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This week, thousands of Americans attended a day-long conservative prayer gathering. The event was billed as a rededication of the U.S. as “One Nation Under God” for our nation’s 250th birthday.
The gathering was a private-public partnership backed by the White House. Non-Christian voices of faith were notably absent, apart from one Jewish rabbi. Almost all the speakers featured were Christians and most were Evangelicals. Some were Trump cabinet members and lawmakers.
With the separation of church and state and the freedom of religion baked into the founding of our country, what does our nation’s relationship with faith look like today? Does the America of 2026 represent what our founding fathers intended?
In this special broadcast of 1A in partnership with Religion News Service, we leave our studio and head to American University in Washington D.C. where we sit down with a panel of experts in front of a live audience.
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It’s been more than two weeks since the Supreme Court made the decision to weaken a key provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. That piece of the legislation protected minority voters from discrimination in elections. Now, that ruling has invoked a new wave of calls to reform the court.
In the last installment of our “If You Can Keep It” series, we discussed what those reforms might look like, from expanding the size of the bench, to restricting the shadow docket.
Our listeners had so many thoughts on whether and how to reform the court that we decided to return to that conversation to talk more about what’s possible and answer more questions.
So, what happens when the Supreme Court loses credibility among a large swath of the country? And how can the court get it back when partisanship on the bench has become the expectation.
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Despite assertions by President Donald Trump to the contrary, reporting from The New York Times indicates that Iran’s military is still in fighting shape, regaining access to 30 of its 33 missile sites near the Strait of Hormuz.
The Supreme Court’s decision to strike down a key provision of the Voting Rights Act has paved the way for Alabama to use a controversial GOP-drawn electoral map in the upcoming midterms.
And FBI Director Kash Patel appeared on Capitol Hill this week to give testimony before Congress. He clashed with Democrats over reporting from The Atlantic that indicated that the Trump official’s alcohol use was impeding him from completing his duties.
We cover the most important stories from around the country in the domestic hour of the News Roundup.
And, in global news, President Donald Trump traveled to China this week to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Taiwan, the war in Iran, and trade are all up for discussion between the two leaders of the world’s largest economies.
The price tag of the war with Iran has now topped $29 billion.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said this week that he believes his country’s invasion of Ukraine is “coming to an end.”
We cover the most important stories from around the world in the News Roundup.
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Mayors are uniquely aware of what’s needed to make their cities run more efficiently. And when it comes to improving city life — from housing, to public safety, to city services — a lack of resources can be a major obstacle.
In February, Bloomberg Philanthropies announced the winners of this year’s mayors’ challenge. A $1 million prize was awarded to 24 winners from 20 countries selected from 630 entries.
1A spoke to some of those winners at Bloomberg’s Citylab conference in Madrid, Spain. The summit was held in April and convened mayors from across the globe to talk about the latest in city planning.
We sit down with Vico Sotto, mayor of Pasig in the Philippines; Lauren McLean, the Democratic mayor of Boise, Idaho; and Geordin Hill-Lewis, the Mayor of Cape Town, South Africa, to talk about how they’re navigating the challenges facing them and their neighbors.
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In August 2024, 26-year-old Conor Hylton checked into Bridgeport Hospital in Connecticut. Overnight, he was transferred to critical care, where he died.
It was only after his passing that his family found out that Conor was treated at what’s known as a “tele-ICU.” His story shines a light on a practice that’s been around for decades despite a lack of substantial research about its outcomes.
A tele-ICU is a hospital unit where patient care is handled off-site by remote doctors, nurses, or specialists. Up to a third of ICU beds in the U.S. are in tele-ICUs. That’s according to a study from the American Hospital Association.
In Wisconsin, as of May 1, critical care physicians are no longer physically present in the ICUs of a few Ascension satellite hospitals. They remain available via video call to help bedside nurses and on-site hospital medicine doctors, known as hospitalists, who do not specialize in critical care.
These facilities do present an opportunity to expand and improve the health care people receive. But what are the risks of replacing in-person care in the most critical, life or death moments?
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Last year, when Columbia University found itself embroiled by anti-war protests and fighting with the Trump administration, journalist Jodi Kantor was invited to speak at the school’s commencement.
“My friends actually tried to stop me. Like, ‘Don’t do it. Call in sick,'” remembers Kantor.
