The most played episodes among Podcast App listeners.

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   Number 1: Will the GOP Leave DC Already? What You Should Be Watching For in Iran (with Riley Blanton)

   House Republicans just returned from five weeks in their districts, and there’s already a rumor that they’re about to pull an “Abe Simpson” — walk into Washington, turn around, and leave again. They’ll vote on a Senate-approved stopgap funding bill to keep the government open through December, probably with Democratic support, and pass a few messaging bills about how they don’t like socialism. Beyond that, expectations are low. They want to leave until November 9, after the midterms. The reasoning is simple: If they’re not going to accomplish anything in this divided, fractious Congress, why stay? Republicans have such a thin majority that they can’t agree on much or put Democrats on defense beyond the broadest, most useless bills. Their members would rather go home, campaign, press the flesh, shake hands, and kiss babies because they believe they’re fighting for their political lives. The mood inside the Republican conference is bleak, bleak, bleak. One member holds a district Trump won by 10 points and the Republican candidate previously carried by 16. Their internal polling now has that Republican ahead by one point. Uno. These are the seats nobody treats as toss-ups until a wave turns them into toss-ups. Republicans are comparing their internal numbers in the hallways, and they don’t like what they see. Politics Politics Politics is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. In 2022, Republican leaders told members they’d win the House by 20 seats; they won by five. The rule of thumb for some members now is to take whatever leadership says and subtract 20. Leadership says Republicans will hold by five, so members are preparing for Democrats to win a 15-seat majority. If Trump-plus-10 districts are already looking like toss-ups, they want to be home doing everything possible to eke out a victory. They probably won’t leave immediately. Going home would be a gigantic red flag from leadership, and fundraisers are already scheduled throughout Washington. Members might need time in their districts, but they also need money for television and streaming ads. That means showing up and giving face time to the people attending those fundraisers. The wild card is Big Chungus. If Trump says Congress should go home, Mike Johnson will face enormous pressure to disperse everybody. If Trump says members should remain in Washington, they’ll stay. From everything I’m hearing, there isn’t much good news on the Republican side. My personal barometer between WINO and My Blue Heaven is swinging left. Chapters 00:00:00 - Intro 00:04:29 - House Republicans 00:12:53 - Update 00:14:25 - Mail-in Ballots 00:19:15 - Bonds 00:21:51 - Ballroom 00:25:46 - Interview with Riley Blanton 01:12:43 - Wrap-up This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.politicspoliticspolitics.com/subscribe

   September 01, 2026·1h 18min
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   Number 2: Why Trump’s $5,000 Check Won’t Happen. How the Internet Mixed Politics with Fandom (with Katherine Dee)

   Trump says he’ll give every American $5,000 if Republicans retain the House and Senate. That’s about $1.3 trillion, and the country is already $40 trillion in the hole. Is it a bribe? No — well, yes. Is it a political bribe? It’s unconventional, but I have a hard time separating it from politicians promising government services and warning that those services will disappear if you vote for the other party. The more important point is that even if Republicans keep Congress, this ain’t happening. There’s no political will for it, and I highly doubt the votes exist. So why are we talking about it? Because Trump would rather have a conversation about whether a $1.3 trillion gift is feasible than talk about $4 gas, high diesel prices, inflation, or the state of the economy. Promising $5,000 reframes him as somebody who understands that people need cash. After a brief improvement in economic sentiment, things look dour again, and Trump now says the Iran war will end shortly after the midterms. Even through his rose-colored glasses that sometimes turn BS brown, he’s admitting this won’t be over before November. Politics Politics Politics is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Republicans are heading into a massive fight. New polling has Sherrod Brown in Ohio and James Talarico in Texas ahead by four or five points, while Lindsey Graham’s sister leads by only two in South Carolina. I’d still bet on Ken Paxton over Talarico, but Talarico is moving toward the center. He says he opposes trans athletes competing where fairness and safety are at stake and would sign a law banning sex changes for minors. Not long ago, that would’ve been called an attack on trans children. Now a more liberal candidate is saying it because he believes the issue is an exhaust port on his Death Star. I’m ending this week more inclined toward My Blue Heaven than I was on Labor Day. The White House is also promising $500 rebates to roughly one million Obamacare customers in 30 states who were allegedly overcharged. That’s separate from Trump’s $5,000 promise, and neither announcement means money has reached anybody. This looks like an answer to Democrats’ warnings about the expiration of Obamacare subsidies — one of the issues that drove the earlier government shutdown. Is it really going to happen? I have no idea. But it puts the administration where it wants to be: talking about what it’ll do for voters who are hurting for money. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court has interrupted Republicans’ effort to use a new congressional map in Missouri, clearing the way for the older map approved by the state Supreme Court. Republicans wanted one more House seat from the redraw, but election officials need usable instructions before ballots go out. The broader redistricting push was hot and heavy a few months ago, but it was also slapdash. That’s the Trump administration: Somebody has an idea, everybody says it’s great, they start doing it, and they figure out whether it’s possible about halfway through. John Fetterman also appeared by recorded video at the Republican midterm convention to introduce fellow Pennsylvania senator Dave McCormick. Fetterman called himself a Democrat, praised McCormick, and discussed working with Trump to protect steel jobs. If you think that means he’s switching parties, he poured cold water on it. He remains a proud Democrat and says he votes with the party 80 to 90 percent of the time. But imagine Democrats reach 50 Senate seats and Fetterman becomes vote 51. I’d love to ask Abdul El-Sayed which he’d prefer: a Democratic majority that depends on Fetterman, or Fetterman revealing his “true colors” and becoming a Republican. Chapters 00:00:00 - Intro 00:02:11 - Trump’s $5,000 Promise 00:06:30 - Polling 00:09:42 - Interview with Katherine Dee 00:31:29 - Trump’s $500 Refunds 00:33:09 - Supreme Court 00:34:29 - John Fetterman 00:36:29 - Interview with Katherine Dee, con’t 00:58:42 - Wrap-up This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.politicspoliticspolitics.com/subscribe

