Podcast appearances and mentions of russ vought

The Supreme Court used the shadow docket to legalize racial profiling, although only Justice Kavanaugh was dumb enough to admit it out loud. It also overturned Humphrey's Executor, but this time even Kav wouldn't cop to it. Meanwhile at the White House, Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought discovers ONE WEIRD trick to steal Congress's power of the purse. And the Second Circuit confirms, Alina Habba is still very bad at her job.   Links:   White House Prayer Executive Order https://www.whitehouse.gov/america250/america-prays/   SCOTUS Shadow Docket Order Trump v. Slaughter https://www.supremecourt.gov/orders/courtorders/090825zr_4f15.pdf   Second Circuit Order Carroll v. Trump 1 https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.ca2.e508a4b2-feae-4592-a6dc-d30f9ed35bb6/gov.uscourts.ca2.e508a4b2-feae-4592-a6dc-d30f9ed35bb6.134.1_1.pdf   SCOTUS Docket Trump v. Vasquez Perdomo https://www.supremecourt.gov/search.aspx?filename=/docket/docketfiles/html/public/25a169.html   White House “pocket rescission” announcement (Aug. 29, 2025) https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/2025/08/historic-pocket-rescission-package-eliminates-woke-weaponized-and-wasteful-spending/   AIDS Vaccine Coalition v. State https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.277333/gov.uscourts.dcd.277333.145.0_4.pdf   Show Links: https://www.lawandchaospod.com/ BlueSky: @LawAndChaosPod Threads: @LawAndChaosPod Twitter: @LawAndChaosPod  

Russ Vought talks the economy and politics and how Trump's agenda is shaping both Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today I'm talking to economic historian Judge Glock, Director of Research at the Manhattan Institute. Judge works on a lot of topics: if you enjoy this episode, I'd encourage you to read some of his work on housing markets and the Environmental Protection Agency. But I cornered him today to talk about civil service reform.Since the 1990s, over 20 red and blue states have made radical changes to how they hire and fire government employees — changes that would be completely outside the Overton window at the federal level. A paper by Judge and Renu Mukherjee lists four reforms made by states like Texas, Florida, and Georgia: * At-will employment for state workers* The elimination of collective bargaining agreements* Giving managers much more discretion to hire* Giving managers much more discretion in how they pay employeesJudge finds decent evidence that the reforms have improved the effectiveness of state governments, and little evidence of the politicization that federal reformers fear. Meanwhile, in Washington, managers can't see applicants' resumes, keyword searches determine who gets hired, and firing a bad performer can take years. But almost none of these ideas are on the table in Washington.Thanks to Harry Fletcher-Wood for his judicious transcript edits and fact-checking, and to Katerina Barton for audio edits.Judge, you have a paper out about lessons for civil service reform from the states. Since the ‘90s, red and blue states have made big changes to how they hire and fire people. Walk through those changes for me.I was born and grew up in Washington DC, heard a lot about civil service throughout my childhood, and began to research it as an adult. But I knew almost nothing about the state civil service systems. When I began working in the states — mainly across the Sunbelt, including in Texas, Kansas, Arizona — I was surprised to learn that their civil service systems were reformed to an absolutely radical extent relative to anything proposed at the federal level, let alone implemented.Starting in the 1990s, several states went to complete at-will employment. That means there were no official civil service protections for any state employees. Some managers were authorized to hire people off the street, just like you could in the private sector. A manager meets someone in a coffee shop, they say, "I'm looking for exactly your role. Why don't you come on board?" At the federal level, with its stultified hiring process, it seemed absurd to even suggest something like that.You had states that got rid of any collective bargaining agreements with their public employee unions. You also had states that did a lot more broadbanding [creating wider pay bands] for employee pay: a lot more discretion for managers to reward or penalize their employees depending on their performance.These major reforms in these states were, from the perspective of DC, incredibly radical. Literally nobody at the federal level proposes anything approximating what has been in place for decades in the states. That should be more commonly known, and should infiltrate the debate on civil service reform in DC.Even though the evidence is not absolutely airtight, on the whole these reforms have been positive. A lot of the evidence is surveys asking managers and operators in these states how they think it works. They've generally been positive. We know these states operate pretty well: Places like Texas, Florida, and Arizona rank well on state capacity metrics in terms of cost of government, time for permitting, and other issues.Finally, to me the most surprising thing is the dog that didn't bark. The argument in the federal government against civil service reform is, “If you do this, we will open up the gates of hell and return to the 19th-century patronage system, where spoilsmen come and go depending on elected officials, and the government is overrun with political appointees who don't care about the civil service.” That has simply not happened. We have very few reports of any concrete examples of politicization at the state level. In surveys, state employees and managers can almost never remember any example of political preferences influencing hiring or firing.One of the surveys you cited asked, “Can you think of a time someone said that they thought that the political preferences were a factor in civil service hiring?” and it was something like 5%.It was in that 5-10% range. I don't think you'd find a dissimilar number of people who would say that even in an official civil service system. Politics is not completely excluded even from a formal civil service system.A few weeks ago, you and I talked to our mutual friend, Don Moynihan, who's a scholar of public administration. He's more skeptical about the evidence that civil service reform would be positive at the federal level.One of your points is, “We don't have strong negative evidence from the states. Productivity didn't crater in states that moved to an at-will employment system.” We do have strong evidence that collective bargaining in the public sector is bad for productivity.What I think you and Don would agree on is that we could use more evidence on the hiring and firing side than the surveys that we have. Is that a fair assessment?Yes, I think that's correct. As you mentioned, the evidence on collective bargaining is pretty close to universal: it raises costs, reduces the efficiency of government, and has few to no positive upsides.On hiring and firing, I mentioned a few studies. There's a 2013 study that looks at HR managers in six states and finds very little evidence of politicization, and managers generally prefer the new system. There was a dissertation