli war on Gaza is entering its fifth month. As the brutal siege and bombing continues, the United Nations and other international organizations are warning of famine and the outbreak of diseases. Powerful nations around the world, led by the U.S., are not just supplying weapons and political support for Israel, but also have now joined in the campaign to further restrict vital humanitarian aid to Gaza. The Biden administration has led the charge to suspend funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, the most important aid organization operating in Gaza. Israel has waged a smear campaign against UNRWA, baselessly characterizing the whole organization as a front group for Hamas. What began as an accusation that a few UNRWA employees may have participated in the October 7 attacks has now become a sweeping attack against the organization’s very existence.

This week on Intercepted, Jeremy Scahill is joined by Mohammed Elnaiem, a political educator and director of the Decolonial Centre in London. Elnaiem discusses the ways pro-colonial narratives provide support to Israel’s onslaught on Gaza, despite people around the world watching a “livestreamed genocide.” He also breaks down the major imperial powers’ role in the conflict, connecting the historical thread of colonialism to the current war.

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The killing of three U.S. soldiers at a remote military outpost in Jordan, claimed by Iraqi militia groups to be retaliation for U.S. support for Israel's war in Gaza, has set the stage for a response by the Biden administration that has blamed Iran for helping support the attack. After years of attempting to pivot away from the region, the Biden administration now looks set to deepen its military involvement in the Middle East as it fights the Houthis in Yemen and squares off in an escalating proxy war with Iran. 

This week on Intercepted, Jeremy Scahill and Murtaza Hussain discuss the trajectory of the U.S. long war in the Middle East with Juan Cole, professor of history at the University of Michigan and a longtime writer and commenter on the region. Cole discusses the basis of the ongoing U.S.–Israel security relationship, the perspective of anti-Israel militant groups in the region, and the prospects of the expansion of the war despite the Biden administration's desires to keep it contained.

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With his airstrikes this month ordered in response to attacks on Red Sea shipping, Joe Biden has become the fourth consecutive U.S. president to bomb Yemen. The strikes targeted against the Houthi militant group are aimed at preventing further attacks on merchant ships in the Red Sea. Biden himself has said that the strikes carried out so far have been ineffective but that they would continue on nonetheless. 

This week on Intercepted, Shireen Al-Adeimi, an assistant professor of language and literacy at Michigan State University and non-resident fellow at the Quincy Institute focused on Yemen, joins us to discuss the history of U.S. involvement in the country since the war on terror and the potential impact of this new intervention on Yemeni society. With co-hosts Jeremy Scahill and Murtaza Hussain, Al-Adeimi discusses the U.S. role in facilitating a disastrous Saudi and Emirati war in Yemen over the past decade, the emergence of the Houthis, and the political threats of the present conflict as Yemenis attempt to negotiate a peace agreement aimed at putting an end to a devastating conflict that has killed hundreds of thousands in the country.

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A panel of judges at the International Court of Justice in The Hague has entered deliberations in the preliminary phase of South Africa’s historic suit against Israel, charging it with carrying out a genocide against the Palestinians of Gaza. While a final ruling in the case could take years, the judges will rule on whether to order a halt to continued Israeli military actions pending a trial.

This week on Intercepted, Katherine Gallagher, a senior staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights, discusses the ICJ case as well as a lawsuit CCR has filed against President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin for the support and failure to prevent genocide in Gaza. Arguments will begin next week in federal court in California.

Gallagher, Jeremy Scahill, and Murtaza Hussain discuss what a ruling in South Africa’s favor would mean for Israel’s U.S.-backed war against Gaza and how the U.S. may try to shield Israel from international consequences, as it has done throughout history. They also examine the history of the U.S. judge who is currently president of the ICJ, as well as U.S. laws that require American officials to take actions to prevent, not enable, genocide, including one that was sponsored by then-Sen. Biden.

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As Israel’s war of annihilation in Gaza enters its fourth month, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appears intent on pulling the U.S. deeper into a wider regional war. In recent weeks, Israel has intensified its military operations inside Lebanon, killing several mid-level Hezbollah commanders in what appear to be targeted assassination strikes. Israel is also widely believed to have been responsible for the January 2 drone strike in a Beirut suburb that killed a senior Hamas official, Saleh al-Arouri. Hezbollah, a well-armed and organized Lebanese resistance movement with close links to Iran and a central member in the axis of resistance, has regularly fired rockets into northern Israel and has conducted drone strikes of its own, including against a strategic Israeli military facility.

This week’s guests on Intercepted are Amal Saad, a lecturer in politics at Cardiff University and a scholar of Hezbollah, and Karim Makdisi, an associate professor of international politics at the American University of Beirut and co-host of the Makdisi Street podcast. They join Jeremy Scahill and Murtaza Hussain for an in-depth discussion on whether Israel's war on Gaza will spark what many in the region believe is an inevitable “great war” against Israel. They also discuss the role of Iran and its relationships with Hamas and Hezbollah, as well as how Joe Biden compares to past presidents on the wars in Palestine and Lebanon. 

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Today, we’re sharing an episode of our sister podcast, Deconstructed, hosted by Ryan Grim.

More than 18,600 people have been killed in Gaza since Israel’s latest wave of attacks began just over two months ago, following the October 7 Hamas attack that killed some 1,200 Israelis. While the Biden administration continues to support Israel in its devastation, politicians and heads of state around the world are calling for a ceasefire. The last extended war on Gaza, in 2021, would reshape the Democratic Party's posture toward Israel and Palestine. 

On this episode of Deconstructed, Ryan Grim brings us another audio documentary, adapted from an excerpt of his new book, “The Squad: AOC and the Hope of a Political Revolution.” In this episode, Grim revisits the 2021 Gaza war. When members of the Squad and their allies began speaking out about the U.S. government’s support for Israel, the debates in Washington grew extremely messy. The Squad’s opposition led to a political showdown, with special interest groups and other politicians applying pressure on those critical of Israel’s attacks. It threatened a government shutdown and further pushed the conversation on the U.S.’s unconditional support for the Israeli military, setting the stage for the widespread opposition seen today, as well as the highly organized and well-funded reaction from supporters of Israel.

You can find Grim's book here: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250869074/thesquad

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For more than two months, the Israeli military has waged a scorched-earth campaign against Gaza, and the death toll has risen to over 18,000 Palestinians, including more than 7,000 children. Meanwhile, in the occupied West Bank, violent Israeli government-armed and funded settlers continue their violent campaign to purge Palestinians from their homes as the Israel Defense Forces lay siege to Jenin and other cities. 

This week on Intercepted, Jeremy Scahill discusses the dystopian game show that Israel is subjecting Palestinians to in Gaza, kettling them into an ever-shrinking killing cage. While the scope of the war against Gaza is unprecedented, it has been preceded by a decadeslong cycle of regular Israeli ground and air attacks against the Palestinians of both Gaza and the occupied West Bank. Independent journalist Antony Loewenstein discusses his groundbreaking new book, “The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World.” For two decades, Loewenstein, a co-founder of Declassified Australia, has reported on Gaza, the occupied West Bank, and Israel, having lived in East Jerusalem for several years. Loewenstein breaks down how Israel markets its defense and intelligence technology to nations across the world, boasting of how it has been “battle-tested” against the Palestinians. He also discusses the weaponization of accusations of antisemitism against critics of Israeli policies and wars and the formal efforts in the U.S., Germany, and elsewhere to categorize opposition to Zionism as antisemitism.

This is the last episode of 2023. Thank you for listening this year. We will be back with more episodes in 2024.

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On Friday morning, Israel resumed its bombing campaign against Gaza, and the civilian death toll is once again rising. Both Hamas and Israel accused the other of violating the temporary truce. Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant has promised, “We will fight in the entire [Gaza] Strip.” Despite meekly worded suggestions from Secretary of State Antony Blinken that Israel make an effort to reduce civilian deaths, the U.S. position remains one of full-throttled support for a military campaign that has killed more than 15,000 Palestinians, the vast majority of them children and other civilians.

In this special episode of Intercepted, political analyst Mouin Rabbani, co-editor of the Arab Studies Institute’s ezine Jadaliyya, offers a provocative analysis of the current situation. In a discussion with Jeremy Scahill and Murtaza Hussain, Rabbani suggests that behind the belligerent rhetoric and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s proclamations he will eradicate Hamas, Israel may already be heading for a bloody quagmire it is unlikely to transform into an accomplishment of its stated goals. “We’re now well into the second month of this war, and the most Israel has been able to achieve is to raise the Israeli flag on a hospital. It’s not exactly Iwo Jima,” Rabbani says. The “Israeli military is a very effective killing machine when it’s dropping 2,000-pound bombs from the air, but a rather mediocre fighting force when it comes to ground operations.” Rabbani describes the evolution of Hamas’s strategy and tactics over the past decades and maps out several scenarios that might emerge in the coming period. “The idea that you can wipe [Hamas] out, even if you fully succeed in conquering every last square inch of the Gaza Strip, is an illusion,” he says. “It is effectively impossible to resume this war without regional escalation.”

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Despite a temporary pause in Israel’s massive bombardment and ground operations in Gaza, the humanitarian catastrophe continues to worsen. With more than 15,000 dead Palestinians and whole neighborhoods and towns left in ruin, Israel’s defense minister has defiantly vowed to dramatically escalate the attacks inside Gaza the moment the truce ends. This week on Intercepted, Jeremy Scahill and Murtaza Hussain discuss the state of the war as well as the propaganda campaigns being waged by each side. Then Roy Yellin, head of public outreach at Israel’s leading human rights organization B’Tselem, discusses recent developments on the hostage and prisoner exchanges, how the crisis has impacted Israeli society, and describes the conditions faced by Palestinians when they are thrown into Israel’s military justice system. Yellin also explains the state sponsorship of violent Israeli settlers, the mass detentions underway of Palestinians in the West Bank, and the dangerous nature of Israel’s far-right Interior Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.

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The civilian death toll wrought by Israel’s siege of Gaza is staggering. More than 14,000 Palestinians have been killed, nearly half of them children. More than 1.7 million Palestinians in Gaza have been displaced from their homes. And President Joe Biden has presided over an open spigot of U.S. weapons and support for the war of annihilation being waged by the far-right government of Benjamin Netanyahu.

This week on Intercepted, the esteemed historian Rashid Khalidi joins Jeremy Scahill and Murtaza Hussain for a wide-ranging conversation about the long arc of the history of Israel’s political, economic, and military campaigns against the Palestinian people. Khalidi, a professor at Columbia University, is the author of several books, including “The Hundred Years' War on Palestine.” Khalidi also discusses how the war on Gaza will impact Biden’s legacy and the role of the United States in facilitating the current war and those of the past 75 years. "Biden has done permanent harm to the standing of the United States in the world, in the Muslim world, and in the Arab world. Permanent harm," says Khalidi. "He has alienated young generations that will think of the United States in terms of Gaza for a very long time."

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said recently on CNN, “It’s not only our war, it’s your war too.” He was right: The Biden administration has armed, funded, and supported Netanyahu every step of the way as Israel wages a campaign of terror bombings against Gaza. In five weeks of sustained Israeli airstrikes and ground operations, one in 200 residents of Gaza has been killed. Of the more than 11,000 deaths, 4,600 of them are children. President Joe Biden remains entrenched in his support for the scorched-earth campaign of his “great, great friend” Netanyahu.

This week on Intercepted, independent journalist Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Jeremy Scahill discuss the horrors facing the people of Gaza and the history of Biden’s support for some of the most extreme actions of Israel. They discuss the unprecedented killing of journalists in Gaza and the violent campaign being waged by Netanyahu-backed Israeli settlers against Palestinians in the West Bank. Kouddous also discusses Israel’s killing of Al Jazeera correspondent and U.S. citizen Shireen Abu Akleh and decries the lack of solidarity from U.S. and other Western journalists. We also hear recent public remarks from author Ta-Nehisi Coates as he describes his trip to Palestine last summer as part of the Palestine Festival of Literature and offers his analysis of the siege of Gaza.

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Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continues to reject international calls for a ceasefire and says Israel will oversee security in Gaza indefinitely. This week on Intercepted, Jeremy Scahill and Murtaza Hussain discuss Israel's monthlong scorched-earth campaign in Gaza and the U.S. government's complicity. Then Mairav Zonszein, an Israeli American journalist and a senior analyst on Israel–Palestine at the International Crisis Group, joins to discuss developments in Israel and Gaza. Zonszein, who is based in Israel, discusses the political developments in the country, the failures of Netanyahu during the crisis, and the tragic implications for Palestinians in Gaza.

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More than 3,000 children have been killed in Gaza since Israel began bombarding the enclave three weeks ago. The number of children reportedly killed in the conflict has surpassed the annual number of children killed in conflicts around the world since 2019, according to Save the Children. 

This week on Intercepted, Murtaza Hussain is joined by Khaled Elgindy, the director of the Program on Palestine and Palestinian-Israeli Affairs at the Middle East Institute and author of “Blind Spot: America and the Palestinians, From Balfour to Trump.” Hussain and Elgindy discuss the latest developments in the war on Gaza, the U.S. government’s role in this crisis, and what the future may look like as the violence continues.

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The dystopian images coming out of Gaza, as Israel continues its scorched-earth campaign, show horrific destruction and the killing of civilians. Over the weekend, Israel escalated bombardments in Gaza, raising the death toll to over 5,000 with more than 62 percent of fatalities being women and children, according to the latest U.N. reports. There is a growing concern Israel’s war on Gaza will draw other nations into the conflict, including Lebanon, Iran, Egypt, and Turkey. This week on Intercepted, Jeremy Scahill and Murtaza Hussain are joined by Yousef Munayyer, a Palestinian citizen of Israel and the head of the Palestine/Israel program at the Arab Center Washington D.C. They discuss the institutional support for war against Palestine, the shutting down of pro-Palestinian voices, and the broader regional and political implications of an intensification of the war.

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The Indian government was locked in a crisis over its alleged assassination of a Canadian citizen when a war between Israel and Palestinians in the Gaza Strip broke out that threatens to upend the global order. As the liberal international system begins to fray under these pressures, Indian author and journalist Pankaj Mishra joins host Murtaza Hussain on this week's Intercepted to discuss how the war in the Middle East is reshaping global politics, the evolution of India’s foreign policy, and its crisis with Canada over an alleged assassination.

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The Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu has initiated a total blockade of Gaza amidst a merciless scorched-earth bombing campaign. The country’s defense minister said Israel will operate with an iron fist in its war against “human animals” following the well-coordinated surprise attacks over the weekend led by Hamas. The unprecedented raids into Israel over the weekend killed scores of both Israeli military and civilians. Hamas has vowed to execute Israeli hostages in retaliation for Israel’s bombing of civilian sites in Gaza. 

This week on Intercepted, Al Jazeera’s senior political analyst Marwan Bishara joins Jeremy Scahill and Murtaza Hussain for a wide-ranging discussion on Hamas’s strategy, Netanyahu’s possible attempt to draw the U.S. into a war with Iran, and the prospects for a wider Middle East war. They also discuss the difference in media coverage of Palestinian and Israeli violence and the deaths of civilians, as well as the Biden administration’s role in the crisis.

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Correction: October 12, 2023: In an earlier version of this episode, Marwan Bishara said Hamas was not involved in the 2021 war between Israel and Palestine. In fact, Hamas was part of that conflict. The audio and transcript have been edited.

