A new podcast is on its way from Miranda Devine — with a very special first guest
Stop the presses — and roll the tape!
This Wednesday, the New York Post will launch a new podcast, Pod Force One, featuring legendary political columnist Miranda Devine interviewing Washington's most influential disruptors.
Her first guest: None other than the president himself.
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Click here to subscribe to Miranda Devine's Pod Force One Podcast
'On Pod Force One, I'll be speaking to the most powerful people in the world, finding out what really drives them — their motivations, beliefs, and desires. My first guest is the apex alpha of global politics, President Donald Trump,' Devine says.
Devine, who was the first to report on Hunter Biden's 'Laptop from Hell,' will return every week with administration insiders, politicians and other newsmakers.
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'Pod Force One is everything you'd expect from the New York Post: hard-hitting, clever, and never afraid to ruffle feathers,' says Post Editor-in-Chief Keith Poole. 'We couldn't have a better host than Miranda Devine. She's a legend, and she's bringing today's biggest newsmakers to the mic. Get ready — we're going to break some news.'
Pod Force One launches on June 11 on NYPost.com, Spotify, Apple and everywhere you get your podcasts. Subscribe now and be the first to get on board.
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an hour ago
- Yahoo
American Politics Only Pretends to Work
There is a pervasive feeling—rising up from the precarious working poor, through the illusory middle class, and now even brushing the edges of the elite—that something in America is broken. The carefully curated illusions of American life, which held just enough weight to seem real for much of my millennial lifetime, are beginning to collapse. These illusions were constructed in the shadow of post-Reagan neoliberalism, just as the rot began to eat away at the gains of the postwar economy. Poverty and racism have always made liberty and justice feel like empty promises for many, but for protected classes, the illusion could endure. So much so that by the time I reached college—coinciding with the first term of Barack Obama—it was fashionable to declare that we had entered a post-racial America. Now those delusions lie bloodied in the street. We have seen law-abiding citizens snatched off the street, a billionaire oligarch turned loose to deconstruct the civil service. Meanwhile, that chasm between those with more than enough and those with nothing keeps widening. If there was an 'Obama legacy,' then it's mostly vanished. The optics of progress have failed to mask its absence. On May 16, Maryland Governor Wes Moore—a Democrat, a Rhodes scholar, and the only Black governor in the country—sent a letter to the president of the Maryland State Senate, vetoing a bill passed by the state legislature that would have created a reparations commission to study the economic and social case for compensating Black Marylanders for the enduring harms of slavery and its legacy. The headlines suggested betrayal. 'Maryland Governor Vetoes Reparations Bill,' read The New York Times' headline. 'Gov. Moore vetoes bill creating a state commission to study reparations,' wrote The Baltimore Banner. But the governor's letter tells a more nuanced story. 'I strongly believe now is not the time for another study,' Moore wrote. 'Now is the time for continued action that delivers results for the people we serve.' The sentiment that a substantial body of research exists bears out. The evidence is already there. The impacts of slavery, redlining, racial violence, and economic exclusion have been documented in study after study by universities, think tanks, and government agencies alike. The racial wealth gap in America—which is a topic that does not want for robust news coverage or analysis—remains staggering: The average white family holds nearly 10 times the wealth of the average Black family. In cities like Baltimore and all across the country, formerly redlined neighborhoods remain poorer, sicker, and less resourced than their white counterparts. Economist Sandy Darity, the Brookings Institution, and the Federal Reserve have all produced rigorous economic models showing the effects of slavery and other racist programs on Black wealth and showing how reparative programs could substantially narrow these disparities—even lengthening the lives of Black Americans. Echoing these findings, The California Reparations Report proposed direct cash payments and broad institutional reforms—ranging from guaranteed access to health care and housing to tax-exempt status for reparations payments—as essential components of a comprehensive state-level strategy to repair the enduring economic and social harms of slavery and its afterlives. But here's the rub: The bill that Moore spiked was never actually about discovering new facts to lay alongside the vast mountain of already-obtained knowledge. Rather, it's a quintessentially American ritual. A