The Intercept Briefing

The Intercept
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Cut through the noise with The Intercept’s reporters as they tackle the most urgent issues of the moment. The Briefing is a weekly podcast delivering news, incisive political analysis and deep investigative reporting, hosted by The Intercept’s journalists and contributors including Jessica Washington, Akela Lacy, and Jordan Uhl. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

  1. “Liberate Their Bodies From Their Souls”: The Lies That Sell the Iran War

    1 DAY AGO

    “Liberate Their Bodies From Their Souls”: The Lies That Sell the Iran War

    From the White House to Iran’s former crown prince, proponents of the U.S.–Israel war on Iran sell it to the American people — and Iranians themselves — as a crusade for liberation. Instead, the regime remains in place as the death toll grows, environmental hazards proliferate, and civilian infrastructure is decimated.  As if the destruction inside Iran itself wasn't enough, the war is starting to have serious ramifications for the global economy and, more to the point, expanding into neighboring countries. Lebanon, in particular, has come into Israel’s crosshairs, with increasing Israeli incursions and missile strikes deeper into the country. The number of dead there is approaching 1,000 with Israeli missiles razing entire apartment blocks in central Beirut this week and a ground invasion getting underway. More than 1 million Lebanese people have been displaced. “I think the Lebanese are suffering now, and there's not really anyone who's trying to save them,” says Afeef Nessouli, a Beirut-based journalist, speaking to The Intercept Briefing. “They know that, and they know that they're just political pawns who are always at the worst end of the stick along with Palestine.” He adds, “The fear is that [Israel] will occupy south of Litani [River] ... and just take people's homes, take their land, and never give it back, make settlements for their country.” “It's been really stunning to watch that so many people fall for this idea of ‘This is a human rights intervention’ — and yet it's accomplished through massive human rights violations,” says Ali Gharib, a senior editor at The Intercept. Commenting on Israel's strategy of making failed states out of its adversaries in the region, he notes, the Israelis “don't need [Reza] Pahlavi to work. They don't need him to go in there and become this democratic leader. They just need him to lead a movement that damages the regime enough to put Iran into some kind of fractured state or state failure where it's not a threat to Israel anymore.” “We've had in the last 20 to 25 years, especially since the Iraq War in 2003, a lobby pushing for regime change in Iran,” says Sanam Naraghi-Anderlini, a veteran peace strategist. “The Iraq version of regime change ended up being a catastrophe from a U.S. perspective, but actually from an Israeli perspective and from a Saudi perspective, and even from a UAE perspective, the decimation of Iraq has been a success because if Iraq had turned out to be a liberal democracy, it would've challenged Israel on the question of Palestine. It would've challenged Saudi Arabia on the question of Islam and what is Islam.” It’s a region in upheaval, and at the center are Israeli and American fictions about liberatory bombs. “I've been on podcasts with Israeli journalists where they're telling me the Iranians wanted us to go in and liberate them,” says Naraghi-Anderlini, “And my response to them is: Liberate their bodies from their souls?” Listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen. Keep our investigations free and fearless at theintercept.com/join.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    47 min
  2. Trump’s AI-Powered World Wars

    11 MAR

    Trump’s AI-Powered World Wars

    In the last few days, President Donald Trump has said that the U.S-Israel war on Iran will end soon, after oil prices jumped and the growing regional conflict continued to shake markets. After a wave of heavy bombardments throughout Iran, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth promised another round, “The most fighters, the most bombers, the most strikes.”  “Hegseth has, yes, said that it's going to be basically death and destruction from the air, and they're delivering that,” Hooman Majd, an Iranian American writer and journalist, tells The Intercept Briefing.  “Killing civilians is a hallmark of American air war. This particular campaign Operation Epic Fury is set apart by the relentlessness of the attacks,” adds Nick Turse, senior reporter for The Intercept. “The two militaries — U.S. and Israel — combined were striking a conservative estimate of 1,000 targets per day in the first days of the conflict. Around 4,000 targets were hit in the first 100 hours of the campaign. For another point of comparison, Israeli attacks in the recent Gaza war were also relentless, but this far outpaces the Israeli campaign by more than double the number of strikes.” On Wednesday, Trump told Axios the war would end soon because there’s “practically nothing left to target." This week on the The Intercept Briefing, host Akela Lacy talked to Majd and Turse about the latest developments in the U.S. and Israel war on Iran and the growing number of conflicts the U.S. is engaged in. Senior technology reporter Sam Biddle also joined to discuss how artificial intelligence is being used in various U.S. conflicts. “Airstrikes, air war generally is already so prone to killing innocent people even when you take your time. But whenever you try to hurry for the sake of hurrying — and AI is great at enabling that — you just increase over and over again the chance of killing someone that you didn’t intend to or didn’t care enough to avoid killing,” says Biddle. “So I think that is an immense risk of just accelerating the metabolism of killing from the air by drone, by airplane — with the stamp of ‘intelligence’ that these AI companies are really pushing.” Listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen.   Keep our investigations free and fearless at theintercept.com/join.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    47 min
  3. What Does the Trump Administration Want With Cuba?