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Nearly the entire population of 120,000 ethnic Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh has been forced to flee their homes after the latest Azerbaijani military assault, according to Armenian authorities and the U.N. This week on Intercepted, Maria Titizian, editor-in-chief of EVN Report, joins Jeremy Scahill and Murtaza Hussain to discuss the history leading up to the recent Azerbaijani offensive and mass exodus of civilians, the collapse of the Republic of Artsakh, and the emerging geopolitical alliances exploiting the protracted humanitarian crisis.

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In the early morning hours of September 26, 2022, in the deep abyss of the Baltic Sea, an international mystery of substantial consequence began to unfold when a bomb ruptured the Russian-dominated Nord Stream pipeline. It was the opening salvo in a four-pronged attack that day that would leave three of the four pipelines incapacitated. One year later, no suspects have been arrested and no sponsor — nation state or otherwise — has been formally accused of responsibility.

This week on Intercepted, we present a special documentary, "The Hunt for the Nord Stream Bombers." We hear from Holger Stark, an investigative journalist from Germany’s Die Zeit newspaper who has broken several major stories on the bombing, as well as retired Swedish engineer Erik Andersson, who organized a groundbreaking independent expedition to film all four of the blast sites. Jeremy Scahill takes us through what we know and what we don’t about the bombing and examines the top suspects and the mounting evidence suggesting Ukrainian involvement in the attacks.

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The U.S. orchestrated a secret arms deal to send weapons to Ukraine, helping Pakistan reach the threshold needed for an International Monetary Fund loan to save the country's economy, according to two sources with knowledge of the arrangement and documents leaked to The Intercept. This week on a special Deconstructed and Intercepted crossover episode, Ryan Grim and Murtaza Hussain discuss their reporting on the behind-the-scenes maneuvering of Pakistani arms sales to the U.S. for the purpose of supplying the Ukrainian military. Grim and Hussain are joined by Arif Rafiq, a non-resident scholar at the Middle East Institute and political risk analyst who focuses on Pakistan and the region. They break down the U.S.’s pressure to oust former Prime Minister Imran Khan, the IMF’s role in the country, and Pakistan’s political economy.

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This is a special crossover episode with our sister podcast, Deconstructed. It's a big investigation from Ryan Grim and Murtaza Hussain.

Last week, Intercept journalists Ryan Grim and Murtaza Hussain published a bombshell investigation into Pakistan’s political crisis. Grim and Hussain were provided a Pakistani intelligence document by an anonymous source, outlining how the U.S. government pressured the Pakistani government to oust former Prime Minister Imran Khan. This week on Deconstructed, Grim and Hussain discuss their reporting, the leaked cable, and the fallout from the political crisis in Pakistan.

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Troops from Niger ousted the country’s democratically elected president, Mohamed Bazoum, last week. One of the coup leaders had previously received training from the U.S. government, becoming the 11th coup in the region led by U.S.-trained officers. This week on Intercepted, Nick Turse, investigative journalist and contributing writer with The Intercept, joins Jeremy Scahill and Murtaza Hussain to discuss the unfolding events in Niger and the Sahel region. Turse outlines how Africa has seen elevated conflict and instability as the U.S. has increased its military involvement on the continent over the last two decades.

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Despite months of widespread protests, Israel's right-wing government passed a law on Monday curbing the authority of the country's Supreme Court to block government decisions. This legislative action is just the beginning of a larger plan aimed at bolstering the nationalist Israeli right's grip on power. This week on Intercepted, Jeremy Scahill and Murtaza Hussain are joined by Mairav Zonszein, an Israeli American journalist and a senior analyst on Israel-Palestine at the International Crisis Group. Zonszein sheds light on the social-political dynamics driving the protests, the far-reaching implications of curtailing judiciary power on Israel and Palestine, and the future of Israel-U.S. relations.

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The United States sent cluster munitions to Ukraine, bombs banned by 123 countries due to how they kill and maim indiscriminately over a wide area and for years after a conflict. This week on Intercepted, Marc Garlasco — the military adviser at PAX, a Dutch nongovernmental organization where he works to protect civilians in armed conflict, joins Jeremy Scahill and Murtaza Hussain to discuss how cluster munitions kill civilians during war and long after, and why their use — even by the United States — should be considered a war crime.

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The fatal police shooting of 17-year-old Nahel Merzouk during a traffic stop in Paris, France, sparked days of protests across the country. This week on Intercepted, host Murtaza Hussain is joined by Yasser Louati, a French political analyst and human rights advocate to discuss how Merzouk’s death struck at the fault lines underlying social discontent building in the country and the increasing power of the police.

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In 2016, Flaviu Georgescu was found guilty and sentenced of attempting to traffic weapons to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, an insurgent group on the U.S. terror list. But when he was arrested by Drug Enforcement Administration agents, he told the officials he was working for the CIA. This week on Intercepted, Trevor Aaronson, contributing writer with The Intercept, joins host Murtaza Hussain to discuss Georgescu’s case. In the second season of Aaronson’s podcast, "Alphabet Boys," Aaronson tells the story of the DEA operation against Georgescu and how he was targeted by a paid DEA informant. Georgescu, however, had reported the attempted arms trafficking to the CIA and believed he was collecting intelligence for the agency. Aaronson and Hussain discuss their reporting on the case and how the U.S. government may be manufacturing the very crimes they claim to stop. The second season of "Alphabet Boys" is out now.

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This week, the Turkish government announced it will raise its monthly minimum wage by 34 percent to address inflation and the economic crisis in the country. Despite the long-standing problems in Turkey, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan recently won a contested reelection, further consolidating his 20-year rule. This week on Intercepted, Gönül Tol, the founding director of the Middle East Institute’s Turkey program, joins Murtaza Hussain to discuss the Turkish elections. Tol runs through Erdogan’s decadeslong history in office, how economic and social problems in Turkey contributed to the election’s rhetoric, and what Turkey’s future may look like under Erdogan’s autocratic government.

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The Ukrainian military’s counteroffensive against Russia is underway. Aided by the U.S. and other Western powers, Ukraine is making a push to expel Russian troops. This week on Intercepted, Jeremy Scahill and Murtaza Hussain are joined by Rajan Menon, the director of the Grand Strategy program at Defense Priorities and author of several books, including "Conflict in Ukraine: The Unwinding of the Post-Cold War Order.” Menon was recently in Ukraine, and he describes the developments in the country, more than one year since the Russian invasion began. Menon breaks down the regional differences in Ukraine and the geopolitical challenges to ending the conflict.

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This week, strategists at JPMorgan, the biggest U.S. bank, warned there are signs of “de-dollarization” around the world. Dedollarization is the push by countries, including Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, and others, to move away from the U.S. dollar as the world’s primary reserve currency. This move poses a big challenge to U.S. economic hegemony. This week on Intercepted, Canadian businessperson and mining financier Frank Giustra joins Jeremy Scahill and Murtaza Hussain to discuss the prospective move toward nations’ dedollarization. Giustra breaks down the history of how the U.S. dollar became the world’s primary reserve currency. Scahill, Hussain, and Giustra then discuss the different nations and the political and economic motivations to dedollarize and how the U.S. government may respond in order to maintain its economic hegemony.

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For the past few weeks, former Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan has been at the center of an unprecedented political crisis. In the lead-up to new elections, Khan was arrested and released on corruption charges intended to keep him out of his office. Meanwhile, his supporters have been facing off against the military, as the armed forces crack down on his political party in a campaign aimed at excluding them from political life. The conflict drives at the heart of the most important issue in Pakistani politics: the reality of military rule. This week on Intercepted, Jeremy Scahill and Murtaza Hussain are joined by Omar Waraich — a journalist, human rights advocate, and former head of South Asia for Amnesty International. Waraich provides the historical context, explains the Pakistani military’s role in the country, and where U.S. relations with Pakistan stand.

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An Intercept investigation, years in the making, reveals previously unpublished, unreported, and underappreciated evidence of hundreds of civilian casualties that were kept secret during the conflict in Cambodia and remain almost entirely unknown to the American people. This week on Intercepted, host Murtaza Hussain talks to Nick Turse, an investigative journalist and contributing writer for The Intercept, about his work to uncover the mass violence Kissinger ordered and oversaw in Cambodia while the U.S. carpet-bombed the country between 1969 and 1973. Turse’s investigation, “Kissinger’s Killing Fields,” is based on previously unpublished interviews with more than 75 Cambodian witnesses and survivors of U.S. military attacks in 13 Cambodian villages so remote they couldn’t be found on maps. Their accounts reveal new details of the long-term trauma borne by survivors of the American war.

“It was very hands on. Kissinger was picking where bombs would be dropped in Cambodia,” Turse says. “The authentic documents associated with these strikes were burned and phony target coordinates and other forged data were supplied to the Pentagon and eventually Congress.” Experts say Kissinger bears significant responsibility for attacks in Cambodia that killed as many as 150,000 civilians — six times more noncombatants than the United States has killed in airstrikes since 9/11.

Check out the full "Kissinger’s Killing Fields" project at TheIntercept.com.

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On September 26, 2022, at approximately 2:03 a.m. local time in the Baltic Sea off the southeast coast of the Danish island of Bornholm, the Nord Stream 2 underwater pipeline was rocked by a blast. That explosion, followed by a series of other targeted detonations on the older Nord Stream 1 pipelines some 17 hours later, were swiftly assessed to be the result of deliberate sabotage. The explosions off the Swedish and Danish coasts set off an international mystery with unimaginably high stakes. There are a variety of international players, including powerful nation states, who would have had the motive, capability, and opportunity to conduct such an operation.

This week on Intercepted, investigative journalist and author James Bamford takes us on a tour of what he calls “the biggest Whodunnit of the century.” Bamford is one of the most respected experts on U.S. intelligence operations and covert action. He is the author of several best-selling books, including “The Puzzle Palace: A Report on America's Most Secret Agency” and “The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA From 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America.” His most recent book is “Spyfail: Foreign Spies, Moles, Saboteurs, and the Collapse of America’s Counterintelligence.”

Last week, The Nation published a story by Bamford in which he argues that Ukraine and Poland should be viewed as the top suspects in the sabotage and that the U.S. government almost certainly knows exactly who bombed the pipelines and how. That story is titled “The Nord Stream Explosions: New Revelations About Motive, Means, and Opportunity.” 

Correction: May 17, 2023

A previous version of this episode incorrectly numbered the initial blasts on the Nord Stream 2 underwater pipeline at 2:03 a.m. The show description and audio have been updated.

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Nearly 50 years ago, the Church Committee began holding hearings to investigate the CIA and U.S. intelligence agencies’ lawless and secret efforts to spy on and plan assassination plots. This week on Intercepted, Jeremy Scahill is joined by James Risen and Thomas Risen to discuss how the CIA — without oversight from Congress and at times behind the backs of U.S. presidents — orchestrated coups against popular democratic governments from Guatemala to Iran and spied on anti-war activists and Black Power leaders inside the U.S. It was not until the Democratic Sen. Frank Church decided to take on this unaccountable, powerful, covert force within the U.S. national security apparatus that some of the CIA’s crimes and abuses came into public view. Sen. Church chaired a committee in 1975 that sought to reign in the CIA and impose laws and rules for their conduct. A new book by James Risen and Thomas Risen, called “The Last Honest Man: The CIA, the FBI, the Mafia, and the Kennedys — and One Senator’s Fight to Save Democracy,” tells the story of the man behind the Church Committee and how an unlikely hero emerged to battle the most powerful secret entity in the U.S. government.

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Last week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy held a long call with Chinese President Xi Jinping, in which Xi appealed for negotiations to begin between Ukraine and Russia. This week on Intercepted, hosts Jeremy Scahill and Murtaza Hussain are joined by Alfred W. McCoy, the Harrington professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the author of “To Govern the Globe: World Orders and Catastrophic Change.” As McCoy explains, China’s role in brokering a peace deal could be instrumental. And it also signals that the U.S. government is no longer the most powerful and influential world power in every region of the world, as it once was. McCoy says, “If Putin sat down with Xi Jinping and Zelenskyy and they sign an agreement, Putin couldn’t break that agreement. He can break any other agreement, he’ll break them, he’s done it many times, but that’s one he can’t break.”

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U.S. war planners have indicated that Ukraine plans to launch a spring offensive in an effort to retake territory lost in Russia’s invasion. Military analysts have also suggested that Kyiv, backed by the U.S.-led NATO alliance and its weapons shipments, is likely to attempt to purge Russia from Crimea. Russian President Vladimir Putin has indicated that he has no plans to cease his military operations, and the stage is being set for further bloodshed with no end in sight.

This week on Intercepted, the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft’s Kelley Beaucar Vlahos joins Jeremy Scahill and Murtaza Hussain for a wide-ranging discussion on the proxy war, the uniform support among Democrats for Joe Biden’s policies on Ukraine, and the growing opposition among Republicans to funding the war. Last week, a group of Republican lawmakers sent a letter to President Biden saying they will no longer support what they called “unrestrained” aid to Ukraine. And they added they “will adamantly oppose all future aid packages unless they are linked to a clear diplomatic strategy designed to bring this war to a rapid conclusion.” The letter, which was signed by 19 Republicans, included three senators: Mike Lee, Rand Paul, and J.D. Vance. Vlahos, Scahill, and Hussain also discuss the various factions comprising the current GOP and discuss how the enduring focus on Russiagate and the 2016 election has fed into the discourse on the war in Ukraine.

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Last week, federal officials arrested Jack Teixeira, a 21-year-old airman in the Massachusetts Air National Guard, accusing him of having leaked hundreds of pages of classified Pentagon documents on a Discord server. The documents offer rare insights into the war in Ukraine and the extent of military casualties and reveal the presence of U.S. and other NATO nations' special forces clandestinely operating in the war zone. They also document how the conflict is spilling over into the Middle East and shed light on U.S. penetration of Russian military plans and U.S. spy efforts, including against American allies and the United Nations secretary general. This week on Intercepted, Jeremy Scahill, Murtaza Hussain, and national security editor Vanessa Gezari discuss the document leak and analyze what we know and don’t know about the young airman accused of distributing the documents, initially to a small group of gamers and gun enthusiasts in a private internet chatroom. They also discuss the media's role in identifying the suspect using open source clues left by Texeira and his friends in the months leading up to his arrest as well as what the accused 21 year old might face in an Espionage Act trial.

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Vice President Kamala Harris wrapped a historic tour of Africa last week, where she positioned the U.S. as a reliable and trustworthy security and economic partner. This week on Intercepted, host Murtaza Hussain is joined by investigative reporter, Nick Turse, to discuss his latest reporting on U.S. counterterrorism efforts in Africa. Since the war on terror was launched, the U.S. government’s ventures in Africa have been more focused on military aid than economic support. Harris’s trip comes after a decade of China investing in infrastructure and critical resource mining throughout the continent and the administration’s concerns over the growing influence of the Russian mercenary Wagner Group. But America’s 20-plus years of counterterrorism support in the region hasn’t resulted in better security. In that time, terrorist groups have risen and U.S.-trained African officers have attempted at least nine coups, eight of which were successful. Hussain and Turse discuss the impact of U.S. military involvement and the influence of other foreign powers.

