On this week’s episode of Deep Dive, Pulitzer Prize winner David Leonhardt joins host and Playbook co-author Ryan Lizza to talk about his new book and what it says about how Democrats can save their relationship with working class voters.

Since the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision in June 2022, the GOP has repeatedly paid a price electorally for its stance on abortion. The chaos has been dispiriting to the anti-abortion activists who helped engineer the Dobbs decision in the first place. And now they think they have a new political strategy to get Republicans out of their defensive crouch and to start winning again on this issue. The woman leading this effort is Marjorie Dannenfelser, the head of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life...

Host and Playbook co-author Ryan Lizza joins Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) to learn how he and other GOP moderates, institutionalists, and Biden-district Republicans have organized against Jim Jordan’s campaign to be speaker of the House… and what the endgame is for Republicans to escape this mess.

Jon Finer, President Joe Biden’s principal deputy national security adviser, opens up to Playbook co-author and Deep Dive host Ryan Lizza about how the administration is approaching some of the thorniest problems related to the war in Israel, including: striking the right balance between supporting Israel and expressing concerns about an extreme response; Biden’s warnings to Iran; and whether America should now consider itself at war with Hamas.

Marty Baron ran The Washington Post’s newsroom for nine years. In that time, Marty clashed with then-president Donald Trump. He pacified rebellions from his younger and increasingly more ideological staff. And he partnered with Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos to take on arguably the biggest disrupter of all: technology. He’s written about all of this — and a lot more — in his new book, "Collision of Power: Trump, Bezos, and The Washington Post." Today, Marty is joining Playbook...

The center of presidential politics this week was the swing state of Michigan. Trump won the longtime Democratic stronghold in 2016, and Biden won it back in 2020. It will be pivotal again in 2024. And that’s why both candidates flew to metro Detroit on consecutive days this week to insert themselves into the United Auto Workers’ strike against the so-called “Detroit Three” — General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis, the company that owns Chrysler. On this episode of Playbook Deep Dive, host and...

After losing a series of votes this week to avoid a government shutdown, Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy has effectively lost his majority. On this episode of Playbook Deep Dive, host and Playbook co-author Ryan Lizza asks the number two Democratic leader in the House, Minority Whip Katherine Clark, what price McCarthy will have to pay for Democrats to lend their votes to passing a CR and fending-off a potential challenge to his speakership.

It would be easy to look at the House of Representatives and assume that the members of the Freedom Caucus — and not Speaker Kevin McCarthy — are the ones who are actually in charge. But is that actually true? On this week’s episode of Playbook Deep Dive, host and Playbook co-author Ryan Lizza talks with one of the top House moderates, Ohio Congressman Dave Joyce. Joyce is the Chairman of the Republican Governance Group, the pre-eminent faction for GOP centrists; and he’s also a senior...

What makes President Joe Biden? We’re all pretty familiar with Vice President Biden and Senator Biden. But in his latest iteration as commander-in-chief, it hasn’t been as easy to see inside his mind. Cracking into Biden’s brain and inside the White House has been a challenge for the media. He’s surrounded by a tight “clan” of family and advisors who have achieved Biden lifer status — and they don’t often leak. It consists of his sister Valerie, and the five advisers known as the Quint:...

On Wednesday night, eight Republican presidential candidates gathered in Milwaukee for the first GOP primary debate. There was a lot on the line for each of them. But there was also an enormous amount at stake for the news organization that hosted the debate: Fox News. Consider the cross currents that the two Fox moderators, Martha McCallum and Bret Baier, had to deal with: First there was Trump, who refused to participate and lashed out at Fox and its talent, including Baier, on social...

This coming Wednesday, something big is happening in Milwaukee: the first Republican presidential debate. On this week’s episode of Playbook Deep Dive, host & Playbook co-author Ryan Lizza talks with North Dakota Governor & GOP presidential candidate Doug Burgum about how he hatched one of the most innovative schemes in memory to qualify for Wednesday's GOP debate; how he’s preparing to compete on the stage with big leaguers like Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump – if Trump shows up;...

This week, almost every Republican running for president is headed to the Iowa State Fair, famous for its fried Twinkies and statues of farm animals made out of butter and — every four years — extremely embarrassing photos of candidates eating unwieldy treats. The Iowa State Fair also kicks off a new more intense period of the Republican primary season as nationally televised debates begin this month and the five month countdown to the Iowa Caucuses begins. Iowa’s importance in presidential...

In 2023, there are two Europes: the Europe of the museums and the beaches – and the real Europe as lived by its people. And that Europe has changed dramatically in recent decades. The end of the Cold War collapsed many of the continent's political barriers. European unification brought countries as diverse as Ireland and Bulgaria under one umbrella. And more recently, a boom in migration, especially from the Islamic world, has changed Europe’s demographics and brought a host of...

