Donald Trump has always presented a problem for journalists. His years as a reality-television star taught him to outmaneuver facts and control narratives. Now as Trump’s second Presidential run gets under way, these skills are proving useful yet again. At CNN’s recent town hall, Trump answered questions in front of a live and sympathetic audience—a situation that played directly to his strengths as a performer. For Jelani Cobb and Steve Coll, New Yorker writers and Columbia Journalism School faculty members, the town hall raised some questions: Where is the line between coverage and promotion? And what is the role of news organizations in the age of political polarization? Cobb and Coll join Tyler Foggatt to discuss the dilemmas that journalists face when reporting on the former President and his 2024 campaign.

In June, a first-of-its-kind lawsuit will go to trial in Montana. The case, Held v. Montana, centers on the climate crisis. Sixteen young plaintiffs allege their state government has failed in its obligation, spelled out in the state constitution, to provide residents with a healthful environment. The psychiatrist Dr. Lise Van Susteren is serving as an expert witness and intends to detail the emotional distress that can result from watching the environmental destruction unfolding year after year. “Kids are talking about their anger. They’re talking about their fear. They’re talking about their despair. They’re talking about feelings of abandonment,” she tells David Remnick. “And they don’t understand why the adults in the room are not taking more action.” Dr. Van Susteren is a co-founder of the Climate Psychiatry Alliance, a network of mental-health providers concerned with educating colleagues and the public about the climate crisis.

President Joe Biden was set to make a historic tour through the Indo-Pacific over the next week, becoming the first sitting U.S. President to visit Papua New Guinea, an island state that declared a national holiday for his arrival. But negotiations over the debt limit back home forced the President to cut his trip short, and he’ll return to Washington immediately after the G-7 summit in Hiroshima, Japan. Debate over the debt ceiling could not be postponed, the White House said, with as the U.S. closes in on the day it will run out of cash. Biden’s cancelled visits would have taken place at a time of growing concern about China’s expanding military and economic influence in the region, and on the heels of G-7 discussions about competition with China and the war in Ukraine. Can the U.S. reassert itself as a leader on the international stage if it can’t take care of business at home? The New Yorker staff writers Susan B. Glasser, Jane Mayer, and Evan Osnos analyze America’s global standing and the G-7 summit in this week’s roundtable discussion.   

Last June, after the Supreme Court reversed nearly half a century of legal precedent by overturning Roe v. Wade, the New Yorker writers Jia Tolentino and Stephania Taladrid joined Tyler Foggatt on The Political Scene to talk about the potential fallout. This week, almost a year later, they reconvened to discuss the changes that have occurred—and what they mean for reproductive rights, maternal mortality, and public attitudes toward abortion.  In March, Tolentino won a National Magazine Award for essays and columns about the repeal of Roe; earlier this month, Taladrid was named a Pulitzer Prize finalist for her reporting on abortion rights and women’s health.

Just over a month ago, the story of two lawmakers expelled from the Tennessee legislature captured headlines across the country. Their offense wasn’t corruption or criminal activity—instead, they had joined a protest at the statehouse in favor of gun control, shortly after the Nashville shooting at a Christian school. Earlier this week, Representative Zooey Zephyr, of Montana, was barred from the House chamber after making a speech against a trans health-care ban. In the past few years, in Arizona, Wisconsin, and North Carolina, legislatures have worked to strip powers from state officials who happen to be Democrats in order to put those powers in Republican hands. Jacob Grumbach, a political-science professor and the author of “Laboratories Against Democracy,” talks about how state politics  has become nationalized. “If you’re a politician, and you’re trying to rise in the ranks from the local or state level in your party,” he notes, “your best bet is to join the national culture wars”—even at the expense of constituents’ real concerns.