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Despite China warning “serious confrontation in the U.S.-China relationship,” House Speaker Kevin McCarthy confirmed plans to meet with Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen when she visits California on Wednesday. This week on Intercepted, Elbridge Colby, former defense strategist during the Trump administration, joins Jeremy Scahill and Murtaza Hussain to discuss and debate the emerging bipartisan consensus that China threatens U.S. economic and military dominance. They discuss the impact of the U.S. war machine globally, China’s military build-up, as well as China’s rapidly expanding international prominence and economic might. As Beijing celebrates its diplomatic efforts to broker a peace deal between Saudi Arabia and Iran, and makes moves aimed at ending Russia’s war in Ukraine, they debate whether Beijing poses a real threat to the U.S. and if a non-hegemonic world is possible.

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This week marked the 20th anniversary of the launch of the War in Iraq. But the U.S. government’s involvement in the country tracks back decades prior. Jeremy Scahill retraces the U.S. government's long history of meddling, destabilizing, and bombing Iraq — and how major players have faced no accountability for their crimes.

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Amidst massive protests around the United States and the world, on March 19, 2003, the U.S. began its invasion of Iraq. This week on Intercepted, Jeremy Scahill, Murtaza Hussain, and Iraqi journalist Ghaith Abdul-Ahad discuss the long-lasting impact of the war on Iraq and its people. Throughout the 20 years since the invasion, Iraq was torn to shreds by a gratuitous American occupation and a U.S.-fueled sectarian civil war. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians died as U.S. policy gave rise to Al Qaeda — and ultimately the Islamic State in Iraq.

While many commemorations of this bloody anniversary focus on the 2003 invasion, the plans to destroy Iraq were launched much earlier and were supported by Democrats and Republicans alike. Scahill, Hussain, and Abdul-Ahad discuss life under Saddam Hussein, the lead-up to the U.S. invasion, the brutality of the occupation, and the systematic refusal to bring any accountability for those responsible.

“Of course, the Iraqis could not believe that their new colonial masters had no clue, had done no planning and made no preparations for what was going to happen after they invaded the country,” Abdul-Ahad writes in his new book, “A Stranger in Your Own City: Travels in the Middle East’s Long War.” “When the myth of an American-generated prosperity clashed with the realities of occupation, chaos and destruction followed. Resentment and anger swept the country and all the suppressed rage of the previous decades exploded.”

Abdul-Ahad shares stories from his deeply human reporting on his personal journey from an architect living in Baghdad to a celebrated international journalist documenting the rise and fall of ISIS.

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Which wetlands are protected under the Clean Water Act? That’s the question before the Supreme Court in Sackett v. EPA. Back in 2004, Michael and Chantell Sackett purchased a residential lot near the idyllic and popular Priest Lake in Idaho. In preparation of construction, the Sacketts started filling the lot with gravel and sand. But after an anonymous complaint about the dredging and filling, the Environmental Protection Agency ordered the Sacketts to stop construction until the proper permits and assessments were sorted out. The EPA argued that the Sacketts were building on a wetland protected by the Clean Water Act. Instead of securing federal permits, the Sacketts took their case to the Supreme Court for a second time.

This week on Dissent, host Jordan Smith is joined by Sam Sankar, the senior vice president for programs at Earthjustice, a leading environmental law organization. Smith and Sankar discuss the Clean Water Act, wetlands and “navigable waters,” and the powerful interests backing the Sacketts. The outcome of the case, Smith and Sankar warn, could further gut the EPA’s ability to prevent pollution of the nation’s waters and combat climate change.

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Rodney Reed has been on death row since 1998 for the killing of a 19-year-old woman named Stacey Stites. Although Texas prosecutors said the case was open and shut, Reed has consistently maintained his innocence. Over the years, dozens of witnesses have come forward with evidence that undermines the state’s case, casting serious doubt on whether Reed is actually guilty. But Texas has refused to conduct DNA testing that could put lingering questions to rest. This week on Dissent, host Jordan Smith is joined by Intercept senior writer Liliana Segura to discuss the Supreme Court’s review of the case. Segura was in Washington, D.C., for the oral arguments, which focused on whether the statute of limitations for DNA testing has run out. Although it may seem like a straightforward question, it’s anything but — and the court’s decision could have life-or-death consequences for defendants seeking to prove their innocence. 

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Back in 2017, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, a case involving a cake shop owner who refused to create a wedding cake for a same-sex couple. In a 7-2 decision, the court found that the state had violated the cake maker’s religious objections. Now the court is considering another case out of Colorado that could expand the right to discriminate under the guise of free speech. In the fourth episode of Dissent, Jordan Smith and law professor Hila Keren discuss 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis, a challenge to the state’s Anti-Discrimination Act brought by Lorie Smith, a website designer seeking to refuse wedding design services to same-sex couples. Unlike Masterpiece Cakeshop, the 303 Creative case has no injured parties; it is a preemptive attempt to allow businesses to practice unfettered discrimination.

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The Supreme Court is hearing a case that could dismantle the Indian Child Welfare Act, also known as ICWA. The law was passed in 1978 to combat a history of forced family separation in the United States and prevent the removal of Native children from their communities. But now, in Haaland v. Brackeen, ICWA could be completely overturned. In the third episode of Dissent, host Jordan Smith is joined by Rebecca Nagle, a journalist, citizen of the Cherokee Nation, and host of the podcast “This Land.” Smith and Nagle break down the case and its broad implications for laws based on tribes’ political relationship with the U.S. government.

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The North Carolina Supreme Court rejected a partisan gerrymandered congressional map drawn to heavily favor Republicans last year. The map violated the state’s constitution. The North Carolina legislature is now arguing before the U.S. Supreme Court whether the state legislature has the authority to override the court and ignore its own constitution. The case, Moore v. Harper, raises the prospect of the independent state legislature theory — a fringe theory that, if the Supreme Court rules in favor of, would give state legislatures unfettered authority, remove checks and balances, and undermine future elections. In the second episode of Dissent, host Jordan Smith and Elizabeth Wydra of the Constitutional Accountability Center closely examine oral arguments and unpack how a favorable or even a middle-ground ruling would radically change elections.

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Last year, the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and demolish nearly half a century of abortion rights put to rest any remaining questions as to how far the 6-3 supermajority was willing to go to realize its extreme right-wing vision. With the court’s 2022-2023 term in full force, what rights are at stake this year? On the first episode of Dissent, an Intercepted miniseries, host and senior Intercept reporter Jordan Smith is joined by Jordan Rubin, a legal analyst with MSNBC and former prosecutor for the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office. Smith and Rubin outline the Supreme Court’s term and discuss the major implications of the decisions ahead.

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Last week, the Justice Department sued the state of Arizona and its governor, Doug Ducey, for installing a shipping container wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. This week on Intercepted: Ryan Devereaux, an investigative reporter with The Intercept, breaks down Ducey’s makeshift, multimillion-dollar container wall. Devereaux tells the story of everyday people and community members who live along the border, and how they stood up to the governor and won. join.theintercept.com/donate/now

Update: December 21, 2022

The state of Arizona has agreed to remove Gov. Doug Ducey’s container wall along the border, in response to the lawsuit filed by the federal government.

Read the full story and watch the video here: HOW NEIGHBORS IN THE BORDERLANDS FOUGHT BACK AGAINST ARIZONA GOV. DOUG DUCEY’S ILLEGAL WALL — AND WON

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This week, the Federal Reserve is expected to raise interest rates again, despite coming under scrutiny in recent months for its aggressive hikes to battle inflation. This week on Intercepted: Jon Schwarz, senior writer with The Intercept, talks all things Fed, the most powerful economic institution in the U.S. Schwarz is first joined by Intercept reporters Ken Klippenstein and Daniel Boguslaw, who discuss how banks are lobbying the Fed, raising questions about the institution’s independence. Schwarz is then joined by former Fed economist Claudia Sahm to break down the Fed’s role in the economy and how its efforts to curb inflation are destabilizing the global economy and raising unemployment.

Ken and Dan's story "The Fed Likes to Tout its Independence. So Why are Big Banks Lobbying It?": https://theintercept.com/2022/10/26/federal-reserve-bank-lobby/

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On October 6, 2022, University of British Columbia faculty members Mohammed Rafi Arefin and Naomi Klein from the new Centre for Climate Justice co-moderated a livestream discussion about the upcoming COP27 summit that will be held in Egypt, while the country’s most prominent pro-democracy activist, Alaa Abd El Fattah, remains in prison.

As the world gets hotter, basic freedoms are under ever greater assault around the globe. These trends are about to collide in dramatic fashion at the upcoming United Nations climate summit, which this year takes place in Egypt, under the iron rule of Gen. Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. Just a decade ago, Cairo’s Tahrir Square was synonymous with a hopeful, youth-led movement for liberation and democracy. Today, journalists are routinely arrested and thousands of political prisoners languish behind bars. With Egypt on the front lines of climate impacts and escalating repression, this panel discussion tackled tough questions about the relationship between meaningful climate action and political freedom. Is it possible to have one without the other? Are Egypt’s political prisoners being sacrificed in the name of climate urgency? What are the responsibilities of those choosing to attend the summit? What pressure can be brought to bear in this microcosm of the intersection of climate and justice? What pressure points exist for political action in Egypt’s debt negotiations and the government’s drive to attract foreign capital in areas like green energy?

Hear from Sanaa Seif, sister of Alaa Abd El Fattah, as well as celebrated writers, journalists, and activists Omar Robert Hamilton, Sharif Abdel Kouddous, and Bill McKibben.

Intercepted is publishing a lightly edited version of the livestream.

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Marked as enemies of the new Taliban regime by his work with Westerners and his family’s Hazara ethnicity, Hamid, his wife, their 8-year-old daughter, and their new baby move furtively from place to place, living under assumed names. Their year in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan echoes Hamid’s own war-torn childhood as he tries to guarantee his daughter’s future. Suddenly, an escape route opens: Will they finally make it out?

Created by Afghans forced into exile when the Taliban took over last year, “No Way Home” tells of the perilous exodus born of two decades of broken promises in the U.S. war on terror. Through the stories of four Afghans who tried to leave when the U.S. military pulled out of Afghanistan last summer, these Afghan storytellers use their own experiences of departure, loss, and resilience to illuminate the dark end of America’s longest war. A production of The Intercept and New America, “No Way Home” is a four-part series available on the Intercepted podcast.

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Maryam Barak, an Afghan journalist, made it to Italy with her family last summer. In Rome, she met Qader Kazimizada, another newly arrived Afghan who is helping refugees find community in an alien place.

Created by Afghans forced into exile when the Taliban took over last year, “No Way Home” tells of the perilous exodus born of two decades of broken promises in the U.S. war on terror. Through the stories of four Afghans who tried to leave when the U.S. military pulled out of Afghanistan last summer, these Afghan storytellers use their own experiences of departure, loss, and resilience to illuminate the dark end of America’s longest war. A production of The Intercept and New America, “No Way Home” is a four-part series available on the Intercepted podcast.

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As the Taliban claimed territory last summer, Mir Abdullah Miri and his cousin Aziz both planned to flee their homes in Herat, a city in western Afghanistan. Mir, an educational researcher, made it to the Afghan capital and tried to get on a flight, while Aziz, a cellphone programmer, decided to cross into Iran on foot with his wife and two young children, hoping to reach relatives in Germany. After Aziz and his family set off through Afghanistan’s southern desert, Mir was left to untangle the mystery of what really happened to them in that desolate wilderness, where thousands of Afghans have risked their lives in search of a way out.

Created by Afghans forced into exile when the Taliban took over last year, “No Way Home” tells of the perilous exodus born of two decades of broken promises in the U.S. war on terror. Through the stories of four Afghans who tried to leave when the U.S. military pulled out of Afghanistan last summer, these Afghan storytellers use their own experiences of departure, loss, and resilience to illuminate the dark end of America’s longest war. A production of The Intercept and New America, “No Way Home” is a four-part series available on the Intercepted podcast.

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When the Afghan government collapsed last summer, Summia Tora, Afghanistan’s first Rhodes scholar, used her connections to get her father out. But when she tried to evacuate a longtime NGO worker named Hamid, his pregnant wife, and their young daughter, a suicide bomber intervened.

Created by Afghans forced into exile when the Taliban took over last year, “No Way Home” tells of the perilous exodus born of two decades of broken promises in the U.S. war on terror. Through the stories of four Afghans who tried to leave when the U.S. military pulled out of Afghanistan last summer, these Afghan storytellers use their own experiences of departure, loss, and resilience to illuminate the dark end of America’s longest war. A production of The Intercept and New America, “No Way Home” is a four-part series available on the Intercepted podcast.

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Four women who were detained in a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement jail are alleging that a nurse at the facility sexually assaulted them. This week on Intercepted, the four women, who were detained at the Stewart Detention Center in Georgia, share their stories with lead producer José Olivares and Intercept contributor John Washington. Olivares and Washington examined internal Homeland Security records, public reports, sheriff’s department documents, emergency call records, and interviewed nearly a dozen sources. They found alarming allegations of sexual assault and harassment and myriad problems, including medical neglect, and unsafe and unhealthy conditions. Olivares and Washington break down the facility’s history, the allegations by the women, and what conditions inside Stewart have been like for the past year and a half, since women began to be detained there. join.theintercept.com/donate/now

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Today we bring you a special episode in response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade.

First, The Intercept’s Washington Editor, Nausicaa Renner takes us to the protests in front of SCOTUS that formed after the radical decision to end the right to abortion. Then we turn to a livestream conversation The Intercept hosted on Friday discussing what can be done to minimize the impact on the most vulnerable people. The Intercept’s Natasha Lennard talks with professor Rachel Rebouché, interim dean of Temple Law School and author of a new report titled “The New Abortion Battleground,” which looks at the legal issues that will arise across state borders and between the state and federal government; Dani McClain, a Puffin fellow at Type Media Center and the author of “We Live for the We: The Political Power of Black Motherhood”; and Hayley McMahon, an abortion access researcher and doctoral student at Emory University.

Livestream: The New Fight for Reproductive Freedom

More from The Intercept: 

In Overturning Roe, Radical Supreme Court Declares War on the 14th Amendment

With the Corpse of Roe Still Warm, Far Right Plots Fascistic Anti-Abortion Enforcement

More People Will Die

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Smartphone apps constantly harvest your location data. That information is shared with advertisers, typically without your knowledge or informed consent. There are no laws in the U.S. prohibiting the sale or resale of that private data. And companies like phone-tracking firm Anomaly Six exploit that. So do government agencies.

This week on Intercepted, Intercept reporter Sam Biddle and Tech Inquiry’s Jack Poulson discuss their reporting on Anomaly Six and the company's pitch to a social media monitoring company, Zignal Labs. Anomaly Six proposed that their joint efforts would permit the U.S. government to effortlessly spy on its adversaries. To show off its vast surveillance capabilities, Anomaly Six demo'd its software by spying on the CIA and NSA. Biddle and Poulson talk about the Wild West of personal data brokers, how the advertising industry feeds the surveillance industry, and just why the apps on your phone made it easy for Anomaly Six to build a tool it claims can spy on billions of devices. join.theintercept.com/donate/now

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Murderville, Texas just ended its nine-episode season, casting significant doubt on whether a man on death row for the 1992 murder of a Houston grandmother is actually guilty. This week on Intercepted: Intercept Senior Editor Andrea Jones speaks with Jordan Smith and Liliana Segura, the reporters behind the investigative podcast, about what happened after the murder of 72-year-old Edna Franklin.