performance of forward motion that, in reality, preserves the status quo: activity masquerading as achievement. We are not waiting for more data. We are waiting for the willpower of political elites to catch up to the facts we have already gathered about the state of the world. We are hoping that we might create a force strong enough to dissolve the lucrative web of mutual dependence that exists between politicians, their funders, and their funding recipients—an arrangement that allows the few to profit from the entrenched policies that impoverish the many. For much of my lifetime, the nation, like our tech devices, has operated like a machine engineered for planned obsolescence: appearing functional on the surface but designed to slowly degrade beneath the hood. Our dissatisfaction is tempered by the allure of a shiny new upgrade that promises new features each campaign cycle. Like our top-grossing movies, election cycles are reboots and franchises. That includes our politics. Our institutions don't just fail; they are built to delay, to degrade, to defer. We pretend they work, and when they don't, we hold another hearing, commission another report, launch another study, believe another is hardly the first to challenge these neglectful impulses. More than a decade ago, The Atlantic published Ta-Nehisi Coates's landmark essay 'The Case for Reparations.' It was not merely a manifesto but a meticulous historical excavation—from redlining in Chicago to the GI Bill's racist exclusions—that laid out in irrefutable detail how government policy, not just private prejudice, created Black disadvantage. It forced a national conversation. But again, the response was mostly talk. On June 1, however, Tulsa Mayor Monroe Nichols—who once opposed reparations—announced a historic local plan for survivors and descendants of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. The city would fund direct payments and long-term support programs. It is a rare instance where moral clarity translated into material commitment. But Tulsa is the exception, not the rule. This policy of forever kicking the can down the road in the name of respecting some phantasmal process is not unique to reparations. The same pattern plays out across the political spectrum: Universal basic income pilots have consistently shown that giving people money reduces poverty, homelessness, and even mental illness—yet most federal assistance remains conditional and insufficient. Restorative justice programs show lower recidivism than punitive sentences—particularly for youth—yet U.S. incarceration rates have remained the highest in the world since 2002. The information is known. The solutions exist. They are simply not acted upon. The political class often blames this inertia on partisan gridlock. But that too is an illusion—one as fragile as it is convenient. The apparent opposition between parties masks a deeper consensus: Both benefit from a system that rewards performative conflict over substantive change, ensuring that donor interests and institutional power remain undisturbed regardless of which party holds office. What has not changed since the 1990s is the sheer number of Americans who do not vote at all. In 1992, Joan Didion wrote in The New York Review that political apathy was a misdiagnosis: the real condition was disenchantment, a loss of faith that the system could deliver anything meaningful. And while raw turnout numbers have rebounded from the dismal 1990s, it remains the case that disaffection is a constant presence. I saw it firsthand while teaching an introductory sociology class in Washington, D.C., in the autumn of 2024. As expected in a presidential election year, every discussion of social issues circled back to politics. My students, who represented the population of their majority-Black, working-class university, were thoughtful and interested but wary. One student offered the familiar argument: that nonvoters had only themselves to blame; they are uninformed and unengaged. But an older Black woman in the class cut in. She worked with unhoused Washingtonians who, she said, don't see much difference between life under either party. And how could they? Their material circumstances have not changed. In 2024, the Democratic Party—once the party of labor—ran its campaign flanked by billionaires and Bush-era Republicans. While Donald Trump performed populism in a McDonald's, Kamala Harris held fundraisers with Mark Cuban and the Cheneys. Campaigns are fought on vibes and not policy. While Kamala Harris had a 'Brat Summer,' Trump, a Manhattan-made real estate developer, played to rural crowds. Their policy disagreements and, especially, their pro-war consensus on foreign policy and neoliberal economics are rarely discussed. One party cosplays populism, and the other cosplays credibility. All that has shifted since the '90s is which party plays which role. What has changed since the Clinton era is not political substance but political spectacle. Social media has democratized access to information and sharpened our ability to see the