The Erick Erickson Show

Erick breaks down the numbers in the Georgia governor race, where Republican Rick Jackson has reserved $40.5 million in ad time against Keisha Lance Bottoms and her $42,000, and calls Jackson's foster care and Atlanta riot spots the best political ads of the cycle. Then to Michigan, where Mike Rogers is sitting on opposition research that has Abdul El-Sayed in his own words saying the government overfunds breast cancer research, and to Texas and Florida, where James Talarico and Angie Nixon are handing Republicans the tape. Plus callers on Iran's enriched uranium buried under Pickaxe Mountain, why America cannot refine its own sweet crude, and Saudi Arabia firing a Chinese made Dongfeng missile in Yemen.

• Rick Jackson's $40.5 million ad reservation versus Keisha Lance Bottoms' $42,000, and why the Georgia governor race is not close on money
• Why Jackson's positive foster care ads let his negative Atlanta riot ads land without raising his own negatives
• Mike Rogers, Abdul El-Sayed, and the coming breast cancer research attack aimed at Michigan's white women voters
• James Talarico's AI generated attack ads in Texas versus Florida Republicans simply rolling tape on Angie Nixon and David Jolly's money problem
• Iran's enriched uranium under Pickaxe Mountain, Kharg Island, the Bab al-Mandab choke point, and Brad Thor's "Choke Point"
• Sports betting's spread through ESPN and golf, the 59 percent checking account gap, and Sydney Sweeney's newest ad controversy

Breaking news opens the hour: the Federal Reserve under Chairman Kevin Warsh votes 12 to 0 to raise interest rates a quarter point, the first hike in more than three years, with the dot plot signaling another to come and the inflation target pushed out to 2029. Erick Erickson then turns to the horseshoe theory tying together the Nazi curious weirdos on the right and the effective altruism crowd at Anthropic who want you to worry about the wellbeing of AI chatbots, and why both groups are really just asking to be put in charge of your life. Plus Xi Jinping appearing to fall ill at the BRICS summit in India, the purge of his own generals, Mitch McConnell's decline, and Susie Wiles announcing she is cancer free.

• The Federal Reserve's unanimous 12 to 0 quarter point rate hike, the 3.75 to 4 percent target range, Kevin Warsh declining to submit a dot, and PCE inflation now projected at 3.7 percent
• Horseshoe theory in action: Charles Haywood and the American Reformer and Claremont Institute crowd on the right, the effective altruism movement and Dario Amodei's Anthropic on the left, and why both want to decide for your family
• Why Erick Erickson opposes AI regulation, how incumbents use regulation to kill competition, Mark Zuckerberg and Meta's quiet safety review, and why free market competition beats Chinese one party rule
• Xi Jinping's apparent health scare at the BRICS summit as Narendra Modi pauses his remarks, Gordon Chang's stroke speculation, the purge of Xi's own generals, and China's real estate and debt crisis
• Events, dear boy, events: Harold Macmillan's line applied to Vladimir Putin, Mohammed bin Salman, Iran, Mitch McConnell, Brian Johnson's quest to beat the clock, and Susie Wiles announcing she is cancer free

Erick makes the case that the AI safety panic is regulatory capture dressed up as the apocalypse: Anthropic, racing toward an IPO and burning cash on GPUs and data centers, wants Washington to freeze its competitors in place before open source models from Meta catch up. He plays Kara Swisher's nuclear nonproliferation analogy on CNN and dismantles it with the history of the China Syndrome, Three Mile Island, and the 100 nuclear plants America never built, then plays David Sacks calling Dario Amodei's bluff. The back half is a full teardown of effective altruism, the Sam Bankman Fried utilitarian cult now running AI safety, complete with shrimp welfare and a Beth Barnes TED talk.

