Why One Lawyer Resigned When His Firm Caved to Trump: An Update

As 2025 comes to an end, The Sunday Special is looking back on the year in culture. This week, on our final episode of the podcast, we’re talking about movies. The potential acquisition of Warner Brothers by Netflix has dominated entertainment news in recent weeks, but the year in movies has been about a lot more than corporate mergers. Alissa Wilkinson, a movie critic for The New York Times, and Nicole Sperling, a culture reporter based in Los Angeles, join Gilbert Cruz to talk about what really matters: the movies we loved this year. Movies discussed in this episode include: “One Battle After Another” “Sinners” “A Minecraft Movie” “Superman” “Weapons” “Wicked: For Good” “Zootopia 2” “Avatar: Fire and Ash” “Marty Supreme” “It Was Just an Accident” “The Testament of Ann Lee” “Come and See Me In the Good Light” “Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning”

This week, The Daily is revisiting some of our favorite episodes of the year and checking in on what has happened in the time since. In the past few years, GLP-1 weight-loss drugs like Ozempic and Zepbound have been radically reshaping the people’s lives, changing appetites and health. But the drugs also have the power to affect other parts of consumers’ lives, including their romantic relationships. Lisa Miller, who writes about health for The New York Times, tells the story of how these drugs upended one couple’s marriage.

In it escalating campaign against Venezuela, the Trump administration has gone from shooting drug boats to trying to seize oil tankers in the Caribbean. Anatoly Kurmanaev, a foreign correspondent for The New York Times who has spent years covering Venezuela, explains why President Trump is shifting his strategy, and what that might tell us about his true endgame.

The latest release of files related to the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein left key questions unanswered about his rise to power and his connections to the president. David Enrich, an investigations editor at The New York Times, explains how he worked with a team of reporters to fill in those mysteries and reveal the truth about Mr. Epstein’s origins.

The construction of a giant factory complex in Arizona was supposed to embody the Trump administration’s ability to bring manufacturing back to the United States. But undertaking big projects is not as simple as it seems. Peter S. Goodman, who writes about the intersection of economics and geopolitics for The New York Times, explains why.