Relying on a hunch from one of her grandsons, police had a suspect — and an arrest warrant — within 24 hours: a family friend named Charles Raby, 22, who had been released from prison two months earlier. Raby was prosecuted on the basis of a single powerful piece of evidence: a confession he gave to police four days after the murder. After a brief trial in which his attorneys called no witnesses, Raby was found guilty by a Harris County jury. He was sentenced to death. Today Raby maintains his innocence. Smith and Segura break down shoddy police work, questionable confessions, and whether the state went after the wrong man. join.theintercept.com/donate/now

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The number of people experiencing homelessness decreased by 8 percent between 2020 and 2021, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. HUD suggests that the decrease could be attributed to Covid-19 pandemic relief efforts. However, many relief efforts have expired or will soon, from eviction moratoriums to expanded unemployment benefits. Meanwhile, the U.S. housing market has continued unabated, with rents rising and housing prices soaring.

This week on Intercepted: Akela Lacy, an Intercept politics reporter, talks to Stephanie Sena, the founder and executive director of the Student-Run Emergency Housing Unit in Philadelphia, about the housing choices low-income families and people face and how the recent deadly residential fires in the Bronx and Philadelphia illustrate how dire the housing crisis is. We also hear from organizers and tenants who are fighting back. join.theintercept.com/donate/now

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Murderville, an investigative podcast hosted by senior Intercept reporters Liliana Segura and Jordan Smith, examines the systemic failures that lead to wrongful convictions. Season Two takes Segura and Smith to the death penalty capital of the country, Harris County, Texas, where they investigate a disturbing crime, a startling confession, and a story that doesn’t add up. To follow the series, subscribe to Murderville at Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more at https://theintercept.com/podcasts/murderville/

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Just how strong are the forces arrayed against police reform — and how far are they willing to go? In April 2019, Keith Humphrey was appointed police chief in Little Rock, Arkansas, a Southern city with a fraught history of racial division. Among the growing number of Black police chiefs, Humphrey came in with a mandate from the new mayor to implement reforms and curtail abuses. Almost as quickly as he set about to do that work, the city’s “old guard,” the police union, and even cops under Humphrey’s own command struck back. The aim, to many observers, was simple: to oust Humphrey.

This week on Intercepted: Radley Balko joins The Intercept's Ali Gharib to talk about Humphrey’s ordeal. Then Balko speaks to Little Rock civil rights attorney Mike Laux and former LRPD Lieut. Johnny Gilbert Jr. Balko, an award-winning journalist and columnist at the Washington Post, is the author of “Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces” and co-author, with Tucker Carrington, of “The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist: A True Story of Injustice in the American South.”

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In late September, the World Health Organization announced that it had assembled a new team of scientists to revive its investigation into the origins of the virus that causes Covid-19. The new group will be tasked with examining whether the virus could have originated in a lab, months after its predecessor deemed the possibility too unlikely for serious consideration.

This week on Intercepted: Intercept investigative reporters Sharon Lerner and Mara Hvistendahl join editor Maia Hibbett to discuss the competing theories on the origins of Covid-19. The Intercept obtained documents that shed new light on controversial lab experiments, raising questions about the origins of the coronavirus pandemic. With neither of the main theories -- natural spillover versus a lab leak -- yet proved true, the Intercept is seeking answers as to how much officials knew about proposed behind-the-scenes experiments. As Georgetown virologist Angela Rasmussen, a staunch critic of the lab-leak theory, said after the first WHO investigation, “There are still major stones that need to be unturned.” join.theintercept.com/donate/now

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Water protectors are traveling in growing numbers to stand with the Anishinaabe-led movement to stop the construction of Line 3, a tar sands oil pipeline.

This week on Intercepted: Intercept reporter Alleen Brown takes us to northern Minnesota, a flashpoint in the fight to halt the expansion of the fossil fuel industry as the climate crisis deepens. Direct actions and other protests against Line 3 are just heating up and more than 500 people have already been arrested or issued citations. Opponents of the Line 3 pipeline are urging the Biden administration to intervene to stop construction, but his administration recently moved to defend the pipeline. Water protectors are being greeted by an intensifying police response and what scholars are calling a corporate counterinsurgency campaign led by the pipeline company, Enbridge.

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Domestic workers — nannies, house cleaners, and care workers — are one of the fastest-growing labor groups in the U.S. They are also some of the most undervalued and least-protected workers, a factor further exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic.

This week on Intercepted: Vanessa Bee and Murtaza Hussain interview Ai-jen Poo, co-founder and executive director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance, about the impact of Covid-19 on these vulnerable yet essential workers. They also discuss how the exclusion of labor protections for domestic workers has roots in slavery and how President Joe Biden’s jobs plan could ensure historically denied rights. And we hear stories from domestic workers themselves as they organize for their rights on International Domestic Workers Day in New York City.

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Last month, the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation uncovered a mass grave of 215 children on the grounds of a former residential school in British Columbia, Canada. This week on Intercepted: Naomi Klein speaks with residential school survivor Doreen Manuel and her niece Kanahus Manuel about the horrors of residential schools and the relationship between stolen children and stolen land. Doreen’s father, George Manuel, was a survivor of the Kamloops Indian Residential School, where unmarked graves of children as young as 3 years old were found. Kanahus’s father, Arthur Manuel, was also a survivor of the Kamloops residential school. This intergenerational conversation goes deep on how the evils of the Kamloops school, and others like it, have reverberated through a century of Manuels, an experience shared by so many Indigenous families, and the Manuel family’s decades long fight to reclaim stolen land.

Warning: This episode contains highly distressing details about the killing, rape, and torture of children. If you are a survivor and need to talk, there is contact information in the show notes. 

If you are a former residential school student in distress, or have been affected by the residential school system and need help, you can contact the 24-hour Indian Residential Schools Crisis Line: 1-866-925-4419

Additional mental-health support and resources for Indigenous people are available here.  

Show notes:

Doreen Manuel can be found @DoreenManuel1 and www.runningwolf.ca 

Kanahus can be found at @kanahusfreedom and www.tinyhousewarriors.com

“Unsettling Canada: A National Wake Up Call,” by Arthur Manuel

“The Reconciliation Manifesto: Recovering the Land, Rebuilding the Economy,” by Arthur Manuel

“From Brotherhood to Nationhood: George Manuel and the Making of the Modern Indian Movement,” by Peter McFarlane with Doreen Manuel, afterword by Kanahus Manuel

“The Fourth World: An Indian Reality,” by George Manuel and Michael Posluns

“These Walls” directed by Doreen Manuel

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When a police officer shoots and kills someone — and there aren’t any witnesses — can we trust the police to investigate themselves?

This week on Intercepted: Antoine and Tammy Bufford's son, Cortez, was shot and killed by a St. Louis police officer in 2019. Nearly two years later, the city is still investigating Cortez’s case. No charges have been filed. And the Bufford family is still looking for answers. The police kill more people per capita in St. Louis than in any other American city. Seventy-two percent of these people are Black, like Cortez.

The Chicago-based Invisible Institute recently partnered with The Intercept to examine the circumstances of Cortez’s death. Their resulting investigation, reported by Alison Flowers and Sam Stecklow, sheds new light in the search for truth about this police killing.

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In the year since the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis and the mass mobilization of protest that followed — the largest collective gesture against police violence in this country’s history — there’s been a constant and energized call to defund or outright abolish policing as we know it in the U.S. This week on Intercepted: The U.S. has been grappling with this same cycle of violence for more than nearly a century: A Black person is killed by police, and protests follow. In 1968, the U.S. tried to find out why this kept happening in cities and small towns across the country with an unprecedented frequency. President Lyndon B. Johnson assembled the Kerner Commission to study the extraordinary violence and destruction of uprisings in cities like Newark, New Jersey, and Detroit the year prior. Their findings should surprise no one. Systemic and institutionalized racism was to blame. Structural white supremacy maintained two societies: “One Black, one white. Separate and unequal.”

Historian Elizabeth Hinton, author of “America on Fire: The Untold History of Police Violence and Black Rebellion since the 1960s,” argues that protestors were not rioters but rather political participants in rebellion against their own poverty, inequality, and constant surveillance and brutality by the police.

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While much of the public’s attention has been focused on the thousands of unaccompanied minors currently in U.S. custody, U.S. Customs and Border Protection has quietly begun a policy of dropping off asylum-seekers in remote border towns along the deadliest stretches of the U.S.-Mexico divide.

This week on Intercepted: Intercept reporter Ryan Devereaux travels to the Arizona cities of Ajo and Tucson, speaking to migrants and local volunteers about the dangers and uncertainty people are facing. Devereaux investigates how the Biden administration’s continuation of Trump-era policies like Title 42, which has been used to expel more than half a million migrants in the past year, jeopardizes the safety of asylum-seekers and exacerbates the humanitarian crisis at the border.

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The Environmental Protection Agency under the Trump administration invited companies to retroactively amend emissions records of a deadly carcinogenic chemical. This week on Intercepted: Investigative reporter Sharon Lerner explains how 270,000 pounds of the chemical ethylene oxide vanished from the public record right after the EPA determined that it was more toxic than previously known. Ethylene oxide is a colorless and odorless gas used to produce many consumer goods and used extensively as an agent in the sterilization of medical equipment.

Despite the EPA’s transition to new leadership under the Biden administration, regulatory capture is a persistent obstacle in the agency’s ability to protect public health and the environment. And as Lerner reports, a disproportionate number of poor communities and communities of color have yet to be alerted to the fact that elevated levels of cancer-causing ethylene oxide permeate the air they breathe. We also hear from a group of Texas women that believes their breast cancer diagnoses are linked to exposure to the chemical.

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Few anti-fascists were as influential on Portland’s recent protest scene as Sean Kealiher. He rarely missed a protest, and he would have been front and center last summer when the insurrectionary activism he had long advocated for became a staple on Portland streets. But he wasn’t. In October 2019, at 23, he was killed in front of the state Democratic Party building, which protesters vandalized on Inauguration Day this year. Kealiher’s death, which was ruled a homicide, shocked Portland’s activist community. But no arrests were ever made, and no persons of interest were ever named. Those in Kealiher’s circle saw his unsolved murder as further confirmation of the police’s double standards and antagonism toward the left.

This week on Intercepted: While it was largely former President Donald Trump who elevated antifa, short for anti-fascists, to a household name, generations of Portland anti-fascists have for decades opposed far-right, racist extremists as well as police. Reporter Alice Speri dives into Kealiher’s ideology and murder, Portland’s legacy of anti-fascist activism and its deeply intertwined history of white supremacist violence, and how law enforcement’s obsession with antifa led to intelligence failures like U.S. Capitol riot.

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As Joe Biden took the oath of office this January, Guatemalan security forces at the Honduran border thwarted thousands of U.S.-bound migrants. While decades-long American imperialism has facilitated displacement throughout the region, the U.S. is increasingly outsourcing its deadly immigration policy. This week on Intercepted: The Biden administration announced it will begin to process the 25,000 asylum seekers stuck in squalid border town camps as part of Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy. But immigration advocates fear President Biden will not reverse the bipartisan trend of his predecessors to further militarize the southern border and expand the reaches of immigration enforcement — policies that have led to more migrant deaths and detention in recent decades. Despite Biden’s executive actions to reverse the Muslim ban, initiate migrant family reunification, and fortify DACA, his administration has indicated that it will continue to support Mexican and Guatemalan armed enforcement of their borders on behalf of the U.S.T

The activist and writer Harsha Walia joins Intercepted to discuss the Democratic Party’s fundamental role in shaping the long arc of U.S. border policy and why the practice of “prevention through deterrence” will continue to incur more suffering and preventable deaths. She also presents an abolitionist view of a world without borders. Walia’s most recent book is “Border and Rule: Global Migration, Capitalism, and the Rise of Racist Nationalism.”

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A massive police database obtained by The Intercept provides groundbreaking insight into the pervasive surveillance state operated by the Chinese government to repress Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities. This week on Intercepted: A new report from The Intercept provides a raw glimpse into the persecution and sweeping internment of Muslims in the city of Ürümqi, the largest city in northwest China’s Xinjiang region.

The report also confirms many of the anti-democratic systems already in place: child separation and carceral re-education, installation of surveillance cameras inside private homes and mosques, immense detention centers, constant police checkpoints, widespread collection of electronic and biometric data, demolition of Uyghur cemeteries, and the forced abortion and sterilization of women.

Although the United States has surveilled, abused, rendered, and imprisoned Muslims for decades, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo declared that China is committing “ongoing” genocide. His successor, Antony Blinken, agreed with that characterization during his confirmation hearing in January.

The Intercept’s Ryan Tate, technology reporter Yael Grauer, and anthropologist Darren Byler analyze the unprecedented scale and sophistication of the surveillance campaign detailed in the database. We also hear Uyghur linguist and poet Abduweli Ayup tell the story of his 15-month detainment for operating a Uyghur-language kindergarten in Xinjiang.

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Now that Donald Trump is gone from office, what’s next? This week on Intercepted: There are a slew of unanswered questions about the siege of the Capitol. Americans are being asked to believe that the national security apparatus — the same one that charged nearly 200 people en masse, including journalists and observers, with felony rioting when Trump was inaugurated in 2017, and has leveled federal charges including terrorism charges on Black Lives Matter protesters — failed to see the threat to the U.S. Congress posed by right-wing extremists, even as people organized across social media platforms in plain sight.

In response to the Capitol siege, Joe Biden and some members of Congress are looking to expand new domestic terrorism laws. They are using the exact same playbook deployed by the Bush-Cheney White House after 9/11 and embraced across the aisles in Congress. This is a dangerous moment where policies with very serious implications could be rushed through in the heat of the moment.

The Intercept’s Ryan Devereaux, Ken Klippenstein, Alice Speri, Natasha Lennard, Sam Biddle, Mara Hvistendahl, and Murtaza Hussain share their thoughts on the transition of power from Trump to Biden that is happening today.

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Donald Trump is now in the dying days of his presidency and is spending those days promoting the myth that he actually won the November election in a landslide. This week on Intercepted: As the clock ticks toward Joe Biden’s inauguration, Trump and Attorney General William Barr have been on a grotesque killing spree, green-lighting executions of federal prisoners at breakneck pace. The Intercept’s Senior Reporter Liliana Segura reports on how Trump is on pace to authorize more federal executions than in the past 67 years combined. She discusses several specific cases, including that of Brandon Bernard who is scheduled to die on Thursday.

As Biden builds his Cabinet, his national security team is looking a lot like a replay of the Obama-Biden militarist coterie. Biden’s nominees include notorious hawks who were central to the genocidal war in Yemen, the weapons sales to Saudi Arabia, the regime-change war in Libya, the war in Syria, the assassination and drone programs, and the use of economic sanctions as a deadly weapon. Several of Biden’s nominees, including his pick for defense secretary, have spent years on boards of defense corporations, profiting from military contractors and peddling influence in Washington, D.C. on behalf of the war industry. Kelley Vlahos of the American Conservative and the transpartisan Quincy Institute discusses Biden’s national security team and the largely continuous arc of U.S. policy through Republican and Democratic administrations.

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On this bonus episode of Intercepted, journalist John Washington, whose latest reporting for The Intercept expanded on an explosive new whistleblower complaint alleging that mass hysterectomies occurred at an ICE detention facility, reads an excerpt from his new book, “The Dispossessed: A Story of Asylum and the US-Mexican Border and Beyond.” And the Colombian-Canadian musician Lido Pimienta talks about her latest album, Miss Colombia, and how the 2015 Miss Universe Pageant inspired her to look critically at anti-blackness in Colombia. She’s currently organizing a relief fund for Colombian families affected by Covid-19, which you can learn more about here.