• AI as a math equation, not a god: why the doomers keep building what they claim will kill us
• Anthropic's IPO, GPU costs, closed models versus Meta's open source, and regulation as a moat
• Kara Swisher's nuclear analogy, the China Syndrome, Three Mile Island, and the Soviet funded anti nuclear pivot to climate change
• David Sacks and JD Vance on the AI Trojan horse: if you believe it ends humanity, why are you running the company
• Effective altruism, Sam Bankman Fried, William MacAskill, Beth Barnes, and shrimp welfare as moral math, plus a preview of tomorrow's newsletter naming names on the right

Erick returns to Beau French and the Indian American Longhorns fans in Stetsons to argue that a legitimate grievance about H-1B visa abuse is being allowed to rot into racism, and he warns that America is walking the same road that produced the AfD and Europe's far right. Then a hard look at the numbers: the New York Times and Siena College poll has Democrats up 51 to 43 on the generic ballot, President Trump at 38 percent approval, 31 percent on the war in Iran and 28 percent on cost of living, with Nate Cohn drawing the 2006 comparison. The bond market is doing its own voting, with the 10 year Treasury yield at a 19 year high, the Dow off more than 400 points, and crude at 106 dollars a barrel.

• Beau French, the University of Texas, and why assimilated American kids became a target for the anti DEI right
• Europe's far right, no go zones, the British rape gangs, and what happens when elites refuse to fix immigration
• Real H-1B visa abuse: the Disney layoffs, universities importing cheap labor, the "unique skills" dodge, and Erick's own immigration law practice stories
• The New York Times and Siena poll, Nate Cohn's 2006 parallel, JD Vance campaigning in Kansas, and why Erick still says do not panic
• James Talarico on parents and gender transition, Ken Paxton, Susan Collins, John Sununu, and the redistricting red wall
• The bond market rejecting Washington, the 10 year Treasury at a 19 year high, and Anduril's drone challenge to Lockheed Martin and Raytheon

Erick opens on a religious liberty case the Supreme Court has just agreed to hear, and it is one he says he could not believe was real: University Heights, Ohio, a Cleveland suburb, threatened Daniel Grand with jail, sent police to monitor his house, and encouraged neighbors to report "unauthorized prayer activity" after he tried to gather ten Orthodox Jews for a minyan on the Sabbath, with neighbors telling him "we don't want your kind here" because they feared the neighborhood would be labeled Jewish. He walks it back through Kelvin Cochran, the Atlanta fire chief fired over his Sunday school book, Jack Phillips and the Colorado Civil Rights Commission, and RLUIPA. The second half is the Supreme Court blocking the Trump administration's Postal Service ballot mail rule, with Erick taking the side of Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Roberts and Amy Coney Barrett against Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, and asking Republicans a simple question: do you want Barack Obama's Postal Service holding a barcode that says this ballot belongs to this Republican?

• Daniel Grand, University Heights, Ohio, and a city using its police force to watch an Orthodox Jewish family for unauthorized prayer, now headed to the Supreme Court
• Kelvin Cochran, Jack Phillips, the Colorado Civil Rights Commission, Charlie Hebdo, and the argument from "You Will Be Made to Care" that the difference between the two persecutions is the sword
• The Postal Service ballot rule struck down: Alito and Thomas in dissent, four conservatives in the majority, and Erick's Lois Lerner and IRS warning about who controls the machinery next time
• A preview of tomorrow's newsletter naming the money behind the anti-Semitic turn on the right, the Franco admirers, and the effort to capture the Southern Baptist Convention and the Presbyterian Church in America
• John Kennedy grilling FBI Director Kash Patel over a hiring rule change on bestiality, plus breaking news: a Kansas man charged over threats to kill Ben Shapiro, a Russian murder for hire indictment in the Southern District of New York, and a disrupted ISIS plot in Philadelphia

Erick walks through regulatory capture in real time: Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei's "We Must Pace the Frontier" essay, the coordinated Jacob Coxson resignation rollout in the Wall Street Journal, and the Bernie Sanders and Greg Casar bill to create a cabinet level AI agency. He traces the money from Dustin Moskovitz, Open Philanthropy, and the Survival and Flourishing Fund back to the same people who own Anthropic, then explains why Meta and Mark Zuckerberg's open source models are the real competitive threat and why nobody is asking for strict liability. In the second half he takes apart Texas Railroad Commission candidate Beau French for a racist tweet about Indian American students at the University of Texas, and argues the right is repeating the identity politics mistake that cost the left two elections.

