The Paris Summer Olympics holds opening ceremonies today, officially kicking off 16 days of elite athletic competition. USA gymnastics legend Simone Biles will return to the mat, while fans will return to the stadiums, after COVID restrictions kept them away at the last Summer and Winter Games. There's a political context at this year's contests, too, and demonstrations have already begun in Paris to rally support for several causes. We spoke Dave Zirin, sports editor for The Nation, about...

On Wednesday, President Biden addressed the nation in an Oval Office speech — three days after he announced his decision to end his re-election bid and endorse Vice President Kamala Harris. Since the president announced he was stepping aside, the Harris campaign has reported a major influx of donations. As of Wednesday, it had received more than 126 million dollars. But with the election quickly approaching, one of the biggest challenges Vice President Harris will face is winning support from...

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is in Washington, D.C., today to address a joint session of Congress. On Tuesday, hundreds of demonstrators opposed to the war in Gaza staged a sit-in at a congressional office building. Thousands more are expected to demonstrate today during Netanyahu’s speech. Inside the Capitol, nearly two dozen Democratic lawmakers say they will not attend the joint session. At the same time, both Vice President Kamala Harris and Sen. Patty Murray of Washington...

With Vice President Kamala Harris in position to receive the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, Republicans like House Speaker Mike Johnson are raising the possibility of legal challenges to keep a new nominee off the ballot. Experts say these challenges will go nowhere. Republicans have also suggested they will try to block Harris from accessing the 96 million dollars Biden’s campaign raised before he dropped out. But it’s unlikely they’ll succeed there, either. We discuss the...

President Joe Biden announced Sunday he is ending his re-election bid and is throwing his support behind Vice President Kamala Harris to be the Democratic Party’s nominee in November. It’s the latest bombshell shakeup to this year’s presidential race. Biden said in a statement, “I believe it is in the best interest of my party and the country for me to stand down and to focus solely on fulfilling my duties as President for the remainder of my term.” In her own statement, Harris said she...

Since the moment someone shot Donald Trump last weekend, we’ve been hearing the same thing: this election’s over, and it’s going to Trump. But the course of this race—and American politics more broadly—will probably change less than you think. Tre’vell and Max take a look at past assassination attempts in the U.S. and abroad to explain why surviving violent attacks does not guarantee an election victory. Has any politician successfully leveraged these assaults for political gain? Which US...

Former President Donald Trump wrapped up this week’s Republican National Convention on Thursday night with the longest speech in convention history. He started with a first-person account of the attempted assassination against him last weekend. But his promised message of unity fell apart quickly as he embraced autocrats, doubled down on false claims the 2020 election was stolen, and promised the biggest deportation in history. Washington Post reporter Dylan Wells joins us from the convention...

On the outskirts of this week's Republican National Convention, the ultra-conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation held a "Policy Fest" to discuss its plans for the next Republican administration. One of the big talking points during the event was Project 2025, a nearly 1,000-page policy blueprint for the next Republican administration to dramatically remake the federal government at almost every level. While former president Donald Trump has distanced himself from Project 2025,...

Former President Donald Trump chose Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance as his running mate on Monday, just as Republicans kicked off their national convention in Milwaukee. Vance, who rose to fame in 2016 with his memoir ‘Hillbilly Elegy,’ has undergone a radical political transformation in the years since. Once an outspoken critic of Trump, Vance is now one of the former president’s biggest supporters in Congress. Zack Beauchamp, a senior correspondent for Vox and author of the new book “The Reactionary...

On Saturday, a gunman attempted to assassinate former President Donald Trump at one of his campaign rallies in Pennsylvania. While Trump was not seriously injured, he said on social media that one of the bullets did graze his ear. President Biden addressed the nation on Sunday evening, acknowledging one of the more shocking instances of political violence in recent history. This all happened just two days before the Republican National Convention kicks off in Milwaukee. We dive into what we...

Why isn’t there a way for party leaders to get together—in a back room, ideally somewhere dark and smokey—and just give Biden the boot? As it turns out, that’s the way things used to get done. Max and Tre’vell explain how back room dealings originated, and why they fell out of favor. Why did the Vietnam War force Democrats to change the process? Did the switch make political parties more extreme? Were there benefits to having a cabal? Listen to this week’s How We Got Here to find out.