that surveyed several employees and managers in civil service reform and non-reform states. Across the board, the at-will employment states said they had better hiring retention, productivity, and so forth. And there's a 2002 study that looked specifically at Texas, Florida, and Georgia after their reforms, and found almost universal approbation inside the civil service itself for these reforms.These are not randomized control trials. But I think that generally positive evidence should point us directionally where we should go on civil service reform. If we loosen restrictions on discipline and firing, decentralize hiring and so forth — we probably get some productivity benefits from it. We can also know, with some amount of confidence, that the sky is not going to fall, which I think is a very important baseline assumption. The civil service system will continue on and probably be fairly close to what it is today, in terms of its political influence, if you have decentralized hiring and at-will employment.As you point out, a lot of these reforms that have happened in 20-odd states since the ‘90s would be totally outside the Overton window at the federal level. Why is it so easy for Georgia to make a bipartisan move in the ‘90s to at-will employment, when you couldn't raise the topic at the federal level?It's a good question. I think in the 1990s, a lot of people thought a combination of the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act — which was the Carter-era act that somewhat attempted to do what these states hoped to do in the 1990s — and the Clinton-era Reinventing Government Initiative, would accomplish the same ends. That didn't happen.That was an era when civil service reform was much more bipartisan. In Georgia, it was a Democratic governor, Zell Miller, who pushed it. In a lot of these other states, they got buy-in from both sides. The recent era of state reform took place after the 2010 Republican wave in the states. Since that wave, the reform impetus for civil service has been much more Republican. That has meant it's been a lot harder to get buy-in from both sides at the federal level, which will be necessary to overcome a filibuster.I think people know it has to be very bipartisan. We're just past the point, at least at the moment, where it can be bipartisan at the federal level. But there are areas where there's a fair amount of overlap between the two sides on what needs to happen, at least in the upper reaches of the civil service.It was interesting to me just how bipartisan civil service reform has been at various times. You talked about the Civil Service Reform Act, which passed Congress in 1978. President Carter tells Congress that the civil service system:“Has become a bureaucratic maze which neglects merit, tolerates poor performance, permits abuse of legitimate employee rights, and mires every personnel action in red tape, delay, and confusion.”That's a Democratic president saying that. It's striking to me that the civil service was not the polarized topic that it is today.Absolutely. Carter was a big civil service reformer in Georgia before those even larger 1990s reforms. He campaigned on civil service reform and thought it was essential to the success of his presidency. But I think you are seeing little sprouts of potential bipartisanship today, like the Chance to Compete Act at the end of 2024, and some of the reforms Obama did to the hiring process. There's options for bipartisanship at the federal level, even if it can't approach what the states have done.I want to walk through the federal hiring process. Let's say you're looking to hire in some federal agency — you pick the agency — and I graduated college recently, and I want to go into the civil service. Tell me about trying to hire somebody like me. What's your first step?It's interesting you bring up the college graduate, because that is one recent reform: President Trump put out an executive order trying to counsel agencies to remove the college degree requirement for job postings. This happened in a lot of states first, like Maryland, and that's also been bipartisan. This requirement for a college degree — which was used as a very unfortunate proxy for ability at a lot of these jobs — is now being removed. It's not across the whole federal government. There's still job postings that require higher education degrees, but that's something that's changed.To your question, let's say the Department of Transportation. That's one of the more bipartisan ones, when you look at surveys of federal civil servants. Department of Defense, Veterans Affairs, they tend to be a little more Republican. Health and Human Services and some other agencies tend to be pretty Democrat. Transportation is somewhere in the middle.As a manager, you try to craft a job description and posting to go up on the USA Jobs website, which is where all federal job postings go. When they created it back in 1996, that was supposedly a massive reform to federal hiring: this website where people could submit their resumes. Then, people submit their resumes and answer questions about their qualifications for the job.One of the slightly different aspects from the private sector is that those applications usually go to an HR specialist first. The specialist reviews everything and starts to rank people into different categories, based on a lot of weird things. It's supposed to be “knowledge, skills, and abilities” — your KSAs, or competencies. To some extent, this is a big step up from historical practice. You had, frankly, an absurd civil service exam, where people had to fill out questions about, say, General Grant or about US Code Title 42, or whatever it was, and then submit it. Someone rated the civil service exam, and then the top three test-takers were eligible for the job.We have this newer, better system, where we rank on knowledge, skills, and abilities, and HR puts put people into different categories. One of the awkward ways they do this is by merely scanning the resumes and applications for keywords. If it's a computer job, make sure you say the word “computer” somewhere in your resume. Make sure you say “manager” if it's a managerial job.Just to be clear, this is entirely literal. There's a keyword search, and folks who don't pass that search are dinged.Yes. I've always wondered, how common is this? It's sometimes hard to know what happens in the black box in these federal HR departments. I saw an HR official recently say, "If I'm not allowed to do keyword searches, I'm going to take 15 years to overlook all the applications, so I've got to do keyword searches." If they don't have the keywords, into the circular file it goes, as they used to say: into the garbage can.Then they start ranking people on their abilities into, often, three different categories. That is also very literal. If you put in the little word bubble, "I am an exceptional manager," you get pushed on into the next level of the competition. If you say, "I'm pretty good, but I'm not the best," into the circular file you go.I've gotten jaded about this, but it really is shocking. We ask candidates for a self-assessment, and if they just rank themselves 10/10 on everything, no matter how ludicrous, that improves their odds of being hired.That's going to immensely improve your odds. Similar to the