The Real News Podcast

Over the last two decades, Vladimir Putin has transformed his government in Russia from a managed democracy into an authoritarian regime. Many now view it as neofascist. Abroad, it has launched war after war to rebuild Russia’s former empire, while, at home, it has crushed the democracy movement, repressed all protests against Putin’s imperialist war in Ukraine, and jailed thousands of political prisoners. Two Russian dissidents, Ksenia Kagarlitskaya and Ilya Budraitskis join Ashley Smith in this episode of Solidarity without Exception.Resource links:Freedom Zone: https://www.futurerussia.ch/en/freedom-zonePosle Media: https://www.p...

It’s been three years since a Norfolk Southern “bomb train” carrying toxic chemicals derailed in the small town of East Palestine, Ohio, on the night of Feb. 3, 2023. Three days later, Norfolk Southern pressured local authorities to make the disastrous and completely unnecessary decision to vent five giant carloads of vinyl chloride into a ditch and set the contents on fire, releasing a massive chemical plume into the air, exposing residents in East Palestine and the surrounding areas to deadly toxins in one of the worst industrial disasters in US history. Three years later, residents are still getting sick, many have b...

Judge Brian Jackson of the U.S. District Court has certified a class action lawsuit against Angola Prison on behalf of men forced to perform punitive farm labor under unconstitutional conditions and in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Under this ruling, the court certified two specific groups: a primary class encompassing all persons currently or potentially assigned to the Louisiana State Penitentiary (LSP) Farm Line, and a specialized subclass for those with disabilities assigned to the same labor. In his findings, Judge Jackson noted that nearly every individual arriving at the facility is assigned to the Farm...

On January 3, 2026, the United States invaded Venezuela and kidnapped president Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores. It was the first U.S. invasion of a Latin American country since the 1989 invasion of Panama. The United States fired missiles and bombs that blew out windows and hit residential apartment blocks. Helicopters. Explosions. Firebombs. They cut electricity. They destroyed a medical supplies warehouse. Testimonies say helicopters fired on innocent people. They traumatized thousands, if not, millions of Venezuelans.The aftermath for everyday Venezuelans has been completely ignored. The voices of those on the ground — the voices of the...

Hundreds of union nurses, federal workers, and local residents gathered outside the Veterans Affairs central office building in Washington, DC, on Jan. 28, to hold a vigil for Alex Pretti and all who have been killed by ICE. The vigil was one of many events organized or co-sponsored by National Nurses United, the nation’s largest union and professional association of registered nurses, which has forcefully called for ICE to be abolished in the wake of Pretti’s killing. We speak with attendees of the vigil in this on-the-ground edition of Working People.  Additional links/info: Maximillian Alvarez...

Non-unanimous jury verdicts were a Jim Crow–era policy designed to silence Black jurors and secure convictions even when the state failed to prove its case. In 2026, over 1,000 people remain imprisoned in Louisiana after being convicted by non-unanimous juries. In this episode of Rattling the Bars, Mansa Musa speaks with Erica Navalance, Associate Director of Strategic Criminal Litigation at the Promise of Justice Initiative, about the case of Lloyd Gray and why the state of Louisiana continues to uphold unconstitutional convictions.Guest:Erica Navalance has worked with both Capital Appeals Project and Promise of Justice Initiative (PIJ) si...

On Friday, Jan. 23, around 50,000 people in Minneapolis, MN, engaged in a historic mass strike and day of protest to demand an end to ICE terror and President Trump’s federal siege of Minnesota. Then, on Saturday, Jan. 24, an ICE agent shot and killed Alex Pretti, volunteer ICE observer and a registered union nurse who worked for the Veterans Health Administration. In this episode, we speak with Mary C. Turner, a registered nurse inn Minnesota and a member of the Council of Presidents of National Nurses United, the largest nurses union in the US, which is now forcefully calling for the ab...

The Third Circuit Court of Appeals handed the Trump administration a victory this month in its ongoing attempt to deport Syrian-born Palestinian activist, husband, father, and former Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil. Khalil remains in the country for now and the legal battle is far from over, but the future of free speech in the US hangs in the balance. This week on The Marc Steiner Show, Marc speaks with Amy Greer, an associate attorney at Dratel & Lewis and a member of Mahmoud Khalil’s legal team, about the status of Khalil’s case.Guest...

In the hours after the Jan. 3 US invasion of Venezuela, social media was inundated with fake videos and images. Some showed Venezuelans holding huge rallies in favor of the US invasion. Others showed US troops landing or firing from helicopters. Others showed Maduro being kidnapped. Not all were AI. Some were old, showing anti-government rallies from years past. Or from other places—other invasions or bombing raids, unrelated to the current US attack. But these videos racked up tons of views, misleading millions of people about what was happening on the ground. Many of those people still don’t know the t...

The Trump administration’s federal invasion and occupation of the state of Minnesota continues to sow chaos in the Twin Cities, but grassroots resistance to ICE and Trump has also exploded. And on Friday, Jan. 23, unions, community organizations, small businesses, faith communities, and Minnesota residents of all kinds will participate in a mass strike, a day of “No work, no school, and no shopping.” From Minnesota, we get firsthand accounts from Aminah Sheikh, a union organizer and an active member and executive board member of Twin Cities Democratic Socialists of America, and Nick Estes, an enrolled member of the Lower Brule S...

