The government shutdown drags on, but the president's pulled off his biggest deal yet. Noah Rothman joins Charlie and Steve to discuss the monumental advancement toward regional stability and the unique talents for these wins by American and Israeli leaders — talents for which they are unlikely to receive due honors. Plus, Hayward and Cooke consider shutdown messaging strategy, mock the MacArthur Foundation for its dimwitted grant giving, and scratch their heads at the fact that the name "Katie Porter" and the word "frontrunner" appear so often in the same sentence. 

• Sound from this week's open: Gubernatorial candidate Katie Porter breaks down in an interview with CBS News’s California-based correspondent Julie Watts.

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We're a few days into a government shutdown, but James, Steve, and Charles are managing to get by. So it's business as usual as the trio pick apart the oddities of the week: Democrats attempt to dodge responsibility for their own filibuster; OMB's Russ Vought gets to work on his master plan; the Secretary of War stands accused of fat-shaming his generals; a man named Jihad does the unthinkable in Manchester; the Chicago Teachers' Union mourns the passing of a '70s cop-killer; and Hollywood resists the rise of digitally diverse actors.



Sound from this week's opening: Pete Hegseth speaks in Quantico, listing practices that the military is "done with" going forward.

The executive branch's ambitious prosecutors have made first strikes against familiar, yet evasive, foes. That means it's time to bring back John Yoo — legal scholar, gastronome, Eagles fan — to parse through the Comey indictment, jurisprudence regarding domestic terror, and the legitimation of using military force against Venezuelan drug runners. 

Plus, Steve, Charlie, and James nod along to Trump's riff at the U.N. General Assembly but remain wary of the big warning against a common pain reliever. 




Sound clip from this week's open: President Trump goes off script at the U.N.



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Steve Hayward is back with James and Charles after a few weeks away, and the trio sits down with Josh Hammer, senior editor-at-large of Newsweek, to talk about his murdered friend, Charlie Kirk. The gang discusses the Turning Point enterprise, the mission of its founder, and the ugly attempts by clickbait peddlers to contort the late-Kirk's message.

Plus, the hosts break down everything right and wrong with Jimmy Kimmel's suspension, Pam Bondi's comments, the proposed investigation into Antifa, and the latest on the TikTok deal. 




Sound from this week's open: Trump and Jimmy Kimmel's latest public comments about each other.

James and Charles discuss the political assassination of Charlie Kirk and the disturbing implications it has for a country founded on certain inalienable rights.



Sound from this week's audio: Utah Governor Stephen Cox announces the capture of the shooter.

Photo: Dennis MacDonald / Shutterstock.com



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Steve Hayward is traveling abroad, so Ricochet co-founder Rob Long takes a break from his seminary studies to join James and Charlie in a discussion of worldly ways this week. The trio discusses property taxes, crazies with guns, and Bari Weiss's making a big deal over The Free Press. Plus, there's a comedian on trial in the UK, sustained outrage over Trump's law-and-order blitz, and disappointment among his enemies that he could be away from the cameras and alive at the same time.



- Sounds from this week's open: Tim Waltz on Donald Trump's "death" earlier this week, and Donald Trump's announcement that he was not dead earlier this week.



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This week's podcast starts out on a somber note, as this week's tragic news of the attack on Annunciation Catholic school hits unsettlingly close to home for one of our hosts. James, Charles, and Steve then chat with Will Chamberlain about next week's NatCon conference taking place in Washington, DC. The trio also weighs in on flag-burning.



- Sound from this week's open: Jesse Merkel, who lost his 8-year-old son Fletcher in the Annunciation Catholic Church shooting on Wednesday speaks to the media.

Democrats have been worked up this week over congressional redistricting in Texas. But, hypocrisy aside, could this be a low priority for a party well into the double-digits in favorability? To get a sense of what the left ought to be doing instead, we welcome Ruy Teixiera back to the podcast to discuss the now-endangered liberal patriot. (Be sure to subscribe to his Substack of the same name!) 

Plus: James, Charles and Steve suss out the raid on John Bolton's house, have their voices heard on mail-in ballots, and collectively grimace at the Cracker Barrel rebrand. 

• Opening sound this week: Sen. John Kennedy (R - LA) on the Democrats ( via Fox News) and John Bolton on Trump (CNN)

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Noah Rothman returns ahead of Trump's meeting with Vladimir Putin to give a foreign policy progress report of the president's second term. He gets into the fraught history of US-Russia negotiations, applauds the latest maneuvers in the Middle East, and applies a big-picture framing of the geopolitical status quo in response to the charge that collapse is imminent. 

Plus, Charlie, Steve, and James discuss the federalization of law enforcement in D.C. and the administration's announcement of potential weed reform. 

• Sound from this week's open: President Trump and House Minority Leader Jefferies on DC police “scheme.”

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In less than eighty years, the US has slipped from its baby boom heyday to a baby bust. Timothy Carney, author of Alientated America and Family Unfriendly, joins the Ricochet Podcast to discuss the implications and potential consequences of the nation's waning will to procreate.   

Steve, Charles, and James gab about the fuss over gerrymandering, appraise Trump's warning to DC leadership, and consider the predicament before Israel as they plan to occupy Gaza City.




- Sound from this week's opening: Jim Acosta interviews an AI version of deceased Parkland shooting victim.