Politix

Donald Trump may not always chicken out, but his on again/off again, advance-retreat dance does seem to insulate him from lasting blowback. It seems the only way to drag Trump’s popularity down low enough to really hem him in is for his supporters to find out the hard way.

In this episode, Matt and Brian tackle the questions:

* Does the hyperbolic c...

Since last week’s episode, Donald Trump and Elon Musk had a bitter falling out, Republicans encountered new obstacles to enacting their top priorities (cutting rich people’s taxes and poor people’s Medicaid) and Trump ordered a federal siege of Los Angeles.

Also, Brian got his first taste of sweet, sweet European health care.

What do these things h...

Brian’s European Vacation continues as Matt is joined by special guest Jane Flegal of the Blue Horizon Foundation to break down the energy provisions of Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill.

The energy cuts have attracted less attention than the health care provisions in part because they were made much more severe at the last minute. Jane breaks down how t...

Brian is on vacation, so special guest McKenzie Wilson joins Matt to talk about Blue Rose Research’s retrospective on the 2024 election and their work on message-testing. McKenzie came to Blue Rose after working in the private sector, working for Jamal Bowman, and working in the Biden administration’s Department of Health and Human Services — she ...

By the time you listen to this episode, the Republican bill to give rich people trillions in tax cuts, and throw millions of people off of Medicaid will be…somewhere. It could be on the glide path to passage in the House, or on life support, or somewhere in between. But the basic shape of what Republicans want to do, and what Donald Trump wants th...

Donald Trump blinked, as many people suspected he would. This week, he reduced the embargo-level tariffs he imposed on China a month ago, and did so unilaterally. So in exchange for a month-long crisis, a still-looming supply shortage, lost jobs, and lost wealth, we got nothing! But Trump’s supporters are all too ready to cover for him.

In this ep...

They won’t come right out and say it this time, the way they did in 2017. But Republicans are still hellbent on repealing the Affordable Care Act—or at least the half of the ACA that expanded Medicaid coverage to millions more poor and disabled Americans.

In this episode, Matt and Brian discuss:

* What do Republican pronouncements about their aspira...

On Donald Trump’s hundredth day in office—the day we taped this podcast—he was historically unpopular, driving the country into recession, and responding to the loss of confidence in his administration by escalating his authoritarian threats against the public.

In this special episode, Paul Krugman joins Brian to discuss:

* What Trump has done to t...

Right-wing religious fanatics want women to have more children with bread-winning men. Donald Trump views masculinity as synonymous with physical toughness. The synthesis: instead of using prosperity to make family formation more appealing, what if we just crushed female employment and made most jobs manual labor?

In this episode, Matt and Brian d...

Two weeks into his trade war, Donald Trump has made at least a few tactical retreats, and markets have stabilized a bit as a result. Are we just in the eye of the storm? Or is it possible the economic fallout from the trade war won’t be as severe as we feared on LIBERATION DAY?

In this episode, Matt and Brian discuss:

* Why did markets recover signi...

Last week, in one fell swoop, Donald Trump wiped out trillions of dollars in wealth, upended all of our trade relations, and poised the U.S. for a lengthy recession and higher prices. His big money backers are in freakout mode. He’s made himself politically vulnerable in dramatic fashion, but also undermined the foundations of the American age.

In ...

There are signs of life in the Democratic Party, and if Republicans continue to badly underperform in special elections, the vibes could shift. But there are some things even a robust opposition can’t really stop, when a president claims autocratic power, and is insulated from normal political considerations

After a brief discussion of Cory Booker’...

Chuck Schumer and Senate Democrats continue to catch hell from their own voters for caving in the government shutdown fight. But in the coming days, perhaps sooner than most people are expecting, Congress will have to increase the debt limit. And once again, Democrats will have to decide whether and how to use their votes to rein in an out-of-cont...

Donald Trump is becoming unpopular, but Democrats are more unpopular than they’ve ever been, reflecting not just Republican voter partisanship, but the fact that tens of millions of Democratic voters are fed up with their party’s conduct in the aftermath of the election. With partisan anger boiling over, calls for Chuck Schumer to resign from lead...

By the time this episode runs, we’ll be two days from the deadline to fund the government. And if Republicans get there act together juuuust a bit, Democrats will have to decide if and how to wield their leverage to the end of forcing the Trump administration back into compliance with the rule of law.

In this episode, Matt and Brian discuss:

* Can D...

Just six weeks into his presidency, Donald Trump has dragged the country to the brink of recession. He’s become unpopular, lost the public’s trust to handle the economy, and hollowed out the government in risky ways. So in his first speech to Congress, Trump: blamed all of it on Joe Biden, subjected Democrats to a torrent of abuse, lied about Social Security (among many other things), and redoubled his commitment to tariffs, even i...

Even in the acute phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, most Americans thought Donald Trump was a good steward of the economy. This misplaced faith has been key to his political durability. But after just one month of indiscriminately firing federal workers, illegally reneging on federal spending commitments, and making erratic threats to tariff the bej...

Explaining the GOP’s rapid slide into authoritarianism is complicated, but you can’t tell the story if you don’t understand that Republicans have been unwilling to abandon huge, unpopular tax cuts for the rich as an organizing principle. In their view of things, if popular majorities don’t support regressive tax cuts, then democracy has to go. So ...

Donald Trump and Elon Musk are now on the receiving end of multiple court orders requiring them to rein in their constitutional crime spree: resume impounded payments, destroy improperly downloaded government data, restore regular government communications. Their response, as of this recording, has been to see how contemptuous they can be of the o...