In this episode, Matt and Brian discuss:

• The results, and the merits of the California election system, which maximizes ballot access, but at the expense of quick ballot counting.

• What should California Democrats, and the national party, do about the scourge of GOP election lies?

• Would Democrats really have been better off if they’d managed to lock Steve Hilton out of the governor’s race, like they locked Spencer Pratt out of the LA mayor’s race?

Then, how do you solve a problem like Graham Platner? How do you catch an oyster, and snarf it down? How embellished is his self-depiction as a blue-collar outsider? How consistent is a clear, chronological recitation of his checkered past with his redemption story? Are we even anywhere near the point where it would make sense for Democratic voters in Maine to stay home or vote for Susan Collins, rather than Vote Blue No Matter Who as a harm-reduction strategy?

The answer to the last question is “no,” but the answers to the rest are available in full to paid subscribers—just upgrade your subscription and pipe full episodes directly to your favorite podcast app via your own private feed.

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Further reading:

• Matt’s 17 thoughts about Graham Platner, from before the latest developments.

• Brian argues California Dems should streamline their election process and simultaneously disqualify proven election liars from ballots in the state.

• ’s Liar’s Kingdom.

• Brian’s 2017 piece on the pitfall of embracing “believe all women” as a political standard (tl;dr, some women are committed Trump loyalists with MAGA ethics).

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In this episode, Matt and Brian discuss:

• Would the Democratic Party be better off or worse off with two Democrats (Xavier Becerra and Tom Steyer) at the top of the California ballot?

• Is Donald Trump’s spiraling presidency cause for schadenfreude, alarm, or both at once?

• Is the latest Platner scandal worse than the previous ones? Part of the same story?Distinct in ways that might be more likely to put off older voters? And what should he do to get back into a commanding position?

Then a look ahead to 2029 (but possibly sooner). Inflation and interest rates and deficits and debt are all high. When Democrats next regain power (if not sooner) they will face enormous pressure to cut deficits—and unlike in 2009, it’ll be for a good reason. How should they present this to the public. What’s a sound and moral way to retrench, particularly given the rapacious greed that ballooned deficits under Trump? And how should they frame their opening bids, so they don’t get stuck in another lopsided austerity negotiation with Republicans?

Answers are available in full to paid subscribers—just upgrade your subscription and pipe full episodes directly to your favorite podcast app via your own private feed.

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Further reading:

• Brian argues Democratic operatives planning for the post-Trump era need to go back to the drawing board.

• Matt argues it’s time to start freaking out about the national debt.

• ’s précis on the Broadview Six fiasco.

• A reminder that Colorado Dems still could and should oust Jared Polis.

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In this episode, Matt and Brian discuss:

• Jared Polis…what the fuck?! (Redux.)

• Jake Auchinchloss…what the fuck?!

• Democratic National Committee…what the fuck?!

Are all these intraparty recriminations why Dems seem like they’re MIA in the fight against Trump? Or are there structural issues that prevent Democrats from driving attention to GOP weaknesses? Are progressive and mainstream media outlets covering Democratic infighting because that’s where the conflict is? Or are their readers and viewers simply more interested in Democratic factionalism than in the partisan food fight? If Democrats took a page from the GOP and made a big stink about everything—Trump’s physical deterioration, his humiliating defeat in Iran, his impeachable corruption—would media outlets cover it? Or is the media ecosystem really just rigged against them?

Answers are available in full to paid subscribers—just upgrade your subscription and pipe full episodes directly to your favorite podcast app via your own private feed.

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Further reading:

• on Colorado Democrats’ obligation to investigate Jared Polis.

• on why Trump’s failing health isn’t a media or opposition-party obsession, the way Biden’s was.

• : Impeach Todd Blanche.

• : Democrats shouldn’t fall for the revisionist history of Trump’s impeachments—it is wrong to say they backfired.

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In this episode, Matt and Brian discuss:

• Jared Polis…what the fuck?

• Are Republicans simply winning the fight for historical memory of January 6?