rupture between what is promised and what is real. There is now a generation fluent in disillusionment. The Democratic National Committee itself has become a case study in illusion maintenance: from undermining Bernie Sanders as the leading candidate in 2020 to burying debates, to pretending Joe Biden's cognitive decline is a fabrication rather than a crisis of leadership. When David Hogg—a Parkland school shooting survivor and one of five DNC vice chairs—challenged the party's refusal to reckon with younger, more progressive voters and threatened to primary incumbents, he wasn't breaking ranks; he was breaking the fourth wall. And now his sentence may be ousting. My generation has watched the lives promised to us slip away based on a political consensus we were not alive to agree upon, conceived by a club we've not been invited to join. While a cycle of progress and backlash has emerged on some social issues, such as same-sex marriage and abortion, neoliberal financial policies embraced by both major parties have left millennials unable to buy houses, afford kids, or even buy groceries without financing them through buy-now-pay-later apps like Klarna—which is now facing losses and pausing its IPO in part because we can't pay them back. Meanwhile, policies supporting deregulation of financial markets, tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy, and austerity measures have persisted throughout our lifetimes. These are the policies that political elites keep recycling as 'solutions' to our problems; meanwhile, these strategies only further widen income inequality and economic insecurity. Banking deregulation under the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999 paved the way for risky financial practices that led to the 2008 financial crisis. Similarly, trade agreements like NAFTA, which went into effect in 1994, prioritized corporate interests over labor protections, resulting in job losses and stagnant wages for American workers. Just a few weeks ago, the Senate, by bipartisan acclamation, passed an industry-friendly crypto deregulation bill, the direct fruits of crypto donors drowning Washington in slush money. This is a deeply entrenched way of doing business, one that reflects a larger failure to adapt to changing economic realities and contribute to ongoing challenges faced by younger generations. We should think of Governor Moore's veto like this: He didn't reject reparations; he rejected this whole charade. And the culture is catching up. Even our consumer habits reflect the growing revolt against disposability. Across the country, citizens are fighting for 'right to repair' laws, demanding that tech companies let people fix their own devices rather than forcing them to buy replacements. Behind that demand is a deeper yearning—for durability, for agency, for something built to last. We should want the same from our politics. But our civic infrastructure is designed more for optics than policy action. Commissioned research is a dress rehearsal for a play that will never debut. A 25-hour 'filibuster' that blocked no bill is marketing for Senator Cory Booker's new book. Every moral breakthrough is deferred until the next election cycle. We have outsourced moral courage to process. Governor Moore's veto was a rare political moment that acknowledged what so many Americans now suspect: We are not in need of more evidence or rhetoric—we are in need of political will and action. We know how to fix what's broken. The question is whether we still have the courage to stop pretending and pick up the tools to repair it.
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2 hours ago
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Trump-Musk feud shows what happens when unregulated money floods politics
Elon Musk said, very loudly and very publicly, what is usually the quiet part of the role of money in US politics. 'Without me, Trump would have lost the election, Dems would control the House and the Republicans would be 51-49 in the Senate. Such ingratitude,' he wrote on his X social media platform amid an ongoing feud with Donald Trump. When rightwing commentator Laura Loomer wrote that Republicans on Capitol Hill had been discussing whom to side with in the inter-party feud, Musk replied with a nod toward the long tail of his influence. 