Red Flag

Week 31 of 2026: Rachel and Jordyn test Trump's promise to pay off the national debt with tariffs against CRFB's new $950 billion projection through 2036 — an $825 billion shortfall Fortune pegs at a 40 percent gap on a $39 trillion debt.

From there, they dig into the $166 billion IEEPA refund order CBP has to process by hand, the eighteen-month scramble from IEEPA to Section 122 to Section 301, and fresh lawsuits from a spice company and a watch company challenging the new tariffs. Rachel and Jordyn disagree on whether the Brazil and Canada tariffs count as any kind of silver lining, and they spar over whether Wyden's tariff-reform bill matters if leadership refuses to schedule a vote.

• CRFB's $950 billion estimate versus the $1.7 trillion original tariff revenue target
• Treasury Secretary Bessent's claim of unchanged tariff revenue, checked against the numbers
• New 10-12.5% tariff tiers and their impact on small businesses like Collective Horology
• A second refund liability stacking on top of the existing $166 billion IEEPA order
• Three concrete markers listeners can track going forward

Both hosts also admit what they got wrong about tariff durability this year. The question the episode tries to answer: if tariffs were supposed to pay down the debt, why is the government the one writing refund checks?

The Section 122 tariff's 150-day clock runs out at 12:01 a.m. Eastern on July 24, and in Week 30 of 2026, Rachel and Jordyn check whether tariff power actually reverts to Congress or the administration has a new legal doorway ready.

They trace the pivot from February's Supreme Court ruling against IEEPA tariffs to Section 122, then to a Section 301 forced-labor determination that has no rate cap and no expiration date. They also dig into a $25.6 billion net customs outflow in June, refund litigation, and a possible entry-date loophole around midnight July 24.

• Congress had 150 days of notice and took zero floor votes on Section 122
• The one active bill, the Reclaim Trade Powers Act, would restrict future tariff power rather than renew it
• Section 232 tariffs on steel, aluminum, copper, autos, and chips run in a completely separate legal lane
• Rachel argues the fiscal failure matters most; Jordyn argues the process failure has no off-ramp

If you're a conservative voter tired of being told tariffs are temporary, this episode asks: when does a 'bridge' tariff actually become permanent policy?

In Week 28 of 2026, Rachel and Jordyn dig into the Supreme Court's 6-3 ruling against Trump's tariffs and what happens next. Trump's own nominees, Gorsuch and Barrett, joined the majority, and he called them disloyal within hours.

The hosts break down the pivot to a dormant 1974 law with a hard July 24 expiration date, then trace where tariff costs actually land, according to New York Fed and Yale Budget Lab data. They also examine Trump v. Slaughter, where the same six justices expanded presidential power over independent agencies the same term they curbed him on tariffs.

Rachel and Jordyn disagree on which backup tariff tool the administration is most likely to use once Section 122 expires, with Rachel betting on Section 301 while Jordyn flags the riskier scenario of restarting the 150-day clock entirely.

• Why the July 24 deadline actually matters this time
• Who's really paying for tariffs, by the numbers
• What the Slaughter ruling means for future presidents
• Where Democrats get credit, and where they don't

The question this episode tries to answer: if the Court says Trump overstepped on tariffs, why does he end up with more power everywhere else?

Week 27 of 2026, and the Senate managed to pass and reverse a war powers vote within a single business day. This episode tracks exactly how that happened — and what it cost.

Rachel and Jordyn walk through the Iran war powers reversal vote by vote: Rand Paul and Bill Cassidy both flipped within 24 hours, a closed-door White House lunch where Trump called Cassidy a lunatic, and a private Situation Room briefing that apparently resolved Cassidy's four-month-old demand for answers. The two hosts don't fully agree on Cassidy — Rachel thinks his substantive case was correct even if his nerve failed; Jordyn is less sympathetic.

They also pull apart the $87.6 billion supplemental spending request that landed the same day as the reversal, including the Pentagon's unexplained jump from a $29 billion estimate to $67 billion with no public accounting.

The episode closes on a question Republican voters in competitive races may be asking heading into November: if a senator can be talked out of his vote with one private briefing, what exactly did the vote mean?

Week 26 of 2026, and Tucker Carlson just called the Republican Party treasonous and immoral after 35 years of defending it — then the clip sat unnoticed for four days.

Rachel and Jordyn run the receipts on Carlson's exit, Trump's Iran war promise, and a Georgia special election margin that collapsed from 37 points to 14. Rachel wants to see the label before buying the product. Jordyn thinks leaving the party is the least effective form of dissent. They agree on the number, even when they disagree on what it means.

• Carlson's verbatim apology — and why the phrasing matters more than the words
• The $300 billion Iran reconstruction fund that made both parties furious
• What the Brookings data says about non-MAGA Republican turnout heading into November
• Why the House sent members home early before the war powers vote

The question this episode tries to answer: if you're done with the GOP but have nowhere else to go, what does your vote actually do in November 2026?

Week 25 of 2026, and the House just passed a war powers resolution telling Trump to end hostilities with Iran — 215 to 208 — with four Republicans crossing the aisle to make it happen. This episode tracks the receipts on executive war authority, from the 2011 GOP letter demanding Obama comply with the 60-day clock on Libya to Speaker Johnson's claim that the U.S. is not at war, made the same day Trump called it a war on camera.