keyword search, there's been pushback on this in recent years, and I'm definitely not going to say it's universal anymore. It's rarer than it used to be. But it's still a very common process.The historical civil service system used to operate on a rule of three. In places like New York, it still operates like that. The top three candidates on the evaluation system get presented to the manager, and the manager has to approve one of them for the position.Thanks partially to reforms by the Obama administration in 2010, they have this category rating system where the best qualified or the very qualified get put into a big bucket together [instead of only including the top three]. Those are the people that the person doing the hiring gets to see, evaluate, and decide who he wants to hire.There are some restrictions on that. If a veteran outranks everybody else, you've got to pick the veteran [typically known as Veterans' Preference]. That was an issue in some of the state civil service reforms, too. The states said, “We're just going to encourage a veterans' preference. We don't need a formalized system to say they get X number of points and have to be in Y category. We're just going to say, ‘Try to hire veterans.'” That's possible without the formal system, despite what some opponents of reform may claim.One of the particular problems here is just the nature of the people doing the hiring. Sometimes you just need good managers to encourage HR departments to look at a broader set of qualifications. But one of the bigger problems is that they keep the HR evaluation system divorced from the manager who is doing the hiring. David Shulkin, who was the head of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), wrote a great book, It Shouldn't Be This Hard to Serve Your Country. He was a healthcare exec, and the VA is mainly a healthcare agency. He would tell people, "You should work for me," they would send their applications into the HR void, and he'd never see them again. They would get blocked at some point in this HR evaluation process, and he'd be sent people with no healthcare experience, because for whatever reason they did well in the ranking.One of the very base-level reforms should be, “How can we more clearly integrate the hiring manager with the evaluation process?” To some extent, the bipartisan Chance to Compete Act tries to do this. They said, “You should have subject matter experts who are part of crafting the description of the job, are part of evaluating, and so forth.” But there's still a long road to go.Does that firewall — where the person who wants to hire doesn't get to look at the process until the end — exist originally because of concerns about cronyism?One of the interesting things about the civil service is its raison d'être — its reason for being — was supposedly a single, clear purpose: to prevent politicized hiring and patronage. That goes back to the Pendleton Civil Service Act of 1883. But it's always been a little strange that you have all of these very complex rules about every step of the process — from hiring to firing to promotion, and everything in between — to prevent political influence. We could just focus on preventing political influence, and not regulate every step of the process on the off-chance that without a clear regulation, political influence could creep in. This division [between hiring manager and applicants] is part of that general concern. There are areas where I've heard HR specialists say, "We declare that a manager is a subject matter expert, and we bring them into the process early on, we can do that." But still the division is pretty stark, and it's based on this excessive concern about patronage.One point you flag is that the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), which is the body that thinks about personnel in the federal government, has a 300-page regulatory document for agencies on how you have to hire. There's a remarkable amount of process.Yes, but even that is a big change from the Federal Personnel Manual, which was the 10,000-page document that we shredded in the 1990s. In the ‘90s, OPM gave the agencies what's called “delegated examining authorities.” This says, “You, agency, have power to decide who to hire, we're not going to do the central supervision anymore. But, but, but: here's the 300-page document that dictates exactly how you have to carry out that hiring.”So we have some decentralization, allowing managers more authority to control their own departments. But this two-level oversight — a local HR department that's ultimately being overseen by the OPM — also leads to a lot of slip ‘twixt cup and lip, in terms of how something gets implemented. If you're in the agency and you're concerned about the OPM overseeing your process, you're likely to be much more careful than you would like to be. “Yes, it's delegated to me, but ultimately, I know I have to answer to OPM about this process. I'm just going to color within the lines.”I often cite Texas, which has no central HR office. Each agency decides how it wants to hire. In a lot of these reform states, if there is a central personnel office, it's an information clearinghouse or reservoir of models. “You can use us, the central HR office, as a resource if you want us to help you post the job, evaluate it, or help manage your processes, but you don't have to.” That's the goal we should be striving for in a lot of the federal reforms. Just make OPM a resource for the managers in the individual departments to do their thing or go independent.Let's say I somehow get through the hiring process. You offer me a job at the Department of Transportation. What are you paying me?This is one of the more stultified aspects of the federal civil service system. OPM has another multi-hundred-page handbook called the Handbook of Occupational Groups and Families. Inside that, you've got 49 different “groups and families,” like “Clerical occupations.” Inside those 49 groups are a series of jobs, sometimes dozens, like “Computer Operator.” Inside those, they have independent documents — often themselves dozens of pages long — detailing classes of positions. Then you as a manager have to evaluate these nine factors, which can each give points to each position, which decides how you get slotted into this weird Government Schedule (GS) system [the federal payscale].Again, this is actually an improvement. Before, you used to have the Civil Service Commission, which went around staring very closely at someone over their typewriter and saying, "No, I think you should be a GS-12, not a GS-11, because someone over in the Department of Defense who does your same job is a GS-12." Now this is delegated to agencies, but again, the agencies have to listen to the OPM on how to classify and set their jobs into this 15-stage GS-classification system, each stage of which has 10 steps which determine your pay, and those steps are determined mainly by your seniority. It's a formalized step-by-step system, overwhelmingly based on just how long you've sat at your desk.Let's be optimistic about my performance as a civil servant. Say that over my first three years, I'm just hitting it out of the park. Can you give me a raise? What can you do to keep me in my role?Not too much. For most people, the within-step increases — those 10 steps