The Intercept Briefing

The most defining feature of Donald Trump’s first year back in office has been the brutality of his deportation machine and his administration's numerous attempts to upend due process. Back in March, the Trump administration wrongly deported Kilmar Ábrego Garcia to a notoriously violent prison in El Salvador. Ábrego Garcia’s legal status protected him from deportation to his home country for fear of persecution.“I think most Americans are intelligent enough to recognize that everybody deserves due process,” says Ábrego Garcia’s attorney Benjamin Osorio. “There's a process. They get a jury of their peers. And the same thing in immigration: This guy had a lawful order protecting him from being removed from the United States, and the government violated that.”This week on The Intercept Briefing, host Akela Lacy speaks to Osorio about Ábrego Garcia’s case. After months of being shipped around detention centers, he is free and fighting deportation orders from home with his family. “I think the courts have probably never seen more immigration habeases in their life.” says Osorio. “In the habeas sense, I would think that Kilmar’s case has had a lot of effect in the immigration practice.”Ábrego Garcia’s story epitomizes the unlawfulness and cruelty of the Trump administration’s deportation agenda and for that reason his story has become a political flashpoint. But what’s less understood is the scale and scope of fulfilling the administration’s vision of mass deportation.A new investigative video series from Lawfare and SITU Research called "Deportation, Inc.: The Rise of the Immigration Enforcement Economy,” maps out a vast web of companies that make up the rapidly growing deportation economy, how we got here, and the multibillion-dollar industry driven by profit, political power, and a perverse incentive structure.“The creation of the Department of Homeland Security in 2002 was a pivotal moment. It was a major restructuring of immigration, and that was also a point at which the framing of immigration went from more of a civil matter to more of a national security concern,” says Tyler McBrien, managing editor of Lawfare. “And with that transition, the amount of money and contracts began to flood in.”Gauri Bahuguna, deputy director of research at SITU, adds, “It was in the Obama administration where the detention bed quota comes in, and that's really the key unit of measurement that drives this particular part of the immigration enforcement industry, is 'How much money can you make per detained individual?’”“Even though the bed quota is gone formally from the law there, it still exists in contracts with companies like CoreCivic and GEO Group,” says Bahuguna. “There is payment for detaining a certain number of people, whether or not the beds are occupied, and then the perverse incentive to keep those facilities filled because there's an economies of scale.” McBride underscores that the current immigration system is “treating people as these products and units and to maximize profit.”Listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing onApple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.You can support our work at theintercept.com/join. Your donation, no matter the amount, makes a real difference.

In September, The Intercept broke the story of the U.S. military ordering an additional strike on an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean.Since then, U.S. boat strikes have expanded to the Pacific Ocean. The Intercept has documented 22 strikes as of early December that have killed at least 87 people. Alejandro Carranza Medina, a Colombian national, was one of the dozens of people killed in these strikes. His family says he was just out fishing for marlin and tuna when U.S. forces attacked his boat on September 15. On behalf of Medina’s family, attorney Dan Kovalik has filed a formal complaint with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.“We're bringing a petition alleging that the U.S. violated the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man, in particular, the right to life, the right to due process, the right to trial, and we're seeking compensation from the United States for the family of Alejandro Carranza, as well as injunctive relief, asking that the U.S. stop these bombings,” Kovalik told The Intercept.In the midst of this massive scandal, the so-called Department of War is cracking down on journalists’ ability to cover U.S. military actions. Back in October, Secretary Pete Hegseth introduced major new restrictions on reporters covering the Pentagon. In order to maintain press credentials to enter the Pentagon, journalists would have to sign a 17-page pledge committing to the new rules limiting press corps reporting to explicitly authorized information, including a promise to not gather or seek information the department has not officially released.This week on The Intercept Briefing, host Jessica Washington speaks to Kovalik about Medina's case. Intercept senior reporterNick Turse and Gregg Leslie, executive director of the First Amendment Clinic at Arizona State University Law, also join Washington to discuss the strikes off the coast of Latin America, subsequent attacks on shipwrecked survivors, and the administration’s response to reporting on U.S. forces and the Pentagon.Leslie raised concerns about the administration’s attempts to erase press freedoms. “It's just that fundamental issue of, who gets to cover the government? Is it only government-sanctioned information that gets out to the people, or is it people working on behalf of the United States public who get to really hold people to account and dive deep for greater information? And all of that is being compromised, if there's an administration that says, ‘We get to completely put a chokehold on any information that we don't want to be released,’” says Leslie. “You just don't have a free press if you have to pledge that you're not going to give away information just because it hasn't been cleared. It just shouldn't work that way, and it hasn't worked that way. And it's frightening that we've gotten an administration trying to make that the norm.”With a president who regularly targets journalists and critics, Turse adds, “What's to stop a lawless president from killing people in America that he deems to be domestic terrorists? … These boat strikes, the murders of people convicted of no crimes, if they become accepted as normal. There's really nothing to stop the president from launching such attacks within the United States.”Listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing onApple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.You can support our work at theintercept.com/join. Your donation, no matter the amount, makes a real difference.