Rachel and Jordyn break down what the War Powers Resolution actually requires, why every president finds a way to argue around it, and what it cost the four Republicans who voted yes anyway. They also give Democrats their due — the constitutional argument is consistent, even if the party loyalty flips depending on who holds the White House.

• The White House's 'no present hostilities' argument is nearly word-for-word from the Obama Libya playbook
• Thomas Massie voted yes after Trump's PAC had already targeted his seat — and lost his primary without reversing the vote
• A concurrent resolution carries no force of law, but a formal congressional record still has legal and political weight
• The Senate vote is the next test: four Republican senators already moved to discharge the resolution from committee

The question this episode tries to answer: if you believe in limited government, what exactly does that mean when your own party controls the White House and is running a war Congress never authorized?

Week 24 of 2026, and Rachel and Jordyn are tracking one specific promise: Donald Trump said no new wars, then told Meet the Press he never said that.

This episode runs the numbers on Operation Epic Fury at day 100 — $11.3 billion in the first six days, a $200 billion supplemental request with no clear answers for GOP fiscal hawks, and gas prices Moody's says cost the average household $750 this year alone. When a reporter asked Trump whether Americans' finances were motivating him to make a deal, he said, on the record, "not even a little bit."

Rachel and Jordyn also cover where they think the anti-war left got the constitutional argument right, what the JCPOA withdrawal promised versus what it delivered eight years later, and why the FY2027 defense budget creates a real identity problem for a movement that ran on small government.

• The Pentagon's own cost estimates versus what Congress was told
• Four House Republicans voted yes on the war powers resolution — who they are and what it cost them
• The nuclear file: still unresolved after $25 billion spent
• Two concrete actions listeners can take before the supplemental vote

The question this episode tries to answer: if the goal was always worth it, why won't anyone in this administration do the math out loud?

Week 23 of 2026, and this episode runs the full receipt on Trump's Epstein transparency promise — what he said, what he signed, and what actually got released.

Rachel and Jordyn break down how a law that passed 427 to 1 ended up meaning almost nothing in practice: 3.5 million pages released with 81 of 82 pages redacted in a key document, a DOJ that logged lawmakers' search histories in a reading room, and an attorney general who showed up to a congressional hearing holding a printed record of a legislator's searches.

• The Epstein Files Transparency Act explicitly banned withholding documents on embarrassment grounds — and had no enforcement mechanism.
• Boebert, Mace, and MTG all broke publicly with Trump over the release, calling it inadequate or worse.
• Thomas Massie lost the most expensive House primary in U.S. history — over $34 million — partly for co-writing and enforcing that law.
• Massie's concession speech warned that a legislature that always votes with the president produces a king.

The question the episode keeps returning to: if your own side passed the law, spent the political capital, and still got stonewalled — who exactly is protecting the people still on those pages?

Week 22 of 2026, Rachel and Jordyn go through PolitiFact's MAGA-Meter — a scorecard tracking 75 of Trump's second-term promises — after Trump told a Detroit crowd in January that he had kept every single one of them.

The numbers say otherwise. About 19% rate as kept. Roughly a third are stalled. Electricity prices, groceries, and housing all moved in the wrong direction. The Department of Education still exists. The Ukraine war is still going. And nearly 590,000 people paid deposits on a Trump-branded phone that still hasn't shipped.

Rachel and Jordyn don't agree on everything here. Jordyn is willing to credit the promises that did land. Rachel keeps returning to the stalls with no White House action at all — which she calls the most damning category on the scorecard.

• The Tax Foundation put the cost of Trump's proposed $2,000 tariff dividend at up to $607 billion against roughly $158 billion in new tariff revenue
• The Trump Mobile T1 was marketed as Made in America — that language was quietly changed after $59 million in deposits were collected
• Trump's own supporters are now publicly demanding delivery on the phone, the tariff checks, and other promises

The question this episode tries to answer: if the promises that actually mattered to conservative voters — lower prices, less government, real money back — haven't come through, what exactly was the deal?

Week 21 of 2026, Rachel and Jordyn are running the receipts on tariffs — specifically the promise that foreign countries would foot the bill, not American families.

They break down the Tax Foundation's findings on household costs, the Supreme Court's 6-3 ruling striking down IEEPA tariffs, and what happened hours later when the administration reached for a different statute. The courts keep saying no. Collections continue anyway.

The hosts don't fully agree here. Jordyn grants there's a defensible history for targeted industrial tariffs. Rachel doesn't buy it at scale. Both agree the IEEPA emergency framing was indefensible — and that movement conservatives were too quiet too late.

• U.S. households absorbed an estimated $1,000 in 2025 tariff costs, with projections reaching $1,500
• The trade deficit — the central justification — barely moved
• Tariff lobbying revenues spiked 496% while manufacturing jobs declined
• Section 301 investigations are now the administration's legal fallback, with no expiration date

The question the episode tries to answer: if tariffs were supposed to bring back jobs and lower the trade deficit, why are working-class households the ones paying?