'Oh and some food for thought as they ponder this question: Trump has 3.5 years left as President, but I will be around for 40+ years … ,' Musk wrote on X. Billionaires in the US often seek to influence politics in big and small ways, throwing their money and influence around to extract what they want from the government. But few are as explicit and influential as Musk has proven in the past year – and it's showing just how transactional and broken US governance has become. The Trump-Musk battle exemplifies the post-Citizens United picture of US politics: the world's richest person paid handsomely to elect his favored candidate, then took a formal, if temporary, role with a new governmental initiative created for him that focused on dismantling parts of the government he didn't like. We're sitting ringside to a fight between the mega-rich president and the far richer Republican donor to see who can cut more services from the poor. As one satirical website put it: 'Aw! These Billionaires Are Fighting Over How Much Money to Steal From Poor People.' Fifteen years ago, the US supreme court ruled that corporations and outside groups could spend as much as they wanted on elections. In that ruling, conservative justice Anthony Kennedy said: 'The appearance of influence or access, furthermore, will not cause the electorate to lose faith in our democracy.' In the years since, it's become clear that these infusions of wealth have eroded democracy, with Musk's ostentatious example accelerating an already out-of-control level of money in politics. Musk spent nearly $300m to elect Trump in 2024. It's the billionaire's government now. 'Fifteen years after that decision, we're seeing the full culmination of living under a Citizens United world – where it's not just elections that are for sale, but it's that our entire government, and the apparatus of our government, is up for sale,' Tiffany Muller, the president of End Citizens United, told the Bulwark earlier this year. Musk isn't alone here: in races up and down the ballot, ultra-rich donors are throwing around their cash to get their favored candidates elected. This is the standard state of play for politics in the US now, in both political parties. Bernie Sanders confronted Democrats at their convention last year to say: 'Billionaires in both parties should not be able to buy elections, including primary elections.' Earlier this year, Musk poured big money into a Wisconsin judicial election, but lost to the Democratic candidate. And he's sent small-dollar donations to Republicans who wanted to go after judges who ruled against the Trump administration. The threat of his money, even if it is uneven and has an inconsistent success record, looms large for both political parties. But, by virtue of his unelected role, Musk couldn't do as much as he wanted to stop Trump's signature spending bill – or so it seems so far. Trump's 'big, beautiful bill' didn't cut enough spending or favor Musk enough or otherwise meet his litmus test for a budget. And when the administration stopped working for him, he turned on it, blazing out the door in a chaotic fashion. It's a fitting coda to the uneasy alliance between Trump and Musk that started with a warm embrace and front-row status for the ultra-wealthy when Trump took office. The fact that Musk holds such sway over the budget process is in itself corruption. Trump has said Musk knew what was in the bill, the undertone being that the administration sought his approval before the public explosion. Musk embraced a brawling style of political spending that is rare among the uber-wealthy, who tend to let their money speak louder than their public words. One expert in philanthropy previously told the Guardian Musk stood out because of his 'complete eschewal of discretion as a mode of political engagement'. Musk is now rallying his followers on X to reach out to their members of Congress and kill the bill, a quest that could be successful, depending on how Republican lawmakers shake out when they're forced to decide between their ideologue president and a megadonor known for his vindictiveness. In rightwing media, the feud has created a chasm. On Breitbart, one commentator noted how Trump was 'sticking his finger in the eye of his biggest donor and that never happens'. In the American Spectator, one writer opined that Musk did not elect Trump: 'the American people did.' But in the pages of the Washington Examiner, Musk's stance on the bill was praised because Trump's budget plan 'deserves to die'. 'I don't mind Elon turning against me, but he should have done so months ago,' Trump wrote to cap off a series of posts and public comments about Musk. Musk has 'lost his mind', the president said in a TV interview Friday. So far, Republican officials are lining up behind Trump. 'President Trump has done more than any person in my lifetime to earn the trust of the movement he leads,' JD Vance said. If Musk ultimately loses, he could take his money and run elsewhere. He floated the idea of creating a third political party, a prospect that's been tried many times before but without the wealth infusion and bully pulpit he'd offer to the cause. Democrats, themselves quite reliant on rich donors, will lobby for him to switch sides. The Democratic representative Ro Khanna suggested the party should 'be in a dialogue' with Musk. Although Khanna, who represents Silicon Valley and has called for the left to embrace economic populism, saw intense backlash against his comments from his party, he doubled down. 'If Biden had a big supporter criticize him, Trump would have hugged him the next day,' he wrote on X. 'When we refused to meet with @RobertKennedyJr, Trump embraced him & won. We can be the party of sanctimonious lectures, or the party of FDR that knows how to win & build a progressive majority.'
