Half the Answer

Trent and Caitlin talk to Chris Geidner of Law Dork about the absolute deluge of legal news that seems to be crashing over us like a tsunami. What are the current assaults on our constitutional rights? What are judges and lawmakers doing to defend those rights? Why is Mike Johnson pretending the Fourth Amendment doesn’t exist?

Resources: https://www.lawdork.com/https://bsky.app/profile/lawdorknews.bsky.socialhttps://bsky.app/profile/chrisgeidner.bsky.socialMike Johnson being wrong about the 4th amendment: https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3mdxoltnsyz2aPerdomo decision: https://www.scotusblog.com/cases/case-files/noem-v-perdomo/Bondi demands voter rolls: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2026/01/pam-bondi-letter-to-minnesota-voter-roll-data-alex-pretti-ice-midterms-trump/MN US attorneys resigning: https://www.startribune.com/another-wave-of-departures-in-minnesotas-us-attorneys-office/601575569Mark Zaid security clearance case: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/13/trump-mark-zaid-restore-clearanceTulsi Gabbard at Georgia elections office raid: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/29/tulsi-gabbard-georgia-fbi-elections-raid

Caitlin and Trent talk with journalist Gillian Brockell about her work tracking the flights and airline companies that move people in unsafe conditions to third-party recipient countries, where they will be imprisoned, mistreated, tortured, and possibly sent to their country of origin in violation of international law.

Resources

ICE flight monitor https://humanrightsfirst.org/ice-flight-monitor/

Unsafe Conditions on Deportation planes: https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-ice-air-deportation-flights

Gillian "interferes" in illegal ICE flight https://bsky.app/profile/gbrockell.bsky.social/post/3lpnjho77jc25

Linda Brent (Harriet Jacobs) autobiography https://bookshop.org/a/115699/9780486419312

Protest Key Lime Air Jan. 31 in Alamosa https://arkvalleyvoice.com/demonstration-against-key-lime-airs-ice-connections-set-for-january-31-in-alamosa/

Key Lime Air https://boulderreportinglab.org/2025/12/28/cu-boulder-keeps-key-lime-air-contract-as-denver-ends-its-deal-over-ice-flights/

Denver Air Connections https://cnycentral.com/news/nation-world/denver-colorado-city-council-rejects-airline-contract-for-its-association-with-president-donald-trumps-administration-ice-immigration-agenda

Gillian's Bluesky https://bsky.app/profile/gbrockell.bsky.social

What is ICE Air? https://gillianbrockell.ghost.io/what-is-ice-air/

Trent and Caitlin ask Evan Urquhart about his 2025 wrap up piece on Assigned Media: "The Year We Lost Everything." They discuss the need to take stock of where we are on trans rights, autonomy and the various freedoms we hold dear, and the value of acknowledging that we are not hysterical or out of touch with reality when we feel those freedoms being wrenched from our grasp. We talk about the intense pressure in corporate media to maintain anti-trans bias and the wonderful work independent journalists are doing to find and share the truth.

Caitlin and Trent chat with linguistics scholars Savi Namboodiripad and Daniel Midgley on what word most exemplifies 2025. Was it a new coinage? A pre-existing word that gained a new meaning or usage this year? A word that seemed to be on everybody's lips in 2025?

Resources:

https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/word-of-the-year

"6 7" song https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07xpV4ix2K8

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/dec/27/more-than-20-of-videos-shown-to-new-youtube-users-are-ai-slop-study-finds

https://www.economist.com/culture/2025/12/03/and-the-economists-word-of-the-year-for-2025-is

https://www.dictionary.com/articles/word-of-the-year-2025

https://corp.oup.com/word-of-the-year/

https://www.cam.ac.uk/news/cambridge-dictionary-reveals-word-of-the-year-2025

https://blog.collinsdictionary.com/language-lovers/collins-word-of-the-year-2025-ai-meets-authenticity-as-society-shifts/

https://ici.radio-canada.ca/rci/en/news/2147118/is-that-grocery-product-really-canadian-or-is-it-maple-washing

"getting sendy" song https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYAQEJyqR7E

group 7 https://www.forbes.com/sites/danidiplacido/2025/10/27/tiktoks-group-7-meme-explained/

https://www.merriam-webster.com/slang/lore

https://www.merriam-webster.com/slang/unc

https://www.merriam-webster.com/slang/chopped

https://www.merriam-webster.com/slang/huzz

https://theconversation.com/the-rise-of-the-performative-male-how-young-men-are-experimenting-with-masculinity-online-268742