• Would impeaching Polis, or removing Virginia supreme court justices, be purely expressive, or is there value in showing strong intolerance for fascism?

Then, if Democrats aren’t really looking for procedural toe holds for resisting Republican election theft, are they at least maximizing their electoral advantage ahead of the midterms? The picture is mixed! Will they prevail on Republicans to quash Trump’s pro-insurrection slush fund, filled with $1.8 billion in stolen public money? Are they broadening the map as much as possible? Does the end of Bill Cassidy’s career doom us to 40 years of insurrectionist right-wing politics? The short answer to all of those questions is “maybe.” The long answers are much more fascinating and available in full to paid subscribers—just upgrade your subscription and pipe full episodes directly to your favorite podcast app via your own private feed.

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Further reading:

• Brian noticed a positive change in Democratic partisan fighting back in September.

• But he worries they haven’t reached clarity on the need to maximize procedural advantage at every turn.

• Matt: Out with moderation, in with “schmoderation.”

• Mother Jones on the progressive case for Tina Peters clemency.

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But for Trump, that’s about the only good news. He’s lost the war he launched against Iran, and keeps falling asleep on the job as an eerie hantavirus outbreak slowly spreads here and abroad. Yet as the public grows more outraged, Trump only seems truly engaged on one highly eccentric suite of issues.

In this episode, Matt and Brian discuss:

• What the late break of Republican judicial activism means for the midterms, GOP efforts to steal the midterms, and the post-midterm race to gerrymander even more aggressively.

• Now that the gerrymandering cycle is cooked for 2026, what more could Democrats do to pad their margins, so that biased maps don’t cost them the House?

• Is the hantavirus outbreak something worth treating seriously, or something worth beating Trump over the head with?

Then, given the bleak political outlook for the GOP, isn’t it weird that Trump’s only able to sustain focus on building a palace ballroom, and various other monuments to himself? Will Republicans vote to spend a billion dollars on the ballroom? Would it be better (politically, or in schadenfreude terms) for Dems to divide Republicans, so that the ballroom never gets built, or for Republicans to do Trump’s bidding, so that Democrats can tear down the ballroom in 2029? Would Democrats tear down the ballroom? And if they copped out on that, who would be to blame?

All that, plus the full Politix archive are available to paid subscribers—just upgrade your subscription and pipe full episodes directly to your favorite podcast app via your own private feed.

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Further reading:

• Brian argues the Democratic surrender in Virginia, after the adverse, partisan gerrymandering ruling, is a very bad omen for November.

• Matt argues the hantavirus outbreak is a reminder that the government should be preparing for the next pandemic, rather than dismantling pandemic prevention programs.

• Robert Kagan argues Iran has Trump in checkmate.

• Nate Silver on the risk that Democrats will underreact to Republican gerrymandering next year, and leave seats on the table.

• Brian in December 2024: The New Gilded Age Will Be Streamed

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In this episode, Matt and Brian discuss:

• What does the decision, by Sam Alito and the five other Republican Supreme Court justices to effectively end the Voting Rights Act mean for the gerrymandering fight, and the race for House control in 2026 and 2028?

• Should the Supreme Court’s decision, which was widely predicted, make us rethink our assessment of the Democratic Party’s posture in the gerrymandering fight?

• Should Democrats lean in to the race politics of the GOP’s campaign to eliminate black representation in the South, or should they heed misgivings within the party about increasing the salience of race in politics generally?

Then, do things look any better in the Senate. Fixing this down the line will probably require a Democratic trifecta, which means putting up as many Senate wins as possible. So why have party leaders had such a hard time steering primary voters to viable candidates? Is the crisis in confidence among Democrats in Chuck Schumer feeding bitter infighting within state parties? And what, short of resigning and giving way to a new leadership team, could Schumer do to regain trust in his electoral judgment?

All that, plus the full Politix archive are available to paid subscribers—just upgrade your subscription and pipe full episodes directly to your favorite podcast app via your own private feed.

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Further reading:

• Matt argues Ken Martin is doing a terrible job running the DNC.

