Pankaj Mishra’s new book, The World After Gaza: A History, was written as a response to the “vast panorama of violence, disorder and suffering that we’re seeing today,” says the author. In Part 1 of our interview with the award-winning Indian writer, Mishra shares why he “felt compelled” to respond to what he sees as a return to the 19th-century model of “rapacious imperialism” in the Western world, signified by global complicity in Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

How is Elon Musk personally benefiting from his role as head of the Department of Government Efficiency? The agency, known as DOGE, is tasked with slashing “trillions” of dollars in federal spending and has set its sights on regulatory agencies, including ones that have opened investigations into Musk’s business practices. “At a minimum, it’s an appearance of conflict of interest,” says journalist Eric Lipton, who is investigating Musk and DOGE for The New York Times.

According to the White House, Russia’s Vladimir Putin has agreed to meet with President Trump to negotiate ending the war in Ukraine. Trump opposed the United States’ financial involvement in the Russia-Ukraine war during his campaign, distinguishing himself from the Biden administration’s funding of Ukraine’s military. Trump’s Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth broke with years of U.S.

We speak with the acclaimed Palestinian writer Mohammed El-Kurd on the publication day for his new book, Perfect Victims. It comes at a time of heightened censorship and attacks on Palestinian expression in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, as well as in the United States and elsewhere.

Acclaimed scholar and activist Tariq Ali joins us for a wide-ranging conversation. In Part 1, he responds to Trump’s support of the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, the U.S.’s capitulation to Israeli aggression in the Middle East and the rise in right-wing authoritarianism around the world. Ali says Donald Trump is “the most right-wing president in recent years” and exposes “in public what his predecessors used to say in private.

Is Trump embracing the authoritarian playbook of far-right Hungarian dictator Viktor Orbán? Princeton professor Kim Lane Scheppele walks us through Orbán’s sudden rise to power and how the Trump administration’s recent actions appear to follow his anti-democratic “blueprint,” with Trump “echoing a lot of Orbán’s rhetoric,” consolidating power in the executive branch and bypassing federal checks and balances.

President Trump has given yet more power to Elon Musk, who is now leading the effort to dismantle the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Created in response to the 2008 financial crisis, the CFPB helps enforce consumer financial laws for mortgages, credit cards and other financial products. We speak to a former CFPB staffer, Julie Margetta Morgan, who says the consumer watchdog has helped recover $21 billion lost to financial fraud and abuse in its decade-plus of existence.