    20 FEB

    What Does the Trump Administration Want With Cuba?

    Cuba is spiraling into a humanitarian crisis. The country’s long-standing economic and political turmoil reached new heights this week as the effects of the Trump administration’s oil blockade took hold. The president’s targeting of Cuba is part of the administration’s broader attacks on the region, where the U.S. kidnapped Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores earlier this year and has executed more than 140 people in boat strikes. As the U.S. hurtles toward war with Iran and further military action in the Middle East and continues to fund Israel’s genocide in Gaza, Cuba is just the latest foreign policy arena where the Trump administration has further ensnared the U.S. This week on The Intercept Briefing, senior politics reporter Akela Lacy speaks with fellow reporter Jonah Valdez about how U.S. foreign policy is impacting the upcoming midterm elections and Valdez’s recent reporting on how a new anti-Zionist PAC has associated with influencers that have made statements that are outright antisemitic.  Lacy also speaks to University of Miami history professor Michael Bustamante and Andrés Pertierra, a historian of Cuba specializing in post-1959 regime durability, about the crisis unfolding in Cuba. Missing from mainstream news coverage of Trump’s attacks on Cuba and U.S. efforts to impose regime change in the region is a recognition of how Trump’s policies fit into his attacks on immigrants in the U.S., Bustamante says. “One of the, I think, subtext of why this administration might be keen on government change in Cuba, like in Venezuela, it's not just about being able to plant the flag and say, ‘We buried communism in the Americas. Something that no other president could do,’” Bustamante says.    “It's also about, we can deport more people. And we can deport more people. And so how does the Cuban American community react to that? That, I think, is an open question. Something that I haven't seen linked yet to the conversation about regime change, per se.” The Trump administration’s strategy is likely to backfire, Pertierra says. “You don't get long-term cooperation stability through fear,” he says. “So I don't think it's actually going to solidify the U.S. position in Latin America. I think it's going to further weaken it.” Listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.  Keep our investigations free and fearless at theintercept.com/join.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    59 min
  4. The Intercept Briefing Trailer

    TRAILER

    The Intercept Briefing Trailer

    Cut through the noise with The Intercept’s reporters as they tackle the most urgent issues of the moment. The Briefing is a weekly podcast delivering incisive political analysis and deep investigative reporting, hosted by The Intercept’s journalists and contributors including Jessica Washington, Akela Lacy, and Jordan Uhl. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    1 min
  5. Attorney for Epstein Survivors Warns That Justice Is Impossible With Bondi as AG

    13 FEB

    Attorney for Epstein Survivors Warns That Justice Is Impossible With Bondi as AG

    Attorney General Pam Bondi testified before the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday, defending the Justice Department’s widely criticized rollout of the Epstein files against accusations that her department is shielding powerful men, including President Donald Trump, at the expense of survivors.  Democrats, who reviewed the unredacted files for the first time this week, revealed that the names of “wealthy, powerful men” were improperly redacted, while the names of victims were left exposed.  This week on The Intercept Briefing, co-hosts Jessica Washington and Akela Lacy gave their rundown of the politics stories they’re watching right now. Washington also spoke with Spencer Kuvin, an attorney representing nine of Epstein’s victims, about the failures of the Department of Justice to protect survivors.  “From the beginning of this case, the government, both from a state and federal level, have been trying to bury this, cover it up, and avoid any full exposure of the extent of the operation that was involved here,” Kuvin said, “and they're doing it … because of all the both political, wealthy, and powerful individuals who were involved with Epstein and knew what was going on with these young women.”  Kuvin also spoke about the DOJ’s failure to redact the names of victims in the files, including two of his clients who were victimized as children. “The current Department of Justice has a focus on something different than victims and helping victims and prosecuting bad people that victimize these young girls,” he said. “Their focus instead appears to be on the important people — powerful people that are contained within these files and protecting them instead of protecting who needs the protection, the young victims in this case.” Listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    34 min
  6. Even the Top Prosecutor in Minneapolis Doesn’t Know the Identity of the Agents Who Killed Alex Pretti