A very special thanks to our friend Francisco Bravo for his help with this episode.

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A bipartisan coalition of lawmakers led by Rep. Liz Cheney, daughter of Dick Cheney, is trying to stop Trump from withdrawing troops from Afghanistan. This week on Intercepted: As the longest continuous war in U.S. history enters its 19th year, Congressional Democrats and Republicans are joining together in an effort to keep the war going. Constitutional lawyer and activist Shahid Buttar, who is challenging House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for her Congressional seat in San Francisco, alleges that Pelosi’s leadership during the Trump era has amounted to enabling Trump at his worst while simultaneously working to block the potential good that could come from ending the Afghanistan war. Buttar also discusses his views on surveillance, the climate crisis, the role of large tech companies in violating human rights, and he assesses the state of the Democratic Party ahead of the November elections.

In a spate of recent speeches, Donald Trump has portrayed himself as a noble warrior in the battle to protect America’s heritage. He is consistently railing against a long list of perceived enemies, including anarchists, Marxists, immigrants, while preemptively casting doubts on the validity of the 2020 election. And as he campaigns, Trump is increasingly operating — whether intentional or not — from a playbook that is eerily reminiscent of the America First movement in the United States that operated in the 1930s. These were allies of Germany’s Nazi Party, the most famous amongst them was famed pilot Charles Lindbergh. California State University historian Bradley W. Hart, author of “Hitler's American Friends: The Third Reich's Supporters in the United States,” discusses the history of the movements and figures in U.S. history who supported Hitler and the Third Reich in the years before and during World War II. Hart also discusses Hitler’s affection for Henry Ford and details the rise and fall of radical rightwing radio host Fr. Charles Coughlin whose broadcasts into tens of millions of homes built support for fascism in the U.S.

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As cases of Covid-19 skyrocket across the U.S., Trump passionately focuses on defending the legacy of the Confederacy and white supremacist monuments. Native American historian Nick Estes explains the crimes against Indigenous people committed by the four presidents whose faces are carved into Mount Rushmore.

Black Lives Matter demonstrations against police brutality and systemic racism continue across the U.S. as calls to defund the police intensify. University of Iowa historian Simon Balto, author of the new book “Occupied Territory: Policing Black Chicago from Red Summer to Black Power,” lays out the origins of the Chicago Police Department as a moralistic enforcement agency in the late 1800s and its transformation into a militarized terror force deployed to control Black people in Chicago while simultaneously crushing movements for workers rights, tenant rights, and basic human rights.

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Dr. Robin D.G. Kelley, a distinguished history professor at UCLA, explains why he believes the current abolitionist movement has the potential to fundamentally change the country and offers a historical analysis of the weaponization of racial capitalism throughout U.S. history. He also tells the story of the Black-led communist party of Alabama in the aftermath of the Great Depression and the racist roots of U.S.-style policing.

As Attorney General William Barr continues to preside over a Justice Department being wielded as a political and legal weapon to defend Trump, Hina Shamsi of the ACLU explains the dangerous use of military and intelligence surveillance systems to spy on activists, the characterizations of activists as terrorists, and discusses the ongoing drone strikes overseas.

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The new podcast Somebody documents Shapearl Wells’s quest to find out what happened to Courtney Copeland, her 22-year-old son who wound up with a bullet in his back outside a Chicago police station in 2016 and died soon after.

On April 30, Topic Studios, The Intercept, and Chicago-based journalism nonprofit Invisible Institute presented a live conversation and listening session focused on Shapearl’s experiences confronting Chicago Police and challenging the city’s long-standing racial disparities. The event was hosted by Intercept co-founding editor Jeremy Scahill and featured Somebody co-hosts Shapearl and Alison Flowers, a journalist at the Invisible Institute.

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While the statistics are grim, the harsh reality is how the Trump administration — as well as some governors and mayors — handled this crisis made the situation much more deadly than it should have been. New York Magazine writer Zak Cheney-Rice discusses how the economic, social, racial, and gender injustices that predate this pandemic have impacted the most vulnerable people in the United States. He also discusses Trump’s incompetence, Joe Biden’s strategy of being seldom seen or heard, and how all of this might impact the 2020 presidential election.

Trump and his radical anti-immigrant minion Stephen Miller are already exploiting the crisis to ram through radical measures aimed at immigrants, as ICE deports detainees infected with the coronavirus disease. John Washington, author of “The Dispossessed: A Story of Asylum at the U.S.-Mexico Border and Beyond,” discusses the dueling messages to migrant workers from a White House that openly espouses hate and wants them deported while government agencies have categorized many as “essential workers.” Washington also discusses his latest piece for The Intercept, “We Need to Reverse the Damage Trump Has Done in Latin America. Biden’s Plans Don’t Cut It.”

And Intercepted listeners share more of their stories of life during the pandemic.

If you or someone you know needs emotional support or is contemplating suicide, resources include the Crisis Text Line, the Suicide Prevention Lifeline, the Trevor Project, or the International Association for Suicide Prevention.

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Hidden behind the scenes of protests against Democratic governors is the role of radical fringe groups, gun enthusiasts, and right-wing financiers, some with ties to the family of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. Author Jeff Sharlet discusses the rise of right-wing religious extremists, influential members, their broader strategy, and how the shutdown protesters are being used as disposable pawns in a much longer game. Sharlet’s books “The Family” and “C-Street” chronicle the history and strategy now permeating the Trump administration and the Republican Party.

As his administration rolls out its phased plan for “re-opening America,” Dr. Seema Yasmin, a former officer in the Epidemic Intelligence Service at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, analyzes the insanity of Trump’s daily briefings, his strategy to withhold aid from states based on how nice governors are to him, and what should be done to overcome the pandemic scientifically and socially. Plus, Intercepted listeners share their often gut-wrenching stories of struggling to survive in a country rocked by the nightmare of economic uncertainty in the time of the coronavirus crisis.

If you or someone you know needs emotional support or is contemplating suicide, resources include the Crisis Text Line, the Suicide Prevention Lifeline, the Trevor Project, or the International Association for Suicide Prevention.

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Across the United States right now, there are over 32,000 people in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, otherwise known as ICE. 

Tucked away in remote corners of the country, ICE’s detention centers have long had issues with providing adequate medical care, and have been proven breeding grounds for disease. Just last year, an outbreak of mumps overtook dozens of ICE facilities, infecting nearly 900 detainees.

For the tens of thousands of people currently detained by ICE during the coronavirus pandemic, for whom social distancing is impossible, there is widespread fear that an even more pervasive and deadly outbreak could occur.

Carceral facilities — prisons, jails — like ICE detention centers, have much higher infection rates than the general public. On Riker’s Island, for example, the rate of infection is seven times that of New York City.

As of Thursday, there have been 100 confirmed cases of coronavirus among ICE detainees, and 25 cases among ICE employees at detention centers, according to ICE’s own website.

The Intercept's Ryan Devereaux has been speaking directly to detainees inside of an ICE facility in Etowah County, Alabama. ICE maintains that it is following appropriate CDC protocols. But as Ryan recently reported in his story “'Burials Are Cheaper Than Deportations': Virus Unleashes Terror in a Troubled Ice Detention Center,” detainees in this facility, overwhelmed by their own precarious conditions in the face of the coronavirus threat, were forced to radically take matters into their own hands to ensure their own safety.

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On March 4, 2016, Shapearl Wells wakes up to a bamming at her door. It’s the police, telling her that her 22-year-old son, Courtney Copeland, has been shot. Detectives tell her Courtney drove his BMW to a police station for help. But Shapearl’s grief turns into suspicion when police start asking her questions, so she launches her own investigation into her son’s murder, teaming up with journalists from the Invisible Institute to confront the cops and find the truth about Courtney's death.

This week on Intercepted: We air the first episode of Somebody, a new podcast from the Invisible Institute, The Intercept, Topic Studios, and iHeartRadio, in association with Tenderfoot TV. Somebody explores the racial disparities and turbulent relationship between law enforcement and citizens in one of America’s largest cities.

Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, and for more information go to somebodypodcast.com.

Intercepted will be back next week.

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Bernie Sanders has suspended his campaign for the Democratic nomination for president as the country continues to be rocked by Covid-19 cases and hospitals are struggling to obtain basic supplies. The U.S. has seen almost 20 million unemployment claims in just the past few weeks while new data is revealing that Covid-19 is killing African Americans disproportionately in some major cities. What we are witnessing in stark reality is — contrary to the rhetoric of American greatness — a mask now being lifted to reveal a failed state.

On the new Intercepted: Jacobin magazine executive editor, Seth Ackerman, discusses the pandemic, capitalism, the suspension of the Sanders campaign, and the future of the U.S.

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Milwaukee’s Health Commissioner, Dr. Jeanette Kowalik, discusses the Wisconsin Supreme Court's reckless disregard for public safety as they force the state to conduct in-person voting. Dr. Kowalik analyzes why some 70% of Covid-19 deaths in Milwaukee are African Americans and why the city has declared racism a public health crisis. She also analyses the expected consequences of Tuesday’s crowded voting lines at limited number of polling sites across Wisconsin. 

Author and scholar Dr. Ibram X. Kendi, author of "How to Be Antiracist," discusses what the data tells us about race and coronavirus in America. He draws historical parallels between the Trump administration response and the Mississippi flood of 1927 and analyzes what it means for the U.S. to have to choose between Donald Trump and Joe Biden.

Fired Amazon worker Christian Smalls responds to the company’s smear campaign organized against him during a meeting attended by the wealthiest person in the world, Jeff Bezos.

And Intercepted listeners share their stories of struggle during the pandemic.

If you or someone you know needs emotional support or is contemplating suicide, resources include the Crisis Text Line, the Suicide Prevention Lifeline, the Trevor Project, or the International Association for Suicide Prevention.

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Workers at Amazon, Instacart, and Whole Foods have gone on strike demanding safe work conditions. Amazon has already fired one organizer and continues to pump out misinformation and propaganda as Jeff Bezos continues to rake in billions of dollars. We hear from the fired Amazon manager Christian Smalls and talk to Jacobin magazine reporter Meagan Day about her reporting on the conditions of some essential workers impacted by the coronavirus pandemic, Joe Biden’s campaign against Medicare for All, and the shortage of supplies in hospitals.

Emergency Room nurse John Pearson, from Highland Hospital in Oakland, explains why his colleagues had to start a GoFundMe campaign for vital medical equipment. He talks about the lack of supplies to deal with the coming surge of coronavirus cases and why he believes that this crisis demands the implementation of a single-payer healthcare system. He also talks about the California health care workers petition to Governor Gavin Newsom.

Intercepted listeners share their stories of struggle during the pandemic — we hear from people losing jobs, facing mounting debt, working in unsafe conditions, and worrying about what the future holds for the most vulnerable people.

As Congress pats itself on the back for the bipartisan $2.2 trillion “stimulus” package Trump signed into law, journalist David Dayen, executive editor of The American Prospect, breaks down the corporate interests and powerful people who stand to gain the most from the looting of taxpayer funds. Dayen analyzes the portions of the bill aimed at bailing out struggling families, workers, small business owners, and explains why he believes Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders were wrong to vote in favor of the bailout.

And if you or someone you know needs emotional support or is contemplating suicide, resources include the Crisis Text Line, the Suicide Prevention Lifeline, the Trevor Project, or the International Association for Suicide Prevention. 

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As Congress continues to negotiate a bailout, Republicans seem intent on exploiting the crisis to enrich Wall Street, while Democrats offer meek resistance. Matt Bruenig of the Peoples Policy Project breaks down the various proposals in Congress, compares the U.S. plans with other countries’ responses, and lays out some of the tenets of what a bailout for the people should look like.

Meanwhile, the fate of more than 2 million people locked up in U.S. jails and prisons hangs in the balance as coronavirus begins to spread among incarcerated populations. Workers at carceral facilities are also getting sick. While some cities are working to release pre-trial detainees and people convicted of non-violent technical crimes, legal groups and human rights organizations are sounding the alarm bells on what could be a horrifying aspect of the coronavirus pandemic hitting people who are literally prevented from social distancing. Premal Dharia, Founder and Director of of the Defender Impact Initiative, describes the situation in carceral facilities across the U.S. and why she is warning of a humanitarian disaster if action is not taken immediately.

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After weeks of downplaying the seriousness of the virus and at times implying it was a hoax, the Trump administration has announced a series of government responses to the crisis. While some actions, such as expanded testing, emergency aid to states and production of medical supplies, are aimed directly at protecting public health, serious questions abound about the economic survival of millions of people.

Organizer Mariame Kaba discusses the realities facing some of the most vulnerable people in our society, from poor and working families to prisoners and immigration detainees and beyond. While the virus does not discriminate in who it infects, it will have a disproportionately devastating impact on communities that already faced dire crises before coronavirus. Kaba discusses “mutual aid” actions taking place across the country where ordinary people are pooling resources and offering direct responses to those in the most need.

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With Michigan and other states voting in primaries today, the justice movements backing the Sanders campaign are making the case that nominating Joe Biden to take on Donald Trump is a grave risk. Poet Aja Monet and organizer Astra Taylor discuss the mini-manifesto from a multi-generational, multi-racial coalition of feminists: “Rising for a Global Feminist Future with the Movement to Elect Bernie Sanders.”

As Biden’s campaign seeks to keep him away from open microphones and limit his public appearances, serious questions are being asked about Biden’s mental health and his decades of right-wing positions and policies. Nathan Robinson, editor-in-chief of Current Affairs, discusses Biden’s record on criminal justice, the climate crisis, women’s reproductive rights, war, and trade. Robinson accurately predicted Trump would defeat Hillary Clinton and he argues it will all happen again if Biden is the candidate in November. His latest article is titled, “Democrats, You Really Do Not Want To Nominate Joe Biden.”

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It’s Super Tuesday and the battle lines are drawn in a campaign that will not only determine who will face Donald Trump in the general election, but also the future of the Democratic Party.

The Intercept’s Lee Fang discusses who is funding and running the Biden campaign, the role of dark money in the attack against Sanders, and the looming influence of super delegates.

As the Democratic establishment intensifies its battle to ward off a Sanders insurgency, former Hillary Clinton adviser Peter Daou describes why he is now backing Sanders. Daou also discusses the opposition files compiled on Sanders and rejects the claims he has not been “vetted.”

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As Bloomberg launches a massive attack ad campaign against Sanders ahead of the South Carolina and Super Tuesday primaries, Sanders is facing a multi-pronged battle against the most powerful political and economic forces in the country.

From Columbia, South Carolina, Rev. Jesse Jackson discusses the red-baiting of Sanders, offers his views on Democratic Socialism, and suggests Bloomberg should have run against Trump in the Republican primary. Jackson, who won the South Carolina primary in 1984 and 1988, discusses his presidential runs and Joe Biden’s claims of involvement with the civil rights movement. 

Intercepted producer Laura Flynn and Intercept journalist Aída Chavez report from Nevada on how the Latinx community propelled Sanders to victory.

Plus, Jeremy Scahill takes on the red-baiting scare tactics being deployed against Sanders.

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Billionaire former mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg, has announced he is going to unleash a spate of attack ads against Sanders; while Pete Buttigieg and Joe Biden are harping about comments Sanders made on 60 Minutes where he praised Cuba’s literacy efforts. The red-baiting attacks on Sanders are most definitely going to increase this week ahead of the South Carolina primary Saturday and next week’s Super Tuesday contest. Sanders is simultaneously battling his challengers and an often openly hostile corporate media culture.