As of December first, officials across the U.S. have executed 44 people in 11 states, making 2025 one of the deadliest years for state sanctioned executions. In this week’s episode we talk to Malcolm Gladwell, whose new podcast series dives into one case to understand how the system operates and the reality that who gets sentenced to die often depends on things that have nothing to do with guilt or innocence. Intercept reporter Liliana Segura also joins the conversation.

This week on The Intercept Briefing: What does it mean to work full-time in America and still not afford a place to live? We're resharing our conversation with journalist Brian Goldstone, whose new book  “There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America,” examines this growing crisis. Goldstone's book — a finalist for the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction — reveals how people holding down jobs are increasingly living in their cars, motels, shelters, or on the streets. This episode originally aired August 29, 2025.Episode Description: Homeless sweeps have become the go-to, bipartisan performance of “doing something” about the U.S. housing crisis — a spectacle embraced by Democrats and Republicans, city halls, and the White House alike. But sweeps are not a solution. They’re a way to make homelessness less visible while the crisis deepens.The roots stretch back decades. President Ronald Reagan’s Tax Reform Act of 1986 pulled the federal government out of building and maintaining public housing, paving the way for a fragmented patchwork scheme of vouchers and tax credits. The result is the system we live with today — one that does little to stem the tide.Last year, more than 700,000 people were officially counted as homeless, the highest number ever recorded. Nearly 150,000 of them were children. And that number leaves out the “hidden homeless”: families doubling up in cramped apartments or bouncing between motels.“What causes homelessness, in the 1980s as now, is a lack of access to housing that poor and working-class people can afford,” says Brian Goldstone, journalist and author of the new book “There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America.”This week on The Intercept Briefing, Goldstone tells host Laura Flynn that the housing emergency is no accident; it’s the product of deliberate political choices: “It's an engineered abandonment of not thousands, not hundreds of thousands, but millions of families.”Listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.You can support our work at theintercept.com/join. Your donation, no matter the amount, makes a real difference. 

The Labor Department reported September jobs numbers on Thursday, showing employers added 119,000 jobs to the economy but also an increase in unemployment to 4.4 percent. “The September report shows fairly good job growth, but every other report we have for October shows a slowdown,” says Robert Reich, the former secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton.“Real wages — that is, wages adjusted for inflation — are going down for most people. The bottom 90 percent of Americans are in very bad shape,” says Reich. This week on The Intercept Briefing, host Akela Lacy speaks to the professor, author, and longtime commentator about the economy and the state of Democratic Party politics under Trump. “The only people who are doing well, who are keeping the economy going through their purchases, are the top 10 percent, and they're basically doing well because they're the ones who own most of the shares of stock,” says Reich. “What happens when and if the stock market implodes?”Reich has been beating the drum on poverty and inequality for decades. And while that message took some time to hit the mainstream, it seems to be hitting home now more than ever, but Democratic leadership continues to fall flat in conveying they understand the urgency of the economic hardships ordinary Americans face.The answer, Reich says, is new leadership. He is disappointed in Democrats who caved to Trump on the government shutdown. “It's another example of the Democrats not having enough backbone,” Reich says. “I think Chuck Schumer has to go. And Jeffries too.” He adds, “I'm 79 years old. I have standing to speak about the fact that there is a time to move on. And I think that the Democratic leaders today should move on.”Listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing.You can support our work at theintercept.com/join. Your donation, no matter the amount, makes a real difference.