inside each GS-level — is just set by seniority. Now there are all these quality step increases you can get, but they're very rare and they have to be documented. So you could hypothetically pay someone more, but it's going to be tough. In general, the managers just prefer to stick to seniority, because not sticking to it garners a lot of complaints. Like so much else, the goal is, "We don't want someone rewarding an official because they happen to share their political preferences." The result of that concern is basically nobody can get rewarded at all, which is very unfortunate.We do have examples in state and federal government of what's known as broadbanding, where you have very broad pay scales, and the manager can decide where to slot someone. Say you're a computer operator, which can mean someone who knows what an Excel spreadsheet is, or someone who's programming the most advanced AI systems. As a manager in South Carolina or Florida, you have a lot of discretion to say, "I can set you 50% above the market rate of what this job technically would go for, if I think you're doing a great job."That's very rare at the federal level. They've done broadbanding at the Government Accountability Office, the National Institute of Standards and Technology. The China Lake Experiment out in California gave managers a lot more discretion to reward scientists. But that's definitely the exception. In general, it's a step-wise, seniority-based system.What if you want to bring me into the Senior Executive Service (SES)? Theoretically, that sits at the top of the General Service scale. Can't you bump me up in there and pay me what you owe me?I could hypothetically bring you in as a senior executive servant. The SES was created in the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act. The idea was, “We're going to have this elite cadre of about 8,000 individuals at the top of the federal government, whose employment will be higher-risk and higher-reward. They might be fired, and we're going to give them higher pay to compensate for that.”Almost immediately, that did not work out. Congress was outraged at the higher pay given to the top officials and capped it. Ever since, how much the SES can get paid has been tightly controlled. As in most of the rest of the federal government, where they establish these performance pay incentives or bonuses — which do exist — they spread them like peanut butter over the whole service. To forestall complaints, everyone gets a little bit every two or three years.That's basically what happened to the SES. Their annual pay is capped at the vice president's salary, which is a cap for a lot of people in the federal government. For most of your GS and other executive scales, the cap is Congress's salary. [NB: This is no longer exactly true, since Congress froze its own salaries in 2009. The cap for GS (currently about $195k) is now above congressional salaries ($174k).]One of the big problems with pay in the federal government is pay compression. Across civil service systems, the highest-skilled people tend to be paid much less than the private sector, and the lowest-skilled people tend to get paid much more. The political science reason for that is pretty simple: the median voter in America still decides what seems reasonable. To the median voter, the average salary of a janitor looks low, and the average salary of a scientist looks way too high. Hence this tendency to pay compression. Your average federal employee is probably overpaid relative to the private sector, because the lowest-skilled employees are paid up to 40% higher than the private sector equivalent. The highest-paid employees, the post-graduate skilled professionals, are paid less. That makes it hard to recruit the top performers, but it also swells the wage budget in a way that makes it difficult to talk about reform.There's a lot of interest in this administration in making it easier to recruit talent and get rid of under-performers. There have been aggressive pushes to limit collective bargaining in the public sector. That should theoretically make it easier to recruit, but it also increases the precariousness of civil service roles. We've seen huge firings in the civil service over the last six months.Classically, the explicit trade-off of working in the federal government was, “Your pay is going to be capped, but you have this job for life. It's impossible to get rid of you.” You trade some lifetime earnings for stability. In a world where the stability is gone, but pay is still capped, isn't the net effect to drive talent away from the civil service?I think it's a concern now. On one level it should be ameliorated, because those who are most concerned with stability of employment do tend to be lower performers. If you have people who are leaving the federal service because all they want is stability, and they're not getting that anymore, that may not be a net loss. As someone who came out of academia and knows the wonder of effective lifetime annuities, there can be very high performers who like that stability who therefore take a lower salary. Without the ability to bump that pay up more, it's going to be an issue.I do know that, internally, the Trump administration has made some signs they're open to reforms in the top tiers of the SES and other parts of the federal government. They would be willing to have people get paid more at that level to compensate for the increased risks since the Trump administration came in. But when you look at the reductions in force (RIFs) that have happened under Trump, they are overwhelmingly among probationary employees, the lower-level employees.With some exceptions. If you've been promoted recently, you can get reclassified as probationary, so some high-performers got lumped in.Absolutely. The issue has been exacerbated precisely because the RIF regulations that are in place have made the firings particularly damaging. If you had a more streamlined RIF system — which they do have in many states, where seniority is not the main determinant of who gets laid off — these RIFs could be removing the lower-performing civil servants and keeping the higher-performing ones, and giving them some amount of confidence in their tenure.Unfortunately, the combination of large-scale removals with the existing RIF regs, which are very stringent, has demoralized some of the upper levels of the federal government. I share that concern. But I might add, it is interesting, if you look at the federal government's own figures on the total civil service workforce, they have gone down significantly since Trump came in office, but I think less than 100,000 still, in the most recent numbers that I've seen. I'm not sure how much to trust those, versus some of these other numbers where people have said 150,000, 200,000.Whether the Trump administration or a future administration can remove large numbers of people from the civil service should be somewhat divorced from the general conversation on civil service reform. The main debate about whether or not Trump can do this centers around how much power the appropriators in Congress have to determine the total amount of spending in particular agencies on their workforce. It does not depend necessarily on, "If we're going to remove people — whether for general layoffs, or reductions in