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In this segment of Mehdi Unfiltered, Amanda Litman, co-founder of Run for Something and author of When We’re in Charge: The Next Generation’s Guide to Leadership, speaks to Mehdi about the US’s gerontocracy problem and how younger leadership could revitalize the Democratic Party.
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In this segment of Mehdi Unfiltered, Greg Grandin, historian and author of America, América: A History of the New World speaks to Mehdi about what the US can learn from Latin America when it comes to fighting fascism.
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Just weeks before last year’s US presidential election, California Congressman Ro Khanna, the so-called ‘rep for Silicon Valley’, told Mehdi that he’d be “surprised” if billionaire Elon Musk joined the Trump administration in an official role.
Now, over six months later, Musk has become perhaps one of the most powerful people in the United States government, with Khanna now saying that Musk – who has said he will be stepping back from DOGE – “needs to be held accountable.”
“I was surprised, but I turned out to be both right and wrong. Wrong obviously that he joined, right that he'd get quickly frustrated and exhausted and leave,” Khanna tells Mehdi. “He's the only person I know who's gone from 65% approval to 35% approval… He went on a cultural crusade. And what he didn't realize is that Americans will cheer you to put rockets up in space, but they don't want those folks making decisions for them.”
In this wide-ranging interview, Mehdi and Ro Khanna discuss the congressman’s online feuds not only with Musk, but also Vice President JD Vance. When Mehdi asked Ro Khanna why he spars with JD Vance so often, whether it’s because he sees Vance as the heir to Trump or just because he finds Vance annoying, Khanna replied, “probably the latter.”
“JD is the only one who's making some pretense of trying to give an intellectual justification to what Trump's doing. Even Trump doesn't say, ‘I want to deprive people of due process.’ He says, ‘I don't know about it.’ JD Vance is saying, ‘No, no… an immigrant shouldn't have due process in this country,’” Khanna says to Mehdi.
Mehdi also presses the congressman on his own party, with Khanna admitting that Democrats were too cautious in this past election, despite President Donald Trump constantly endorsing extreme policies, such as pardoning Jan. 6 rioters and buying Greenland.
“If you get one person promising sweeping change and the other party saying, ‘well, we're basically going to give you what you've had for 40 years,’ people keep rolling the dice and saying, ‘let's roll the dice because what we've had for 40 years hasn't worked,’” Khanna tells Mehdi.
Khanna also calls for the “loudest condemnation” of the Netanyahu government’s actions in Gaza and reveals what he thinks the next Democratic presidential nominee should say about Israel and Gaza. (Will that be Khanna himself? Mehdi, of course, asked the question!)
Paid subscribers can watch the half-hour interview to hear Mehdi and Ro Khanna discuss the congressman’s plan to help Democrats try and win back MAGA voters, the recent fighting between India and Pakistan, and, yes, whether or not he is laying the groundwork for a presidential bid in 2028.
Free subscribers can watch the first 5-minutes of the interview. Do consider becoming a paid subscriber to Zeteo and skip the paywall every time!
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In this segment of Mehdi Unfiltered, surgeon Tom Potokar in Khan Younis says he’s ‘sick and tired’ of describing the horror on the ground to international media, and yet seeing no action from Western leaders.
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When Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s extremist far-right Minister of National Security, made a recent visit to Capitol Hill, he ended up crossing paths with a group of pro-Palestine activists. That group included award-winning Palestinian author and journalist Laila el-Haddad, whose books include ‘Gaza Mom: Palestine, Politics, Parenting, and Everything in Between.’
El-Haddad joined Mehdi on set in Washington DC to discuss the confrontation, which she caught on video and shared widely on Instagram.
“I personally looked at him and said, ‘You were responsible for killing my family members in Gaza,’ el-Haddad tells Mehdi, adding that Ben-Gvir “was shouting back at us, and he had to be restrained because he was trying to lunge at us.”
Discussing the role the last Democrat administration had with regards to Israel-Palestine and the 2024 presidential election result, Laila el-Haddad also notes that the genocide in Gaza will be Joe Biden’s “lasting legacy,” saying his failure to take a stand against Israel “is one of the reasons that we have Trump sitting here today.”