It’s the end of an era. Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who counts among her legacies in Congress successfully undercutting the push for Medicare for All, announced last week that she is retiring from Congress. The two-time former speaker of the House made her announcement after Democrats made remarkable gains in nationwide elections, campaigning on affordability and standing up to the Trump administration.“We are in this era where we need new ideas, we need new leaders, we need people who are going to push the party in a new direction,” says Saikat Chakrabarti, who is running to replace Pelosi and represent San Francisco in Congress, making economic inequality and corporate power the focal point of his politics. This week on The Intercept Briefing, host Akela Lacy speaks to Chakrabarti, the co-founder of the progressive outfit Justice Democrats who helped run the primary campaign of one of its first candidates, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, becoming her first chief of staff.Answering Lacy's question as to how he'll get it done, Chakrabarti says, “In the 1930s, we had a really powerful, far right in this country. We were actually seeing Nazi rallies in Madison Square Garden, it was filling the stadium. And the way we defeated that was FDR came in with the New Deal movement. He built this whole new economy and a whole new society that improved people’s lives so dramatically, it just killed this idea that you need an authoritarian to do it for you.” FDR “wasn’t advocating for going back to a pre-Great Depression era. He was advocating for something new. So that’s the way we get it done, and I see some movement towards that.”Chakrabarti has been openly calling for House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., to be primaried and tells The Intercept that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer should be too, following the end of the longest government shutdown in U.S. history, after eight Democratic senators — none who are up for reelection — joined forces with Republicans to pass a spending package.“My goal, honestly, is to replace a huge part of the Democrat establishment,” says Chakrabarti. “I'm calling for primaries all across the country. ... I think we actually have to get in there and be in a position of power where we can do all that, so it's not going to be this constant compromising with the establishment, trying to figure out how we can push.” He adds, “I tried the pushing strategy — that's what Justice Democrats was: We were trying to elect people to try to push the Democratic Party to do the right thing. It's not going to work. We have to replace them.”Listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.You can support our work at theintercept.com/join. Your donation, no matter the amount, makes a real difference.

On Tuesday, voters in Virginia, New York City, New Jersey, Texas, California, and Mississippi overwhelmingly supported Democratic candidates and ballot initiatives.In New York, despite facing racist opposition from both Republicans and much of the Democratic establishment, Zohran Mamdani sailed to victory. The new mayor-elect won over 50 percent of the vote in a three-way race. And in Virginia, Governor-elect Abigail Spanberger won with an even greater margin over her opponent, Winsome Earle-Sears, whose campaign weaponized transphobia in a vain attempt to defeat Spanberger.In California, as of Wednesday, nearly two-thirds of the vote favored redrawing the congressional map to counter Republican gerrymandering in Texas.The Intercept Briefing spoke with Amanda Litman, co-founder and president of the PAC Run for Something, and Maurice Mitchell, national director of the Working Families Party, to discuss what lessons Democrats and progressives should take heading into the midterm elections. Mitchell pointed to Mamdani’s and other Democrats' success last night at driving home a positive economic message for working-class voters as an important roadmap for next year.“There’s elements of [Mamdani’s] victory that are very particular to New York, that are very particular to him, but the politics and the conditions that are a part of the victory are happening all across the country,” said Mitchell. “It's clear that this was a wave election. And inside of that wave are a number of independent, progressive-minded folks who didn't wait their turn, who are willing to fight for working people.” Similarly, Litman argued that Democrats need to embrace a big tent that includes progressive voices. "You need candidates who know what they believe, who know how to communicate, who love the place they're running, and who can articulate why voters should want them to win,” she said.Litman continued, “Does every candidate need to have the exact same ideological profile? No. But also, the person who's running and winning a seat on the Iowa City Council is probably not a good fit for the New York City Council, and vice versa. And that's OK. To be a party that can win everywhere, which is what we need to be in order to stop authoritarianism and stop what the Republican Party has done, we need to have a big tent.” Listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.You can support our work at theintercept.com/join. Your donation, no matter the amount, makes a real difference.

