The House Shuts Down Early; Cyclists in Court; Naturalized Citizens' Rights; Plastic-Free Kitchens

On today's show:

• Speaker Mike Johnson sent members of the House of Representatives home for their August break a few days early in order to avoid a vote on releasing Epstein materials. Annie Karni, congressional correspondent for The New York Times and co-author (with Luke Broadwater) of Mad House: How Donald Trump, Maga Mean Girls, a Former Used Car Salesman, a Florida Nepo Baby and A Man with Rats in his Walls Broke Congress (Random House, 2025), talks about how the years-old story is roiling Republicans and delighting Democrats, and more Congressional news.

• WNYC/Gothamist reporters Stephen Nessen and Paige Oamek talk about the NYPD enforcement push against cyclists violating traffic rules, where the most summonses are issued and why violations often require trips to court.

• Chris Feliciano Arnold, director of the creative-writing program at Saint Mary’s College of California and the author of The Third Bank of the River: Power and Survival in the Twenty-First-Century Amazon (Picador, 2018), talks about his Atlantic article on the threats of denaturalization against citizens not born in the U.S. by the Trump administration.

• Emma Wartzman, senior kitchen and dining writer at New York Magazine's The Strategist, offers that latest on "black spatulas" and how and why to avoid plastics around food, during The Strategist's Plastic-Free Kitchen Week.

Transcripts are posted to each segment as they become available.