force, or because of particular performance issues — how can we go about doing that?" My last-ditch hope to maintain a bipartisan possibility of civil service reform is to bracket, “How much power does the president have to remove or limit the workforce in general?” from “How can he go about hiring and firing, et cetera?”I think making it easier for the president to identify and remove poor performers is a tool that any future administration would like to have.We had this conversation sparked again with the firing of the Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner. But that was a position Congress set up to be appointed by the President, confirmed by the Senate, and removable by the President. It's a separate issue from civil service at large. Everyone said, “We want the president to be able to hire and fire the commissioner.” Maybe firing the commissioner was a bad decision, but that's the situation today.Attentive listeners to Statecraft know I'm pretty critical, like you are, of the regulations that say you have to go in order of seniority. In mass layoffs, you're required to fire a lot of the young, talented people.But let's talk about individual firings. I've been a terrible civil servant, a nightmarish employee from day one. You want to discipline, remove, suspend, or fire me. What are your options?Anybody who has worked in the civil service knows it's hard to fire bad performers. Whatever their political valence, whatever they feel about the civil service system, they have horror stories about a person who just couldn't be removed.In the early 2010s, a spate of stories came out about air traffic controllers sleeping on the job. Then-transportation secretary, Ray LaHood, made a big public announcement: "I'm going to fire these three guys." After these big announcements, it turned out he was only able to remove one of them. One retired, and another had their firing reduced to a suspension.You had another horrific story where a man was joking on the phone with friends when a plane crashed into a helicopter and killed nine people over the Hudson River. National outcry. They said, "We're going to fire this guy." In the end, after going through the process, he only got a suspension. Everyone agrees it's too hard.The basic story is, you have two ways to fire someone. Chapter 75, the old way, is often considered the realm of misconduct: You've stolen something from the office, punched your colleague in the face during a dispute about the coffee, something illegal or just straight-out wrong. We get you under Chapter 75.The 1978 Civil Service Reform Act added Chapter 43, which is supposed to be the performance-based system to remove someone. As with so much of that Civil Service Reform Act, the people who passed it thought this might be the beginning of an entirely different system.In the end, lots of federal managers say there's not a huge difference between the two. Some use 75, some use 43. If you use 43, you have to document very clearly what the person did wrong. You have to put them on a performance improvement plan. If they failed a performance improvement plan after a certain amount of time, they can respond to any claims about what they did wrong. Then, they can take that process up to the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) and claim that they were incorrectly fired, or that the processes weren't carried out appropriately. Then, if they want to, they can say, “Nah, I don't like the order I got,” and take it up to federal courts and complain there. Right now, the MSPB doesn't have a full quorum, which is complicating some of the recent removal disputes.You have this incredibly difficult process, unlike the private sector, where your boss looks at you and says, "I don't like how you're giving me the stink-eye today. Out you go." One could say that's good or bad, but, on the whole, I think the model should be closer to the private sector. We should trust managers to do their job without excessive oversight and process. That's clearly about as far from the realm of possibility as the current system, under which the estimate is 6-12 months to fire a very bad performer. The number of people who win at the Merit Systems Protection Board is still 20-30%.This goes into another issue, which is unionization. If you're part of a collective bargaining agreement — most of the regular federal civil service is — first, you have to go with this independent, union-based arbitration and grievance procedure. You're about 50/50 to win on those if your boss tries to remove you.So if I'm in the union, we go through that arbitration grievance system. If you win and I'm fired, I can take it to the Merit Systems Protection Board. If you win again, I can still take it to the federal courts.You can file different sorts of claims at each part. On Chapter 43, the MSPB is supposed to be about the process, not the evidence, and you just have to show it was followed. On 75, the manager has to show by preponderance of the evidence that the employee is harming the agency. Then there are different standards for what you take to the courts, and different standards according to each collective bargaining agreement for the grievance procedure when someone is disciplined. It's a very complicated, abstruse, and procedure-heavy process that makes it very difficult to remove people, which is why the involuntary separation rate at the federal government and most state governments is many multiples lower than the private sector.So, you would love to get me off your team because I'm abysmal. But you have no stomach for going through this whole process and I'm going to fight it. I'm ornery and contrarian and will drag this fight out. In practice, what do managers in the federal government do with their poor performers?I always heard about this growing up. There's the windowless office in the basement without a phone, or now an internet connection. You place someone down there, hope they get the message, and sooner or later they leave. But for plenty of people in America, that's the dream job. You just get to sit and nobody bothers you for eight hours. You punch in at 9 and punch out at 5, and that's your day. "Great. I'll collect that salary for another 10 years." But generally you just try to make life unpleasant for that person.Public sector collective bargaining in the US is new. I tend to think of it as just how the civil service works. But until about 50 years ago, there was no collective bargaining in the public sector.At the state level, it started with Wisconsin at the end of the 1950s. There were famous local government reforms beginning with the Little Wagner Act [signed in 1958] in New York City. Senator Robert Wagner had created the National Labor Relations Board. His son Robert F. Wagner Jr., mayor of New York, created the first US collective bargaining system at the local level in the ‘60s. In ‘62, John F. Kennedy issued an executive order which said, "We're going to deal officially with public sector unions,” but it was all informal and non-statutory.It wasn't until Title VII of the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act that unions had a formal, statutory role in our federal service system. This is shockingly new. To some extent, that was the great loss to many civil service reformers in ‘78. They wanted