There is a lot on our radar along with Santa’s sleigh…

We’re joined this week by Adam Wren, a national political correspondent for POLITICO, based in the Midwest. He is a contributor to POLITICO Magazine, Playbook and West Wing Playbook, focusing on Donald Trump’s remaking of the federal government and the Democratic response to his return to power ahead of what could be a wide-open 2028 presidential contest. Wren previously served as a national politics features correspondent at Business Insider. He has also written for The New York Times and Washington Post. Originally from Ohio, Adam graduated from Indiana Wesleyan University and has a master’s from Northwestern University’s prestigious Medill School of Journalism.

You can find Adam online X/Twitter and Instagram.

Dozing Donald woke up from his nap long enough to shout out an 18-minute campaign speech, laden with lies and blaming everything on Joe Biden. It was the centerpiece of a truly horrific week politically for Trump and Republicans. The ACA tax credits are going, going and nearly gone … and with them, Republican prospects for the 2026 midterm elections.

Adding to the political challenges to the GOP: Donald Trump’s massively offensive responses to two mass shootings, and the horrific murders of Rob and Michele Reiner. The chorus of one-time MAGA acolytes breaking with Trump is growing louder … and his shouted 19-minute televised falsehood-laden campaign speech didn’t help, a speech Jimmy Kimmel labeled “a liar-side chat”.

Also this week:

In Trump-the-Man-Child News:

We’re joined by Congresswoman Debbie Dingell, the senior member of the state’s Democratic delegation in Congress. The Dingell legacy, dating back to her father-in-law John Dingell Senior’s first term in 1933, is the nation’s healthcare program.

Debbie Dingell was first elected to the House in 2015. She succeeded her late husband, John Dingell Jr, who was the longest-serving member of Congress in U.S. history. Her husband had succeeded his father who was first elected in 1932. There’s been a Dingell in the U.S. House non-stop for 92 years.

President Donald Trump took his show back on the road this week in a desperate attempt to rekindle his “rally magic” and tell voters not to believe their eyes, ears, brains, wallets, or increasingly harder to fill refrigerators. Starting in Pennsylvania, he vows to campaign early and often across the country in competitive seats for the U.S. House and Senate. Democrats should offer to pay for the rallies. As our (least) Favorite President emerges from his Mar-A-Lago cocoon to deny economic reality, with his economic team claiming everything gets better … eventually: Prices will come down, he’ll have a healthcare plan you’ll love, urban crime will end, the Kennedy Center will have a rebirth as the Trump Center for the Arts and medical science will come up with a cure for cankles. Trump and his economic team sound like “Annie”!

Also this week…

Joining the podcast this week is Michigan’s Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson. We talk election security, potential voter intimidation, gubernatorial politics…and the Lions and Pistons! Secretary Benson was first elected in 2018 and reelected in a 2022 landslide. She’s former Dean of the Wayne State University Law School, and considered one of the nation’s top experts on election law.

In the most recent polling, she has an overwhelming lead in the race for the Democratic nomination for Governor, leading Lt. Governor Garlin Gilchrist by 43 points. The most recent EPIC-MRA poll shows her in a statistical tie with Republican John James in the general election, with Independent Mike Duggan 13 points behind.

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The most recent EPIC-MRA poll shows Michigan voters are angry over the Trump tariffs and what they are doing to the economy. It’s especially important in Michigan, where our top trading partners are Canada, Mexico and China. We’re joined by a Michigan business owner who is suing the Trump administration over the tariffs.

Mike Musheinesh has been CEO of Detroit Axle since 2012, taking over from his father Ed Musheinesh, who started the company as a small aftermarket parts shop in 1990. Mike has grown the company into a leading global retailer and distributor of remanufactured and new aftermarket auto parts.

Today, Detroit Axle employs hundreds of people in Metro Detroit, and it operates a large online operation to serve customers nationwide.

