The Lonely Liberal Podcast

The Energy Department admitted in court this week that it canceled 284 clean energy grants — $7.5 billion worth — based solely on whether the state voted for Kamala Harris. Not cost. Not performance. Just the election result. Meanwhile, Marco Rubio's State Department released a 100-page report naming DSA, CodePink, Hasan Piker, and Ilhan Omar as instruments of Cuban influence, and Troy Jackson won the Maine Democratic Senate nomination 566 to 5.

Also this week: Zohran Mamdani asks the federal government to arrest Netanyahu, Trump bombs at the Correspondents' Dinner, measles hits a 35-year high, a judge freezes the $110 billion Paramount–Warner Bros. merger, and the Pentagon quietly subtracts four dead service members from the Iran war to reset the War Powers clock. Plus Rahm Emanuel and Gretchen Whitmer both pick a side in the Democratic Party's fight over its own future — and a question nobody asks centrist Democrats.

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Nick sits down with Stephen Lacey — co-founder and executive editor of Latitude Media, host of Open Circuit, and former Editor-in-Chief of Greentech Media — for a conversation about what it actually takes to make trustworthy media in a "fake news" world.

They get into why Stephen thinks the "legacy media is biased" argument is mostly BS (it's really hyper-partisanship coloring how people read otherwise solid reporting), why data centers exploded overnight into a 2026 midterm litmus test before anyone had time to figure out what's actually true, and why the popular narrative blaming data centers for your electric bill isn't backed by the numbers Stephen's actually watching. Plus: the real difference between "I'm just asking questions" podcasters like Rogan and Tucker Carlson versus actual journalism, a live case study of the NYT/Politico flip-flop on the Graham Platner story, and Stephen's pitch for the one unsexy fix that could actually rebuild trust — local news.

Month five of the Iran war and there's still no end in sight. Two U.S. service members were killed in Jordan on Friday with a third missing, the first American deaths from Iranian fire since March, and the U.S. struck back within hours. It came days after Senate Democrats blocked the $1.15 trillion NDAA over a war Congress has now voted to end twice and watched continue anyway. Then JD Vance spent three hours on Joe Rogan's podcast, where the conversation ranged from the Epstein files to Iran to a heavy dose of election fraud nonsense that deserves to be taken apart. And in Maine, Troy Jackson — a fifth-generation logger, former state Senate President, and Bernie-backed Platner ally — swept more than 460 of 500 delegate slots in a single weekend, pushing Shenna Bellows and Nirav Shah out of the race and effectively locking up the nomination to face Susan Collins. The party built a 601-delegate convention instead of a caucus, and the union guy won it anyway.

Also this week: Trump went primetime to declassify documents claiming elections are "vulnerable to being rigged and stolen," offering no evidence of a single fraudulent vote, four months before the midterms. His DNI nominee Jay Clayton wouldn't tell senators Biden won the 2020 election. Todd Blanche's attorney general nomination stalled after Epstein survivors came out of a forced meeting more opposed than before, with John Cornyn and Thom Tillis still holding out over a $1.776 billion DOJ slush fund. Lindsey Graham died and his sister was sworn into his Senate seat 72 hours later on Trump's recommendation. ICE halted traffic stops after a string of killings and reinstated them days later, with zero agents charged and two more men dead. Trump's teleprompter operator got caught allegedly betting on which words Trump would say. Plus New York's data center moratorium, Cuba's grid collapse, and a tuberculosis outbreak in a Colorado immigration jail.

Nick and Rick cover the week.

Iran war, JD Vance, Joe Rogan, Troy Jackson, Maine Senate, Susan Collins, Graham Platner, election fraud, Epstein files, Todd Blanche, Lindsey Graham, ICE, NDAA, 2026 midterms.

Nick sits down in person with Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Michigan, at a campaign stop in Warren. They get into the misconception that he's "just a socialist," why distrust in public health traces back to a healthcare system stuck behind a paywall, and his case for Medicare for All. El-Sayed makes his electability argument head-on: outspent 8-to-1 by AIPAC-backed money, he argues that message and work ethic — not cash — are how you beat Mike Rogers in November, and that every general-election poll backs him up. Plus: the AIPAC money fight, Thomas Massie's amendment to cut Israel funding, and a bench-press cameo. A sharp, funny, substantive conversation with one of the most nuanced progressives in the country.

Graham Platner is out — and nobody knows what happens next in the most important Senate race of the midterms. Last time, I called him the right candidate but the wrong person. This week, that prediction cashed out. So what now? I break down how the campaign actually ended (hint: it was Schumer's money, not the allegation), the two-week scramble to replace him, the 600-delegate convention Maine Democrats chose over an actual election — two years almost to the day after Biden handed the nomination to Harris without a vote — and the Bernie vs. Schumer proxy war that created this mess and is already restarting. Plus: the contenders, whether Susan Collins just won by default, and how Patrick Dempsey briefly became a Senate prospect.