    30 JAN

    Even the Top Prosecutor in Minneapolis Doesn’t Know the Identity of the Agents Who Killed Alex Pretti

    In the two months Minnesota has been under siege by federal agents, immigration officers have shot and killed two U.S. citizens, poet and artist Renee Good and ICU nurse Alex Pretti. Local and state law enforcement say they’ve been blocked from properly investigating the shootings of Good and Pretti.  “The federal government has blocked our state BCA, so that's the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. They are the state law enforcement agency that has authority to investigate any kind of deadly use of force involving police,” says Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty, who is leading local investigations into the killings of Good and Pretti.  “We've not gotten anything from the federal government,” Moriarty says. “To tell you how odd this situation is, we are getting our information from the media ... we are not getting that from the federal government.”  This week on The Intercept Briefing, host Akela Lacy speaks with Moriarty, whose office has jurisdiction over both killings. Moriarty says federal agents have blocked local and state law enforcement from properly investigating the killings. Even Moriarty, the top prosecutor in Minneapolis, does not know the identity of the agents who killed Pretti.  In response, Moriarty says, “We set up a portal and asked the community to send any kind of videos or any other kind of evidence so that we could collect absolutely everything that we possibly could.” The BCA, she says, was even “blocked physically, actually, by federal agents from processing the scene where Alex Pretti was shot.” Meanwhile, attacks by the administration on Minnesota’s Somali citizens persist. At her first town hall of the year in Minneapolis, an attendee sprayed Rep. Ilhan Omar with an unidentified substance on Tuesday. Trump has backtracked on some of his bluster and removed Border Patrol Gregory Bovino from Minnesota, replacing him with border czar Tom Homan. None of that has changed things on the ground yet in Minneapolis, says Moriarty. “Minnesotans care about their neighbors. They're delivering meals to people. They are there and they do not approve of the fact that their federal government is attacking them and their neighbors. “We hear a lot of people talking to us about how they understand the threat from the administration or from DHS on their neighbors and on their communities, and it's really much more rooted in an understanding that they think their freedoms are under threat, even if they are not an immigrant or even if they don't really have deep ties to immigrant communities, that this really matters to them and it really bothers them,” says Jill Garvey, co-director of States at the Core, an organization that leads and runs ICE Watch training programs. “So we hear a lot from folks who just haven't been engaged previously. But this for all those reasons is enough for them to step up.” Garvey says her organization is training community members in how to properly document ICE. “We also know that we can't stop all this aggression,” Garvey says. “The aggression is the point of these operations. So we can't guarantee that people aren't going to be targeted with violent actions from federal law enforcement. What we can say is, if you're doing this in community, other people are going to be watching.” Listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.  If you want to support our work, you can go to theintercept.com/join.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    53 min
  7. Trump’s War on America