The Pulitzer prize-winner did wind up giving that speech. And that experience led her to write a new book about how young people can find their life’s work. We sit down with Kantor to talk about ‘How to Start.’
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Public trust in the Supreme Court is at a 30-year low, according to Pew Research Center. For some, this month marked a turning point in perceptions of its legitimacy.
The court recently ruled in Louisiana v. Callais. Its decision undermined a key provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that protected minority voters and sought to prevent racial discrimination in elections.
Following the court’s ruling, Tennessee’s GOP-controlled legislature passed a new congressional map, dismantling the state’s majority-Black district. The map gives Republicans a competitive advantage in all nine districts ahead of the state’s midterms. Other red states are now scrambling to redraw their congressional maps as well.
Justice Samuel Alito justified the court’s ruling by claiming that Black voter turnout, both nationwide and in Louisiana, exceeded white voter turnout in two of the five recent presidential elections, writing that the kind of discrimination the Voting Rights Act was designed to prevent no longer exists.
However, reporting from The Guardian found that Alito’s claim was based on misleading data from the Justice Department.
As trust in the Supreme Court continues to remain low, calls for reform grow. In this installment of our weekly politics series, “If You Can Keep It,” we unpack what that reform might actually look like and what’s at stake for our democracy if it doesn’t happen.
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President Donald Trump told PBS News this week that his offensive in the Middle East has a “very good chance of ending.” Just days later though, the U.S. traded fire with Iran in the Strait of Hormuz, threatening an already fragile ceasefire. The U.S. is still hoping for a “serious offer” from Iran on a proposal to end the war, according to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, even as the threat of escalation looms.
Donald Trump isn’t on the ballot in the upcoming Indiana primary. But his agenda certainly is. In late 2025, GOP state lawmakers resisted efforts by the White House to redraw Indiana’s congressional map. Now, Trump allies are running to unseat them.
The Trump administration has opened an investigation into Smith College, a women-only institution of higher education, over its 2015 decision to admit trans women as students.
And, in global news, the fragile ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran was tested this week when American forces launched “self-defense strikes” in the Strait of Hormuz after Iranian forces targeted three Navy destroyers, though none were struck.
These strikes come as Iran reviews the latest U.S. proposal to end the war which American officials hope will result in a “serious offer” from Iran, according to Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
President Donald Trump claimed this week that the U.S. will be taking over Cuba “almost immediately.” The backlash from the island nation was swift, with Cuban leader Miguel Diaz-Canel calling the American administration fascist.
On Monday, and despite the ceasefire, Israeli attacks killed 17 people in southern Lebanon.
We cover the most important stories from around the world in the News Roundup.
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One drug is at the center of the current legal battle over abortion: mifepristone.
Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, mifepristone has become the dominant method of abortion in the United States, filling the gap left by clinic closures in states with abortion bans. And the number of abortions has actually risen nationally as a result.
That’s a problem for abortion access opponents. Now, they’re taking aim at one of the main ways it’s prescribed – via telehealth. And last week, they scored their first big win.
A federal appeals court blocked remote prescription of mifepristone. Louisiana sued the FDA, arguing that mail access undermines the state’s near-total ban on abortion. But two days later, the drug’s manufacturers went to the Supreme Court and it temporarily restored telehealth access while it considers the case. But that stay is set to expire soon.
So, what’s next in this legal battle? And what does it mean for patients and reproductive health providers?
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Last November, Calvin Duncan won an election to serve as the chief records keeper for the criminal courts of the parish that covers New Orleans.
He received 68 percent of the vote, beating out a powerful incumbent. He has some personal experience with Louisiana courts. He was incarcerated for a murder conviction for 28 years. He studied criminal law to advocate for himself, and a judge eventually found him innocent. He was freed in 2011.
But now, the Louisiana state legislature has moved to eliminate his position. State officials voted to combine his office with another in a move that state senators said was meant to save money. Duncan is taking legal action and a lawsuit over his role is now making its way through the courts. This situation is part of a larger trend across the nation where state legislatures are more and more often undoing decisions made by local officials.
“State preemption” describes steps a state government can take to tell a local city or town council it can’t do something. Legislators in states like Florida, Missouri, California, West Virginia, Michigan, and Louisiana have been using it to influence events and regulations in their communities.
What’s leading to more frequent, and public, fights between state legislatures and local governments? And what could defuse these fights?
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