• Regulatory capture explained through AT&T and the FCC, the railroads and the Interstate Commerce Commission, the airlines and the Civil Aeronautics Board, and the insurance industry writing the Affordable Care Act
• The Jacob Coxson resignation, the Hugging Face incident, Anthropic, OpenAI, METR, and the donor network funding both the doomers and the companies demanding regulation
• Why Meta and Mark Zuckerberg's open models are the actual target, the Anthropic IPO, and why Anthropic and OpenAI want regulation instead of Hammurabi style strict liability
• Beau French, the Texas Railroad Commission, and the University of Texas photo: the real UT Austin demographic numbers, Greg Abbott's response, and the H-1B visa abuse that has a kernel of truth inside the race baiting
• Tropic Thunder, Kirk Lazarus, and the warning to Republicans chasing algorithm revenue, plus Tom Tiffany's plane crash landing in Lake Wausau and the Cowboys losing to the Giants

Erick opens with a progressive tech writer's essay about neighbors named Bob and Van, men whose politics never came up because politics was not the whole of life, and turns it into an argument that social media has catechized both parties out of normalcy. He plays Bill Maher's Real Time monologue on radical Islamism, Osama bin Laden's polling among young Americans, and the parallel between 2020 stolen election claims and Gaza genocide claims as tribal loyalty tests, then walks the Senate Leadership Fund's $25 million ad buy across seven states and explains what the missing Georgia money says about Mike Collins, Jon Ossoff, and the AI generated attack ad nobody asked for. He closes on Ken Paxton's AI generated James Talarico ad, Abdul El-Sayed's refusal to answer for Hasan Piker in Michigan, and President Trump lifting tariffs on Irish whiskey as a favor.

TOPICS

• Where have all the normal people gone: the Bob and Van essay, Lindsay Clancy defenders on TikTok, Beau French and the University of Texas photo, and why normal people who work, watch football, and skip conventions still decide elections
• Bill Maher on Real Time: radical Islamism versus Western liberalism, one in five young Americans with a favorable view of Osama bin Laden, Luigi Mangione, and the stolen election and Gaza genocide as matching tribal loyalty tests
• Senate Leadership Fund drops $25 million across Ohio, North Carolina, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, New Hampshire, and Alaska, with nothing for Mike Collins in Georgia and the Trump super PAC covering Texas instead
• The AI generated ad problem: the Ossoff ad calling him too pretty for office, Ken Paxton's AI James Talarico bible spot, and why using fake video when real video exists is political malpractice
• Abdul El-Sayed dodges on Hasan Piker in Michigan, John Sununu versus Chris Pappas puts New Hampshire in play, plus Irish whiskey tariff favors, the 10 year Treasury yield at 5%, Speaker Mike Johnson and David Sacks on AI regulation, and Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson's step by step progress on crime

Erick Erickson takes a caller's tale of two Georgia ad campaigns, Rick Jackson's brutal and effective spots against Keisha Lance Bottoms versus the One Nation tax ads carrying Mike Collins against Jon Ossoff, and turns it into the central question of the 2026 midterms: a blue wave is coming, but is the red wall the GOP built taller than the wave? He stakes out his own call of a 10 to 15 seat Democratic House pickup with the Senate holding, walks through New Hampshire, Michigan, North Carolina, Maine, Texas, Iowa, and Kansas, and plays the Roger Marshall town hall where Republicans in the crowd, not just the progressive hecklers, start booing the moment he defends tariffs. In the back half he digs into the ProPublica report that a Russian oligarch quietly bankrolled Donald Trump Jr.'s wedding, then explains in plain language why a $5,000 tariff dividend check would pour fuel on inflation right as the Federal Reserve decides whether to raise interest rates.