• Brian notes that even if Democrats win the midterms in a wave, the rump GOP will be the party’s most fascist incarnation yet, and they should prepare for opposition politics with that in mind.

• TPM on the Democratic Party’s preparations for Trump-Republican midterm subversion.

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In this episode, Matt and Brian discuss:

• Are false flag conspiracy theories coming back into vogue on the left because it’s taboo to point out that Trump makes politics angrier and more violent?

• Is it more that everyone knows Trump’s character is so poor that he would fake an attempt on his life to gain political advantage?

• Are lesser forms of radicalism justified in response to his affronts, or is it all counterproductive?

Then, what the f&ck has any of this got to do with the White House ballroom? Will Republicans bully Democrats into authorizing its construction? Will Republicans bite the bullet and finance the ballroom through budget reconciliation? Can we trust any Democratic presidential candidate who won’t commit to demolishing the ballroom? And what was the White House Correspondents’ Association thinking by extending an invitation to a president who wants to destroy journalism as a vocation?

All that, plus the full Politix archive are available to paid subscribers—just upgrade your subscription and pipe full episodes directly to your favorite podcast app via your own private feed.

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Further reading:

• Brian argues politics in America are unusually violent not just because of Trump’s words, but because he governs like a tyrant, and oppression swells the ranks of indivdiuals who choose to take matters into their own hands.

• Matt argues that lowering prices is a better approach to public anger than (e.g.) “microlooting.”

• A Manhattan Institute survey found that 46 percent of Democrats believe “the assassination attempt against Donald Trump in July 2024 was orchestrated by his supporters to increase sympathy for him.”

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So in this episode, Matt and Brian try to unravel the mystery of why perception and reality have departed from one another so dramatically.

• Does Trump in some sense deserve this economic discontent, for fanning it on the campaign trail and selling lies about lower prices, only to govern corruptly and incompetently?

• Is Trump just as much a victim as Democrats of a new media era in which negativity drives attention?

• And if smartphones and social media really are the main drivers of discontent, how much is due to viral misinformation, and how much is due to a more generalized malaise that arises from hours wasted scrolling?

Then, if weak economic sentiment is only loosely tied to real economic conditions, what can Democrats do about it? This episode contains real, actionable ideas: how to message through economic challenges; how to instill confidence in voters across lengthy campaigns, without overpromising; how to exploit right-wing governing failures for maximum partisan benefit.

All that, plus the full Politix archive are available to paid subscribers—just upgrade your subscription and pipe full episodes directly to your favorite podcast app via your own private feed.

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Further reading:

• Matt on the Tyranny of Democratic Plansmaxxing.

• Brian on how MAGA is devouring itself before our eyes.

• ’s new book on persistent labor market weakness and how to fix it.

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In this conversation, Brian and the veteran political scholar Norm Ornstein discuss:

• When did needed political reform in America stop pertaining to modernization and become a more existential campaign to fascism-proof democracy?

• How have Democrats done so far, given that they’re the minority party in both the House and Senate?

• What could change between now and the midterms to better discharge their obligations?

Then, a look ahead. First: If Democrats win the midterms, what would resistance worthy of the Hungarian opposition look like in practice? What under-utilized tools should Democrats exploit? Where does impeachment fit in all this? Then: If Democrats have a chance to rebuild in 2029, what would it take to convince ourselves and the world that we’re really not going back this time? And—perhaps most important of all—is there any indication that the party, as currently staffed and led, has gamed this all out and begun preparing to act?

All that, plus the full Politix archive are available to paid subscribers—just upgrade your subscription and pipe full episodes directly to your favorite podcast app via your own private feed.

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Further reading:

• Brian on what Democrats should—and shouldn’t—learn from Hungary.

• Brian on Trump’s plan to conceal, destroy, or sell the evidence of his corruption, perhaps before the midterms.

• Norm and Madeleine Dean on reining in the pardon power.

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• Is Democratic infighting over the status of Hasan Piker a proxy for internal divisions over the war and the U.S. relationship with Israel?

