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As Donald Trump’s poll numbers continue to sink to new record lows, his anger grows. He’s been lashing out at media reports that his Iran War didn’t end Iran’s nuclear program, signs of opposition to his Big Bad Budget Bill among Republicans in Congress … and possibly having his golfing schedule interrupted by his war in the Middle East.

Michigan political news on our radar this week:

And we can now officially say “goodbye” to “Big Balls.” 19-year-old Edward Coristine, one of the first teenage Ninjas hired as part of Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), is no longer working for the federal government according to multiple media reports.

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The Trump administration’s latest anti-democracy tactic is arresting the opposition. Trump’s masked brownshirts have now moved from arresting immigrants who haven’t committed crimes to arresting elected officials and threatening their staffs with arrest for the crime of disagreeing with Donald Trump and Stephen Miller. Adding to the terror: threats and acts of violence aimed at politicians and government workers, with the horrific murder of a Minnesota legislator and her husband the most terrifying attack of all. We are joined by a senior leader in the Michigan Legislature who has served the public for 30 years: Senate Majority Floor Leader Sam Singh.

And we can’t overlook the pathetic, under-attended and over-priced birthday parade that was so boring even the birthday boy himself fell asleep as the soldiers marched by…while five-million or so pissed off Americans took to the streets for peaceful protests over the full panorama of Trumpism.

Also on Michigan’s political radar this week:

We begin with the first guilty plea in what’s likely to be a growing campaign spending scandal: the funding of the Unlock Michigan campaign which threatens former state Senate GOP leader Mike Shirkey. The original complaints about the financing of Unlock Michigan were filed by longtime GOP activist Bob Labrant and with the assistance of Mark and Jeff: Jeff as a witness, and Mark as attorney for the trio.

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Donald Trump made his first visit to the now Woke-Free Kennedy Center this week for a performance of his favorite musical, Les Miserables. He apparently failed to see the irony in how the musical’s plot mirrors the week in Los Angeles: the people rising up to protest a militaristic autocracy intent on smashing their rights and who ultimately overturn the ruthless militaristic autocracy. The French resistance barricades the streets and light fires. And, as we record this week’s show, a member of the United States Senator is assaulted and handcuffed by Kristi Noem’s security detail – sparking outrage on the left, and lies on the right.

There’s also a lot of Michigan political news on our radar this week:

We’re joined by Bridge Michigan political and state government reporter Jordyn Hermani for a deep dive into the politics of Michigan’s budget and the multiple 2026 races that have national importance. She is an Emmy-nominated journalist whose byline has been featured in several publications including POLITICO, The Detroit Free Press, Indianapolis Star and now Bridge Michigan. Her coverage of Michigan politics throughout the years has seen me featured on a host of networks such as CNN, CBS News, Fox News, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, and NPR. Jordyn also has been featured in the Columbia Journalism Review and Washington Post.  Outside of politics, she is an avid trail hiker and estate sale enthusiast. Her passions include cats, horror movies, hockey and her husband… but she quickly adds “not necessarily in that order!”

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Our apologies for the audio distortion on this week’s episode. We’ll enlist some newly out-of-work DOGE techies to fix it for next week 😂

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The bromance appears to have ended between the world’s wealthiest man and the world’s most brazen. What does the growing rift between The Ketamine Kid and TACO Don mean for the next few months? Senator Joni Ernst has a serious case of foot-in-mouth disease with her revelation that we’re all going to die … allowing Democrats to note it will happen faster under GOP policies. And “Big Balls” is back in the news. The 19-year-old Doge Wunderkind is now a top-level executive with the General Services Administration which gives him access to all sorts of data on every American compiled. And he’s drawing one of the top salaries in the federal government – more than $106,000 a year.

There’s also a lot of Michigan political news on our radar this week.

There’s a new campaign finance scandal growing with revelations of a huge dark money slush fund.

State Democrats continue to hone in on the impact of federal Medicaid cutbacks in the run-up to 2026. We are joined by Democratic State Party chair Curtis Hertel. Michigan looks to be the focal point for 2026, critical to control of Congress … and with expensive, competitive races to replace term-limited Gretchen Whitmer, Jocelyn Benton and Dana Nessel.

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“Big Balls” and all his Doge teenage mutants are on their way out as head Doge Elon Musk slinks to the exits, unhappy with Trump’s pretty much ignoring efforts to cut the federal deficit as the mostly dysfunctional Re¡publican Congress decides if it needs to inflict even more damage on the nation.

