Podcast: The Daily

For years, even as fentanyl has killed Americans at an astonishing rate, Mexico has claimed that it was doing everything possible to crack down on production of the drug.

This week, President Trump began using punishing new tariffs to test that claim.

Natalie Kitroeff, who is the Mexico City bureau chief for The New York Times, discusses the surprising result of his tactics.

In his first address to Congress on Tuesday night, President Trump took a highly partisan victory lap as Democratic lawmakers openly protested against him.

Maggie Haberman, a White House correspondent for The Times, walks us through the speech, including the reactions to it in the room.

Since President Trump took office, Elon Musk and DOGE have wielded an unprecedented level of power to help the administration cut the U.S. government, and they claim to have stopped tens of billions of dollars in wasteful spending.

David A. Fahrenthold, an investigative reporter for The Times, explains why those claims are not what they seem — and what that tells us about Mr. Musk’s project to shrink the federal bureaucracy.

On Friday, President Trump and Vice President JD Vance berated President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine in an explosive televised Oval Office meeting and abruptly cut short a visit that was meant to help coordinate a plan for peace.

Peter Baker, chief White House correspondent for The Times, discusses the clash and its consequences.

Jim Tucker could hardly believe what he was hearing. It sounded like fiction, a nightmare too outlandish for an unassuming town like his.

It was July 2023, and Tucker was hosting a meeting of the board of Heartland Tri-State Bank, a community-owned business in a small Kansas town called Elkhart. Heartland was a beloved local institution and a source of Tucker family pride: Tucker served on the board with his elderly father, Bill, who founded the bank four decades earlier. All of the board members — the Tuckers and several other farmers and businesspeople — had known one another for years.

That evening, however, they were gathering to discuss what seemed, on its face, an epic betrayal. Over the past few weeks, the bank’s longtime president, a popular local businessman named Shan Hanes, had ordered a series of unexplained wire transfers that drained tens of millions of dollars from the bank. Hanes converted the funds into cryptocurrencies. Then the money vanished.

The Massachusetts leader, whose influence goes well beyond her state, discusses how the Democratic Party can pick its battles and rebuild its brand.

This week, President Trump proposed two deals that would require allies to put his needs ahead of their own.

Times’ Journalists Michael Barbaro, Catie Edmonson, Maggie Haberman, and Zolan Kanno-Youngs discuss how, in both cases, Trump got what he wanted.

During his decades-long path to become America’s highest-ranking military officer, Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. won the crucial support of President Trump.

That all changed when Mr. Brown publicly talked about a subject that is taboo in Mr. Trump’s government.

Helene Cooper, who covers national security for The Times, explains why General Brown was fired and why it has rocked the military.

Today, as the cease-fire between Israel and Hamas enters its most fragile phase, no one knows who will control the future of Gaza.

Patrick Kingsley, the Jerusalem bureau chief for The New York Times, talks through this delicate moment — as the first part of the deal nears its end — and the questions that hover over it.

Warning: This episode discusses sexual themes.

Artificial intelligence has changed how millions of people write emails, conduct research and seek advice.

Kashmir Hill, who covers technology and privacy, tells the story of a woman whose relationship with a chatbot when much further than that.

Since President Trump took office, his plan to deport millions of undocumented people has kept running into barriers. That has forced the White House to come up with ever more creative, and controversial, tactics.

The Times journalists Julie Turkewitz and Hamed Aleaziz explain why some migrants are being held in a hotel in Panama.

When David Muhammad was 15, his mother moved from Oakland, Calif., to Philadelphia with her boyfriend, leaving Muhammad in the care of his brothers, ages 20 and 21, both of whom were involved in the drug scene. Over the next two years, Muhammad was arrested three times — for selling drugs, attempted murder and illegal gun possession.

For Muhammad, life turned around. He wound up graduating from Howard University, running a nonprofit in Oakland called the Mentoring Center and serving in the leadership of the District of Columbia’s Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services. Then he returned to Oakland for a two-year stint as chief probation officer for Alameda County, in the same system that once supervised him.

Muhammad’s unlikely elevation came during a remarkable, if largely overlooked, era in the history of America’s juvenile justice system. Between 2000 and 2020, the number of young people incarcerated in the United States declined by an astonishing 77 percent. Can that progress be sustained — or is America about to reverse course and embark on another juvenile incarceration binge?

The Pulitzer Prize-winning science writer talks about burnout from covering the pandemic and how bird-watching gave him a new sense of hope.

This week, President Trump falsely claimed that Ukraine started the war against Russia, ordered federal agencies created by Congress to answer directly to him and installed himself as the leader of Washington’s premiere cultural institution.

The Times journalists Michael Barbaro, Zolan Kanno-Youngs, Charlie Savage and Elisabeth Bumiller sit down to make sense of it all.

The sweeping federal corruption charges against Mayor Eric Adams seemed to spell the end of his career. Then he got a sudden reprieve from President Trump — but as the terms of that support became public, an extraordinary blowback ensued.

Nicholas Fandos, who covers New York politics and government for The Times, walks us through the saga.

On the campaign trail, Donald J. Trump and his allies left little doubt that, if they returned to power, federal workers would face layoffs, buyouts and agency closures.

Now that President Trump’s plan has become a reality, dozens of federal workers explain what it’s been like to live through it.

During less than a month in office, President Trump has pursued more trade actions against adversaries and allies than all the trade measures he took in his entire first four-year term. There is one man guiding it all: his trade adviser Peter Navarro.

Ana Swanson, who covers trade and international economics for The Times, explains why Mr. Navarro thinks tariffs will usher in a new age of American prosperity.

A few days ago, the Trump administration began blowing up America’s existing approach to ending the war in Europe by embracing Russia and snubbing Ukraine.

The shift has quickly turned into a broader assault on America’s relationship with Europe.

Anton Troianovski, the Moscow bureau chief of The Times, explains how it’s all adding up to a stunning victory for Vladimir V. Putin.

The Arizona lawmaker diagnoses what he thinks needs to change in the way his party communicates with men, Latinos and Trump voters.

Over the past week, President Donald J. Trump dramatically ceded the stage to Elon Musk in the Oval Office, turned the Democratic mayor of New York City into a political pawn and ensured that Vladimir Putin begins peace talks with Ukraine on Russia’s terms. The Times journalists Michael Barbaro, Maggie Haberman, David E. Sanger and Zolan Kanno-Youngs sit down and discuss the latest week in the Trump administration.