to get through a lot of these other big reforms about hiring and firing, but they gave up on the unions to try to get those. Some people think that exception swallowed the rest of the rules. The union power that was garnered in ‘78 overcame the other reforms people hoped to accomplish. Soon, you had the majority of the federal workforce subject to collective bargaining.But that's changing now too. Part of that Civil Service Reform Act said, “If your position is in a national security-related position, the president can determine it's not subject to collective bargaining.” Trump and the OPM have basically said, “Most positions in the federal government are national security-related, and therefore we're going to declare them off-limits to collective bargaining.” Some people say that sounds absurd. But 60% of the civilian civil service workforce is the Department of Defense, Veterans Affairs, and the Department of Homeland Security. I am not someone who tries to go too easy on this crowd. I think there's a heck of a lot that needs to be reformed. But it's also worth remembering that the majority of the civil service workforce are in these three agencies that Republicans tend to like a lot.Now, whether people like Veterans Affairs is more of an open question. We have some particular laws there about opening up processes after the scandals in the 2010s about waiting lists and hospitals. You had veterans hospitals saying, "We're meeting these standards for getting veterans in the door for these waiting lists." But they were straight-up lying about those standards. Many people who were on these lists waiting for months to see a doctor died in the interim, some from causes that could have been treated had they seen a VA doctor. That led to Congress doing big reforms in the VA in 2014 and 2017, precisely because everyone realized this is a problem.So, Trump has put out these executive orders stopping collective bargaining in all of these agencies that touch national security. Some of those, like the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), seem like a tough sell. I guess that, if you want to dig a mine and the Chinese are trying to dig their own mine and we want the mine to go quickly without the EPA pettifogging it, maybe. But the core ones are pretty solid. So far the courts have upheld the executive order to go in place. So collective bargaining there could be reformed.But in the rest of the government, there are these very extreme, long collective bargaining agreements between agencies and their unions. I've hit on the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) as one that's had pretty extensive bargaining with its union. When we created the TSA to supervise airport security, a lot of people said, "We need a crème de la crème to supervise airports after 9/11. We want to keep this out of union hands, because we know unions are going to make it difficult to move people around." The Obama administration said, "Nope, we're going to negotiate with the union." Now you have these huge negotiations with the unions about parking spots, hours of employment, uniforms, and everything under the sun. That makes it hard for managers in the TSA to decide when people should go where or what they should do.One thing we've talked about on Statecraft in past episodes — for instance, with John Kamensky, who was a pivotal figure in the Clinton-Gore reforms — was this relationship between government employees and “Beltway Bandits”: the contractors who do jobs you might think of as civil service jobs. One critique of that ‘90s Clinton-Gore push, “Reinventing Government,” was that although they shrank the size of the civil service on paper, the number of contractors employed by the federal government ballooned to fill that void. They did not meaningfully reduce the total number of people being paid by the federal government. Talk to me about the relationship between the civil service reform that you'd like to see and this army of folks who are not formally employees.Every government service is a combination of public employees and inputs, and private employees and inputs. There's never a single thing the government does — federal, state, or local — that doesn't involve inputs from the private sector. That could be as simple as the uniforms for the janitors. Even if you have a publicly employed janitor, who buys the mop? You're not manufacturing the mops.I understand the critique that the excessive focus on full-time employees in the 1990s led to contracting out some positions that could be done directly by the government. But I think that misses how much of the government can and should be contracted out. The basic Office of Management and Budget (OMB) statute [OMB Circular No. A-76] defining what is an essential government duty should still be the dividing line. What does the government have to do, because that is the public overseeing a process? Versus, what can the private sector just do itself?I always cite Stephen Goldsmith, the old mayor of Indianapolis. He proposed what he called the Yellow Pages test. If you open the Yellow Pages [phone directory] and three businesses do that business, the government should not be in that business. There's three garbage haulers out there. Instead of having a formal government garbage-hauling department, just contract out the garbage.With the internet, you should have a lot more opportunities to contract stuff out. I think that is generally good, and we should not have the federal government going about a lot of the day-to-day procedural things that don't require public input. What a lot of people didn't recognize is how much pressure that's going to put on government contracting officers at the federal level. Last time I checked there were 40,000 contracting officers. They have a lot of power. In the most recent year for which we have data, there were $750 billion in federal contracts. This is a substantial part of our economy. If you total state and local, we're talking almost 10% of our whole economy goes through government contracts. This is mind-boggling. In the public policy world, we should all be spending about 10% of our time thinking about contracting.One of the things I think everyone recognized is that contractors should have more authority. Some of the reform that happened with people like [Steven] Kelman — who was the Office of Federal Procurement Policy head in the ‘90s under Clinton — was, "We need to give these people more authority to just take a credit card and go buy a sheaf of paper if that's what they need. And we need more authority to get contract bids out appropriately.”The same message that animates civil service reform should animate these contracting discussions. The goal should be setting clear goals that you want — for either a civil servant or a contractor — and then giving that person the discretion to meet them. If you make the civil service more stultified, or make pay compression more extreme, you're going to have to contract more stuff out.People talk about the General Schedule [pay scale], but we haven't talked about the Federal Wage Schedule system at all, which is the blue-collar system that encompasses about 200,000 federal employees. Pay compression means those guys get paid really well. That means some managers rightfully think, "I'd like to have