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/20563051221126040

https://dailyillini.com/opinions-stories/columns-opinions/culture/2025/10/25/opinion-unmasking-performative-male/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kianbakhtiari/2025/09/28/performative-males-gen-z-irony-and-the-death-of-sincerity/

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/23/us/rapture-tiktok-sept-23.html

Epstein's email simulator https://www.jmail.world/

https://othermeans.io/p/the-glonzo-strategy

https://www.theverge.com/policy/798491/frog-portland-trump-national-guard

https://the-monsters.fandom.com/wiki/The_Monsters

https://lafufu.art/blog/labubu-vs-lafufu

https://www.thelist.com/1817157/what-is-mar-a-lago-face-who-has-tried-the-trend/

https://bsky.app/profile/canadiandictionary.bsky.social/post/3m7tf3jm2fc2c

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/oprah-podcast-no-contact-adult-children-parents_n_69389e85e4b0fb6244b0daa8

https://fortune.com/2025/12/29/trump-tariffs-cost-25000-per-month-small-business-importers-center-american-progress/

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/03/trump-administration-accidentally-texted-me-its-war-plans/682151/

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/23/us/politics/doge-musk-trump-analysis.html

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-doge-government-spending-2025-b2890243.html

https://www.vox.com/culture/376401/r-word-slur-return-euphemism-treadmill-cycle

https://www.lawdork.com/p/the-kavanaugh-stop-50-days-later

https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/30/politics/trump-taco-angry-tariff

https://www.buzzfeed.com/abbyzinman/canadians-elbows-up-explainer

https://pen.org/banned-words-list/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/brucelee/2025/03/15/these-197-terms-may-trigger-reviews-of-your-nih-nsf-grant-proposals/

https://www.dailydot.com/memes/everythings-computer-trump-quote-meme/

https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/trump-promises-harsher-ice-crackdowns

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/12/27/chatgpt-suicide-openai-raine/

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/snap-welfare-queen-ai-memes-1235460824/

https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/10022/who-coined-the-phrase-rapid-unscheduled-disassembly#10219

https://www.wordorigins.org/big-list-entries/rapid-unplanned-disassembly-rud

https://becauselanguage.com/131-wotwoty-2025/

Trent and Caitlin catch up with Greg Sargent from The New Republic about his recent piece exploring the family history and ideology of Stephen Miller. How did the product of Russian Jewish refugees come to see today's refugees as incapable of integration in American society? What are the white nationalist positions on who is a real American, and how does Miller navigate his position in relation to those ideologies? Why do these unlovable jerks insist on the myth that community and empathy are suicidal?

Resources:

The New Republic: https://newrepublic.com

The Daily Blast Podcast: https://newrepublic.com/podcasts

Greg's piece on Miller: https://newrepublic.com/article/204191/stephen-miller-maga-terror-state-dark-plot

Stephen Miller on Somali immigrants: https://www.cnn.com/2025/12/11/politics/stephen-miller-trump-immigration-law-somalia

Facts about Somali community in MN: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/5-things-to-know-about-the-somali-community-in-minnesota-after-trumps-attacks

Hatemonger: https://bookshop.org/a/115699/9780062986726

When The Clock Broke: https://bookshop.org/a/115699/9781250390417

Furious Minds: https://bookshop.org/a/115699/9780691255262

DHS Twitter Account: https://archive.ph/Vg8c7

Stephen Miller's cousin: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/stephen-miller-cousin-alisa-kasmer/

Caitlin and Trent speak with Mark Copelovitch, a political science professor from University of Wisconsin–Madison. They discuss the problem of a world power going rogue, the lack of viable responses for countries like Venezuela and Denmark, and the costs to international trust when the US is so unreliable.

Resources:

https://polisci.wisc.edu/staff/mark-copelovitch/

https://www.markcopelovitch.com/

https://bsky.app/profile/mcopelov.bsky.social

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfXZxn2z8U0

https://archive.is/OriWG

Trent and Caitlin check in with the Handbasket’s Marisa Kabas about the year that has been the first week of 2026. What are we doing in Venezuela, and why is corporate media being so weird about it? What are the ethics of publishing scoops that involve military actions? Why are we doing our war crimes from a resort ballroom in Florida?