If you're a paid subscriber, you can watch the full interview above to hear el-Haddad reflect on the Uncommitted movement in 2024, the Trump crackdown on college campuses, the newly introduced West Bank Violence Prevention Act, and what happened to a lawsuit she was a plaintiff that aimed to hold the Biden administration accountable for their complicity in genocide.
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As Donald Trump and the Republican Party fight to pass his “big, beautiful bill” to cut taxes for the wealthy and gut federal spending for key federal agencies and social support programs, a new podcast miniseries from The Lever is pulling back the curtain on how Republicans became the face of the anti-tax movement.
David Sirota, the founder and editor-in-chief of The Lever and a former speechwriter and senior adviser to Bernie Sanders, joins Mehdi to discuss the podcast, “Tax Revolt”, and the surprising state where the movement took off in the 1970s: California.
Sirota tells Mehdi that while “Democrats were the Santa Claus of spending programs,” Republicans realized they could be “the Santa Claus of tax cuts.”
But as Sirota explains, Republican voters are beginning to sour on the idea of tax cuts as more people have learned that while this “Santa Claus” provides gifts “to the very richest,” those benefits aren’t trickling down to those who need them most.
“We’re living through a time where you can see every day the actual real-world effects of prioritizing tax cuts over a government that can accomplish the most basic necessities that we need it to accomplish,” Sirota tells Mehdi.
You can click here to listen to The Lever’s new podcast miniseries, “Tax Revolt”, which is available wherever you get your podcasts.
Paid subscribers can watch the full interview above to hear Mehdi and Sirota discuss the parts of Donald Trump’s playbook that trace back to the early days of the tax revolt, the lasting impacts of a California ballot measure that has made it nearly impossible to raise taxes in the state, and whether AOC is the heir to Bernie Sanders’ movement.
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It doesn’t take much under Trump’s authoritarian system of governance for anyone to find themselves in the crosshairs of one agency or the other. For attorney Clay Jackson, it was the simple act of telling an immigrant family their rights and offering to find them pro bono counsel.
“I'm licensed in three states. Every one of those states has a rule that says lawyers have an obligation to provide pro bono assistance to people in their community, I thought it was that simple.” Sadly for Jackson, it was not.
Following his meeting with a family, Jackson received a visit from state agents who refused to identify themselves, and then accused him of obstructing an immigration investigation. When Jackson went public with the story, he was immediately fired.
“I didn't think that doing something like this would cost me my job,” he says, “When I see big white shoe law firms, quote, ‘make a deal’ with a presidential administration that's pretty clear in its intent to test every single constitutional boundary that exists, it would be impossible for me as an attorney to tell a client that their interests are represented to the fullest extent.”
Watch the full interview above to hear Jackson’s account of how he thinks he was targeted, the status of the family he was helping, and whether this was a high-level attempt at intimidating lawyers who help immigrants under threat of deportation.
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It’s been over a month since shocking footage emerged of masked ICE agents arresting Tufts Doctoral Student Rümeysa Öztürk, after her visa was terminated simply for co-authoring an op-ed in the student newspaper calling for the university to divest in Israel.
Since then, Rümeysa has been confined to an ICE detention center in Louisiana, where her US Representative, Ayanna Pressley, met with her late last month.
In this powerful interview for ‘Mehdi Unfiltered,’ Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley tells Mehdi about the “harrowing” conditions Rümeysa has been facing in her detention center – which Pressley says, “has a long documented history of human rights violations and abuses.”
“She suffered several very severe asthma attacks while there, received inadequate medical care. There has been no religious accommodation, in fact, not only on a dietary aspect, but when it comes to a space to pray, a Quran. Her hijab was removed without her consent by one of the nurses,” Pressley tells Mehdi.
Pressley emphasizes to Mehdi how the Trump administration has completely ignored due process, and explains just how dire the implications of Rümeysa’s case are for the country.
“This is laying the ground foundationally and will be a threat to everyone. This means that this could be you tomorrow for suffering a miscarriage, because in Trump's America, that's been criminalized. This means this could be you tomorrow for reading a banned book,” Pressley says. “With this dictator in chief, simply because you have a dissenting opinion from his worldview, you could find yourself incarcerated.”
