On the Fourth of July, President Donald Trump signed into law a bill that constitutes one of the largest transfers of wealth in history — taking money away from working people and giving it to the nation’s elite.

The bill is the culmination of years of giveaways that have allowed corporations and billionaires to tighten their grip on the government. The law triples the budget for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, slashes taxes for the most wealthy, and pays for it all by cutting health care for as many as 20 million people and gutting funding for public education and meals for school children.

“ The reconciliation process goes hand-in-hand with all the executive orders that we've been seeing,” says Rep. Summer Lee, D-Pa. “It goes hand-in-hand with all of the different things that DOGE was pretending to uncover. It goes hand-in-hand with so much of Project 2025. So this is all just one kind of super villain packed into this — what they call this one big bill — that's like thousands of pages.”

This week on The Intercept Briefing, Lee speaks to host Akela Lacy about what Democrats are doing to meet the moment and how they can break through Republican messaging on the bill.

“ Democrats are screaming into a void,” Lee says. “The reality is that we have been talking about Medicaid, and it's very hard to break through in a 24-hour news cycle and this big bubble where we are in a sea of red coverage, conservative media, conservative narratives, disinformation, misinformation. And to break through in that moment takes more than just us.”

At the heart of it all is one core problem: the power of money in politics, Lee says. She introduced a bill to ban super PACs, the kind of groups that helped elect Trump and have pushed Democrats to the right.

“ You cannot have a democracy and super PACs,” Lee says. “If you are able to influence and shape the politics, shape information — what information gets out, which information doesn’t — because you have more money, then we don't have a level playing field.”

You can hear 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.

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This week on The Intercept Briefing, we're re-sharing a conversation we first aired on March 7, 2025 – a conversation that’s only grown more relevant since it first aired.

It’s a deep dive into the right-wing Christian ideologies shaping Donald Trump’s inner circle, featuring journalist and author of “Wild Faith,” Talia Lavin, and Intercept politics reporter Jessica Washington.

As Trump consolidates power — with the backing of a hardline Congress and a Supreme Court increasingly aligned with his agenda — understanding the religious forces behind his movement is more important than ever.

We’ll be back next week with a new episode.

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This week on The Intercept Briefing, host Akela Lacy speaks to Iranian American author Hooman Majd about the Israel–Iran ceasefire, Trump’s role in escalating the conflict, and whether diplomacy can survive.

Listen to the full episode of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

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A tenuous ceasefire between Israel and Iran announced Monday appears to be holding. President Donald Trump made the announcement after unilaterally dragging the U.S. into the conflict and authorizing strikes on three Iranian nuclear sites using 30,000-pound bunker busters.

Israel attacked Iran on June 13, just days before Iran and the U.S. were set to resume talks in Oman over the country’s nuclear enrichment program.

“ You don't have to be anti-war to understand that diplomacy in this case would've been better,” said Hooman Majd, an Iranian American writer and the author of three books on Iran. Majd is a contributor to NBC News and covered the 2015 Iran deal for the network.

This week on The Intercept Briefing, Majd joins host Akela Lacy to discuss what's left of the path to diplomacy after years of sabotage, from Israel's aggressive military posture to Trump's withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear deal.

You can hear the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

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This week on The Intercept Briefing, host Jordan Uhl talks with journalists Taylor Lorenz and Akela Lacy about how online disinformation is distorting public understanding of major events — from political violence to immigration to potential war with Iran. In this chaos-driven ecosystem, the right — and Trump especially — know how to thrive.

Listen to the full episode of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

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In the wake of the political assassination of Minnesota lawmaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, prominent right-wing figures moved quickly to assign blame. Utah Sen. Mike Lee pinned the killings on “Marxism.” Elon Musk pointed to the “far left.” Donald Trump Jr., the president’s son, said it “seems to be a leftist.”

But the facts quickly told a different story: The suspect, 57-year-old Vance Boelter is a Trump supporter who held radical anti-abortion views.

“There's an entire right-wing media machine aimed at pushing disinformation around breaking news events and specifically attributing violence to the left,” says Taylor Lorenz, independent journalist and author of “Extremely Online: The Untold Story of Fame, Influence, and Power on the Internet.” “You see this over and over and over again, no matter who is perpetrating the violence.”

“The reality is that the vast overwhelming majority of political violence in recent years has come from the right,” adds Akela Lacy, The Intercept’s senior politics reporter. “It basically treats that fact as if it's not real, as if it doesn't exist,” she says — a dynamic that then fails to address the root causes.

This week on The Intercept Briefing, host Jordan Uhl talks with Lorenz and Lacy about how online disinformation is distorting public understanding of major events — from political violence to immigration to potential war with Iran. In this chaos-driven ecosystem, the right — and Trump especially — know how to thrive.

You can hear 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.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

ICE agents are arresting day laborers and raiding businesses across the country. They didn’t expect community resistance. This week on The Intercept Briefing, Salvador Sarmiento, the campaign director and lawyer for the 70-member National Day Laborer Organizing Network, and Jonah Valdez, reporter for The Intercept joined host Jordan Uhl to discuss the wave of ICE operations sweeping Los Angeles that have sparked a week of protests and the militarized response from law enforcement.

Attorney Isabella Salomão Nascimento also talks to us about our First Amendment right to protest.

You can hear 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.

Across the country, demonstrators are preparing for a weekend of protests against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations, Donald Trump's planned June 14 military parade, and Trump himself.

Ground zero for these demonstrations is likely to be Los Angeles, where heavily armed ICE agents have carried out raids at churches, graduations, parking lots, and scores of other gathering spots recently.

“ The level of armament that these guys are wearing is out of a GI Joe movie,” said Salvador G. Sarmiento, the campaign director and lawyer for the 70-member National Day Laborer Organizing Network. “It seems like the federal police is just driving around willy-nilly — dressed up as a goon squad — picking up people that they see on a street corner.”

“The federal government [is] violently taking people from their work sites in military fashion,” added Jonah Valdez, reporter for The Intercept.

This week on The Intercept Briefing, Sarmiento and Valdez joined host Jordan Uhl to discuss the wave of ICE operations sweeping Los Angeles that have sparked a week of protests and the militarized response from law enforcement.

As people head to the streets again this weekend, protesters should be informed about their constitutional rights and safety options. The episode also features practical advice from attorney Isabella Salomão Nascimento.

You can support our work at theintercept.com/join. Your donation, no matter the amount, makes a real difference.

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