If I had a dollar for every law the orange idiot has broken while he's occupied the oval office I wouldn't necessarily be rich, but I'd certainly be able to pay my bills, probably easier than I can these days. Aside from that pretty big deal, there are tons of other legal issues in play that the administration seems to not care about or consider when the do the insane things they do.

They lie, they cheat, they steal. They refuse to investigate crimes --even murder - when they think it makes them look bad. They refuse to follow the implicit demands codified by law, ie the Epstein Files Transparency Act. At the direction of the dick-tator, they target law abiding citizens who he feels have wronged him or who he simply doesn't like.

He ignores court rulings against him. I could go on, and I will on today's show when my favorite legal expert LISA GRAVES author of the must-read book, WITHOUT PRECEDENCE joins us.

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If you had hoped things would lighten up a bit as the calendar turned to 2026, I'm sorry to remind you that we live in Opposite World, and it's awful here. There's an explosion of ugly news to go through today, so thankfully Jonathan Larsen is here from his eponymous Substack where he brings us original reporting and from the one with the attitude, thefuckingnews.substack.com. But at least the midterms are less than 300 days away...

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As she does every Friday morning, Marcy Wheeler of emptywheel.net joins us to recap and discuss some of the news made over the week. In keeping with tradition, today we marked the end of another year-long week.

The week began when, just a few hours after we recorded last week's show, the White House idiots invaded Venezuela and kidnapped its president. Also this week, ICE murdered a US citizen - a white, Christian woman, Renee Good, who was a mother of three and a poet.

Yes, there was a LOT of bad news (what else is new?), but there was also some good news to share, and that's where we began today...

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I'm happy to welcome MS NOW's Senior Political and National Reporter Jacob Soboroff to the show today. The occasion is the release of his new book, FIRESTORM: THE GREAT LOS ANGELES FIRES AND AMERICA'S NEW AGE OF DISASTER which hit shelves on the first anniversary of those historic and horrific fires which he covered for NBC News.

As usual, we'll begin with today's news which is dominated by this administrations lies, disinformation and brutality that yesterday took the life of an innocent 37-year old mother, Renee Nicole Good, slandering her and blaming her for her murder by ICE thugs in Minneapolis.

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We started today's Nicole Sandler Show with breaking news from Minnesota where an ICE agent shot and killed a 37-year old mother, a US citizen, who was attempting to drive away. Of course, everyone from Kristi Noem to the orange dick-tator said she was a terrorist who tried to kill the murderer. Videos show what happened and confirm that they are lying.

Executive Editor of The American Prospect, David Dayen joined me at the start of the show. We addressed this sickening news and spoke a bit about some of the rest of the stories we should be following as the new year proceeds.

In the second half of the show, I welcomed Houston rock radio legend Dayna Steele back to tell us about a new daily feature she recently started called Today's Facts. She's got perfect timing as I'm always ranting about how important it is to double-check everything you read to make sure it's true before trusting or sharing it.

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Today is an anniversary I'd prefer that we not recognize. But we must, because the insurrectionists who attacked the Capitol five years ago today and their criminal leader would like nothing more than for us to move on and forget it ever happened. We can't and we won't. Because, if we do, we surrender and declare our democracy dead. That, we refuse, now and forever.

I was on the air that day; I actually went live earlier than our regular showtime because of what was unfolding live on television. We will not, we cannot forget, so I'll share a little bit of that broadcast today. Then I'll welcome Craig Unger back to the show. He's the NY Times bestselling author of six books about the Republican Party's assault on democracy including American Kompromat, House of Trump, House of Putin and, most recently, Den of Spies, which expose Donald Trump's relationship with Russia and Putin. Somehow, all of this is connected...

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And we're back.. It's the start of the first full week of the new year 2026 and nothing is normal. I hope everyone got some good rest and relaxation because it's unlikely we'll have more of that for a while. We begin the week on a Monday and, if it's Monday, it's Jonathan Larsen of his two important substack newsletters: The Fu%&ing News and Jonathan Larsen where he does important, original reporting.

Jonathan was all over the Venezuela attack early Saturday morning, and we will certainly discuss that today. We'll try to ease into it slowly because, in addition to bringing you the truth about what's happening, we must take care of ourselves if we're going to survive this shitstorm.

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Let’s get this new year started! We’re back for the first live show of 2026 as Marcy Wheeler joins me to kick it off with a new Emptywheel Friday!

Today, we’ll talk about what happened over the holiday break (Epstein files, Jack Smith deposition, Mamdani swearing in as NYC Mayor, etc).

And Marcy will walk us through the article she posted this morning at emptywheel.net, “Where We Go From Here: 10 things we can do in 2026 to hold Trump accountable”.

Here we go….

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Today For the final show of 2025 (good riddance), I opted to feature some past moments from the show over the years that still resonate today, sharing a little bit of everything - including a visit or two from Bernie Sanders, and my appearance on Rock & Roll Jeopardy.

I've been sick over the holidays, so please excuse my voice as I introduce the various segments I'll share.

Today is also the 10th Anniversary of my wedding to David. I actually did a live show that afternoon. So I'll share a few minutes of that program to kick things off... and then we'll take off on a journey through the past with perhaps a peek into the future.

Happy New Year everyone. May 2026 bring us an end to the D'ump insanity and begin our march back into democracy.

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I only met and interviewed Tom Petty once. Unlike most of the artist interviews I did during my music radio years, he did not perform live for us. He just came into the studio at Channel 103.1 (KACD and KBCD in Los Angeles) on April 30, 1999 and hung out with me for a while on the air. He was promoting the album that had just been released, ECHO.

Following that interview, we'll move ahead about 20 years to July 26, 2019 for an interview with Jon Scott about his book, TOM PETTY AND ME. Jon Scott was a record promoter for MCA records who really is the man responsible for Tom Petty breaking through by getting the label to change its plans to drop the record and getting him airplay. In fact, at what turned out to be Petty's final concert, on Sept. 25, 2017 at the Hollywood Bowl, Tom thanked Jon Scott for that from the stage as he introduced "I Won't Back Down".

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