During the second half of the interview, Mehdi asks Pressley about President Donald Trump’s first 100 days of his second term, as well as the state of the Democratic party.
“I do not believe, Mehdi, that this is about weathering the next four years. I believe this will dictate the next 100,” Pressley says to Mehdi.
Paid subscribers can watch the full 26 minutes of this engaging interview with Pressley, to hear her discuss Trump and Republicans’ plans to potentially cut Medicaid, reporting that Democrats were told to stand down on visiting wrongly deported legal resident Kilmar Abrego Garcia, and Congresswoman AOC’s decision to pass on seeking a leadership position in the House.
Free subscribers can watch the first 5 minutes of the interview. This is a conversation you won’t want to miss, with Pressley completely unbarred in her answers. Consider upgrading to a paid membership to watch it in full.
Congresswoman Pressley recently joined Substack. You can find her at https://substack.com/@reppressley.
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Mehdi speaks to BAFTA-winning, Oscar-nominated Palestinian Director Farah Nabulsi about her latest film, 'The Teacher,' which centers around the struggle of Palestinians living in the occupied West Bank through the lens of a school teacher there.
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In this segment of Mehdi Unfiltered, Lindsey Boylan, former Cuomo aide who blew the whistle on his sexual misconduct, speaks to Mehdi about the former New York governor’s mayoral bid.
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In this week’s episode of Mehdi Unfiltered, Mehdi is joined by The Atlantic's Derek Thompson to discuss his new book with Ezra Klein, 'Abundance,' and the criticism it's received from progressives.
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In this segment of Mehdi Unfiltered, free speech advocate Nico Perrino talks to Mehdi about the Trump administration’s attacks on student protestors and the media, and the right’s free-speech hypocrisy.
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In this week’s episode of Mehdi Unfiltered, Mehdi is joined by MSNBC host Chris Hayes to discuss his new book, ‘The Siren’s Call: How Attention Became the World's Most Endangered Resource.’
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In this week’s episode of Mehdi Unfiltered, Mehdi is joined by Iranian-American relations expert Trita Parsi to discuss the possibility of a US-Israel-backed war with Iran, and the threat of it all going nuclear.
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After enduring almost three months of the Trump-Musk agenda, Democrats finally gained a victory last week, after voters elected Democratic-backed judge Susan Crawford, defeating billionaire Elon Musk’s attempt to flip the court to conservative control.
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Ten British nationals are now facing allegations of war crimes over their service in the Israeli military and its war on Gaza. To respond to this groundbreaking news, Mehdi interviews one of the lawyers behind this report: renowned human rights barrister Michael Mansfield KC.
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Mehdi was in New York this past week, and he was joined in the studio for a fascinating and wide-ranging conversation by none other than Molly Jong-Fast, acclaimed author, host of the ‘Fast Politics’ podcast, and a special correspondent for Vanity Fair.
You might find this to be a cathartic conversation as Mehdi and Molly unleash on the idiocy of the Trump tariffs - and the Trump administration in general. The two of them also address the deficiencies in the modern, cautious, elderly Democratic Party.
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The United States Constitution was written nearly 240 years ago, laying the foundations for an independent, successful, democratic country. But, like most of the nation’s laws, it was written by and for wealthy white men. To put it simply, the US legal system today feels, in some ways, both outdated and discriminatory – especially when it’s either under attack or weaponized by Donald Trump. It’s this exact issue that Elie Mystal, lawyer, author, and justice correspondent at The Nation magazine, tackles in his new book, Bad Law: Ten Popular Laws That Are Ruining America. Mehdi speaks with Mystal about US democracy, voter suppression, and the Trump administration.
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In this segment of Mehdi Unfiltered, Mehdi interviews the lawyer for a Georgetown scholar who is facing deportation for his pro-Palestine views.
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With the sun setting over Gaza’s skyline and warplanes flying overhead, trauma surgeon Dr. Feroze Sidhwa and orthopedic surgeon Dr. Mark Perlmutter huddle in front of their webcam at Nasser Hospital in the south of Gaza to describe some of the horrors they have seen over the last week.
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