   September 10, 2026·1h 3min
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   Number 3: Is Trump Out of Ideas? How Election Fundamentals Will Impact the Midterms (with Gabe Fleisher)

   I’m struggling to find anything that dissuades me from a position I think is probably too aggressive: Democrats are going to ransack. They’re going to pillage. They’re going to take things that aren’t usually theirs. The polling, the energy, and the environment all point in that direction, and I haven’t seen the midair maneuvering Republicans would need to put together a coherent message. Their argument is basically, “You’re really going to turn the keys back over to those guys? They’re lunatics and they’ve learned no lessons.” That’ll work with some of the base, but I don’t think it’ll be enough. I took a random sampling of 15 polls and looked at the five issues Americans say they care about most. Number five is foreign affairs and war. Number four is democracy and democratic values. Number three is healthcare. Number two is immigration. Number one, of course, is the economy. Foreign affairs and war aren’t showing up because people are pumped about the war in Iran. Democracy is an almost entirely Democratic-signifying issue, and voters nearly always trust Democrats more on healthcare. Politics Politics Politics is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Immigration is the first good news for Republicans because nobody trusts Democrats on immigration. Some Democratic voters are worried about overenforcement, and even a Republican congresswoman from Miami has told Trump that he’s listening to the wrong advisers and going too far. But by and large, Republicans can argue that they’re correcting something that’s been wrong for a long time. Then you get to the economy, which is normally sewn into the DNA of the Republican Party. The problem is that when voters say “economy” right now, they mean inflation and gas prices — two areas where things have come in hotter than Trump swore they would. The rest of the top issues include crime, Social Security, housing affordability, government ethics and reform, the SAVE America Act, Trump himself, and abortion. I don’t see many things there that Republicans want to discuss. I see plenty that Democrats would like to discuss because Republicans have taken a position and now have to defend their solutions. It’s easier to run against a problem than defend a solution, and Trump is very good at doing things. He explores every legal option to do a thing, which creates a lot of surface area for Democrats to run against. Across the last 10 midterms, the five most common issues were crime and drugs, immigration, foreign affairs and war, healthcare, and the economy. The economy appeared in every one. But some issues that used to matter have disappeared. Morals and family values were major concerns in 1994, 1998, and 2006, but they’ve completely fallen off the political radar. If anything, shedding the morals-and-family-values label helped make the Republican Party more potent. Gun policy was important in 2018 and 2022 but didn’t make the current top 10. The federal budget deficit made the list only in 1986. Nobody cares about it now, which is why nobody is particularly interested in changing it. In 2018, the top issue was healthcare, followed by immigration, the economy, and gun policy. In 2022, it was inflation, followed by abortion, crime, gun policy, and immigration. This year looks a little more like the Bush era, with foreign wars and foreign policy returning to the center. But the biggest difference is enthusiasm. Democrats are doing jumping jacks, keeping their heart rates up, ready to run through the door like the Kool-Aid Man to vote. I don’t see that same enthusiasm among Republicans, and I don’t see a message telling voters what Republicans will do about the things they care about most — at least not yet. Chapters 00:00:00 - Intro 00:02:40 - Midterm Issues 00:18:04 - Update 00:19:55 - Paramount Settlement 00:23:09 - Trump and Mamdani 00:27:17 - Trump TV and the Press Pool 00:31:50 - Interview with Gabe Fleisher 01:16:09 - Wrap-up This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.politicspoliticspolitics.com/subscribe

   September 22, 2026·1h 20min
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   Number 4: Is Iran Making Trump Into Jimmy Carter? Making Sense of Talarico’s Texas Pivots (with Michael Cohen)