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Joining the conversation this week is Michigan Advance senior political reporter Ben Solis. Solis has covered state and local government for nearly a decade as a former staff writer with Gongwer News Service and multiple MLive newsrooms. He is an award-winning writer and editor and was a finalist for the Michigan Press Association Richard Milliman Journalist of the Year award in 2022 for his work covering Michigan’s independent redistricting process.

Michigan Advance is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.

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The Donald Trump Hunger Games begin with the administration doing as little as possible to comply with a court-ordered continuation of SNAP Benefits. For millions of Americans, it means going hungry … just not quite as hungry as Trump had wanted. The Trump shutdown is officially the longest in U.S. history, surpassing the record of 35 days set during the first Trump term.

With Trump’s administration failing on the economy, foreign policy, healthcare and basic competence in the background, Democrats sweep the handful of off-year elections including flipping Virginia’s governor’s office and holding on in New Jersey. We’ll do a post-mortem on the election, and the impact on Michigan politics, with former Obama Communications Director Jennifer Palmieri.

Two updates on Michigan’s congressional races: a familiar name enters the GOP primary to replace John James, and new polling shows Lansing-area Congressman Tom Barrett trailing two relatively unknown Democrats.

A former top aide to former state House Speaker Lee Chatfield pleads guilty to assorted corruption charges … and agrees to testify against his former boss.

The latest political shocker nationally: Marjorie Taylor Greene is talking about running for President. Of the United States. Yes, that MTG!

And the Subway Sandwich Terrorism trial has ended with an acquittal. Sean Dunn was charged with misdemeanor assault after hitting a federal agent with a “sub-style sandwich.” Apparently ICE agents consider mustard a weapon of mass destruction…but the prosecution’s case, it turns out, was toast. Dunn reportedly relished the decision.

There were, of course, a lot of significant elections on Tuesday. Joining the post-election analysis is guest commentator Jennifer Palmieri. Her credentials include three years as Barack Obama’s Communications Director and then Director of Communications for the Hillary Clinton 2016 presidential campaign. Before her service at the White House, she was the National Press Secretary for the 2004 John Edwards presidential campaign and for the Democratic National Committee in 2002, after a brief time at the advocacy group Americans for Gun Safety. She served in the Clinton Administration as Special Assistant to White House Chief of Staff Leon Panetta, deputy director of Scheduling and Advance, and finally as a Deputy White House Press Secretary. More recently she co-hosted the political documentary series “The Circus” on Showtime with John Heilman, Alex Wagner and Mark McKinnon.

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Donald Trump’s medical path seems to be tracking alongside his poll ratings: going down. Six months after his “annual” physical exam, doctors gave him a screening test for dementia, and ordered an MRI for undisclosed reasons. But when your doctor says you need an MRI (or a monthly dementia check-up), it’s not a clean bill of health.

The latest campaign finance reports are in, and they offer some strong clues for what to expect over the next year of campaigning. We’ll take a deep dive into “following the money”, and be joined later by campaign finance tea-leaves reader Simon Shuster from Michigan Bridge.

The state court of appeals has ordered state House Speaker Matt Hall to release his hostages: nine bills passed by the Legislature in the final days of the 2024 session that he unconstitutionally refused to deliver to the Governor for signature. We get the lowdown from the attorney for the winning side (his last name is Brewer).

As Trump continues his unconstitutional killing of alleged drug runners in international waters, a lot of his underlings may be needing criminal defense lawyers. Trump has Supreme Court gifted immunity, but everyone from Pentagon Pete Hegseth on down could be looking at multiple charges of murder as the killing spree escalates.

State Republicans staged their first gubernatorial candidate debate and the alleged frontrunner didn’t even show up. John James continues to hide in the witness protection program both as a candidate and as a congressman.

An estimated 1.4-million Michiganders are on the verge of losing SNAP benefits. State legislators are trying to fill the federal funding void – a $71-million emergency appropriation passed the state Senate earlier today on a bipartisan vote; the state House can act on the measure as early as Tuesday.