    16 JAN

    Trump’s War on America

    Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Jonathan Ross fatally shot Renee Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, in Minneapolis last week, unleashing a wave of anti-ICE protests and sentiment throughout Minnesota and the rest of the United States.  On Wednesday evening, federal immigration agents shot and wounded a man in Minneapolis, adding to the tension in the Twin Cities. President Donald Trump threatened to send in troops to crush the unrest. “What should be very clear to all Americans now is that there is no way to wage war on ‘illegal immigration’ without also waging war on American citizens,” says Adam Serwer, staff writer at The Atlantic. This week on The Intercept Briefing, host Jessica Washington examines how the Trump administration’s brutal deportation agenda is unfolding in Minnesota, sparking national backlash and renewed demands to abolish ICE; the historical legacy of immigration enforcement in the U.S.; and the administration’s racist vision of reshaping American society.  First, Minnesota Public Radio reporter Jon Collins shares an update on the Trump administration’s siege. “The national audience needs to understand this is not just unrest, this is not just protests. … This is an invasion,” says Collins. “The justification from this administration, the way that they’re portraying what's happening here in Minnesota — it almost turns on its head how we think about our constitutional rights in this country. Instead of protecting the citizens from the government, what they're arguing for is protecting law enforcement from any transparency, from any accountability to the people.” “The biggest organization of terror in this moment is the Department of Homeland Security,” says Rep. Delia Ramirez, who shared exclusively with The Intercept that she is introducing legislation to limit the use of force by DHS agents. The Illinois congresswoman described the bill as the “bare minimum” to curb DHS’s abuses, calling for Democrats to use the appropriations process to “hold” funding to the agency and ultimately dismantle it.  “Every single Democrat and every single Republican should be able to sign on to this bill,” says Ramirez. “Because it’s basic, bare minimum, and not signing on is indicating that you're OK with what's happening on the streets.”  “What we're seeing today has a long history,” says Adam Goodman, a historian at the University of Illinois Chicago. Federal immigration agencies’ budgets depend “on apprehensions, detentions, and deportations.” That “institutional imperative,” he says, “is going to lead to all kinds of problems, including incredible discretionary authority … and tremendous abuses.” Serwer points out “the violence that you're seeing that federal agents are engaging in against observers, against activists, not just against immigrants, is a reflection of [an] ideological worldview. Which is that those of us who do not agree with Donald Trump are not real Americans and are not entitled to the rights that are due us in the Constitution, whether or not we have citizenship.” He adds, “The truth is, a democracy cannot exist when it has an armed uniformed federal agency who believes that its job is to brutalize 50 percent of the country.”  Listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.  If you want to support our work, you can go to theintercept.com/join.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    1 hr
  8. Greg Grandin on Trump’s “Universal Police Warrant”

    9 JAN

    Greg Grandin on Trump’s “Universal Police Warrant”

    How long will the United States claim control over Venezuela? “Only time will tell,” President Donald Trump told the New York Times on Wednesday — potentially years. U.S. troops invaded the country over the weekend, kidnapping President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores. Maduro and Flores pleaded not guilty to narco-terrorism charges in New York on Monday. They now sit in a Brooklyn jail, awaiting trial.  Trump and administration officials have justified ousting Maduro by claiming it was consistent with the Monroe Doctrine — a doctrine that through the years “has been expanded into something like a universal police warrant that allows the United States to intervene,” says historian Greg Grandin. “Trump has redefined the Monroe Doctrine to mean, the Monroe is as a weapon that the United States can use in order to protect its interests wherever it wants, whenever it wants. So it's a substitute for liberal international law.”  This week on the Intercept Briefing, host Jessica Washington discusses the Trump administration’s attack on Venezuela, its larger aims of controlling the Western Hemisphere, and bringing Latin America to heel with Grandin, the author of numerous books, including most recently "America, América: A New History of the New World." “There's an affiliation between the Monroe Doctrine and American First nationalism,” says Grandin. “They imagine United States sovereignty expanding well beyond its borders within its hemisphere.”  The administration’s vision is outlined in the National Security Strategy the White House released in December. “This is a strategy that announces that the Monroe Doctrine is back in the especially bellicose form. But what's also interesting, if you read further, the United States is not withdrawing from any of those old regions. … It's reserving the right to treat the rest of the world like it treats Latin America.”  Trump and administration officials — from Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a longtime advocate for Venezuelan and Cuban regime change, to White House chief of staff Stephen Miller — have threatened to expand military operations to Colombia, Mexico, and other Latin American countries that don’t fall in line. Maureen Tkacik, investigations editor at The American Prospect, who recently wrote a profile of Rubio headlined “The Narco-Terrorist Elite,” also joins the conversation to discuss the former Florida senator’s history and ambitions. Tkacik points out that Rubio, a driving force behind Maduro’s ouster, represents a wing of the Republican Party fixated on battling nominally left leaders in the region. That mentality is at odds with a key faction of Trump’s base, who say they’re against foreign intervention because they think the government should keep its attention on U.S. soil. Trump’s attack on Venezuela and fixation on so-called “narco-terrorists,” Tkacik says, “represent an attempt to reconcile these two poles — the Steve Bannon guys and the Marco Rubio neocons — that really have different definitions of America First.” Listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.  If you want to support our work, you can go to theintercept.com/join.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    38 min
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Cut through the noise with The Intercept’s reporters as they tackle the most urgent issues of the moment. The Briefing is a weekly podcast delivering news, incisive political analysis and deep investigative reporting, hosted by The Intercept’s journalists and contributors including Jessica Washington, Akela Lacy, and Jordan Uhl. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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