In this episode, Alex starts by brushing over the election in Turkey that went into a runoff on Sunday. Unfortunately, Erdogan won once again and is now going to enter into his third decade as the leader of Turkey. Alex questions whether the election was truly fair, but either way he knows that it will be bad for democracy and bad news for secularism. Next, Alex dances in a small puddle of Schadenfreude because Texas’ Attorney General, Ken Paxton, was impeached for violating numerous policies involving a powerful real estate developer. Moderate Republicans even voted to impeach Paxton as MAGA Republicans are threatening those that voted to impeach him. As the impeachment now moves to the senate for the trial, Alex is worried that Paxton could still survive. Finally, Alex is surprised but happy that Joe Biden and Kevin McCarthy ended up striking a deal over the debt ceiling debacle. After all the chaos and looming deadline, the deal is actually not bad for either side and has some moderate spending cuts along with sustained programs that Biden pushed forward in the Inflation Reduction Act. Alex argues that the agreement was good for the center of American politics but could be bad for the Republicans.