full-time supervision over some role, but I would rather contract it out, because I can get it a heck of a lot cheaper."There's a continuous relationship: If we make the civil service more stultified, we're going to push contracting out into more areas where maybe it wouldn't be appropriate. But a lot of things are always going to be appropriate to contract out. That means we need to give contracting officers and the people overseeing contracts a lot of discretion to carry out their missions, and not a lot of oversight from the Government Accountability Office or the courts about their bids, just like we shouldn't give OPM excess input into the civil service hiring process.This is a theme I keep harping on, on Statecraft. It's counterintuitive from a reformer's perspective, but it's true: if you want these processes to function better, you're going to have to stop nitpicking. You're going to have to ease up on the throttle and let people make their own decisions, even when sometimes you're not going to agree with them.This is a tension that's obviously happening in this administration. You've seen some clear interest in decentralization, and you've seen some centralization. In both the contract and the civil service sphere, the goal for the central agencies should be giving as many options as possible to the local managers, making sure they don't go extremely off the rails, but then giving those local managers and contracting officials the ability to make their own choices. The General Services Administration (GSA) under this administration is doing a lot of government-wide acquisition contracts. “We establish a contract for the whole government in the GSA. Usually you, the local manager, are not required to use that contract if you want computer services or whatever, but it's an option for you.”OPM should take a similar role. "Here's the system we have set up. You can take that and use it as you want. It's here for you, but it doesn't have to be used, because you might have some very particular hiring decisions to make.” Just like there shouldn't be one contracting decision that decides how we buy both a sheaf of computer paper and an aircraft carrier, there shouldn't be one hiring and firing process for a janitor and a nuclear physicist. That can't be a centralized process, because the very nature of human life is that there's an infinitude of possibilities that you need to allow for, and that means some amount of decentralization.I had an argument online recently about New York City's “buy local” requirement for certain procurement contracts. When they want to build these big public toilets in New York City, they have to source all the toilet parts from within the state, even if they're $200,000 cheaper in Portland, Oregon.I think it's crazy to ask procurement and contracting to solve all your policy problems. Procurement can't be about keeping a healthy local toilet parts industry. You just need to procure the toilet.This is another area where you see similar overlap in some of the civil service and contracting issues. A lot of cities have residency requirements for many of their positions. If you work for the city, you have to live inside the city. In New York, that means you've got a lot of police officers living on Staten Island, or right on the line of the north side of the Bronx, where they're inches away from Westchester. That drives up costs, and limits your population of potential employees.One of the most amazing things to me about the Biden Bipartisan Infrastructure Law was that it encouraged contracting officers to use residency requirements: “You should try to localize your hiring and contracting into certain areas.” On a national level, that cancels out. If both Wyoming and Wisconsin use residency requirements, the net effect is not more people hired from one of those states! So often, people expect the civil service and contracting to solve all of our ills and to point the way forward for the rest of the economy on discrimination, hiring, pay, et cetera. That just leads to, by definition, government being a lot more expensive than the private sector.Over the next three and a half years, what would you like to see the administration do on civil service reform that they haven't already taken up?I think some of the broad-scale layoffs, which seem to be slowing down, were counterproductive. I do think that their ability to achieve their ends was limited by the nature of the reduction-in-force regulations, which made them more counterproductive than they had to be. That's the situation they inherited. But that didn't mean you had to lay off a lot of people without considering the particular jobs they were doing now.And hiring quite a few of them back.Yeah. There are also debates obviously, within the administration, between DOGE and Russ Vought [director of the OMB] and some others on this. Some things, like the Schedule Policy/Career — which is the revival of Schedule F in the first Trump administration — are largely a step in the right direction. Counter to some of the critics, it says, “You can remove someone if they're in a policymaking position, just like if they were completely at-will. But you still have to hire from the typical civil service system.” So, for those concerned about politicization, that doesn't undermine that, because they can't just pick someone from the party system to put in there. I think that's good.They recently had a suitability requirement rule that I think moved in the right direction. That says, “If someone's not suitable for the workforce, there are other ways to remove them besides the typical procedures.” The ideal system is going to require some congressional input: it's to have a decentralization of hiring authority to individual managers. Which means the OPM — now under Scott Kupor, who has finally been confirmed — saying, "The OPM is here to assist you, federal managers. Make sure you stay within the broad lanes of what the administration's trying to accomplish. But once we give you your general goals, we're going to trust you to do that, including hiring.”I've mentioned it a few times, but part of the Chance to Compete Act — which was mentioned in one of Trump's Day One executive orders, people forget about this — was saying, “Implement the Chance to Compete Act to the maximum extent of the law.” Bring more subject-matter expertise into the hiring process, allow more discretion for managers and input into the hiring process. I think carrying that bipartisan reform out is going to be a big step, but it's going to take a lot more work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.statecraft.pub