President Joe Biden on Thursday wrapped up this week’s NATO summit in Washington by giving his first solo press conference since November. Despite more defections from House Democrats earlier in the day, Biden gave no indication that he would drop out of the presidential race. Some also praised Biden for his command of foreign policy issues during the one-hour Q&A session with reporters, though he did stumble a few times. Political reporter Abigail Tracy breaks down the reaction to...

Lawmakers continue to weigh in on the fate of President Biden’s re-election campaign. Vermont’s Peter Welch on Wednesday became the first Democratic senator to call on Biden to step aside. However, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on MSNBC that her fellow Democratic lawmakers should “hold off” on publicly debating the issue until after this week. Meanwhile, actor George Clooney penned a New York Times op-ed to describe a recent fundraiser he co-hosted for Biden and said the president...

Republicans appeared to soften their stance on abortion ahead of next week’s party convention and adopted a policy platform this week that didn’t include a call for a federal ban. They did so at the direct request of former President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly tried to downplay the issue during the campaign while also taking credit for ending Roe v. Wade. But the 16-page policy document opens the door to establishing fetal personhood, which would threaten access to abortion and IVF....

President Biden continued to aggressively push back on the idea that he would drop out of the presidential race. He started Monday morning by sending a letter to all Congressional Democrats that said he is “firmly committed to staying in this race,” and that it was time for speculation about it to end. He followed that up by calling into MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” where he blamed the party’s “elites” for trying to push him out of the race. Tara Palmeri, senior political correspondent for Puck...

President Joe Biden spent the long July Fourth weekend trying to save his re-election bid after his disastrous debate performance more than a week ago. On the campaign trail and in his first post-debate interview with ABC, the president was adamant that he would not leave the race. But Biden’s publicity blitz did little to assure panicked Democrats in Washington, with some top lawmakers in both the House and Senate privately voicing hopes that the president will drop out. Alex Thompson,...

We may be starting to see a seismic shift in how the Democratic Party publicly talks about whether President Joe Biden should remain the party’s presumptive nominee for president. On Tuesday, Texas Rep. Lloyd Doggett became the first sitting Democratic lawmaker to call for Biden to leave the race after his devastating debate performance last week. Longtime Illinois Rep. Mike Quigley and Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island and Peter Welch of Vermont were also among those voicing harsh...

The Supreme Court's conservative majority handed former President Donald Trump a major win on Monday, granting him broad — though not full — immunity from charges he tried to overturn the 2020 election. The decision effectively kicks Trump's federal election interference case back down to a lower court judge to parse out which of his actions that day, and leading up to it, could be considered "unofficial acts," for which he could still be prosecuted. It makes the likelihood of a trial before...

The Biden campaign spent the weekend trying to contain the damage from the president’s devastating performance in Thursday night’s presidential debate. Biden acknowledged his lackluster showing during a campaign event in North Carolina on Friday. Still, it didn’t do much to end the sheer panic that has overtaken the Democratic Party and quiet the calls for him to leave the race ahead of the Democratic National Convention. Colby Itkowitz, national reporter for The Washington Post, explains...

Why is America so obsessed with lawns and order? Max and Erin get into the weeds of how the founding fathers made cultivating grass an American pastime, why our lawn mania is a creation of corporate marketing, and how it all feeds class anxiety. Why is it so bad for our environment? Does milkweed bring all the bees to the yard? And how much do lawns and instagram face have in common? Listen to this week’s How We Got Here to find out.

Well… that happened. In the first presidential debate of the 2024 election cycle, President Biden failed to ease concerns about his age, igniting panic among Democrats. Meanwhile, former President Donald Trump blustered his way through lie after lie with little pushback and once again refused to say whether he would accept the election results. Grace Panetta, politics reporter for The 19th, and Gerren Keith Gaynor, White House correspondent and managing editor of politics at The Grio, join...

President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump are set to square off tonight in their first debate of the presidential election — and the first debate in history between a sitting and former president. Whether you've been waiting for it or dreading it, the debate is expected to draw millions of viewers, even though Election Day is still months away. Friend of the pod and 'Hysteria' co-host Alyssa Mastromonaco served as the deputy chief of staff under President Barack Obama. She...

Ready or not, tomorrow is debate day. And both President Joe Biden, 81, and former President Donald Trump, 78, are under a lot of pressure to show they're fit for re-election. While Biden hunkers down at Camp David to prepare, Trump has been getting an assist from his supporters sharing selectively edited "cheap fake" videos that pray on voter concerns over Biden's age. Tom Nichols, staff writer at The Atlantic, joins us to talk about why Republicans are resorting to spreading these easily...