President Trump has issued more executive orders in the first year of his second term than he did in all four years of his first. These orders — which have directed government action on issues ranging from immigration to tariffs to the funding of federal agencies — have been met with hundreds of lawsuits filed in federal court.

As a result, our federal court system is shaping U.S. public policy more than at any time in recent history, and federal judges are making decisions on many of the most pressing policy issues facing society today.

So, what does this new legal landscape mean for American politics, and what does it mean for America’s judicial branch?

To help make sense of this change (and to put it in historical context), Dan Richards spoke with Judge William Smith, former Chief Judge for the U.S. District Court of Rhode Island. Judge Smith was appointed by George W. Bush in 2002 and retired in 2025; he is also a Senior Fellow in International and Public Affairs at the Watson School, where he currently leads a study group on the role of the courts in U.S. public policy.

Transcript coming soon to our website.

Violent, organized conflict is a near constant in human history.

But why?

Often, large-scale conflicts and wars are explained in material or political terms: humans engaging in conflict over land, resources, or ideologies.

But as Rose McDermott, the David and Marianna Fisher University Professor of International Relations, sees it, these explanations fail to fully account for war’s existence and persistence throughout the long history of our species.

To do that, McDermott argues that we need to take more seriously the ways that human psychology — shaped by our evolution as a species — predisposes some of us to violence.

On this episode, Dan Richards spoke with Rose McDermott about how millennia of human evolution have wired our brains — particularly male brains — for war; what this means for modern society; and how we might think about building structures and institutions to help chart a new, more peaceful path for humanity.

Transcript coming soon to our website.

When President Trump took office in January, Congress seemed poised to play a supporting role in the story of Trump’s second term. Republicans largely fell in line to support President Trump’s cabinet nominees and much of his broader agenda; it’s been reported that Trump himself has joked that he’s both the President and Speaker of the House.

Congressional Democrats, meanwhile, appeared helpless to mount a vigorous opposition to Trump’s policies, or even to energize their own base.

But this fall, those dynamics began to shift.

Congressional Republicans have stood up to Trump on some key issues, including most notably the release of files related to the Jeffrey Epstein case. And Congressional Democrats galvanized supporters around this fall’s government shutdown fight over the future of ACA health insurance subsidies.

On this episode, two experts on Congressional politics spoke with Dan Richards about the shifting role of Congress in U.S. politics, as President Trump enters his “lame duck” phase and America gears up for a midterm election in less than 12 months. They also discuss Congress’s consistently low approval rating among Americans, and explore what (if anything) could be done to make Congress work better under the Trump administration and beyond.

Guests on this episode:

• Eric Patashnik is a political scientist and director of the Watson School’s Taubman Center for American Politics and Policy.
• Congresswoman Kathy Manning represented North Carolina’s sixth district from 2020 to 2024 and is currently a senior fellow in international and public affairs at the Watson School.