Resources:

https://www.thehandbasket.co/

https://www.semafor.com/article/01/03/2026/new-york-times-washington-post-held-off-on-reporting-venezuela-raid

https://www.cnn.com/2026/01/05/politics/video/trump-mar-a-lago-war-room-maduro-venezuela-vrtc

https://www.wsj.com/world/americas/trumps-donroe-doctrine-aims-to-dominate-the-americas-b31208dd?mod=Searchresults&pos=3&page=1

Trent and Caitlin talk with philosophy of science expert Nathan Oseroff-Spicer about his review of the book "The War On Science," how the book misses the mark, what strategies its authors use to downplay the threats from the right and fabricate a threat from the left, and what motivations could possibly lead thirty-nine scholars to create such a meritless collection of propaganda under the leadership of someone like known pest Lawrence Krauss.

Resources:

https://www.liberalcurrents.com/wars-on-science-real-and-otherwise/

https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/warscience/

https://www.dailynebraskan.com/news/administration/breaking-this-hurts-unl-eliminates-4-programs-despite-faculty-student-pleas/article_e0d11a61-0fcc-4e66-b364-d16e89bea336.html

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/ai-chatbot-journal-research-fake-citations-1235485484/

https://blog.apaonline.org/2025/11/13/llm-usage-and-manipulation-in-peer-review/

https://www.advocate.com/news/second-ou-instructor-suspended

https://www.facebook.com/OUNightlyTV/posts/pfbid02nieL7PmXwUDAnNcHzK9HLBWdCQ1EyjA7S1pDvrRxEaGw7qkqAR3oGtjXwFXkb4KBl

UPDATE: grad student no longer teaching https://www.koco.com/article/samantha-fulnecky-professor-graduate-instructor-no-longer-at-ou-oklahoma/69841882

https://pen.org/trumps-compact-for-higher-education-faq/

https://www.science.org/content/article/nsf-pares-down-grant-review-process-reducing-influence-outside-scientists

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2025/12/17/aap-hhs-funding-rfk/

https://bsky.app/profile/crampell.bsky.social/post/3ma7aivcros2a

https://hsph.harvard.edu/news/usaid-shutdown-has-led-to-hundreds-of-thousands-of-deaths/

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/rumeysa-ozturk-what-i-witnessed-inside-an-ice-womens-prison?srsltid=AfmBOoqRks5pzgFv2QyjsvuUvNt6E41InSCPQmXwWOoFvxftjMoRvkSy

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/judge-releases-palestinian-student-at-columbia-who-was-arrested-at-citizenship-interview

https://www.columbiaspectator.com/news/2025/11/20/columbia-denies-mahmoud-khalil-sipa-24-campus-access-for-planned-events-citing-security-reasons/

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/jeffrey-epstein-emails-reveal-ties-to-prominent-scientists/

Caitlin and Trent talk with Matthew Sheffield about his experiences as a former Republican strategist and the information he wants progressives to know about their strategies and successes.

Resources:

https://plus.flux.community/p/what-republicans-know

https://www.patreon.com/posts/142008768?utm_campaign=postshare_fan

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cr4qwwk0g0yo

https://www.seattletimes.com/business/sinclair-

known-for-conservative-political-tilt/

https://deadline.com/2025/12/nexstar-trump-tegna-merger-trump-1236642435/

https://www.xfang.studio/books/we-are-definitely-human-wcnat

Trent and Caitlin catch up with journalist Amanda Moore to hear about her tour of American cities that have been targeted for ICE and Border Patrol operations.

Resources:

https://www.thenation.com/article/activism/broadview-ice-cbp-gregory-bovino/

https://www.clippings.me/users/noturtlesoup17

https://www.cnn.com/2025/09/29/us/illinois-broadview-ice-protesters-charged

https://abcnews.go.com/US/border-patrol-commander-admitted-lied-tear-gas-incident/story?id=127283392

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trumps-top-border-patrol-goon-gregory-bovino-roasted-for-nazi-look/

https://www.npr.org/2025/12/02/nx-s1-5627502/national-guard-shooting-latest

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/how-plastic-whistles-are-becoming-an-anti-ice-resistance-tool-chicago-2025-10-23/

https://www.thenation.com/article/society/new-orleans-immigration-raids-operation-catahouls-crumch/