On MSNBC, his victory in Nevada was compared to the Nazi invasion of France, one of the networks paid pundits referred to the Sanders national campaign press secretary as coming from the “Island of Misfit Black Girls” and host Chuck Todd compared Sanders's twitter followers to Nazi “brown shirts.” Meanwhile, a surrogate for Buttigieg called on Sanders to “muzzle” his top African American campaign representative, while Mike Bloomberg’s campaign put out a statement accusing Sanders of being “Trump’s new bro” and focused overwhelmingly on attacking the comments of senior Black women on the Sanders campaign.

In this Intercepted special, Sanders top national surrogate, Sen. Nina Turner, and campaign press secretary Briahna Joy Gray discuss the attacks against them, the red-baiting attacks against Sanders, and why they believe Sanders could pull off a major upset in South Carolina.

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As Bloomberg nears a half a billion dollars in paid ads for his presidential campaign, he is intensifying his attacks on Bernie Sanders. Meanwhile, the red-baiting smears against Sanders are resurfacing as he surges in national polls. NYU Professor Nikhil Pal Singh, author of "Race and America’s Long War," dissects the record of Bloomberg, what his candidacy says about the state of electoral politics in the U.S. and discusses Bloomberg’s “racial terror” tactics in New York.

Attorney Diala Shamas, of the Center for Constitutional Rights, who fought Bloomberg over his Muslim surveillance program, describes the NYPD’s “Demographics Unit” that targeted Muslim Americans, businesses, houses of worship, and restaurants. Shamas compares the surveillance program to some of the activities of the East German Stasi secret police and says Bloomberg’s use of the program should be seen as an ominous sign of what he might do as president.

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Consumer advocate and former presidential candidate Ralph Nader talks about the state of the Democratic primary, the corporate DNC panic over Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and what would happen to the Democratic party if Sanders wins. Nader also discusses a phone call he had with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi just before the impeachment process began.

As Michael Bloomberg buys his way into the Democratic primary, he is plastering the airwaves with hagiographic advertisements that ignore his awful record on race, labor unions and how he escalated the Stop-and-Frisk program as mayor of New York. Intercept investigative reporter Lee Fang talks about Bloomberg’s advisers and the strategy to block Sanders or Warren from getting the nomination, possibly seeking to force a brokered convention.

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While the Iowa Democratic Party has thoroughly fumbled reporting official results of Monday’s caucuses, Sen. Bernie Sanders’s campaign has released figures showing a significant lead. 

The Intercept’s Washington D.C. bureau chief Ryan Grim reports from the ground in Iowa and traces the rise of today’s progressive moment to Rev. Jesse Jackson’s 1988 presidential campaign. Producers Jack D’Isidoro and Elise Swain speak with caucus-goers in Ottumwa, where meatpacking union workers in the first satellite caucus of the state emphatically supported Sanders. During a caucus at Drake University, Grim speaks with Rep. Ro Khanna and Pod Save America’s Tommy Vietor about Bernie Sanders and electability. At the Sanders campaign victory party in Des Moines, Sanders gives a speech before election results are known, and Chapo Trap House’s Matt Christman weighs in on this political moment. 

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Donald Trump’s legal team, including Allan Dershowitz and Ken Starr, argue that the president cannot be impeached for abusing his power. As the battle over Bolton testifying before the Senate intensifies, The Daily Beast’s Spencer Ackerman discusses the longterm impact of the trial on extreme executive power. He also describes his report that Saudi Arabia plotted to kidnap a critic of the regime on U.S. soil and the Cold War rhetoric deployed by the House Managers.

While Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are often portrayed in the media as being kindred political souls with identical and similar positions, there are some important differences, particularly on foreign policy. Sarah Lazare, a writer at In These Times, discusses Warren’s hawkish side, her team of advisers and her evolving position on Israel.

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Donald Trump’s impeachment trial is already unfolding as a Mitch McConnell-coordinated farce. The charges against Trump are serious, but they beg the question of why Congress has never impeached a president for war crimes. None of the three Senate trials of a president was for imperial crimes committed in plain sight, despite a long history of presidents invading countries, killing civilians, and torturing prisoners.

Constitutional and international law scholar Marjorie Cohn discusses the trial of Trump, the refusal of lawmakers to prosecute war crimes, and presents the case that Trump should be impeached for assassinating Iranian Gen. Qassim Suleimani in Baghdad.

This month marks 29 straight years that the US has been bombing Iraq. Joe Biden, who proactively aided and abetted the Bush administration’s drive for war, has been openly lying about his record, but Bernie Sanders also has some serious questions he needs to answer about his own support for regime change, missile strikes, and deadly economic sanctions. Jeremy Scahill and Sam Husseini, of the Institute for Public Accuracy, present a thorough history of both candidates records on Iraq over the past three decades.

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Other podcasts make money from advertising and corporate sponsors. We don’t have ads — Intercepted is powered by its members.

When you support Intercepted, you become a part of the journalism that holds the powerful to account. Become a member — together we can make a difference.

If you become a sustaining member at $10/month, we’ll send you our stylish Intercepted t-shirt.

This is a community effort. Your donation, no matter the amount, makes a difference. Generous support of listeners like you is what makes our fierce and independent reporting possible.

Do what you can. Become a member at theintercept.com/support. 

All donations are welcome. You can make a one-time gift or become a sustaining member.

Thank you! We’ll see you in 2020.

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Former senior health insurance executive-turned-whistleblower Wendell Potter explains McKinsey’s role in our insurance nightmare and how Pete Buttigieg is using industry talking points to attack Medicare for All. Potter also discusses his career working for insurance giants, soaring medical costs in the U.S. and his role in killing Hillary Clinton’s health care initiative in the 1990s.

Propublica reporter Ian MacDougall discusses McKinsey’s relationship with the Saudi regime, its work for Rikers island, and how it helped push opioids to doctors and patients. MacDougall also lays out his reporting on how McKinsey’s work for ICE in detaining and deporting immigrants disturbed career immigration officials.

And, the Justice Department’s Inspector General blasted the FBI over its lies and omissions in obtaining a secret FISA warrant to spy on Trump campaign operative Carter Page. Intercept co-founder Glenn Greenwald discusses how the report vindicates civil liberties activists and serves as a striking rebuke of the bipartisan love affair with law enforcement and intelligence agencies.

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Monday marked the five year anniversary of the release of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s executive summary on the CIA’s torture program. The former top Senate Intelligence Committee investigator, Daniel Jones and his team combed through 6.3 million pages of CIA records. Jones discusses the years-long battle with the Bush and Obama administrations to make public the findings of this still-classified 7,000 page report. In this bonus episode, Jones expands on the torture report findings.  

Jones is the subject of the new feature film, The Report, starring Adam Driver and Annette Bening, and the host of its companion podcast, The Report Podcast, with Kelly McEvers, where they unpack the story of the CIA’s torture program, the Senate’s investigation, and ensuing cover-up.

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As Washington D.C. remains focused on the Trump impeachment, Daniel Jones, the former top Senate Intelligence Committee investigator into the CIA torture program discusses the years-long battle with the Bush and Obama administrations to make public the findings of his still-classified 7,000 page report. Jones, the subject of the new feature film, The Report, starring Adam Driver and Annette Bening, discusses his findings. He tells the story of how the CIA, under John Brennan, spied on the Senate investigators and accessed their classified computers.

As a rebellion in Iraq forces the resignation of the country’s prime minister, Iraqi activist Raed Jarrar describes the roots of the protests, the impact of foreign intervention by numerous countries, and the history of the U.S. encouraging sectarianism in Iraq.

Plus, "Bigger Than Baghdad" — we hear new music from Iraqi-Canadian hip-hop artist Narcy about the protests in Iraq.

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Other podcasts make money from advertising and corporate sponsors. We don’t have ads — Intercepted is powered by its members.

All donations are welcome. You can make a one-time gift or become a sustaining member.  

If you become a sustaining member at $10/month, we’ll send you our stylish Intercepted t-shirt.

This is a community effort. Your donation, no matter the amount, makes a difference. Generous support of listeners like you is what makes our fierce and independent reporting possible.

Do what you can. Become a member at theintercept.com/support.

Thank you! We’ll be back tomorrow with a full show.

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Early Monday morning, a few minutes past midnight, The Intercept published a major series of investigative stories based on a cache of more than 700 pages of secret Iranian intelligence files detailing years of “painstaking work by Iranian spies to co-opt the country’s leaders, pay Iraqi agents working for the Americans to switch sides, and infiltrate every aspect of Iraq’s political, economic, and religious life.” On this special episode of Intercepted: The Intercept’s Murtaza Hussein and New York Times reporter Farnaz Fassihi discuss the revelations.

The leak of these files is historic. The Iran Cables paint a picture of the actions of a rational nation state actor’s intervention in the affairs of a neighbor whose government once launched a devastating war against it with the backing of the world’s preeminent superpower, the U.S. For more than six decades, successive U.S. governments have waged military and economic war on Iran and Iraq. In the post-9/11 world, the U.S. overthrew the governments of two of Iran’s most threatening neighbors, Saddam Hussein and the Taliban, while simultaneously coming dangerously close to an all out regime change war against Iran. The 2003 invasion shattered Iraq and the documents in the Iran Cables tell the story of the secret activities of its neighbor Iran.

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As right-wing forces attack indigenous Bolivians and allies of Morales, the Trump administration says the toppling of the democratically-elected government “preserves democracy.” Anthropologist and Bolivia scholar Bret Gustafson offers a nuanced analysis of how the coup unfolded, who benefits from the crisis, and what is at stake for the overwhelmingly indigenous population.

Brazil’s former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is now free after spending a year and a half behind bars. He says he wants to run for president and fight the far right regime of Jair Bolsonaro. The Intercept’s Glenn Greenwald talks about his recent conversation with Lula, the threats against Intercept journalists in Brasil, and the latest on the corruption investigation into Justice Minister Sergio Moro.

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On this special episode of Intercepted, Jordan Smith and Liliana Segura discuss the case of Rodney Reed.

The state of Texas has set an execution date of November 20 for Reed. He has been on death row since 1998, following his conviction in the murder of a young woman named Stacy Stites in April of 1996. There is an overwhelming amount of evidence in this case that Reed is innocent, and a very compelling case to be made that Stites’s fiancee at the time of her murder should be the focus of this case. Her fiancee was a police officer at the time of her killing. He is also now a convicted felon himself with a shocking track record of violent assault and rape. Rodney Reed’s life is now hanging in the balance, and an unlikely coalition of high profile people are trying to halt this execution, including Texas Republican politicians and elected officials. Perhaps most prominent among them is Sen. Ted Cruz. 

Jordan Smith and Liliana Segura are both journalists at The Intercept and the cohosts of Murderville. Check out all of their work on this case at The Intercept.

If you like what we do, support our show by going to TheIntercept.com/join.

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Organizer Astra Taylor, author of “Democracy May Not Exist, but We’ll Miss It When It’s Gone,” analyzes “minoritarian” rule in the U.S., how capitalism undermines democracy, and lays out concrete ideas for fighting back.

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, author of “Race for Profit,” talks about the history of how the U.S. government and predatory lenders conspired against Black home ownership in the United States. She also explains why privatizing affordable housing initiatives is a recipe for continued disaster.

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Amidst the grandstanding and partisan bickering, no one wants to talk about the decades of U.S. policy that helped give rise to ISIS and al Qaeda. Jeremy Scahill discusses how U.S. policy opened a Pandora’s box in Iraq and Syria.

Islamic studies scholar Amanda Rogers discusses the actual founder of ISIS, Abu Musab al Zarqawi, and how ISIS adopted tactics from the U.S. “war on terror.”

War reporter Mike Giglio talks about his time on the ground covering ISIS. He documents this experience in his new book,  “Shatter the Nations: ISIS and the War for the Caliphate.”

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Legendary peace activist Liz McAlister has spent her entire life resisting U.S. war. The 79-year-old grandmother of six, who is on trial with her Kings Bay Plowshares co-defendants, explains why she and her friends snuck onto a U.S. nuclear base to deliver an indictment of the U.S. government.

Rudy Giuliani has emerged as Donald Trump’s dollar store Roy Cohn and he has put himself right in the center of the impeachment inquiry. Journalist Johnny Dwyer, author of “The Districts,” chronicles Giuliani’s time as a prosecutor in the Southern District of New York, Giuliani’s connections to shady characters from a host of countries and why he may never face indictment.

Journalist Emily Guendelsberger went undercover working at Amazon, McDonald’s and Convergys. She discusses her experience in the dystopic world of low wage work and her new book “On the Clock, What Low-Wage Work Did to Me and How It Drives America Insane.”

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Adam Serwer of The Atlantic discusses the impeachment inquiry, the cruelty of the Trump presidency and the state of play in Washington D.C.

As Turkey continues its brutal incursion into parts of Syria, U.S. politicians accuse Trump of “betraying” the Kurds. Jeremy Scahill and Dr. Kamran Matin of Sussex University discuss the long history of U.S. support for despotic regimes as they’ve waged genocidal campaigns against Kurdish people.

Author Fatima Bhutto has two new books out, a novel “The Runaways” and “New Kings of the World: Dispatches from Bollywood, Dizi, and K-Pop.” Bhutto discusses these books, the role of the CIA in Hollywood and the evolving story of Pakistan in the post-9/11 world.

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Jeremy Scahill is back. Well, sort of. He passes the reins over to Intercepted's producers.

A recent report from Airwars investigates the incredibly thin media coverage of civilian harm during the U.S. war against ISIS. The author of that report, investigative researcher Alexa O'Brien, shares her findings with associate producer Elise Swain. 

Lead producer Jack D'Isidoro interviews Wilfred Chan, who dives deep into the pro-democracy uprising in Hong Kong and explores the protesters' demands. 

The Intercept's Jordan Smith discusses the first abortion case before the Supreme Court since Trump’s new appointments with producer Laura Flynn. They analyze the latest in the war against women's reproductive rights.

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D.C. Bureau Chief Ryan Grim hosts and gives the long history of Hunter Biden in Ukraine. 

Senior National Security Correspondent James Risen explains Donald Trump’s abuse of power, comments on the New York Times publishing information about the whistleblower, he calls for an end to leak prosecutions, especially under the Espionage Act. 

Grim and Risen are joined by Edward Baumgartner, a researcher on Ukraine and Russia, and Kristofer Harrison, a former Defense and State Department adviser during the George W. Bush administration. They discuss Joe and Hunter Biden’s involvement in Ukraine, and the interests of various Trump associates in Ukraine including Rudy Giuliani, Michael Cohen, and Paul Manafort. 

Reporter Murtaza Hussain asks why the moral outrage over Trump’s abuse of political power is so much greater than it is for America’s endless wars and rising civilian deaths.

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Senior Correspondent Naomi Klein imagines what real climate justice could look like and talks about her new book, “On Fire: The Burning Case for a Green New Deal.” 

The Intercept’s Sharon Lerner tells Intercepted’s Elise Swain about her groundbreaking reporting on toxic industrial chemicals.

NSA Whistleblower Edward Snowden reads an excerpt from his new memoir, “Permanent Record,” and reflects on his time since revealing the broad scope of NSA surveillance with Micah Lee, First Look Media’s Director of Information Security.

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Philosopher Srecko Horvat discusses the historical lessons we can learn from the guerrilla struggle against fascism waged by the Partisans in Yugoslavia during World War II. Horvat also talks about  the recent surge in extreme right-wing political forces in Europe and what that trend and Julian Assange’s case mean for the future of democracy.