We’ve got the usual lineup of Trump outrages through the week: handing out pardons like Oprah hands out cars, sending his sons and Vice President to suck up to the crypto kings at their convention, and whining as a three-judge panel tells him he doesn’t have the right to impose his tariffs.

We’re joined in the podcast by author, legal commentator and UM law professor Leah Litman. Her book  LAWLESS: How the Supreme Court Runs on Conservative Grievance, Fringe Theories, and Bad Vibes has just been published. Litman teaches and writes on constitutional law, federal courts, and federal post-conviction review. Her research examines unidentified and implicit values that are used to structure the legal system, the federal courts, and the legal profession.

In 2023, the American Law Institute named Litman a recipient of its Early Career Scholars Medal, which is awarded every other year to “two outstanding early-career law professors whose work is relevant to public policy and has the potential to influence improvements in the law.” Also in 2023, the American Constitution Society recognized Litman with the Ruth Bader Ginsburg Scholar Award.

Leah is is one of the co-hosts and co-creators of Strict Scrutiny, a Crooked Media podcast about the US Supreme Court, which received the 2023 Podcast Academy award (Ambie) for Best Politics or Opinion podcast and a 2023 Anthem Award for its coverage of the Supreme Court overruling Roe v. Wade. 

Following her clerkships, she worked at Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP, one of the DC law firms targeted by Donald Trump for retribution – something struck down earlier this week by a federal court. The firm said in its lawsuit that Trump was punishing the firm for cases it had taken, noting among other things that it had filed a suit this year challenging Trump’s dismissal of inspectors general and previously represented some of his political opponents.

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Donald Trump had one of the best weeks of his 4-month presidency this week, with his “Big Beautiful Budget Bill” sneaking through as his personal music of the night.

This past week may go down in history as the most corrupt week in the history of American government, far surpassing the exploits of even Richard Nixon or Warren Harding.

There’s also a lot of Michigan political news on our radar this week:

Also this week: Jeff and producer Walt Sorg and  talk politics, healthcare … and Trump corruption… with U.S. Senate candidate Dr. Abdul El-Sayed

The race for the Democratic U.S. Senate nomination has four heavyweights poised to battle over the next year. Among them: former Wayne County health director and Bernie Sanders favorite Dr. Abdul El-Sayed. He ran for Governor in 2018, coming out of nowhere to score 30 percent of the vote to Gretchen Whitmer’s 52 percent. Recognized nationwide as an expert on improving the American healthcare system, he authored Medicare for All: A Citizen’s Guide, which explains how to build a healthcare system that guarantees high-quality, affordable healthcare for every American. In 2020, he was selected to serve on President Biden’s Unity Task Force for Healthcare, helping craft policies that are lowering prescription drug prices today.

Dr. El-Sayed is a native of southeast Michigan. He graduated from the University of Michigan with the highest distinction and played on the Wolverines men’s lacrosse team. He earned his medical degree from Columbia University on an NIH-funded fellowship and a second doctorate at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar.

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The grifting is like a Musk rocket ship, soaring off to near space while the passenger has a big giggle. In this case, it’s a $400-million airplane for Donald Trump’s personal use now (after a $1-billion taxpayer-funded retrofit), and even beyond … assuming he agrees to leave the White House. In the time he’s able to take away from golf, social network posting and watching TV, Trump is getting occasional briefings on what his band of zealots are doing to the nation…and backing away from at least a few of his most damaging decisions. Case in point: tariffs. Yes, he’s still a fan of what amounts to a national sales tax, but he’s backing away from the most excessive as his approval ratings move into used-car-salesman numbers. We’ll talk about the economics of Trump’s ever changing policies with University of Michigan economics professor Justin Wolfers.

Also on our political radar screen this week (between Newark-style outages!):

Joining the conversation this week is one of the world’s most respected economists, Justin Wolfers. 

Dr. Wolfers is a professor of public policy and economics at the University of Michigan and a visiting professor of economics at the University of Sydney. He is also a research associate with the National Bureau of Economic Research; a non-resident senior fellow with the Brookings Institution, a non-resident senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a research fellow with the Institute for the Study of Labor in Bonn; a research affiliate with the Centre for Economic Policy Research in London; and an international research fellow with the Kiel Institute for the World Economy. 

Dr. Wolfers earned his Ph.D. in economics in 2001 from Harvard University, and was a Fulbright, Knox and Menzies Scholar. He earned his undergraduate degree in economics in his native Australia at the University of Sydney in 1994, winning the University Medal. He was recently named by the International Monetary Fund as one of the “25 economists under 45 shaping the way we think about the global economy.”