• Is Matt right that Dems have opposed the war as aggressively as they oppose (e.g.) cuts to health care? Or is Brian right that they haven’t received much credit for their war opposition, because they aren’t really acting like you’d expect an opposition party to act in the midst of an existential crisis?

• Would a more procedurally aggressive form of opposition—impeachment resolutions, calls for an arms embargo—allow Democrats to appeal to marginal voters without necessarily “legitimizing” specific influencers, who tend to have bad ideas about all kinds of issues?

Then, are Dems stuck in an issue trap, or are they mainly uncertain of themselves because they’re leaderless? Do they need to make demonstrable moves to the right on issues like immigration, or do they need to echo charismatic figures like James Talarico and John Ossoff who have staked out mainline views on immigration and Israel with an unusually deft touch? Do they need a hard reset, the way Republicans did after George W. Bush’s presidency ended in failure, or is the Biden legacy mostly tarnished by his age, his allegiance to Benjamin Netanyahu, and the fact that he failed to vanquish fascism?

All that, plus the full Politix archive are available to paid subscribers—just upgrade your subscription and pipe full episodes directly to your favorite podcast app via your own private feed.

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Further reading:

• Matt has progressive views about some things.

• Brian thinks Hakeem Jeffries should use his power to force impeachment votes to stage a referendum on the Iran war.

• On the attempted cancelation of Hasan Piker.

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In this episode Matt and Brian discuss:

• Do Democrats deserve any credit for Donald Trump’s political woes?

• How should we square Democrats’ impressive performance in special and off-year elections with their underwhelming performance in the generic ballot?

• If Democrats change nothing between now and November, would they win big by default, or disappoint, leaving everyone wishing they’d undertaken a more serious rebranding?

Then, since nobody disagrees that Democrats have become toxically unpopular, we get at why? To what extent is it contemporaneous frustration with the weakness of the Democratic opposition, and to what extent is a longer-run disaffection with a party that’s moved left over the past couple decades. Have Democrats really changed stripes? Or are they right where they “should” be, given long-run liberal commitments to a robust welfare state and civil equality?

All that, plus the full Politix archive are available to paid subscribers—just upgrade your subscription and pipe full episodes directly to your favorite podcast app via your own private feed.

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Further reading:

• Brian argues Dems don’t necessarily need to sweat their generic ballot woes, but can only fix them by picking more fights with Donald Trump.

• Matt thinks Democrats’ uniform moves to the left since 2008-2012 are the culprit.

• Ta-Nehisi Coates on the counterproductive aspects of intersectional political rhetoric: “If you can extend the the temporality out just a little bit of the struggle I think it makes the mistakes not better, but understandable. It’s very, very hard to get any movement of humans to always act right, speak right, talk right. I really, really wish people read more about the civil rights movement deeply because they were fucking up all the time.”

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In this Matt and Brian discuss:

• Trump’s latest, inscrutable, and quite likely corrupt machinations to end his war of choice (or at least prosecute the war without throttling global oil supply);

• Signs that Republicans are catching more heat than Democrats for the DHS shutdown (and the ensuing long lines at airports);

• Whether it was wise or unnecessarily risk averse for Democrats to offer to fund TSA and other non-immigration components of DHS (to avoid blowback from weary travelers).

Then, does the fact that Democrats have maintained unity in this fight for the past 40 days redeem Chuck Schumer at all? (No.) If not, does it suggest that the Senate Democrats who lost confidence in him aren’t really that interested in fighting after all? Will this kind of fighting help Democrats improve their abysmal approval numbers and lagging generic-ballot numbers? Or are they simply unpopular because they’re out of step, policy-wise, with the electorate?

All that, plus the full Politix archive are available to paid subscribers—just upgrade your subscription and pipe full episodes directly to your favorite podcast app via your own private feed.

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Further reading:

• Brian argues that the real problem with Democrats’ policy agenda isn’t that it’s too far left, per se, but that it will, once again, crowd out the more pressing matters of democracy protection and accountability for fascism.

• Matt on the most perverse reason Trump hasn’t quite chickened out of the war.

• Perception of partisan ideology, by party ID.