Intercepted is going on hiatus for the summer and will return with new episodes in September 2019.

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Rutgers professor and co-host of the Uncivil podcast Chenjerai Kumanyika argues that demands for reparations should include challenging the driving forces behind slavery: capitalism and imperialism. 

The Intercept’s Ryan Devereaux gives an update on the trial for humanitarian aid worker Scott Warren and discusses the dehumanization that has allowed the war on immigrants to continue for decades. 

Artist and musician Nakhane reflects on growing up queer in South Africa and talks about his new record, “You Will Not Die.”

This is our last episode of the season. Intercepted is going on hiatus for the summer and will return with new episodes in September 2019.

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As the U.S. accuses Iran of attacking civilian ships while offering scant evidence, grave historical parallels are emerging with the Gulf of Tonkin incidents in 1964 that were manipulated to justify Lyndon Johnson’s dramatic escalation of the war in Vietnam. 

California Democrat Rep. Ro Khanna is preparing legislation aimed at stopping an attack on Iran and he says he would not put it past National Security Adviser John Bolton to manipulate evidence. 

Journalist Negar Mortazavi of The Independent analyzes what war with Iran would look like and exposes the State Department’s funding of propaganda operations against Iran. 

Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman talks about the parallels with the build up to the Iraq invasion of 2003 and shares stories from her early life as a journalist.

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In a bombshell series of reports, The Intercept Brasil has revealed dirty tricks used in the prosecution of the leftist former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on corruption charges and improper coordination among prosecutors and judges. Glenn Greenwald discusses the documents in the leaked archive and what this means for Trump ally Jair Bolsonaro. 

Tiffany Cabán, a queer Latina public defender from Queens, New York, talks about her battle with the Democratic Party machine in her bid to become a prosecutor opposed to the carceral state. Chesa Boudin, whose parents were sentenced to lengthy prison terms when he was 14-months-old, is trying to overhaul San Francisco’s justice system and radically change the relationship between cops and the DA. 

As paramilitary forces carry out a massacre against non-violent protesters in Sudan, we get a report from filmmaker Hajooj Kuka who was wounded in the raid in Khartoum last week. And we hear the music of Sudanese-American Ahmed Gallab, the lead singer-songwriter of the band Sinkane, and his experience of monitoring the major developments in his home country.

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Fanatical opponents of a woman’s right to choose are pushing to criminalize abortion and women's healthcare providers. Historian Johanna Schoen, Rutgers professor and author, talks about when abortion was illegal and the history of coercive policies from forced sterilization to blocking access to sex education, birth control, and abortions.

Whistleblower Reality Winner has spent more than two years in prison for allegedly leaking a top-secret NSA document on Russian cyber attacks on software used in some U.S. voting systems. Her mother, Billie Winner-Davis, describes her daughter’s prison conditions and makes the case for why she should be freed.

As Donald Trump wraps up his state visit to the United Kingdom, we speak with philosopher and activist Srećko Horvat about the historical lessons we can learn from the guerrilla struggle against fascism waged by the Partizans in Yugoslavia during World War II, as well as the recent surge in extreme right-wing political forces in Europe.

If you like what we do, support our show by going to TheIntercept.com/join to become a member.

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For the first time in U.S. history, the government is criminally prosecuting a publisher for printing truthful information. Whether Assange is extradited or not, this case casts a dangerous cloud over aggressive national security reporting and means criminalizing journalism is on the table. Jameel Jaffer, director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University and former top lawyer at the ACLU, analyzes the indictment and explains why he believes this case represents a grave threat to a free press.

As Democrats continue to debate whether to initiate an impeachment inquiry against Trump, Nancy Pelosi seems to be getting under The Donald’s skin. The Intercept’s Ryan Grim explains Pelosi’s rise to power within the Democratic Party, her political origins and what her possible end game strategy is for Donald Trump. Grim also discusses his new book “We’ve Got People: From Jesse Jackson to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the End of Big Money and the Rise of a Movement.”

If you like what we do, support our show by going to TheIntercept.com/join to become a member.

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National Security Adviser John Bolton is more powerful than ever and is obsessed with regime change in Tehran. His boss is threatening to bring the “end of Iran” as some news outlets help spread the administration’s unveiled attempt to gin up a Gulf of Tonkin-style justification for war. Iranian author and analyst Hooman Majd explains how we got here and how Iran’s leaders view the Trump administration. 

Trump loves to talk about locking up his political opponents and with William Barr as his attorney general, it may not be unthinkable. That is precisely what the former President of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, is charging happened to him. Lula, the once popular leftist president of Brazil, is serving a 12-year prison sentence on corruption charges. But, in an exclusive prison interview with The Intercept’s Glenn Greenwald, Lula says his prosecution was an attempt to destroy him and the Workers Party he built. Greenwald discusses his interview and plays highlights of his conversation with Lula.

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Trevor Timm, executive director of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, talks about the weaponization of this law for use in stopping investigative journalism and the case of Air Force veteran Daniel Hale, who is facing 50 years in prison. 

Organizer Bill Fletcher Jr. discusses the Trump administration’s intensifying military threats against Iran, the ongoing coup attempt in Venezuela and offers strategic thoughts on how to view the 2020 Democratic primary field. 

Dr. Krystal Redman, executive director of SPARK Reproductive Justice Now in Georgia, talks about the spate of new laws being implemented in several states that seek to criminalize abortion and women’s health care providers.

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The Intercept’s Murtaza Hussain discusses Trump’s motley crew of regime change warriors, what war with Iran would look like, and the strategy behind the economic sanctions.

At nearly 90 years old, former Senator Mike Gravel may be the oldest candidate for president, but he also has the dankest social media memes. Gravel discusses his insurgent run for the Democratic nomination led by his campaign volunteers who are teenagers.

The Intercept’s Jordan Smith talks about her latest reporting on abortion.

In honor of the 100th anniversary of Pete Seeger’s birth, we hear some never before released recordings and talk with Jeff Place, the curator and senior archivist of The Smithsonian Folkways Collection’s career-spanning anthology of Seeger’s work.

If you like what we do, support our show by going to TheIntercept.com/join to become a member.

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The Intercept’s editor-in-chief Betsy Reed, investigative journalist Matthew Cole, and national security editor Vanessa Gezari discuss how Erik Prince went from exile in the United Arab Emirates to a shadow player in Trump world. 

Famed Pentagon Papers lawyer James Goodale, former counsel to the New York Times, discusses the dangerous precedent the prosecution of Julian Assange would set and criticizes “establishment” media outlets for not speaking out. 

War reporter Dahr Jamail, who reported inside Fallujah during the first U.S. siege, has now deployed to the frontlines of the war to save the climate. He reads from his new book, ”The End of Ice: Bearing Witness and Finding Meaning in the Path of Climate Disruption."

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We’d like to introduce you to Running from COPS — a new podcast from our sister company Topic Studios and the team behind Missing Richard Simmons.

After 30 years on television, COPS has evolved into a constant messaging machine about policing in America. Running from COPS is the result of an 18-month investigation and delves deep into how the show actually gets made, how much control police departments really have over the final product, and the harrowing stories of the people who have ended up on camera.

If you like what you hear, the show is out now on all podcast platforms. Just search for “Running from COPS.”

Intercepted will be back with new episodes next week.

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Ryan Grim, the Washington DC bureau chief of The Intercept, discusses the departure of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Neilsen and the historic War Powers Resolution vote that just passed Congress.

Investigative reporter Aura Bogado, of Reveal, discusses the Trump administration’s current immigration policies, the ongoing family separations and Bernie Sanders rejection of the concept of “open borders.” 

The Intercept’s Micah Lee discusses the bizarre case of the Chinese national who talked her way onto Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort with a bunch of cash, USB drives with malware and some counter surveillance equipment. 

Two Catholic Worker peace activists explain why they snuck onto a US military base, poured their own blood and attempted to deliver an indictment of President Trump. Carmen Trotta of the New York Catholic Worker and Martha Hennessy, the granddaughter of Dorothy Day, discuss their legal strategy, why they acted, and the history of the Plowshares movement.

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The Intercept’s Alice Speri discusses her investigation into the FBI’s creation of the term “black identity extremist” and explains why this label is so dangerous. 

Science fiction author Cory Doctorow walks us through the dystopian yet highly plausible futures in his new book “Radicalized.” 

Plus, Katie Alice Greer of the band Priests describes how history and mythology influenced their new record, “The Seduction of Kansas.”

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Naomi Klein analyzes the epic media failure on Trump-Russia and discusses the agenda for change and resistance that should have been. 

Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi details how on Trump-Russia the media failed to do its job.

Ali Abunimah, of the Electronic Intifada, lays out the scandal in plain sight: Israeli collusion with Trump and the broader U.S. political power structure. 

The Intercept’s Jon Schwarz tells the bizarre tale of China’s illegal influence over the presidential campaign of Jeb Bush. 

And Alison Klayman talks about her film "The Brink," a look at the past year of Steve Bannon’s project to bring his white nationalist agenda global.

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Guardian columnist Nesrine Malik talks about the “ghoulish routine” in the media and among politicians that increasingly emerges in the aftermath of massacres of Muslims by white supremacists. 

The Intercept’s Murtaza Hussain explains why, as a non-white Western Muslim, he felt compelled to analyze the “manifesto” of the shooter. 

University of Chicago historian Kathleen Belew, author of “Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America,” discusses the history of white power movements and why she draws a distinction between white power and white supremacy.

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Famed civil rights lawyer Flint Taylor discusses his 13 year struggle for justice for Fred Hampton, his work in exposing the torture program in Chicago that was unleashed on black men, and his career fighting against violent corrupt cops, the city of Chicago, and J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI. Taylor’s new memoir is called "The Torture Machine: Racism and Police Violence in Chicago." 

Hina Shamsi of the American Civil Liberties Union talks about the expansion of drone strikes under Trump, how Obama paved the way for his successor, and what we might expect from Attorney General William Barr. 

Meghan McCain is not Jewish, but she is accusing a Jewish comic artist of creating “one of the most anti-semitic things” she has ever seen: a cartoon about her hypocrisy in attacking Ilhan Omar and appropriating Jewish suffering. Artist Eli Valley talks about why he drew it and why he believes McCain’s attacks on his cartoon proves the very point he was making.

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Journalist and Russiagate critic Aaron Maté presents his dissenting analysis, what he believes is behind the investigation, and how the scandal has distracted from other urgent issues. 

We hear a speech from professor Shoshana Zuboff, author of “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power.”

As the Trump administration intensifies its air war in Somalia, journalist Harun Maruf, author of “Inside Al-Shabaab: The Secret History of Al-Qaeda’s Most Powerful Ally," discusses the war in Somalia and the seldom mentioned history of how the George W. Bush administration helped overthrow the only force that had brought peace to Somalia since the early 1990s.

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California Rep. Ro Khanna tells us he is ready to invoke the War Powers Act in an effort to stop military action in Venezuela. 

New York Times reporter Charlie Savage discusses the rise of the unitary executive theory and how Attorney General William Barr could impact the Trump scandals and U.S. national security policy.

Carol Rosenberg, the only journalist covering the Guantanamo prison and trials full-time, joins us for a wide-ranging conversation. She discusses 17 years of reporting, controversies around prosecuting detainees, and the evidence that Haspel's covert career included a stint at GTMO.  

Jordan Carver, the author of “Spaces of Disappearance: the Architecture of Extraordinary Rendition,” takes us on an audio journey mapping the covert CIA program.

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Venezuela scholar George Ciccariello-Maher and journalist Kim Ives discuss recent developments and examine the massive protests rocking Haiti’s U.S.-backed president. 

The Intercept’s Jon Schwarz details the bloody and murderous career of Elliott Abrams, the man now in charge of U.S.-Venezuela operations. 

And journalist Sharif Abdel Kouddous explains the failed revolution in Egypt and outlines U.S.-backed dictator General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s plot to make himself president for life.

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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi officially endorses the attempted coup in Venezuela, joining forces with Donald Trump and his posse of neoconservatives. Venezuela’s Vice Foreign Minister Carlos Ron responds to the threats of military action, the reports about covert U.S. activity in the country, and discusses the impact of the sanctions on Venezuela. 

Former United Nations rapporteur Alfred de Zayas is accusing the U.S. of attempting to “asphyxiate” Venezuela with economic warfare and says the U.S. should be investigated by the International Criminal Court. Zayas wrote a UN report on Venezuela in late 2018 that was scathing in its assessment of U.S. policy towards Venezuela under both Obama and Trump. He talks about what he found during his investigation. 

And we go inside the mind of journalist Sam Husseini who tried to ask convicted criminal Elliott Abrams about his past and the present U.S. lies about Venezuela.

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Donald Trump received big bipartisan applause at his State of the Union.

Vijay Prashad discusses the state of imperialism in the world, the battle for Venezuela, India’s upcoming election, and the history of U.S. dirty operations across the globe.

As right-wing media and politicians have gone berserk over the FBI raid on the home of Trump crony, Roger Stone, whistleblower Reality Winner remains behind bars. The Intercept’s Peter Maass discusses the hypocrisy surrounding the two cases and we hear excerpts from the recent play, “Is This A Room: Reality Winner Verbatim Transcription,” created by Tina Satter. The play is based entirely on the verbatim transcript of the FBI interrogation of Winner the day she was arrested. 

Plus, a sneak peak at the new film Donald Trump’s Day Off.

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Investigative journalist Allan Nairn talks about the history of U.S. crimes in Central America, the time he told Abrams, on national television, he should stand trial for war crimes and the threat of U.S. military action in Venezuela. 

Former adviser to Hugo Chavez, Eva Golinger, and journalist and educator Roberto Lovato discuss how Venezuela was thrust into economic crisis, who is responsible, and what Washington really wants.

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Longtime investigative journalist Michael Isikoff of Yahoo! News analyzes the Buzzfeed News bombshell report that Trump ordered Michael Cohen to lie to cover up a planned Trump Tower in Moscow. Robert Mueller is disputing the report and Isikoff offers his own critique of the story and what we know to be true thus far. 

Popular economist and adviser to Bernie Sanders 2016 campaign Stephanie Kelton talks about Modern Monetary Theory, the lies told by Republicans and Democrats about deficits, and whether young workers will ever get Social Security benefits. 

Los Angeles public school teachers appear to have won some major victories as a result of their historic strike. We speak to Noriko Nakada, an 8th grade English teacher at Emerson Middle School in LA, and labor journalist Sarah Jaffe, who covered the strike for The Nation.

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Trump says he wants to end U.S. wars abroad, while he threatens to use emergency powers to further militarize U.S. immigration enforcement. On Twitter, Trump advocates isolationism, while embracing lifelong warmongers like John Bolton and Benjamin Netanyahu. 

Investigative reporter and historian Gareth Porter analyzes Trump's pledge to pull troops from Syria and Afghanistan. He breaks down why Israel and the Pentagon don't want to see an end to U.S. militarism. 

Historian Greg Grandin lays out the nativist roots of the U.S. Border Patrol, its connection to CIA dirty wars in Latin America, and nearly 100-years of brutality and impunity. 

Sudan has been rocked by large demonstrations for the past month, threatening the regime of Omar al-Bashir, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court. Despite Bashir’s pariah status, Trump has lifted some longstanding sanctions against his regime. Journalist Hana Baba discusses her recent trip to Sudan and what the protests are really about.