This week, the action in the Senate was all about the annual defense authorization – the NDAA. Usually, the argument about what goes into this enormous bill that governs everything the military can and can’t do is a word soup cooked-up by defense nerds. You may recall things like SDI, the GWOT, and closing GITMO. All controversial in their own day, and all eventually resolved through the historically bipartisan NDAA process. But this time around, many in Washington are beginning to wonder...

When Alejandro Mayorkas was tapped to run DHS – the now 20-year-old behemoth with 260,000 employees created in the aftermath of 9/11 – Mayorkas said that he was determined to be the Secretary of Homeland Security, NOT the Secretary of Immigration. How’s that going? Yesterday, Playbook co-author and Deep Dive host Ryan Lizza sat down with him on the sidelines of the Aspen Security Forum to find out. Mayorkas’s department is charged with preventing foreign and domestic terrorist attacks. It...

“Early one morning in April of 2016 I woke up and seriously contemplated the possibility that I would never be able to generate the strength, focus, and courage to get out of bed. The combination of crippling anxiety, chronic pain, muscle atrophy, and the fascinating mix of pharmaceuticals coursing through my body had, I feared, finally broken me.” Those are the words of Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, on the first page of his new...

This weekend, President Joe Biden is headed to Europe. His first stop: the U.K. Biden is scheduled to meet with both His Royal Highness King Charles, an old acquaintance and fellow head of state; and the Right Honorable Rishi Sunak, Britain’s prime minister and a fellow head of government – who just visited Biden in Washington this past month. On the agenda for these meetings: climate change, the war in Ukraine, and the “Atlantic Declaration” – that’s the diplomatic term for Biden and...

In American politics, there is a small group of leaders who are – to borrow a term from Hollywood – hit makers. Everything they touch seems to turn to gold. There is perhaps no better example of this in Democratic politics than Rahm Emanuel. For those who need a refresher, Rahm is a former Bill Clinton advisor, turned Illinois Congressman, turned DCCC chair, turned Barack Obama chief of staff, turned mayor of Chicago… and currently, he is Joe Biden’s ambassador to Japan. In his new...

The big debate in Washington this week is about realism versus idealism. It played out first in foreign policy, when Joe Biden hosted Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi for a state dinner. Biden has made big claims about how democratic ideals are at the heart of American foreign policy; but he spent two days lavishing time and attention on Modi, who is persecuting Muslims and cracking down on public dissent from reporters and political opponents. Biden needs India to be an ally against...

Timothy Parlatore spent over a year working for Donald Trump on a number of legal challenges, including the Department of Justice’s probe into Trump’s role in Jan. 6 and the investigation of all those documents stashed at Mar-a-Lago. Parlatore was inside the secret grand jury room in Washington. He oversaw the search for documents in Bedminster. He coordinated the former president’s response to Jack Smith’s subpoena for the national security files that eventually landed Trump in so much...

Ben Terris is a feature writer at The Washington Post, where he’s carved out a unique role: reporting on what he calls, “the weirdo beat.” While Ben’s colleagues focus on what’s happening on the main stage in politics, he keeps an eye on the freak show that’s happening just out of sight. This week, Ben published his much-anticipated book “The Big Break: The Gamblers, Party Animals, and True Believers Trying to Win in Washington While America Loses Its Mind.” “The Big Break” has a novel...

In this episode of Deep Dive, Playbook co-author Rachael Bade joins House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) and Chief Deputy Whip Guy Reschenthaler (R-Pa.) just hours before final passage of the debt ceiling bill they shepherded through the House. This is the behind the scenes story from inside the Republican whip's office of how Kevin McCarthy's leadership team convinced House Republicans to raise the debt ceiling for two years and embrace his agreement with Joe Biden, which many on the...

This week, the rumors became reality as Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and South Carolina Senator Tim Scott announced their long-awaited presidential campaigns. The contrast between the two events foreshadowed all of the big questions for next year’s Republican primaries. Tim Scott, who is a favorite among his senate colleagues — but who is mostly unknown outside of his home state and the Washington, D.C., fundraising circuit — preached optimism and unity while sharing the stage with his...

In the last year, a lot has changed in Washington for progressives like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.). In 2021 and 2022, with Democrats controlling the House, she and her allies could block any piece of legislation if they held together. Their big fights were with moderate Democrats over how many trillions of dollars to spend on President Joe Biden’s agenda. And they had easy access to the White House with Ron Klain as Biden’s chief of staff. Now they are in the minority and far...

This week, after years of criticism from immigration rights activists and many progressive Democrats, President Joe Biden has ended the use of Title 42. That’s the public health law that Donald Trump first used during the pandemic to expel millions of asylum seekers arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border. Biden’s decision has drawn predictable outrage from Republicans. But perhaps more worrisome to the president is the growing list of critics from within the Democratic Party who are concerned...