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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Donald Trump’s drive to autocracy is hitting some speed bumps and accelerating at the same time. Just this week:

In the age of crypto and endless Trump crime family grifting, there’s never been a more important time to understand white collar crime. They don’t use guns and goons: the weapons for these criminals are banking laws, off-shore accounts and trading on the ignorance of their victims. Joining this week’s conversation is Jennifer Taub, a legal scholar and advocate whose writing focuses on “follow the money” matters— promoting transparency and opposing corruption. 

Taub was the Bruce W. Nichols Visiting Professor of Law in fall 2019 at Harvard Law School and is now a professor of law at the Western New England University School of Law. A former associate general counsel at Fidelity Investments, she is a graduate of Yale College and Harvard Law School. Taub’s most recent book was “Big Dirty Money” published in 2020 by Viking Press. Her first book was Other People’s Houses, published in 2014 by the Yale Press. She posts daily on YouTube.

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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This week’s show is sponsored in part by

On this week’s show…

The Attorney General goes to the U.S. Senate to workshop her new stand-up/outraged authoritarian dystopian comedy routine … without any jokes.

A Trump-appointed federal judge is getting increasingly pissed over Bondi’s defense of National Guard Whack-a-Mole. The judge said sending troops to Portland was illegal, so Bondi’s lawyer thugs came up with a different state’s guard to deploy – and the Trump-appointed judge sounded like a parent scolding a child in referring to the whole strategy as untethered from reality. And now Trump is facing another court challenge over the Texas National Guard incursion into Chicago, which, like Portland, is the quietest Burning Hell Hole in the history of Burning Hell Holes. And as the very MAGA governor of extremely red Oklahoma said this week, “Oklahomans would lose their mind if Pritzker in Illinois sent troops down to Oklahoma during the Biden administration.l?” This simply cannot be allowed to happen.

Trump’s puppet U.S. Attorney in Northern VIrginia doubles down on retribution indictments by calling out New York Attorney General Leticia James. Next up, based on Trump’s Oopsie It Was Supposed to be Private demand to Bondi, will be California Senator Adam Schiff.

The Supreme Leader, never one to worry about what is and what is not legal, is now apparently directing the Treasury to issue a Donald Trump one-dollar coin. Federal law prohibits putting living persons on our currency … but then again, Fearless Leader is 79-years-old, obese, eats a high-fat diet, limits exercise to getting in and out of his golf cart … and is plagued by cankles. You never know…we’re 9 months away from the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

And in Michigan, a threat from the Trump administration to renege on upgrading GM’s Lansing-Grand River assembly plant threatens 700 factory jobs with a ripple impact on thousands of Michigan workers.

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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This week’s show is sponsored in part by

This week’s theme – “The Enemy Within” – focuses on the moves by Trump in the last week to establish his authoritarian dominance of our lives. An alternative title could be “The Rubicon has been crossed” episode, as Trump uses a highly unusual audience and venue to declare war on American citizens, the Constitution, a lawful civilian-controlled military, and the very notion of a limited government that derives its existence from “we the people.” But because our culture and our media are so entirely broken and damaged, the biggest story is the breathless coverage of the federal government shutdown and not the 12-alarm departure from the rule of law and prelude to martial law and authoritarianism.

In Lansing, there’s a one-week truce in the battle of the state budget, averting a shutdown with both sides promising to get the budget adopted by next Tuesday at midnight. We begin the show by doing a deep dive into the partisan battles in Lansing, and strong signs that the state can avoid a government shutdown. Our tour guide is veteran Bridge Michigan state capitol reporter Lauren Gibbons. It’s a $80-billion budget dispute. Will it last? Is there really agreement on a framework for the budget? What is standing in the way of final agreement?

In the Trump/Vance/Hegseth world of Fatsos and Beardos, two more American cities — Portland, Oregon, and Memphis, Tennessee — will likely see National Guard troops deployed in the coming days, though exact timings remain unclear. An Oregon Military Department spokesperson had said troops could arrive in Portland as soon as Thursday (our recording day), but legal and logistical delays may push the deployment into next week. Angry state leaders’ efforts to have the deployment halted will be heard by a federal judge tomorrow.