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Introducing Murderville, a new investigative podcast from The Intercept.  Episode 2: The Trial. Devonia Inman goes on trial for his life. But there’s really no evidence against him. Witnesses keep changing their stories. And the jury never hears about an alternate suspect — a man who was just arrested for a brazen murder of two prominent community members.

The full seven-episode Murderville series is available now on Stitcher Premium, or free on all platforms starting December 20. To subscribe, go to theintercept.com/murderville.

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Introducing Murderville, a new investigative podcast from The Intercept.  Episode 1: Murder at Taco Bell. A murder in the small southern town of Adel, Georgia, sent Devonia Inman to jail 20 years ago.  He was accused of robbing and shooting a woman named Donna Brown in a Taco Bell parking lot.  He swore he was innocent and there were good reasons to believe him. And while he awaited trial, three more brutal killings took place in Adel. Did police get the wrong man?

The full seven-episode Murderville series is available now on Stitcher Premium, or free on all platforms starting December 20. To subscribe, go to theintercept.com/murderville.

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Dan Kaufman, author of "The Fall of Wisconsin: Conservative Conquest of a Progressive Bastion and The Future Of American Politics," digs into the history, analyzes the latest Republican conspiracy and lays out why we all should study the Wisconsin model. 

Longtime criminal justice reporters Liliana Segura and Jordan Smith talk about their gripping new true crime podcast, Murderville, which tells the story of a series of grisly killings in a small Georgia town and the man they believe has been wrongly imprisoned. 

Canadian hip-hop artist and host of Netflix's "Hip-Hop Evolution," Shad, talks about his roots, class warfare, and his imaginative new album “A Short Story About a War.”

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Jeremy Scahill details the crimes of George H.W. Bush, the sick propaganda of the corporate media memorials; and the trail of blood, death, and tears Bush leaves behind. 

Independent journalist Arun Gupta covers decades of Bush, from his time at the helm of the CIA, to the presidency. Gupta discusses Bush’s support for Manuel Noriega and his eventual invasion of Panama, the pardoning of Iran-Contra criminals, the dirty wars in Central America, the support for Saddam Hussein, and the launch of the Gulf War. 

Acclaimed Iraqi poet and scholar Sinan Antoon describes his life under the U.S.-backed dictatorship of Saddam, the horrors of the Gulf War, and how Bush’s destruction of Iraqi civilian society led to the rise of ISIS.

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Decades of CIA death squads, economic warfare, coups, and support for authoritarian rule played a central role in the exodus of refugees from Central America. Donald Trump is now threatening to shoot the fleeing victims. Honduran professor Suyapa Portillo Villeda analyzes how Washington created the crisis. 

Jeremy Scahill details the history of John Negroponte and the Contra death squads in Nicaragua and the case of a U.S. Jesuit priest murdered in Honduras during Negroponte’s tenure. 

The Intercept’s Ryan Devereaux and Melissa del Bosque of The Investigative Fund at the Nation Institute talk about the militarization of the border, the prosecution of humanitarian volunteers who help immigrants and the nativist, white supremacists driving U.S. policy. 

Director Alex Winter talks about his film documenting the hundreds of reporters who produced the Panama Papers — more than 11 million documents showing systematic tax evasion and money laundering by some of the world’s most powerful people.

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The Chicago-based hip-hop artist Vic Mensa not only raps about Chicago police killings of black and brown people, about apartheid in Palestine, the poisoning of the water in Flint, Michigan, but he also goes to where the silence is and speaks out. 

In the aftermath of the police shooting of Laquan MacDonald, Mensa was in the streets and gave voice to the movement that led to the conviction of second-degree murder for Chicago Police officer Jason Van Dyke. Mensa has traveled in Palestine with the poet Aja Monet, and he has gone to Flint to help amplify the voices of a community that was poisoned and continues to be poisoned. During the Standing Rock movement, he joined to support the water protectors fighting against the Dakota Access Pipeline. 

He speaks about his activism, what he saw in Palestine, being a gun owner who supports gun control, and the revolutionary figures that inspire his work.

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Columbia University professor Bernard Harcourt lays out the multi-decade history of paramilitarized politics in the U.S., how the tactics of the “War on Terror” have come back to American soil, and why no one talks about drone strikes anymore. 

Academy Award-winning director Michael Moore talks about his recent visit from the FBI in connection to the pipe bomb packages and who he thinks should run against Trump in 2020. 

Journalist and lawyer Josie Duffy Rice analyzes the battle over vote counts in Florida and Georgia, the Republican campaign to suppress black voters, the gutting of the Voting Rights Act, and why she isn’t protesting the firing of Jeff Sessions. 

Jeremy Scahill explains why Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer need to go away.

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Journalist Chris Hedges has spent the past 15 years trying to ring the alarm about the dangers of the U.S. political system and the impact of a corporate and financial coup d’etat that happened long ago. He talks about the growing power of “Christian fascists,” predicts a major financial crash and offers ideas on how to fight back.

In 1923, a year after Mussolini took power in Italy, one radical and visionary woman saw his rise for what it was and warned of the grave dangers the world would face if fascism spread. Her name was Clara Zetkin. Acclaimed writer and actor Deborah Eisenberg performs a selection of Zetkin's writing, which was recently published as a book, “Fighting Fascism: How to Struggle and How to Win.”

Also, new music from the incredible visual artist and musician Lonnie Holley who is out with a new album called "MITH."

Join Michael Moore, Jeremy Scahill, and Marshall Curry for a special post-election screening and discussion about the rise of hate crimes and right-wing political violence in the age of Trump on November 9th, in New York City. Tickets are available here.

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NYU’s Ruth Ben-Ghiat, and Yale’s Jason Stanley discuss Trump’s brand of authoritarianism and dissect the similarities and differences between Trump and fascist leaders Mussolini and Hitler. 

Actor Ty Jones, Producing Artistic Director at The Classical Theatre of Harlem, perform’s Langston Hughes’s poem “Let America Be America Again.” 

Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting’s Adam Johnson breaks down how white supremacy and fascism are discussed in U.S. media, hypocrisy on Saudi Arabia and the false both-sides paradigm on radical rightwing violence and terrorism. 

And hardcore punk musician Julian Cashwan Pratt, of Show Me the Body, talks about  "Work Sets You Free," a silent visual essay juxtaposing federal prisons in America with the band’s own footage of visits to concentration camps while touring Europe.

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Journalist Rula Jebreal, who conducted one of the last interviews with Jamal Khashoggi before he was executed, discusses possible motives for his murder and shares audio from the interview. Sam Husseini, a journalist who once asked a top Saudi official to defend the legitimacy of his regime, joins for a roundtable on the history of U.S. support for Saudi Arabia, the intentional amnesia of the politicians demanding action, and the slaughter in Yemen. 

Renowned playwright Naomi Wallace has a new one-person play about Yemen. Intercepted has adapted it into a radio drama performed by Ismail Khalidi. 

Indigenous historian Nick Estes discusses the ongoing attacks on native people, voter disenfranchisement, the Red Power movement and the latest on the fight against major oil and gas pipelines.

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Glenn Greenwald is host and he breaks down the rise of the most extreme right-wing candidate in the democratic world and explains why Brazil’s young and fragile democracy leaves it far more susceptible to a return of military rule. 

Glenn is joined by the Vice Presidential candidate on the Worker’s Party ticket running against Bolsonaro, Manuela d’Ávila, for a wide-ranging interview about Bolsonaro, the campaign she and the Worker’s Party are running, and the severe dangers posed to Brazilian democracy. 

Journalist Sarah Aziza gives an in-depth analysis of the alleged brutal murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi that has rocked the journalistic world and started a debate over the U.S. relationship with Saudi Arabia.

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Chicago claps back in a live show recorded in the Windy City.

Poet, scholar, and author Eve Ewing, revolutionary educator Bill Ayers, activist Charlene Carruthers, and journalist Jamie Kalven discuss the murder conviction of the Chicago Police officer who gunned down Laquan McDonald, the neoliberal tenure of Mayor Rahm Emanuel, and the war on Chicago’s public schools. 

Plus, musician Malcolm London performs and Eve Ewing reads a poem which imagines the mundane normalcies of life for Emmett Till — if he hadn't been murdered.

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Most analysis of Donald Trump’s election to the U.S. presidency in 2016 focuses on immediate causes and, of course, its effects. In a recent speech, NYU history professor Nikhil Pal Singh took a longer historical view, sketching three arcs of U.S. history that have yielded the durable commitments to racism, militarism, and unequal class power that have sharpened over the past two decades. 

Considering the historical development of the United States as an empire-state, rather than as a nation-state, he argues, is essential to understanding what it has meant, and what it might mean going forward, to bend the future toward greater equality and justice – both in the United States and in its relationship to the wider world. He argues that the election of Trump and the failure of Hillary Clinton may be the clearest signals yet, of the decline of U.S. empire. Rather than a cause for pessimism, he says, this moment is an opportunity to enliven a new politics and begin a new story — but only if we are honest about our past. 

Singh is the author of "Black is a Country" and "Race and America’s Long War." He is also the founding co-director of NYU’s Prison Education Project. This speech was delivered on September 26th at the Lensic Theater in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The event was sponsored by the Lannan Foundation, which granted Intercepted permission to share it with our audience.

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If the Democrats retake the House, Rep. Hank Johnson will be the chair of a subcommittee that has subpoena power to continue the investigation of Kavanaugh. He explains his position on Kavanaugh and also Justice Clarence Thomas and his history of alleged sexual harassment of Anita Hill. 

Former White House lawyer, Supreme Court clerk and current constitutional law professor Kate Shaw and Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman offer an in-depth analysis of the battle over Kavanaugh. 

The Intercept’s Peter Maass got a copy of Kavanaugh friend Mark Judge’s novel about their drunken high school years. We made a radio drama of some of the scenes from the book, including a character named Bart O’Kavanaugh. 

We hear brand new music from musician and radical indigenous queer feminist Katherine Paul, aka Black Belt Eagle Scout. 

Plus, Donald Trump says he has never had a drink, but how different would he be if he liked beer as much as Brett Kavanaugh?

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Famed dissident Noam Chomsky breaks down the Trump presidency; the defeat of the U.S. in Afghanistan; what he believes is a just position on Syria’s civil war; and the agenda of Vladimir Putin and Russia. He also discusses the impact of big social media companies and explains why a life of resisting and fighting is worth it. 

Jeremy Scahill analyzes Trump’s U.N. speech and gives context to the seldom-discussed bipartisan support for much of Trump’s global agenda. 

Dallas Hip Hop artist Bobby Sessions talks about police killings and this political moment. We also hear music from his new EP, "RVLTN (Chapter 1): The Divided States of AmeriKKKa."

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One year ago, Hurricane Maria ravaged Puerto Rico, but U.S. colonialism prepared the ground for the deadly crisis. 

Journalist Juan González exposes how Wall Street, the bipartisan Washington political machine, and climate change conspired to kill thousands of Puerto Ricans. 

The Intercept’s Naomi Klein outlines the neoliberal economic attack on Puerto Rico and a shock doctrine in motion. 

Puerto Rican musician Ileana Mercedes Cabra Joglar, better known as iLe, talks about her new song, "Odio" and the struggle for Puerto Rican independence.

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Constitutional law professor Zephyr Teachout is running to be the New York Attorney General, and has vowed to put Trump and his organization in her legal sights if she wins. She talks about why she believes Trump may have violated the emoluments clause and her plan to undermine his potential pardons. 

Socialist academic Dr. Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor talks about socialism, capitalism and what real resistance looks like in Trump’s America.

On the 17th anniversary of 9/11, the longest continuous U.S. war in history continues in Afghanistan. Rep. Barbara Lee tells the story of her historic lone vote against the Authorization for the Use of Military Force, and the harassment and death threats she received after her speech on September 14, 2001. 

We speak with Nathan Robinson, the editor of Current Affairs magazine, and Intercept senior politics editor Briahna Joy Gray about the state of left politics, the midterm elections and the reappearance of Barack Obama.

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Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, 33, is running for governor of Michigan on a campaign of creating a single-payer health care system, raising the minimum wage to $15, legalizing marijuana, and a sweeping overhaul of the state’s criminal justice system. He discusses his campaign, his views on the Democratic Party, the Flint water catastrophe, and why he believes he can accomplish his agenda despite the powerful right-wing forces in Michigan politics. 

As the internment of immigrant families continues, we revisit Scahill's 2017 conversation with educator and organizer Mariame Kaba. She retraces the evolution of the U.S. prison system, from convict leasing to three-strikes law, and the devastating generational impact these policies have disproportionately had on black and brown communities.

Filmmaker Michelle Latimer discusses her new documentary "Nuuca," a nuanced exploration of the brutal transformation that oil extraction brought to one North Dakotan community. The film follows three young indigenous women who struggle with an influx of men and rising rates of sexual abuse, rape, and kidnappings.

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The Intercept’s Ryan Devereaux talks about his recent reporting in the border state of Arizona and paints a harrowing picture of the human toll of family separations by ICE. Alice Speri lays out her investigation of sexual abuse by ICE officers and contractors in immigration detention centers. 

Sohail Daulatzai discusses his new book," With Stones in Our Hands: Writings on Muslims, Racism and Empire," and explains why the film "The Battle of Algiers" is still relevant more than 50 years since its release. 

The legendary resistance singer Barbara Dane shares stories from her 91 years on earth fighting militarism, racism, and economic injustice. Plus, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen competes on Jeopardy! and we hear a cover of “The Partisan” from composers and musicians Leo Heiblum of Mexico and Tenzin Choegyal of Tibet.

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 While Paul Manafort enjoyed the comforts of his Hamptons mansion on house arrest, Winner was denied bond, kept in a jail and has been subjected to a public smear campaign by Jeff Sessions’ Justice Department. She was the first whistleblower charged under President Trump and her treatment is unprecedented.

Former drone technician-turned-whistleblower Lisa Ling talks about the campaign to free Winner. Trevor Timm of Freedom of the Press Foundation breaks down how the government is stripping Winner of her right to a fair trial. The Intercept’s Peter Maass highlights the injustice and hypocrisy of her treatment. Intercept editor in chief Betsy Reed and reporter Sam Biddle talk about the top secret NSA document she allegedly leaked, the irony of the media silence about Winner’s treatment, and why First Look Media is funding her defense. To support Reality Winner's legal defense fund, click here.

Come see Intercepted live in Brooklyn, NY on June 21 with featured guest, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh. Tickets are now available.

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Blacklisted academic Norman Finkelstein discusses his meticulous, scholarly documentation of the collective punishment of Gaza, “the largest concentration camp in the world.” The son of two Nazi concentration camp survivors, Finkelstein is an incendiary academic whose work has infuriated the Israeli government for decades. His latest book, "Gaza: An Inquest Into its Martyrdom," has not been reviewed in a single U.S. newspaper. He talks about the latest massacre in Gaza, the history of US support for Israel’s war crimes and why he believes Iran is out-maneuvering Netanyahu. 

Sen. Ron Wyden, a longtime member of the Intelligence Committee, blasts the CIA propaganda campaign in support of Haspel and accuses the Republicans of engaging in a secret confirmation process. Jeremy also asks Wyden if he believes CIA personnel involved with torture should be criminally prosecuted, what he thinks of Edward Snowden and why James Clapper, Obama’s director of national intelligence, was never charged with perjury. 

Plus, Jared Kushner speaks a little too much truth at the Jerusalem embassy.

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