• The Georgia ad war: Rick Jackson defining Keisha Lance Bottoms on crime while she has no money to answer, the One Nation $2,100 tax increase ad against Jon Ossoff, why the Mike Collins makeup attack is political malpractice, and the Trafalgar poll showing Ossoff up 49 to 43
• Blue wave versus red wall: Erick's 10 to 15 seat House call against Mark Halperin's 25, why the Senate map still favors Republicans in New Hampshire, Michigan, Iowa, Alaska, Nebraska, and Florida, and what a Democratic Senate would mean for JD Vance in 2028
• Roger Marshall gets booed in Kansas by his own voters over tariffs, JD Vance campaigning in a state Republicans should not have to defend, the Real Clear Politics average showing a 50-50 Senate, and the 6.7 point Democratic generic ballot lead
• ProPublica reports Russian oligarch Umar Kremlev secretly bankrolled Donald Trump Jr.'s wedding, Eric Trump says he has no idea who the man is, and why Erick still rejects the Russian stooge theory while calling this an unforced gift to Democrats
• Affordability is the number one issue: data center construction propping up the economy while driving concrete, aluminum, and chip prices up, the 50% tariff on Canadian lumber, nine straight months of wages trailing inflation, and why Erick says the $5,000 check is a Diocletian style mistake the Federal Reserve will have to clean up

On the 25th anniversary of September 11, 2001, Erick Erickson opens not with the news but with Welles Crowther, the 24 year old equities trader on the 104th floor of the South Tower who tied a red bandana around his face, carried an injured woman down 17 floors, and went back up the stairs again and again until he died alongside firefighters in the lobby. Prompted by a question from his daughter Evelyn about whether Americans have turned misery into a way of honoring the day, Erick draws a hard line between grieving and honoring, reads the names of the 2,977 dead, and argues that the unity of September 12 was cheap unity because fear is free. He revisits Todd Beamer and Flight 93, the 343 firefighters and 71 police officers, Article 5 of NATO, Cantor Fitzgerald's 658 employees, President Trump's posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom for Crowther, and the algorithmic outrage industry that now profits from keeping Americans sorted into factions.

• Welles Crowther, the red bandana, the 78th floor sky lobby, and the Tunnel to Towers Foundation touring the South Tower stairwell as Trump awards him the Presidential Medal of Freedom
• Erick's answer to his daughter Evelyn: grief fades with time and is private, honor is public and chosen, and a country that only knows how to grieve on September 11 has made an idol of the day
• Why the post 9/11 unity was cheap: Gettysburg 1913, British poppies, the 2000 Florida recount, Jim Jeffords, and unity that only shows up when a building falls on your neighbors
• Todd Beamer, Flight 93, "let's roll," the Pentagon, Article 5 of NATO, and the 2,977 names Erick challenges listeners to scroll through
• Caller Mark in Jacksonville on why America came together after 9/11 and tore itself apart over COVID, plus Erick on Albany Georgia, the conspiracy theorists who still claim controlled demolition, and the algorithm that pays people to divide us
• Erick's own September 11 memory in a middle Georgia law office, the out of town lawyer who insisted the deposition go forward, Adam Milani and Oklahoma City, and the moment he stopped wanting to be a lawyer

Erick Erickson takes apart the Politico story out of the Republican midterm convention in Dallas claiming panic over the Senate map, siding with Chris LaCivita and walking through why a five point Democratic polling bias in September means Republicans in Ohio, Iowa, Michigan, Maine, Alaska, and Texas are actually ahead, not drowning. Then the August consumer price index lands at 3.4 percent, Mark Zandi and Thomas Ryan warn the Federal Reserve may raise rates next week, the 30 year mortgage hits 6.76 percent, and Erick issues a direct challenge to President Trump: take every tariff to zero between now and Election Day and run the experiment.

TOPICS

• The Politico "doom in Dallas" story, Meredith Lee Hill and Aaron Daugherty, and why Erick sides with Chris LaCivita over the anonymous Republican strategists
• The 2020 comparison: Lindsey Graham, Joni Ernst, Roger Marshall, and John Cornyn were all "toss ups" at this exact point and all won comfortably
• Erick's forecast: the GOP loses the House, loses Georgia and North Carolina, but holds the Senate, with Ken Paxton surviving in Texas and Susan Collins preferable to the unvetted alternative
• August CPI at 3.4 percent, gas up 27.4 percent, airline fares up 23 percent, and the Iran war as the energy shock economists including Joe Siedel at JP Morgan blame for it
• The tariff challenge to President Trump, wages running beneath inflation, the 10 year Treasury pushing mortgages to 6.76 percent, and why used car and auto insurance prices are the only things falling
• Caller Alan on broken trust, forty trillion in debt, and a country that has not felt this pulled apart since the Civil War