   When it comes to the war in Iran, my supposition is that the economic negativity driving the country — and creating an environment where Democrats could do very well in the midterms — is entirely about one thing: the price of gas. The war is incredibly unpopular, but it’s different from the war in Iraq. Both were very expensive, but Iraq brought coffins back at a scale we haven’t seen here. The biggest difference is what Americans are paying at the pump. According to AAA’s live average, gas is at $4.44 nationally. It’s higher in states like California and New York, but even here in Texas, where we have relatively low gas prices, it’s edging toward $4. During the memorandum of understanding, that son of a b***h kissed the twos. Before the war in Iran, it was sitting around the twos. It’s not good right now. The question is whether this is Iran’s play. Iran is extraordinarily sophisticated in its understanding of the American electorate and the American democratic system. Are they timing their greatest chaos in the region to spike the price of oil as high as possible during election season? The United States appeared to have established a flow of tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, but now we’ve seen missiles and drones fired at American vessels and major damage to Saudi Arabia’s 745-mile east-west pipeline. Politics Politics Politics is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. That pipeline can move four to five million barrels a day — roughly 4 to 5 percent of the global supply. Saudi Aramco has already told three European refiners they won’t receive their full September allotments, forcing them to buy emergency stock on the open market. Because oil is a globally traded commodity, that drives up the price. Chevron CEO Mike Wirth has warned that stockpile releases and access to previously restricted oil stored abroad had constrained prices, but those buffers are now played out. Iran has been warning about $200-a-barrel oil since the beginning of the conflict. The obvious historical comparison is Jimmy Carter. But this isn’t 1979. Headline inflation was 11.8 percent then, compared with 3.4 percent now, and unemployment was 6 percent instead of 4.1 percent. We’re doing better by those measures, but will any of it matter? Gas was 98 cents a gallon in August 1979. In August 2026, it was $4.20, and it’s even higher now. The sunniest version of Trump’s tariff policy was that he’d become the greatest energy president of all time and drive gas prices low enough to give him room to negotiate better trade deals. All of that went out the window with the rush into Iran. Even if you don’t totally hate the war from a foreign-policy standpoint, you can understand that this is political poison. It’s strychnine for the average voter. Electing Trump was, in part, a cry for economic relief from people who didn’t trust Joe Biden to provide it. The numbers currently suggest Democrats will receive that same benefit of the doubt. Whether it holds when people vote is the question. Chapters 00:00:00 - Intro 00:03:25 - Gas Prices 00:16:34 - Update 00:16:59 - Data Centers 00:18:20 - ICE 00:19:34 - Kennedy Center 00:21:46 - Interview with Michael Cohen 01:00:02 - Wrap-up This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.politicspoliticspolitics.com/subscribe

   September 17, 2026·1h 4min
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   Number 5: Ohio Governor Ads Get Spicy! Crypto, Congress, and Campaigning for President (with Tim Ryan)

   The Republican Governors Association is already throwing downfield in Ohio. During the Ohio State–Texas game, it aired an ad attacking Amy Acton over a 2019 family dispute in which Acton’s daughter called 911, both adults acknowledged drinking, and Acton said she’d taken prescription migraine medication. The ad also called Acton a coward for refusing to debate Vivek Ramaswamy. This is earwly to throw out a smear like “you’re an alcoholic.” If the only thing Acton needs to do to beat that charge is not act like an alcoholic in public, she’ll likely be able to beat it. Acton is further ahead in this race than Republicans would like to see in a state Donald Trump won by the amount he did, so they’re trying to change the math of the game. I don’t think this is going to be enough. What Vivek really wants is a debate. The thing that put him on the map wasn’t his campaign ads or gigantic crowds — I was at the pizza places where he held events in Iowa, and they weren’t packed to the rafters. He built his reputation by fricasseeing Nikki Haley. He ent there, as the kids say. Now he desperately wants Acton onstage so he can drag the race into the mud, throw Republican red meat at her, and relitigate COVID. If Acton believes she’s ahead, her answer is simple: You can keep that debate spirit to yourself, Vivek. Politics Politics Politics is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court has kept the Trump administration’s new mail-in-ballot restrictions from taking effect for the midterms. The existing block remains in place, allowing election officials to continue their current procedures. This is about where I thought things would land. We won’t have to worry about it for the midterms, but the broader fight will continue afterward. If Trump loses control of the House and enters the back half of his lame-duck term, his attention is going to turn toward executive orders like this. Texas Democrat Al Green is also forcing the House to address another effort to impeach Donald Trump. The real political tension isn’t on the Republican side. Democrats have to decide how much they want to tell voters that regaining the House means going back to 2018 through 2020 — impeachment, impeachment, impeachment. Did that really move the needle? Did it get anybody the political wins they wanted? Not really. Republicans would love to remind voters that Democrats just want power again. Finally, Mitch McConnell is back in the Senate after months away. Exactly how much Mitch is in the McConnell, I don’t know. Even in the worst video I saw, he seemed north of Dianne Feinstein — not a high bar, but nothing involving age in the Senate is. He doesn’t appear to be in fighting shape, but he’s a warm body, and Republicans need that vote on a lot of business between now and January. Chapters 00:00 - Intro 02:41 - Anti-Amy Acton Ads 07:18 - Tim Ryan on Crypto and Clarity Act 24:39 - Update 25:40 - Mail-in Ballots 27:20 - Al Green 29:02 - Mitch McConnell 31:58 - Tim Ryan on Political Careers and Running for President 53:04 - Wrap-up This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.politicspoliticspolitics.com/subscribe

   September 15, 2026·57min
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