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Claims that UK spy agencies aided CIA torture after 9/11 to be heard in rare trial
The UK government's decades-long efforts to keep details of its intelligence agencies' involvement in the CIA's notorious post-9/11 torture programme hidden will face an 'unprecedented' challenge this week as two cases are brought before a secretive court. The cases, filed by two prisoners held at the US military prison at Guantánamo Bay, will be heard across a rare four-day trial at the investigatory powers tribunal (IPT), which has been investigating claims the UK's intelligence agencies were complicit in their mistreatment. Starting on Tuesday, the trial will place a spotlight back on what is considered one of British intelligence's darkest chapters, reviving longstanding questions about the extent of the UK's involvement in the CIA's kidnapping and detention of terrorism suspects in a global network of secret prisons known as black sites. The hearings begin six years after ministers shelved a judicial inquiry into alleged UK complicity, which David Cameron, the prime minister who ordered it, once said was necessary as 'the longer these questions remain unanswered, the bigger the stain on our reputation as a country'. The claims before the IPT have been brought by Mustafa al-Hawsawi, who is accused by the US of aiding the hijackers behind the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, who is alleged to have plotted al-Qaida's bombing of an American naval ship in 2000. Captured by the CIA in the early 2000s, the men were rendered between black sites, where they were systematically tortured and subjected to brutal and degrading treatment. Methods included what the CIA referred to as 'rectal feeding', a form of sexual assault according to medical experts. Related: Rectal rehydration and broken limbs: the grisliest findings in the CIA torture report After several years in CIA detention, Hawsawi and Nashiri – who were among a group of approximately 17 of the CIA's 'high-value detainees' – were transferred to Guantánamo Bay in 2006. They have been there since. Both men face charges carrying the death penalty, though neither of their cases at a special US military court have yet gone to trial. Lawyers for the men have told the IPT there is credible evidence to infer that UK spy agencies, including MI5 and MI6, unlawfully 'aided, abetted, encouraged, facilitated, procured and/or conspired' with the US in their torture and mistreatment. Working in secret, the IPT has been examining the allegations over the past two years. Led by a senior judge, the tribunal is an unusual court that can adopt an inquisitorial process and has unique powers to obtain classified information from the intelligence agencies. So far, the government has successfully prevented any findings from the investigation being disclosed, even to the complainants' lawyers. But the trial is expected to compel the government to confront, in open court, uncomfortable legal questions about what constitutes complicity in torture. 'This level of judicial scrutiny is unprecedented,' said Chris Esdaile, a senior legal adviser at Redress, an NGO that works with torture victims and which represents Hawsawi. 'Until now, efforts to lift the veil of secrecy and consider the full extent of the UK's involvement in the CIA's black site programme have been thwarted.' When Cameron announced the judge-led public inquiry into allegations of UK complicity in the mistreatment of terrorism suspects in 2010, he told parliament: 'Let me state clearly: we need to know the answers.' Nine years later, the government abandoned that commitment. This was despite parliament's intelligence and security committee concluding that British intelligence officers had been involved in 'inexcusable' activities, including hundreds of cases in which prisoners were mistreated, and scores of rendition operations. Related: Criticism mounts over UK's post-9/11 role in torture and rendition Publishing its findings in 2018, the committee emphasised its work had been 'terminated prematurely' due in part to obstruction by ministers and spy chiefs. It insisted there were 'questions and incidents' that 'remain unanswered and uninvestigated'. Among its findings, however, were key details that Hawsawi and Nashiri's lawyers used to persuade the IPT to investigate. Crucially, the committee had highlighted instances in which MI6 had supplied questions to be used in CIA interrogations of two other high-value detainees it knew were being mistreated. On the eve of the trial, evidence has now emerged that in 2003, while Hawsawi was held by the US in a black site in Afghanistan where he was repeatedly tortured, CIA headquarters sent a cable to interrogators, telling them Hawsawi should be 'pressed' for information about alleged terrorist activity in the UK. The cable, which Hawsawi's lawyers are understood to have shared with the IPT, was declassified by the US in 2017 but only recently identified by Unredacted, a research unit at the University of Westminster that investigates UK national security practices. Its director, Sam Raphael, who has spent years researching the torture programme, said the cable suggested there had been a 'clear interest in interrogating Hawsawi about specific UK-based operatives and plots at a time when he was being subjected to the worst kind of treatment'. He added: 'It raises an obvious and important question the tribunal should address: was British intelligence, which we know was directly and deeply involved in post-9/11 prisoner abuse, feeding the questions to the CIA?' The best public interest journalism relies on first-hand accounts from people in the know. If you have something to share on this subject you can contact us confidentially using the following methods. Secure Messaging in the Guardian app The Guardian app has a tool to send tips about stories. Messages are end to end encrypted and concealed within the routine activity that every Guardian mobile app performs. This prevents an observer from knowing that you are communicating with us at all, let alone what is being said. If you don't already have the Guardian app, download it (iOS/Android) and go to the menu. Select 'Secure Messaging'. SecureDrop, instant messengers, email, telephone and post See our guide at for alternative methods and the pros and cons of each. A spokesperson for the government declined to comment on the claims before the IPT. The government previously said that it 'does not confirm or deny allegations, assertions or speculation about the activities of UK intelligence agencies'. • This article was amended on 9 June 2025. The number of 'high-value detainees' at Guantánamo in 2006 was about 17, not 120 as an earlier version said.