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In this Matt and Brian discuss:

• The Oscars!

• What are these policies, where do they come from, and what would they mean, in practice, for other elements of the Democratic agenda?

• Is there tension between Revenuemaxxing™️ and Billionairemogging™️, and can it be resolved?

• Given all that will need to be rebuilt post-Trump, should Democrats embrace fiscal responsibility, or might there be some advantage to playing chicken with Republicans over the future of the American welfare state?

Then, Donald Trump seems pretty panicked about the consequences of his misbegotten Iran war. But not enough to chicken out. At least not yet. Why is that? What are the peculiarities of the global energy market that might explain it. If he’s waiting for global oil futures to hit crisis levels, what kinds of developments in the war might send it there? And can we count on Democrats to oppose war funding?

All that, plus the full Politix archive are available to paid subscribers—just upgrade your subscription and pipe full episodes directly to your favorite podcast app via your own private feed.

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Further reading:

• Matt on quagmires.

• Brian on how the Iran war exposes the shallowness of the U.S. elite.

• The Yale Budget Lab on the Van Hollen tax plan.

• Matt Zeitlen on the oil shock. (Spoiler: it’s bad.)

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In this Matt and Brian discuss:

• Has Trump finally set in motion a disaster he can’t contain?

• What does TACO mean when others have a say over the disposition of events?

• Are we doomed to reprisal attacks and a long-lasting energy crisis?

Then, what the hell is Jared Polis thinking?! The governor of Colorado is apparently planning to commute the sentence of Tina Peters, a former election official who tried to help Donald Trump overturn the 2020 election. Should Polis’s partisan and ideological allies try to stop him? How? Is he acting purely in response to Trump’s threat of reprisals? And to the extent he really thinks it’s a good idea, what are his obligations as a retiring elected official serving at a time when liberal democracy is under severe threat?

All that, plus the full Politix archive are available to paid subscribers—just upgrade your subscription and pipe full episodes directly to your favorite podcast app via your own private feed.

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Further reading:

• Brian asks why elites seem just as easily duped as MAGA nobodies.

• Matt’s prescient piece on the moral failure of liberal leaders to not act selfishly.

• Should Colorado Democrats impeach Jared Polis?

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• What was Donald Trump thinking?

• What consequences (regional, domestic, and global) should we be prepared for?

• What do we make of the Democratic response so far?

Then, because the war has no support and was not justified, the public is overwhelmingly opposed to it. This should tend to fracture Republicans and unite Democrats. But it raises some questions: Will the progressives who couldn’t bring themselves to admit that Kamala Harris was the more anti-war of the two candidates in 2024 link arms with Democrats? Will the Trump supporters (GOP propagandists, marginal voters) who claimed to support Trump on anti-war grounds change their thinking? How much intra-GOP strife is driven by antisemitism? And what’s the best way to make sense of the mixed messages and buck passing already leaking out of the administration?

All that, plus the full Politix archive are available to paid subscribers—just upgrade your subscription and pipe full episodes directly to your favorite podcast app via your own private feed.

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Further reading:

• Matt on the failure of the anti-antisemitism movement.

• Brian argues Trump uses war abroad as an instrument of domestic politics, which he in turn views as civil war by other means.

• Our initial views on the state of the Talarico v. Crockett Senate primary.

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In this episode, Matt and Brian discuss:

• How boring the speech was;

• Whether boring is better for Trump, given his political predicament, than stuntiness;

• Should the Democrats who chose to attend be ashamed of themselves?

• All of the lies.

Then, are we finally going to have it out over whether Trump sexually assaulted any of the girls or women he met through Jeffrey Epstein? Will the Supreme Court decision vacating his tariffs be viewed as a turning point in his administration?

All that, plus the full Politix archive are available to paid subscribers—just upgrade your subscription and pipe full episodes directly to your favorite podcast app via your own private feed.

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In this episode, Matt and Brian discuss:

• How we ended up with such a narrow shutdown, instead of one that spanned multiple cabinet departments;

• Whether this was a mistake or a savvy move;

• What success (or “success”) might look like.

