Impolitic with John Heilemann

John welcomes Jacob Weisberg, co-founder of Pushkin Industries and former editor of Slate, to discuss his new book, “Profiles in Cowardice: A Study of Collaboration in the Trump Era.” Weisberg explains how he took the format and framing of “Profiles in Courage,” John F. Kennedy’s classic examination of moral leadership in politics, and turned it inside out, focusing not on the admirable but the culpable; and why some of America’s best-known and most powerful public figures—from Jeff Bezos and Stephen Schwarzman to John Roberts, Megyn Kelly, and Mitch McConnell—became complicit in a signal feature of Donald Trump’s second term: the remarkable degree of capitulation to a president few of them like or respect and many once resisted.

John welcomes back Searchlight Institute president Adam Jentleson to discuss the post-Labor Day Senate battleground map and his new book, “Supermajority: How Democrats Can Build Lasting Power.” Jentleson explains why cautious optimism is in order about his party’s prospects of retaking the upper chamber; how the strength of James Talarico and Rob Sand (in the Texas Senate and Iowa governor’s races, respectively) are rooted in the sort of ideological heterodoxy Jentleson champions in his book; why the razor-thin margins and slim majorities of our time are historical anomalies; and the degree of compromise Democrats will need to accommodate to build governing coalitions broad enough to last.

John is joined by Lawrence Wright, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11,” to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Wright explains what we understand today about 9/11 that we didn't understand at the time, and what we still don’t know; how the war on terror waged in its aftermath changed America, the world, and us; and the terrible possibility that, in the end, Osama bin Laden achieved more of his goals than we care to admit.

John is joined by publisher of The Bulwark and apostate Republican strategist Sarah Longwell to discuss the midterm elections, 2028, and her new book, “How to Eat an Elephant: One Voter at a Time.” Longwell explains how large an albatross Donald Trump has become for GOP candidates up and down the ballot; why Democrats’ strong position in the polls may not be a summertime “sugar high;” and why Gavin Newsom is merely engaging in “performance art” while Jon Ossoff is “president-maxxing." She also lays out what she's learned about the electorate from conducting more than 400 focus groups in the past decade—and how it informs her new book's argument about how to permanently dismantle MAGA.

John is joined by combative California union boss Dave Regan to discuss Proposition 40, his state’s controversial ballot measure to levy a one-time, 5 percent wealth tax on its resident billionaires. Regan, Prop 40's principal architect and advocate, explains its economic benefits, political challenges, and prospects for passage. He also disses the initiative's opponents—from Silicon Valley billionaires such as Sergey Brin to Governor Gavin Newsom and his likely successor, Xavier Becerra—arguing that “they think the rest of us are stupid.”

John is joined by two first-time Democratic office-seekers — Adam Hamilton, the party’s Senate candidate in Kansas, and Denise Powell, its House candidate in NE-02 — to discuss their upstart campaigns. Hamilton, a Methodist minister who runs his state’s largest mega-church, debunks charges from the right that he’s “too woke for Kansas,” and explains why GOP incumbent Roger Marshall resembles the Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Cowardly Lion from “The Wizard of Oz” all rolled into one. Powell, a self-styled “pissed-off baseball mom,” describes the fury of Omaha voters at Trump’s mockery of "affordability" and her plan to win one of only a handful of congressional districts that voted for Kamala Harris and a Republican House member in 2024.

John is joined by Democracy Forward CEO Skye Perryman to discuss Donald Trump, Todd Blanche, and the threats they pose to America’s elections and the rule of law. Perryman explains why, for all Trump’s talk about federalizing or even canceling the midterms, he has no legal authority to do anything of the kind; why Blanche is such a dangerous deviation from past Attorneys General; and the lasting damage being done to the Justice Department by Trump 2.0. She also talks about her new book, “Ordinary People, Extraordinary Times: How to Reclaim Your Power, Fight for Freedom, and Reimagine Democracy,” which lays out practical steps citizens can take to beat back the authoritarian tide.

In the second installment of a two-part episode with best-selling author Kurt Andersen, John and Kurt continue their discussion of Andersen's new novel, “The Breakup." Kurt assesses how the book—set in 2045, following a second American Civil War—fits into his formidable body of work, from acclaimed novels such as “Heyday” and non-fiction hits including “Fantasyland” to the editorial voice he helped fashioned at Spy magazine and the satirical sci-fi web video series he created with Steven Soderbergh. Kurt also explains the challenges AI poses to writing about the future, and how "The Breakup" handles the (fictional) death of the president he famously co-christened a “short-fingered vulgarian."

John welcomes bestselling author, Spy magazine co-founder, and Peabody Award-winning radio host Kurt Andersen for the first installment of a two-part episode focused on his extraordinary new novel, “The Breakup.” After laying out the premise of his first work of speculative fiction—in 2045, two Americans edge towards ending their marriage just as their country, in the wake of a second Civil War, prepares to end its own, much longer union—Andersen discusses how such a national divorce could come to pass, what America might look like in its aftermath, and whether that outcome would actually be so terrible, after all. Bayer is empowering American farms with the smart tools and accurate data needed to confidently advance regenerative agriculture, improving soil health for a sustainable future.

John welcomes New Mexico Attorney General Raul Torrez to discuss his landmark litigation against Meta and his new crusade against the Justice Department over the Epstein files. Torrez explains his recently filed lawsuit against Todd Blanche and the DOJ for obstructing his investigation of sex trafficking at Epstein’s Santa Fe outpost, Zorro Ranch; his office's role in drafting a new piece of federal legislation, the Epstein Files Transparency II, introduced last week; and his courtroom victory over Mark Zuckerberg's company, which yielded a nearly $1 billion judgment and may serve as a blueprint for similar cases across the country aimed at holding tech firms liable for harms from their platforms. Bayer is empowering American farms with the smart tools and accurate data needed to confidently advance regenerative agriculture, improving soil health for a sustainable future.

