Advertise on podcast: The Independent with Scott Atlas

Scott welcomes Chad Wolf, Executive Vice-President and Chair of Homeland Security and Immigration at the America First Policy Institute. He previously served as acting Secretary of Homeland Security during President Trump's first term. He has received numerous awards and accolades for his service to the nation, including the US Secretary of Transportation 911 Medal, the US Secretary of Homeland Security Distinguished Service Medal, and the National Intelligence Distinguished Service Medal. They have a conversation about immigration, national security issues, and the work being done in the Trump administration to ensure safety and freedom in America today.

Scott welcomes renowned author and scholar Shelby Steele. Steele is an expert on race relations and race-based civil rights policies in America He's formerly the Robert and Marianne Oster Senior Fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution. He's received numerous honors and awards for his work, including the Bradley Prize, the National Humanities Medal, an Emmy Award, and the National Book Critic Circle Award in 1990. Perhaps he's best known for his 2006 book, White Guilt: How Blacks and Whites Together Destroyed the Promise of the Civil Rights Era. They have a provocative conversation about the polarizing issue of race relations.

Scott Atlas joins Ben Domenech, Mollie Hemmingway, and Chanel Rion for an in-depth discussion of the state of the American news media. America’s media is rapidly being transformed, and that transformation is accelerating. Beyond technology, the shift to social media was driven by a plummeting of trust in national news outlets, whose reporting was often overtly biased and false. Ironically, after social media platforms emerged as the new town square, they rapidly became tools for censorship, at times in collusion with government, most vividly on display during COVID. This forum will explore the future of social and legacy media in the search for objective information, especially as we enter the era of artificial intelligence.

Scott welcomes back Harmeet Dhillon, Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division in the Department of Justice. Prior to that she founded the Dhillon Law Group as well as the Center for American Liberty, a nonprofit dedicated to pursuing civil liberties legal claims. Her private law practice career is focused on free speech, civil rights, and campaign and election law issues. They discuss the important work being done in the Trump administration regarding civil rights and freedom in America today.

Scott welcomes back Harmeet Dhillon, Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division in the Department of Justice. Prior to that she founded the Dhillon Law Group as well as the Center for American Liberty, a nonprofit dedicated to pursuing civil liberties legal claims. Her private law practice career is focused on free speech, civil rights, and campaign and election law issues. They discuss the important work being done in the Trump administration regarding civil rights and freedom in America today.

In this second part of his two-part interview, Scott Atlas and Victor Davis Hanson explore misguided progressive policies that disproportionately harm the poor, encouraging crime as lenient judges and prosecutors push alternative sentencing. They discuss New York's socialist electoral trends, fueled mainly by an attitude of entitlement among America's younger generation. They conclude with a discussion of how Trump's authentic, resilient persona drives leftist vitriol, and how the political landscape might change in a post-Trump America.

Scott welcomes back acclaimed author and historian Victor Davis Hanson. They discuss the legacy of Charlie Kirk, and how lenient policies on crime and extreme media hyperbole against conservatives normalizes and even encourages political violence.

Part 4/4 of the Event "Free Speech Today in Free Societies," held September 5–6, 2025 at the Widder Hotel in Zurich, Switzerland. Sponsored by the Global Liberty Institute. Andrew Tettenborn is a Professor and Chair in Law, Swansea University, and writer, United Kingdom. John Yoo is an Emmanuel Heller Prof. of Law, Univ of California-Berkeley; Distinguished Visiting Prof, School of Civic Leadership, University of Texas-Austin, USA. Joachim Steinhoefel is an Attorney, civil rights and media law, and active litigator; Hamburg, Germany.

Part 3/4 of the Event "Europe and the Trump Economic Policies," held September 5–6, 2025 at the Widder Hotel in Zurich, Switzerland. Sponsored by the Global Liberty Institute. Barbara Kolm is the President, Hayek Institute, Vienna; Founding Director, Austrian Economics Center, and former Vice-President of the Österreichische Nationalbank (Austrian Central Bank). Reiner Eichenberger is the Professor for Economic and Financial Policy, University of Fribourg, Switzerland Thomas Mayer Founding Director, Flossbach von Storch Research Institute Germany; Former Chief Economist of Deutsche Bank Group and Head of Deutsche Bank Research Germany. Dr. Scott Atlas is a world-renowned expert in health care policy and frequent policy advisor to policymakers and government officials. He investigates the role of government and the private sector in health care quality and access, global trends in health care innovation, and the key economic and civil liberty issues related to health policy. The Independent features Dr. Atlas in conversation with high profile, news-making guests around public health policy, science, civil liberties, censorship and free speech, higher education, the media, and more.