Nick and Rick break down America's 250th anniversary week — and the chaos that came with it. They open on the America 250 meltdown: the DC Independence Day Parade was canceled Friday night due to a 115-degree heat dome; Philadelphia's parade was canceled the day before; the Great American State Fair on the National Mall temporarily closed after 44 attendees needed medical attention for heat-related illness; Mt. Olive Pickle Company withdrew from the fair over Confederate flag displays at Southern state booths; and Trump used his July 4 White House speech to complain that he "wasn't treated that well" by the media. Then Trump's dark Mount Rushmore speech Friday night, where he called communism "the greatest threat to our country, including WWI, WWII, Pearl Harbor, or even 9/11" — aimed at DSA-aligned Democrats — while Pope Leo XIV counterprogrammed from the Vatican, calling America a "byword for freedom" because it "opened its doors to successive waves of immigrants." Then to SCOTUS's blockbuster final week: the Court upheld birthright citizenship 6-3 in Trump v. Barbara, with Chief Justice Roberts writing the majority and Kavanaugh and Barrett joining the liberals to strike down Trump's day-one executive order; the Court also killed the 91-year-old Humphrey's Executor precedent 6-3 in Trump v. Slaughter, giving Trump the power to fire commissioners at approximately 24 previously-independent federal agencies — from the FTC and FCC to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the NTSB — with Justice Sotomayor reading her dissent from the bench; a separate 5-4 ruling blocked Trump from firing Fed Governor Lisa Cook, leaving the Fed as the sole exception; SCOTUS also protected cellphone location data under the 4th Amendment, declined to hear Trump's appeal of the $5 million E. Jean Carroll verdict, and agreed to consider Arizona's proof-of-citizenship voter law next term.

In February, the Supreme Court ruled Trump's tariffs illegal — all $166 billion of them. The refunds are flowing right now, with interest. But they're going to Walmart, Target, and the importers, not to you — even though the Fed's own research shows American consumers paid nearly all of it, about $1,000 per household. Nick breaks down the triple-charge: you paid the illegal tax at the register, corporations get your refund, and the prices companies raised 'because of tariffs' are never coming back down. Meanwhile, Trump's DOJ is in court fighting to keep as much of the money as possible — and a new 15% tariff already replaced the old one. Nobody in Washington is even pretending you should be made whole.

Nick and Rick break down 10 days of chaos in American politics. They open on Trump's Iran deal: at Versailles during the G7 summit, Trump signed a 14-point memorandum of understanding with Iran's foreign minister — Strait of Hormuz reopens, sanctions lifted, $42 billion in frozen Iranian assets unfrozen, US forces removed from Iran's borders. Senators Cassidy and Tillis called it "the worst American foreign policy blunder in decades" — $100 billion spent, 13 Americans dead, two F-18s lost, and Iran got everything it wanted. The deal was already cracking by Friday: a cargo ship was hit on a UN-backed route in the Strait, Iranian drones struck Bahrain, and the US bombed Iran again — nine days after the "historic" peace deal. Then to Venezuela: twin 7.2 and 7.5 magnitude earthquakes struck the northern coast Wednesday, killing at least 235 with the USGS estimating the total death toll could exceed 10,000. Trump pledged $150 million in aid — his largest humanitarian response since dismantling USAID last year — while the Supreme Court the same day cleared the way to strip TPS from Haitians and Syrians, with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus demanding a halt to Venezuelan deportations during the active disaster. Plus VP JD Vance at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library on Thursday: "If Watergate happened tomorrow, it would be like a 12-hour news story. The idea that it would have taken down a presidency is crazy." Vance also compared himself to Nixon. Also covered: Trump canceled the signing of the bipartisan housing bill at the Capitol because the Senate hasn't passed the voter ID bill — with McConnell, Murkowski, Collins, and Cornyn openly questioning whether Trump is deliberately sabotaging his own party's majority; the NYT revealed Stephen Miller pushed to suspend habeas corpus for immigrants and Vance and Miller pushed to invoke the Insurrection Act after the Alex Pretti killing, both quashed by Staff Secretary Will Scharf; the Pentagon reversed Hegseth on the flu vaccine mandate after a Lackland Air Force Base outbreak sickened 275+ recruits and one trainee died; all three Mamdani-backed insurgent candidates won their NYC congressional primaries — Brad Lander beat Dan Goldman, Darializa Avila Chevalier beat 5-term Rep. Adriano Espaillat, and Claire Valdez won the Velázquez seat; Pete Buttigieg revealed on Substack that his 4-year-old twins were separated from him for 24 hours after a false CPS report he believes was politically motivated swatting; and STAT News reported a 79-year-old man with refractory obesity, sleep apnea, and pulmonary hypertension received compassionate-use access to Eli Lilly's experimental obesity drug retatrutide in April — Democratic senators are now formally asking the White House whether the patient is Trump. We close with the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool: Trump's $16 million "American flag blue" renovation that turned green within 24 hours from algae, started peeling within 10 days, and which Trump is now blaming on a vandalism conspiracy — six arrested, including a former US Olympic canoeist who said he was detained for touching loose paint. And the Great American State Fair opened on the National Mall — Massachusetts brought only maple syrup, the Smithsonian Folklife Festival was displaced to make room, and Vanilla Ice is headlining.

Maine should be the easiest Democratic Senate pickup of 2026. Susan Collins is uniquely vulnerable, Trump has never won the state, and it’s a midterm with an unpopular Republican president. So why is it a nightmare? Nick endorsed Graham Platner early — an anti-PAC, Bernie-backed, working class Marine veteran running the exact campaign Democrats say they want. Then came the scandals. The Reddit posts. The tattoo. The sexting. The NYT relationship story. Nick goes through all of it honestly — what’s real, what’s overblown, and what’s genuinely troubling — and lands on the harder question: what do you do when the right candidate is the wrong guy, and the party that created this mess is now debating whether to help him win?

The Iran deal text is finally out — all 14 points. Nick reads every one of them, ranked from least to most egregious, so you can hear exactly what was traded away and what wasn't. Iran gets immediate oil exports, $24 billion in frozen assets with no restrictions on use, and a $300 billion reconstruction commitment — before a single nuclear concession is verified. The nuclear program? Still standing. Enrichment? Deferred. Hormuz? Toll-free for 60 days, after which Iran negotiates the fees. Trump called Obama a traitor for a deal that involved returning Iran's own money. He just signed something twice as expensive with fewer conditions. These are the receipts.