John welcomes David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker, to discuss his recent viral podcast interview with DSA co-chair Megan Romer and his latest magnum opus on Israel. Remnick confesses to being "startled" by Romer's glaring “lack of fluency” with DSA’s official positions. (He also confesses to having worn a Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee button in college.) And he offers a vivid account of his fifth reporting trip to Israel since October 7, 2023; a portrait of Bibi Netanyahu's main opponent, Gadi Eisenkot, in the forthcoming Israeli election; and an analysis of the campaign's stakes for the Jewish state and the Palestinians. Bayer is empowering American farms with the smart tools and accurate data needed to confidently advance regenerative agriculture, improving soil health for a sustainable future.

John welcomes author Jim Windolf to discuss his new book, “Where the Music Had to Go: How Bob Dylan and The Beatles Changed Each Other—and the World.” Windolf details the revelations and insights unearthed during the five years he spent researching and writing the first full-scale dual biography of two musical acts whose artistic and cultural impact is unparalleled in pop music history—and the surprising degree to which they motivated, inspired, and transformed each other in the process. Bayer is empowering American farms with the smart tools and accurate data needed to confidently advance regenerative agriculture, improving soil health for a sustainable future.

John welcomes back former Wisconsin Democratic Party chairman Ben Wikler to discuss this week’s headline-making Senate primary in Michigan, next week’s gubernatorial primary in Wikler's home state, and his new book, “This Is The Plan: How to End America’s Meltdown and Save Democracy.” Wikler examines Abdul El-Sayed’s narrower-than-expected win over Haley Stevens; the startling rise of 37-year-old state representative and Democratic Socialists of America stalwart Francesca Hong to frontrunner status in the Badger State's governor’s race; and just how freaked out mainstream Democrats should feel about their party’s ongoing wet, hot, DSA summer. Bayer is empowering American farms with the smart tools and accurate data needed to confidently advance regenerative agriculture, improving soil health for a sustainable future.

John welcomes Rolling Stone writer Jonathan Bernstein to discuss the life, music, and legacy of Irish singer-songwriter Glen Hansard, who died tragically last week in a motorcycle crash at 56. Bernstein, who published a moving tribute to Hansard in the wake of his death, traces Glen’s rise from Dublin busker to Oscar-winning star of the movie “Once” — and wrestles with why the death of this particular artist unleashed an unexpectedly large and intense outpouring of grief and appreciation across generations and around the world. Bayer is empowering American farms with the smart tools and accurate data needed to confidently advance regenerative agriculture, improving soil health for a sustainable future.

John welcomes back Democratic strategist Lis Smith to discuss the intra-party factional civil war playing out in the Michigan Senate primary. Best known as the communications guru who helped turn Pete Buttigieg into a national figure, Smith served as a key adviser in the primary to state senator Mallory McMorrow, who left the race a month ago, giving Lis a prime, up-close perspective on the two remaining candidates—former public health official Abdul El-Sayed and congresswoman Haley Stevens—and why their heated, bitter, lavishly funded fight has turned into a microcosm of the burgeoning ideological battle among Democrats from coast to coast.

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John welcomes New York York Times White House reporter Jonathan Swan to discuss his runaway No. 1 bestseller, “Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump,” co-authored with Maggie Haberman, and how the reporting in the book illuminates Trump's inability to bring a tidy end to the war in Iran, fixation on election-related conspiracy theories, and pronounced disinterest in the economic struggles of ordinary voters. Swan also reveals the strategy behind his Emmy-winning TV interview with Trump in 2020—and how a fringe Australian politician with a yen for kangaroo feces fueled his meteoric rise in journalism.

John welcomes Senate savant and Searchlight Institute president Adam Jentleson to discuss the Democrats’ fraught path to retaking control of the upper chamber. A former speechwriter for John Kerry and John Edwards, comms director for Harry Reid, and chief of staff to John Fetterman, Jentleson explains Searchlight’s mission of breaking the hold of entrenched interest groups on his party; that rejecting litmus tests and embracing ideological heterodoxy are key to building a stable Democratic governing majority; his confidence that, despite Graham Platner’s implosion, Susan Collins is going down in Maine; his worries that the blue team will fumble the ball in Michigan; and why “nobody is doing it better now” than Zohran Mamdani.

John welcomes back the John and Yoko (Ike and Tina? Sonny and Cher?) of Beltway journalistic power couples, the New York Times’s Peter Baker and The New Yorker’s Susan Glasser, to try to make sense of a presidency that increasingly appears to be politically nonsensical. Against the backdrop of Trump's recent actions at home and abroad, Peter and Susan ponder a theory that no one quite believes but for which the evidence—from his mercurial conduct of the war in Iran to his doubling down on ICE’s deadly tactics, obsessive focus on election-related conspiracy theories, and more—is at least superficially compelling: that the president is engaged in a concerted campaign to sabotage the Republican Party.

John welcomes former Senate Judiciary Committee senior staffer and deputy assistant attorney general Jeff Blattner to discuss the confirmation hearings of Todd Blanche and Jay Clayton to be America's next attorney general and director of national intelligence, respectively. Blattner also explains how his friend and former Justice Department colleague Phil Weiser unexpectedly defeated Senator Michael Bennett in the recent Democratic gubernatorial primary in Blattner’s home state of Colorado—and what his mentor and former boss, Ted Kennedy, would have to say about Donald Trump’s America.