Political Gabfest - Who Really Won the Shutdown?
Political Gabfest
Slate Podcasts
4.4 • 8.5K Ratings
🗓️ 13 November 2025
⏱️ 67 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week, Emily Bazelon, John Dickerson, and David Plotz discuss why Democrats caved to end the government shutdown and what comes next, the affordability crisis with guest and editorial director for New York Times Opinion David Leonhardt, and the importance of this week’s spectacle of competing Epstein document drops.
For this week’s Slate Plus bonus episode, Emily, John, and David discuss the consequential career and historic legacy of Nancy Pelosi, the first woman to serve as Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, who announced her retirement from Congress.
In the latest Gabfest Reads, Emily talks with Yale law professor John Witt about his new book, The Radical Fund: How a Band of Visionaries and a Million Dollars Upended America. They explore the remarkable story of the Garland Fund—a small 1920s foundation that bankrolled early work by A. Philip Randolph, and others who would go on to shape the civil rights and labor movements.
Email your chatters, questions, and comments to gabfest@slate.com. (Messages may be referenced by name unless the writer stipulates otherwise.)
Podcast production by Kevin Bendis
Research by Emily Ditto
You can find the full Political Gabfest show pages here.
Want more Political Gabfest? Join Slate Plus to unlock weekly bonus episodes. Plus, you’ll access ad-free listening across all your favorite Slate podcasts. You can subscribe directly from the Political Gabfest show page on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Or visit slate.com/gabfestplus to get access wherever you listen.
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Transcript
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| 0:30.5 | This episode is brought to you by Planned Parenthood Federation of America. Earlier this year, |
| 0:36.0 | the Trump administration and Congress passed a law to |
| 0:38.7 | defund Planned Parenthood, jeopardizing care for 1.1 million patients across the country. But Planned |
| 0:45.3 | Parenthood isn't backing down, and you can be part of the fight by donating at |
| 0:49.4 | plannedparenthood.org slash defend. So as this year closes, be someone who shows up. Be someone who fights back. Donate to Planned |
| 0:58.1 | Apparenthood today by visiting planparenthood.org slash defend. |
| 1:06.2 | Hello and welcome to the Slate Political GabFest. |
| 1:13.0 | November 13th, 2025, the Who really won the shutdown edition. |
| 1:26.9 | I'm David Plotz of CityCast, and |
| 1:29.2 | holy moly, holy moly, we're all together in a room. We're at the Slate DC Studio, the new Slate |
| 1:36.6 | DC studio. And it's just going to, it's like we're, we're like naked together because we don't |
| 1:42.3 | have headphones, we can't hear our producer, we don't know what's going on, we are literally, it's like literally we're just going to, it's like we're, we're like naked together because we don't have headphones. We can't hear our producer. We don't know what's going on. We are literally, it's like literally we're |
| 1:48.1 | just going to sit and talk. You know what it's like, David? It's like 20 years ago when we |
| 1:52.3 | started this podcast. Why are you shouting? Because I'm not used to being in the room with you. |
| 1:58.2 | That's John Dickerson, co-anchor of CBS Evening News. |
| 2:02.5 | That was John. |
| 2:04.6 | And then Emily Bazelon of the New York Times Magazine Yale University Law School. |
... |
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