Returning citizens are being funneled into exploitative temp jobs that pay poverty wages, deny them basic labor protections, and deepen the state’s control over their lives long after they’ve served their time. This week, Mansa Musa speaks with Katherine Passley and Maya Ragsdale, Co-Executive Directors of Beyond the Bars, about how Florida’s temp industry traps the most vulnerable workers and operates as a profitable and punishing extension of the prison system.Guests:Maya Ragsdale is the founder and co-executive director of Beyond the Bars, a worker center in South Florida building...

The state of Minnesota is under siege by our own federal government, and residents—immigrant and US-born alike—are living in fear. With the deployment of over 3,000 federal agents to Minnesota in recent weeks,  this is the Trump administration’s largest and most violent so-called “immigration enforcement” operation yet—and with President Trump threatening to invoke the Insurrection Act in Minnesota in response to protests over ICE’s terror campaign, the situation on the ground is extremely volatile. Amid this federal invasion, unions, community organizations, faith leaders, and small businesses in Minnesota are calling for a statewide day of “no work (except for...

Today, people are protesting across the United States. They’re rallying. They’re walking off their jobs to mark the one-year anniversary of the inauguration of president Donald Trump. It’s part of a nationwide protest called the “Free America Walkout.” It’s organized by the Women’s March, the group that led the huge women’s marches against Trump in his first term. More than 400 events, rallies, and actions are happening throughout the United States. People are braving the cold weather, walking out of jobs and schools and standing up. Today also marks the one-year anniversary of Sto...

The Trump administration has said that the “second phase” of the ceasefire in Gaza is now in effect, but the fire has yet to cease. “What's happening now is that we are still being settled silently, we are still being killed slowly, away from the world's cameras,” Eyad Amawi, a father living in Gaza and a representative of the Gaza Relief Committee, tells The Marc Steiner Show this week. “That's the real meaning of the ceasefire.”Follow The Marc Steiner Show on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.Credits:Studio Production: Cameron GranadinoAudio Po...

Thousands have marched against Trump’s invasion of Venezuela. And leaders are leading the charge against U.S. intervention in the region, in some unexpected places. But Trump is now also pointing elsewhere in the region. Cuba, Colombia and Mexico are in his sights.Today, host Michael Fox looks at the response around the world to Trump's invasion of Venezuela. He also takes a deep dive into Trump’s threats elsewhere across the region, and introduces you to some of the leaders and the people standing up to Trump both inside the United States and far beyond....

People continue to take to the streets all across Iran, even as state forces massacre protestors and the US ramps up sanctions and threatens military intervention. While a total internet blackout remains in effect in the country, TRNN Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez speaks with award-winning Iranian-Canadian journalist Samira Mohyeddin of On the Line Media about what we do and don’t know about the crisis unfolding in Iran right now.Studio Production / Post-Production: David HebdenBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-real-news-podcast--2952221/support.Help us continue producing radically independent news an...

Trump’s invasion of Venezuela and kidnapping of President Maduro is “a performance” of the kind of US imperial power “that [Trump] knows is waning” on the global stage, scholar and author Geo Maher tells us.Marc Steiner speaks with Geo Maher, abolitionist scholar and author of We Created Chávez: A People's History of the Venezuelan Revolution, about the untenable goals behind President Trump’s invasion of Venezuela—and what the US bid to reassert imperial dominance in the Western hemisphere reveals about its declining place on the global stage. Follow The Marc Steiner Show on Spotify a...

Canadian journalist Nora Loreto reads the latest headlines for Monday, January 12, 2026.TRNN has partnered with Loreto to syndicate and share her daily news digest with our audience. Tune in every morning to the TRNN podcast feed to hear the latest important news stories from Canada and worldwide.Find more headlines from Nora at Sandy & Nora Talk Politics podcast feed.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-real-news-podcast--2952221/support.Help us continue producing radically independent news and in-depth analysis by following us and becoming a monthly sustainer.</b...

Prisons have frequently been presented as a “solution” to the economic woes and employment needs of rural communities around the US—but that doesn’t mean residents of these communities want them there. In Franklin County, Arkansas, for instance, residents are banding together in opposition to the state’s plans to build a mega-prison in their area. In this episode of Rattling the Bars, host Mansa Musa speaks with Lauren Gill, a staff reporter from Bolts magazine, and Natalie Cadena, executive director of the Arkansas-based rural advocacy nonprofit Gravel & Grit, about the fight in Franklin County and rural America’s changing rel...

Canadian journalist Nora Loreto reads the latest headlines for Friday, January 9, 2026.TRNN has partnered with Loreto to syndicate and share her daily news digest with our audience. Tune in every morning to the TRNN podcast feed to hear the latest important news stories from Canada and worldwide.Find more headlines from Nora at Sandy & Nora Talk Politics podcast feed.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-real-news-podcast--2952221/support.Help us continue producing radically independent news and in-depth analysis by following us and becoming a monthly sustainer.</b...