Trump is using the military to try to eliminate dissent. Caught in the middle of his lust for absolute power are the citizen-soldiers of the National Guard in his target states. Joining us is an expert on what that means: the retired adjutant general of the Illinois National Guard, General William Enyart. Major General Enyart served in the Air Force for 40 years. He was appointed to lead the National Guard and the Illinois Department of Military Affairs as Adjutant General in 2007, and was reappointed in 2009 and in 2011. He retired from the military in 2012, and was elected to Congress where he served for one term.

This episode is sponsored in part by

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This week’s show is sponsored in part by

The man who recommended Ivermectin and bleach injections for treating covid joins with a recovering heroin addict and a former TV snake-oil salesman to warn us about the dangers of Tylenol. Trump? He probably needed to take a Tylenol after watching Tuesday night TV.

But he’s moving forward with taking over the media, carving out a deal so his closest billionaire buddies get control of TikTok. The MAGA moneymen now control CBS, Fox News, X-Twitter, the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, the owners of nearly 400 television stations … and have effectively neutered ABC and ESPN.

This week Trump focused on 

America’s favorite unlicensed pharmacist didn’t seem to be worried that his government is about to shut down because his underlings in Congress can’t enact a budget…and he’s too busy to negotiate with Democrats.

Not to outdone, Michigan statehouse Republicans are doing the same to the state. Instead of working to actually fund education and the rest of state government, a lot of them spent a few days on Mackinac Island figuring out how to return to full power in Lansing. And topping off the week, Governor Whitmer said “no thanks” to Trump’s offer of a military invasion of Detroit.

Joining the podcast this week: an unlikely victim of the post-Charlie Kirk murder cancel culture – former GOP campaign guru and now former MSNBC political analyst Matthew Dowd. The longtime Republican campaign consultant was dumped by MSNBC, a supposedly liberal media outlet, for his comments on the Kirk shooting. Matthew was the chief strategist for President George W. Bush’s 2004 reelection campaign. A native of Detroit, he began his lifelong work in politics as a volunteer for Michigan Congressman William Broomfield.

He was later a longtime political contributor for ABC News. In 2021, he launched a short-lived, unsuccessful bid for lieutenant governor of Texas. Dowd joined MSNBC as a political contributor and analyst in 2022.

This episode is sponsored in part by

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This week’s show is sponsored in part by

One sure sign you’ve got a dictatorship in the making is when the would-be dictator does everything in his power to crush the ability of his opponents to be heard. In today’s Russia, those dissidents have a history of falling out of windows or suddenly becoming deathly ill. In North Korea, even the dictator’s family members end up dead. In the United States, Donald Trump is using all the tools at his disposal – legal and illegal – to silence his critics.

In a break from our usual format, we’re going to focus our opening discussion on one issue: Trump’s assault on free speech. Later in the podcast we’ll get into the Lansing budget mess and Michigan politics when we’ll be joined by veteran Lansing reporter and columnist Kyle Melinn.

As we look at the death of free speech, We begin with the latest example; the attack on late night comedian Jimmy Kimmel, misrepresenting a Kimmel joke and using the threat of broadcast license revocations to muscle Kimmel off the air.

Another favorite Trump tactic: bogus lawsuits, known as SLAPPs. The latest is his laughable $15-billion defamation lawsuit against the New York Times. Mark Brewer discusses the endless bogus lawsuits.

Other tactics of an aspiring dictator:

Government turmoil isn’t limited to Washington D.C. We have a few problems in Lansing as well. The new state fiscal year starts in two weeks and it’s increasingly likely there will be no budget adopted, and much of state government will shut down. What does it mean for the people of Michigan? Joining the discussion is someone who knows as much as anybody about the workings of state government: Kyle Melinn. Kyle is the editor and Vice President of the MIRS Newsletter, a daily on-line political news service covering state government and politics.A professional journalist for 20 years who has covered the state Capitol for the last 13, Kyle hosts a weekly podcast called MIRS Monday, available at iTunes. Before MIRS, Kyle served as a freelance writer for the Boston Herald and as a senior editor for SchoolSports.com. He is a graduate of Michigan State University, who grew up in Byron Center.

Matt Davies:Newsday

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