Part 2/4 of the Event "Alliances and Freedom in the Trump Era," held September 5–6, 2025 at the Widder Hotel in Zurich, Switzerland. Sponsored by the Global Liberty Institute. Joshua Rauh is a renowned economist, He is the Ormond Family Professor of Finance at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business and a senior fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution. He leads the Hoover Institution State and Local Government Initiative. He formerly served at the White House as principal chief economist on the President’s Council of Economic Advisers (2019-20). He has testified before House, Joint, and Joint Select Committees of the United States Congress, and he is a member of the Panel of Economic Advisers of the Congressional Budget Office. He has received several awards recognizing his scholarship including the Brattle Prize and the Smith Breeden Prize of the American Finance Association. Prior to his academic career, he was an associate economist at Goldman Sachs. He received a BA from Yale University and a PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, both in economics.

Part 1/4 of the Event "Alliances and Freedom in the Trump Era," held September 5–6, 2025 at the Widder Hotel in Zurich, Switzerland. Sponsored by the Global Liberty Institute. Chad F. Wolf is America First Policy Institute’s Executive Vice President, Chief Strategy Officer & Chair of the Center for Homeland Security & Immigration. Previously, Wolf served as Acting Secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS). At DHS, he successfully navigated numerous global and domestic challenges to the nation’s security. He also serves as President and Founder of Wolf Global Advisors. Prior to his service at DHS, he spent over 10 years in the private sector helping clients manage risks and earlier in his career worked on Capitol Hill. He has received the U.S. Secretary of Transportation 9/11 Medal, the U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Distinguished Service Medal, and the National Intelligence Distinguished Service Medal.

Scott welcomes Heather Mac Donald, one of the country's most important voices who exposes the truth and the data behind it. Heather is the Thomas W. Smith Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, and a contributing editor of City Journal. Her latest book is When Race Trumps Merit. In it she explains what she calls the foolish pursuit of undermining meritocracy in favor of equal outcome. They discuss critical social issues including crime, media bias, and cultural shifts, including the feminization of American society and an anti-male narrative that MacDonald sees as harmful to families and societal success.

Scott welcomes Larry Arnn, the 12th president of Hillsdale College, where he's also a professor of politics and history. He received his undergraduate education at Arkansas State University and then graduated with an MA and a PhD in government from the Claremont Graduate School. He also studied at Oxford University in the UK where he served as director of research for Sir Martin Gilbert, the official biographer of Winston Churchill. He was then president of the Claremont Institute for the Study of Statesmanship and Political Philosophy. He's the author of several books, including Liberty and Learning: The Evolution of American Education. They have a conversation about several of today's most controversial issues involving college campuses, including free speech and its limits, the impact of government funding, and admissions of foreign students into US universities.

Scott welcomes Robert (Bobby) Robbins, President Emeritus of the University of Arizona where he served as president from 2017 to 2024. Prior to University of Arizona, he served as the president and CEO of the Texas Medical Center after being chair of the Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery at Stanford University. They discuss many of the issues facing college campuses today, including free speech and its limits, the impact of government and taxpayer funding, merit-based admissions, and the friction between young students from other countries and the United States.

In the second part of this two part episode, Scott welcomes Professor Michael McConnell, Director of the Constitutional Law Center at Stanford Law School and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. From 2002 to 2009 he served as circuit judge on the US Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit. He teaches courses on constitutional law the first amendment and interpretive theory. He has published widely in constitutional law, especially church and state, equal protection, and separation of powers. He's written several books including “The President Who Would Not Be King: Executive Power Under the Constitution.” He has argued 16 cases in front of the US Supreme Court he earned his JD from University of Chicago and served as a law clerk to Supreme Court Justice William J Brennan. They discuss some of today's most controversial issues involving the Constitution and law in the context of presidential power and the separation of powers including immigration, censorship and free speech on campus protests.