Illinois congressional candidate Kat Abughazaleh was charged earlier this week with federal conspiracy charges for protesting outside of Broadview ICE Processing Center last month.Along with five others, Abughazaleh was indicted on felony charges for assaulting and conspiring to injure law enforcement officers. The 11-page indictment alleges the protesters “banged aggressively” on a federal agent's car and “pushed against the vehicle to hinder and impede its movement.” They also allegedly scratched the word “pig” onto the vehicle.Abughazaleh, a candidate in the Democratic primary for Illinois’s 9th Congressional District, spoke to The Intercept Briefing just days after the charges were unsealed. “This case against me, this indictment, is a clear attack on free speech, freedom of association, the right to protest,” she says. “This indictment is so breathtaking in just how obviously it is trying to criminalize the right to protest. And it's ludicrous to me that any elected official that's sworn to protect the Constitution wouldn't look at it and think, where the hell are we right now?”At an earlier protest at the same facility, the former journalist was filmed being slammed to the ground by ICE agents. That video went viral sparking outrage, and she’s urging other elected officials to fight back. “I feel like we as citizens are told to do so much — and then our leaders aren’t matching that. Part of it is they’re scared. This is a scary time. And there are threats from the administration, but also supporters. We've had a rise in political violence,” Abughazaleh challenges. “And this sounds callous, but you asked hundreds of thousands of people to vote for you. You asked to represent them. This is a job. You need to do your job even if you're scared, because that's what people deserve from their leaders.”The protesters are set to appear in court for their arraignment on November 5. If convicted, they could face up to six years in prison.Listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.You can support our work at theintercept.com/join. Your donation, no matter the amount, makes a real difference.

Once again, Israeli bombs rained down on Gaza. The latest wave of strikes killed more than 100 people, mostly women and children, according to health authorities. The bombardment marked the deadliest day since the weeks-old U.S.-brokered ceasefire between Israel and Hamas began on October 10 — a ceasefire Israel has repeatedly broken with impunity.“As the Trump administration likes to say, the ceasefire is still in place. And the media has parroted that as well. But an overwhelming amount of people that we spoke to on the ground are saying that there is no ceasefire with killings being at this rate. This is a continuation of the genocide,” says Intercept reporter Jonah Valdez. Palestinians “have a very crystal-clear view of Israel's policy and their goal of wanting mass expulsion from Gaza. ... Those who are surviving it and living it are seeing through the propaganda that the ceasefire is still in place.”On The Intercept Briefing, Valdez joins host Jordan Uhl and reporter Matt Sledge to explain why President Donald Trump “has a lot to gain from continuing to tell the public that there is a ceasefire” and to discuss the news stories published on The Intercept this week.“It's important to mention this layer of hope that exists. No one wants to call the ceasefire dead prematurely because if it surviving allows for other Palestinians and Gaza to survive,” Valdez adds, “then, you know, of course they have vested interest in seeing the truce live on.”And back in the United States, Trump’s pay-to-play approach to running the government continues unabated. Trump recently pardoned the billionaire crypto king, Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, whose company has done business benefiting the Trump family. “Binance overnight became the biggest customer of the Trump family venture, which is called World Liberty Financial,” Sledge points out. “I think a lot of skeptics out there are saying, like, ‘Boy, this sure just looks exactly like pay to play, like quid pro quo.’”Listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.You can support our work at theintercept.com/join. Your donation, no matter the amount, makes a real difference.