Two thirds of the earth is covered by water and the other third is covered by our intrepid trio of Steve Hayward, Charles C.W. Cooke and James Lileks.

We start the week in Minnesota where federal officials believe over $1B of taxpayer money was lost in multiple instances of fraud. Then we run the gamut of the J6 Bomber arrest, the Pentagon's actions in the Caribbean, Texas redistricting and the eye-popping price Netflix is spending to acquire Warner Bros.-Discovery.

Finally, we ask you to contribute to a GoFundMe project for our old friend Jon Gabriel who announced earlier this week that he's battling "The Big C."

The Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice was founded in 1957 to ensure fairness in a union struggling to become more perfect. Yet somewhere along the way, bad actors saw an opportunity to play with the scales while Justice donned her blindfold. Our new Assistant Attorney General of the division is Ricochet's dear friend Harmeet Dhillon — and she's back to remind Americans that Justice has an enforcement arm. 

Harmeet gets us up to speed on her team's investigation into the latest riot at UC Berkeley; reports on how they've handled the workload with only one-third of the manpower; and reiterates the righteousness of the division's purpose while clarifying how she and the ambitious lawyers under her plan to balance the scales on a level playing field. 

James, Steve, and Peter weigh the president's approval numbers on the economy and foreign policy; and they have reason to believe that Democrats will continue to be hardest hit as Epstein files work their way to the public. 



Sound clip from this week's open: TPUSA spokesman Andrew Kolvet explains how UC Berkeley administrators worked to undermine their event last week.

Rob Long and John Yoo are reunited with James to serve up some laughs as they sift through some unpleasant truths that many of us would prefer to ignore. The trio yawns at the conclusion of the record-long government shutdown but sees plenty to worry about in its resuming business as usual; considers some elementary underpinnings of the affordability problem; John Yoo takes a barrage of questions on the SCOTUS term and presidential war powers; and Brother Rob takes us out with some thoughts on walking one's path even in tough times.



Sound from this week's opening: The House adopts the Senate’s plan to reopen the government and Sen. rand Paul talks the deficit on NewsMax2

The American right has a decision before it. There are a few elements in the coalition that threaten the stability of the whole. The boys of the Ricochet Podcast propose the following: Sweeny in, Fuentes out. After settling on that, Steve, Charles, and James get to Tuesday's rout; Mayor Mamdani and the limits to NYC's invincibility; Trump's bad day at SCOTUS; all Canadian land acknowledgements taken to their illogical conclusion. All this before landing on an oddly reassuring note — that America is still among the sanest places on the planet.

James, Steve, and Charles are back for a Halloween treat: H.R. McMaster joins at the top for a chat about military matters: the Maduro regime and boat strikes; UAVs and the fight in Eastern Europe; the Department of War and our readiness. 

Plus, the fellas defend cultural confidence, brave the Great Feminization, and name the most horrifying flick they've seen.




- Sound from this week's open: Senator John Kennedy on the shutdown.

Charles Murray's inquiries into social science have resulted in the publication of a number of the most important (and controversial) academic books of the past half-century. It's safe to say he enjoys complexity and taking a stand — and yet there's one big question that Mr. Murray spent half his life dismissing, and the second half marveling at without quite settling. Today, he sits down with Steve, Charlie and a visiting Peter Robinson to discuss his most personal work yet, the just-released Taking Religion Seriously.

Plus, our trio of merry hosts basks in the Democrats' disarray and they take a closer look at the Supreme Court's hearing in the Callais case that will settle the contradictions between the 14th Amendment and Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.




Sound clip from this week's open: Justice Brown Jackson spars with an attorney during the Callais v. Louisiana hearing.

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.