Then, the Epstein Files story is stuck behind our collective unwillingness in the political class to state plainly what we’re after: Whether Donald Trump abused children, and what the consequences should be if he did? Why is the administration so allergic to accountability for non-Trump associates of Jeffrey Epstein? And, was Pam Bondi’s infamous performance before the House Judiciary Committee last week secretly brilliant?

All that, plus the full Politix archive are available to paid subscribers—just upgrade your subscription and pipe full episodes directly to your favorite podcast app via your own private feed.

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Further reading:

• Brian reconceives of the Trump-2024 campaign as a conspiracy to conceal the Epstein Files.

• on the ICE accountability gap.

• on a credible allegation of child sexual abuse against Donald Trump.

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In this episode, Matt and Brian discuss:

• The narrow question of how Trump and MAGA lost the culture war fight they picked with Bad Bunny and the NFL.

• How we ended up in a situation a year ago, when it seemed that MAGA had, on balance, won the fight over the direction and influence of American culture.

• How the worm turned back, or whether it was all an illusion in the first place.

Then, Trump also lost the mid-decade redistricting fight he picked, thanks in large part to the fight-first approach embraced by Virginia’s new governor, Abigail Spanberger, who prioritized aggressive gerrymandering over legacy policy issues. Is her approach replicable? What would it mean to take it national? And what are some other things Dem can do (nationally and in battleground states) to keep Trump on the back foot through the midterms.

All that, plus the full Politix archive are available to paid subscribers—just upgrade your subscription and pipe full episodes directly to your favorite podcast app via your own private feed.

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Further reading:

• Matt on the uncannily similar political backgrounds of Gavin Newsom and Kamala Harris.

• Brian on how Trump lost the culture.

• Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl Half Time show.

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In this episode, Matt and Brian discuss:

• What’s in this new tranche?

• What does it tell us about both the global elite, and Republican elite, leaders of which are overrepresented in the files relative to Democrats?

• What can we or others do to pry loose the majority of the files, which Trump’s administration insists it will conceal for all time.

Then, is Trump really gonna demolish ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶D̶o̶n̶a̶l̶d̶ ̶J̶.̶ ̶T̶r̶u̶m̶p̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶J̶o̶h̶n̶ ̶F̶.̶ Kennedy Center? Is this something that Congress should try to stop? Or is it better dealt with by protesters putting themselves between the building and the bulldozers? Also, should Democrats’ continued dominance of special elections make members of the party feel more bullish about big demonstrations of resistance?

All that, plus the full Politix archive are available to paid subscribers—just upgrade your subscription and pipe full episodes directly to your favorite podcast app via your own private feed.

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Further reading:

• Brian on the meaning of Democrats’ big victory in the Texas state senate special election.

• Matt on the turning point in Minnesota.

• The New York Times on Elon Musk and other powerful men turning up in the Epstein files.

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In this episode, Matt and Brian discuss:

• The silver lining of Pretti’s death, in providing proof of concept that civil disobedience requires risk and sacrifice—but it does work;

• Whether the political blowback will be fierce enough to dissuade Trump from ordering more pretextual, citywide occupations by masked paramilitaries;

• What Democrats can demand in the ensuing fight over Homeland Security funding, and whether they’ll have greater tolerance for a prolonged shutdown this time.

Then, Trump isn’t just retreating in Minnesota. He also pulled a TACO on Greenland, after allies asserted he’d wrecked the post-war order, and bond markets started revolting. What lessons, if any, lie in that episode? What more should foreign leaders (public and non-governmental) do to limit Trump’s abuses? And to what extent can Democrats partner with the international community to cordon Trump?

All that, plus the full Politix archive are available to paid subscribers—just upgrade your subscription and pipe full episodes directly to your favorite podcast app via your own private feed.

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Further reading:

• Matt on the turning point in Minnesota.

• Brian on the folly of House Democratic support for funding DHS.

• How Alex Pretti might help decent Americans reclaim the meaning of masculinity from the far right.

• Mark Carney’s striking Davos speech.

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