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The mainstream media are finally catching on to the rampant corruption throughout the Trump administration: grifts and gifts that are putting untold billions into Donald Trump’s pocket, much of it from foreign sources. It’s a worldwide, nakedly corrupt bribery scandal with governments, major corporations, law firms, television networks, and billionaires worldwide competing to see who can give Trump the largest bribes.

 In Michigan Democrats are focusing on proposed Republican cuts to Medicaid, as new polling shows statewide voter rejection of any cuts to the healthcare program, and a new state reports projects 700-thousand Michiganders losing healthcare coverage as a result of Republican efforts to use Medicaid cuts to partially fund 4.5-billion-dollars in tax cuts for major corporations and the oligarchs. On the state political front: with Haley Stevens running for U.S. Senate a lot of Democrats are looking to be their party’s nominee. We’ll talk new vs legacy media, Michigan politics, and more with longtime political analyst, journalist, and new-media innovator Susan Demas.

Susan is a 24-year journalism veteran and one of the state’s foremost experts on Michigan politics, appearing on C-SPAN, MSNBC, CNN, NPR and WKAR-TV’s “Off the Record.” For nearly five years, Susan was the Editor and Publisher of Inside Michigan Politics, the most-cited political newsletter in the state. She also founded the online news publication Michigan Advance. Susan’s award-winning political analysis has run in more than 100 national, international and regional media outlets, including the Guardian U.K., NBC News, the New York Times, the Detroit News and MLive.

Susan is the newly minted executive editor of “Lincoln Square Media”, one of the fastest-growing news sources on Substack, YouTube, and in the digital arena. Lincoln Square Media is a joint venture with The Lincoln Project. Lincoln Square’s mission is to expose, inspire, inform, lead, and connect — and present the tools not just to fight back, but fight forward for the America we all deserve. Lincoln Square creates podcasts, live streaming, digital and social media, commentary, articles, town halls, public and virtual community gatherings, and strategy calls with people like Rick Wilson, Stuart Stevens, Joe Trippi and Jeff Timmer who have led the biggest campaigns – and won.

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Democrats remain divided on how to take on the increasingly unpopular Trump, ranging from Schumer’s very strong letter, Gretchen Whitmer’s balancing opposition to Trump with the state’s need, to a full out denunciation from Illinois Governor J.D. Pritzker. Governor Whitmer’s politically risky Oval Office visit may have been embarrassing, but pays off with a big win in Macomb County. The announcement of new support for Selfridge Air National Guard base came just an hour before Trump’s nostalgia tour hit the stage at a 100-days-in-office Macomb rally.

Trump’s campaign-style rally was more of the same: a 90-minute rant with Trump whining about being a victim, backing off some of his jobs-crushing tariffs on autos and auto parts, and a lot of empty seats according to the Detroit News. But the big political news came earlier in the afternoon, with Governor Whitmer standing side-by-side with Trump to take credit for the new federal commitment to Selfridge…in the process taking the spotlight away from Congressman and GOP gubernatorial candidate John James.

Also this week:

Returning to the podcast this week: University of Michigan law professor Sam Bagenstos, who was a senior staffer at what it now Robert Kennedy Jr.’s Department of Health and Human Services, the Project 2025-driven office of Management and Budget, and the probably-soon-to-be shuttered Department of Justice Office of Civil Rights. From Inauguration Day 2021 to June 2022, he served as general counsel to the Office of Management and Budget where his responsibilities included working on President Biden’s Day One executive orders; helped respond to COVID-19, including implementing several crucial aid programs; and helped craft and implement the American Rescue Plan as well as the Inflation Reduction Act;.

From 2009 to 2011, Bagenstos was the principal deputy assistant attorney general for civil rights, the No. 2 official in the Civil Rights Division. Just this week, dozens of senior attorneys in the Civil Rights Division resigned in protest of the protect-white-privilege priorities of the Trump administration.

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The “Underwater” episode of A Republic, If You Can Keep It isn’t a tribute to Jacques Cousteau, Lloyd Bridges or the Navy’s submariners … but the reality facing Donald Trump as he approaches the 100 day mark. At this point in his administration he’s the most unpopular President this century. The only other president whose job approval has been this low after 100 days – Donald Trump in his first term. His 44% net approval is 10-to-20 points below the favorability ratings of Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama … and Joe Biden.

There’s a lot more in the politi-sphere this week:

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