We start with the latest batch of campaign finance reports – the ones filed by would-be Governors. On the Democratic side, Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson smoked the competition for the cycle. On the Republican side, candidate-in-hiding John James continued his strong fundraising, and former attorney general Mike Cox opened his own checkbook to fatten his campaign treasury.

This episode is sponsored in part by

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We’re joined this week by veteran journalist and media monitor Jennifer Schulze for a deep dive into the right-wing takeover of where we get our news.

Jennifer Schulze is a longtime journalist, mostly broadcast news and mostly in Chicago.  She headed the WGN TV newsroom and lead the team that created the WGN Morning News.  She writes media cricitism and other articles for The Contrarian, Lincoln Square, Heartland Signal, etc.  She does regular media roundups for Civic Media and Courier Newsroom with host Pat Krietlow and for WCPT Radio with host Joan Esposito.  Her fellow Chicago journalist Mark Jacob joins her on both of those regular segments.  Jennifer’s Substack is called Indistinct Chatter and you can find her on Blue Sky and threads @NewsJennifer.

This episode is sponsored in part by

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GOP efforts to discredit the No Kings protests across the nation flopped, with seven-million+ Americans registering their disgust with Trump in peaceful, often mocking demonstrations across America. Trump’s disdainful, self-revealing response: an AI-created video fantasy of Mad King Biff carpet-bombing crowds of American people with feces while flying an airborn firefighting super tanker.

Adding to his show of disdain: while hundreds of thousands of federal workers go without paychecks, and with inflation and the price of groceries skyrocketing, Trump had the entire East Wing of the White House demolished – in violation of federal law – to erect a palatial, gilded, $300 million (and growing) ballroom … the worst damage to the White House since the British torched it in the War of 1812. Let them eat cake, Donald? And now he’s telling his Justice Department to pay him $230-million for the trauma of being investigated for his long string of crimes. The decision is up to two of his former personal attorneys: AG Pam Bondi and Deputy AG Todd Blanche, now his personal henchmen inside the DoJ.

Also in our gunsights this week:

The weaponizing of the Justice Department continues to expand the Trump-revenge web. We are joined by one of the potential targets: former DHS Chief of Staff Miles Taylor – also known as “Anonymous”, the first high-level Trump administration whistleblower.

Miles Taylor is a national security expert who served in the administrations of George W. Bush and Donald Trump, where he was chief of staff of the Department of Homeland Security. In 2018, Taylor wrote an op-ed in The New York Times under the pen name “Anonymous” – “I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration” – which drew widespread attention for its criticism of Trump.  Several months after quitting the administration, he published a book titled, A Warning (again under the pen name “Anonymous.) He later revealed that he was “Anonymous” and was the first former Trump administration official to endorse Joe Biden.

Miles is an Indiana native and earned his B.A. in international security studies from Indiana University, with a masters degree from Oxford University in England which he attended as a 2012 Marshall Scholar. He began his government service in 2007 as a college intern under Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Vice President Dick Cheney. 

He’s no longer “anonymous” and speaks out forcefully about the Trump abuses in his online blog “Treason with Miles Taylor”. 

This episode is sponsored in part by

======================================================

We’re joined this week by veteran journalist and media monitor Jennifer Schulze for a deep dive into the right-wing takeover of where we get our news.

Jennifer Schulze is a longtime journalist, mostly broadcast news and mostly in Chicago.  She headed the WGN TV newsroom and lead the team that created the WGN Morning News.  She writes media cricitism and other articles for The Contrarian, Lincoln Square, Heartland Signal, etc.  She does regular media roundups for Civic Media and Courier Newsroom with host Pat Krietlow and for WCPT Radio with host Joan Esposito.  Her fellow Chicago journalist Mark Jacob joins her on both of those regular segments.  Jennifer’s Substack is called Indistinct Chatter and you can find her on Blue Sky and threads @NewsJennifer.

This episode is sponsored in part by

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