The Rich Zeoli Show- Full Episode (08/07/2025) 3:05pm- In a post to social media, “comedian” Rosie O'Donnell wrote that ABC is allegedly reviewing progressive bias on The View. O'Donnell warned that the show would soon be canceled to appease “the orange messiah,” Donald Trump. Is it possible the show is in jeopardy of being discontinued because the quality is low? For example, South Park has been aggressively targeting the Trump Administration in its latest episodes—but Paramount recently awarded the show's creators with an estimated $1.5 billion. 3:30pm- Russell Vought—Director of the Office of Management & Budget—joins The Rich Zeoli Show to discuss “200 Days of Winning” with the Trump Administration. What are the Trump Administration's most underappreciated accomplishments so far? Director Vought explains: securing the U.S. Southern border & preventing entrenched bureaucrats from slowing President Donald Trump's agenda. 4:00pm- Dr. Wilfred Reilly—Professor of Political Science at Kentucky State University & Author of “Lies My Liberal Teacher Told Me”—joins The Rich Zeoli Show to discuss 40% of Brown University students claiming they are gay and a CBS host who is worried about moon colonization…because of the awful history of colonialism. Plus, his book is now officially hitting the bestseller list! You can find it here: https://a.co/d/89w7Scz. 4:30pm- National Purple Heart Day: From the White House, President Donald Trump delivered remarks during a ceremony honoring Purple Heart recipients. 4:45pm- While appearing on Fox News, Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Stephen Miller estimated that because the 2020 census included undocumented migrants living in the U.S. unlawfully, Democrats have an additional 20 to 30 seats in the House of Representatives. 5:00pm- At least fifty-one Texas House Democrats fled the state as part of an effort to deny the Texas House a quorum—effectively preventing a vote on redistricting while also prolonging a vote on providing financial relief for families impacted by last month's devastating floods that killed more than 120 people. In response, Governor Greg Abbott has argued that fleeing the state to prevent the legislative process simply because you don't like the expected outcome of an upcoming vote amounts to an “abandonment or forfeiture of an elected state office.” 5:10pm- While appearing on CNN, political strategist Brad Todd explained that errors with the 2020 census “disproportionately” hurt Republican dominated states. 5:15pm- Democratic Strategist James Carville is now encouraging his party to make Puerto Rico and Washington D.C. states and add four seats to the Supreme Court if they take control of the House, Senate, and White House in 2028. 5:30pm- Chris Cuomo was tricked by perhaps the most obvious deep fake video of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez in recent memory—and didn't realize it for nearly 3 hours! Are we actually on Team AOC here? 5:40pm- Dr. Victoria Coates— Former Deputy National Security Advisor & the Vice President of the Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy at The Heritage Foundation—joins The Rich Zeoli Show to discuss Donald Trump potentially meeting with Vladimir Putin to negotiate an end to the Russia-Ukraine war. Dr. Coates is the author of the book: “The Battle for the Jewish State: How Israel—and America—Can Win.” 6:05pm- State Rep. Briscoe Cain—Texas House of Representative from the 128th District & Chairman of the Texas Freedom Caucus—joins The Rich Zeoli Show to discuss Texas House Democrats fleeing the state to avoid voting on redistricting. Rep. Cain has filed HB 257 to vacate the seat of any legislator who skips seven straight legislative days without an excused absence. He explains: “If you abandon your job, you don't deserve the title.” 6:20pm- During a recent interview, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard was asked about UFOs. Has she seen anything proving the existence of aliens??? 6:40pm- REPLAY: Russ ...

After President Trump's eventful and rare visit to the Federal Reserve building with Fed Chair Powell, OMB Director Russell Vought discusses the building's renovations and the President's concerns about the central bank's budget management. Vought visited the construction site alongside the President, and shares his hope that the project finishes quickly. Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-NY) is aiming to redistribute corporate wealth through his SHARE Plan Act. Rep. Suozzi explains his plan to rebuild the middle class with stock ownership. Plus, the FCC has approved Paramount's merger with Skydance, and President Trump signed an executive order to limit money's influence in college sports.  Russ Vought - 14:32Rep. Tom Suozzi - 29:05 In this episode:Becky Quick, @BeckyQuickAndrew Ross Sorkin, @andrewrsorkinKatie Kramer, @Kramer_Katie

God's Debris: The Complete Works, Amazon https://tinyurl.com/GodsDebrisCompleteWorksFind my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.comContent:Politics, Mental Health Rate 25%, Dalai Lama Reincarnation, Zuby, Zero-Sum Game, Jerome Powell Inflation, Diddy Trial, Trump CBS Lawsuit, Trump Name Branding Adoption, Alligator Alcatraz, Joy Reid, USAID, Samantha Powers, G7 Global Aid Reductions, Global Starvation Rate, Reproduction Rates, Starvation Rates, Jaime Raskin Designated Liar, CNN Bias Reduction, Harry Enten, Scott Jennings, Undocumented People Investigating AOC, Big Beautiful Bill, Russ Vought, Trump BBB Support, Elon BBB Opposition, Student Debt Repayment, SpaceX, Israel Hamas Cease Fire, Iran IAEA Suspension, Zohran Mamdani Creepy Smile, Creepy Commie Smile, Census Non-Citizen Counting, Solar Battery Economics, Scott Adams~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~If you would like to enjoy this same content plus bonus content from Scott Adams, including micro-lessons on lots of useful topics to build your talent stack, please see scottadams.locals.com for full access to that secret treasure.

The GovNavigators prepare for Independence Day weekend in this special pop-up episode of the GovNavigators Show. Unfortunately, leadership in Congress likely won't be enjoying the fireworks, as the administration insists everyone stay in town until the "Big, Beautiful Bill" is on the President's desk. Meanwhile, Russ Vought calls for a shakeup in federal auditing, and HUD gets a new headquarters.

BigTentUSA hosted an urgent and insightful conversation with David Graham, staff writer at The Atlantic and author of the new book The Project: How Project 2025 Is Reshaping America and Andra Watkins, founder of bestselling Substack newsletter For Such Time as This (formerly How Project 2025 Will Ruin YOUR Life).Graham and Watkins provided crucial insights into the ideological and political machinery driving one of the most consequential shifts in modern U.S. history. They dove into the roles of key figures such as Russ Vought, Stephen Miller, and other Trump-era officials who helped craft and now execute this agenda.ABOUT THE SPEAKERSDavid A. Graham is a staff writer at The Atlantic and an author of the Atlantic Daily newsletter. He is the author of the new book, The Project. He won the Toner Prize for Excellence in National Political Reporting in 2021 for his coverage of the 2020 presidential election. He previously reported for Newsweek, The Daily Beast, and The Wall Street Journal. He is also an adjunct instructor of journalism at Duke University and lives in Durham, North Carolina.Andra Watkins is a survivor of Christian Nationalism and a proud immigrant. She is the author of the bestselling Substack For Such a Time as This (formerly How Project 2025 Will Ruin YOUR Life) and the New York Times bestselling memoir Not Without My Father: One Woman's 444-Mile Walk of the Natchez Trace.PROTECT OUR WINTERS LETTER CAMPAIGNWatch YouTube Recording Learn More: BigTentUSA This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit bigtentnews.substack.com

Thursday, June 19th, 2025Today, the Supreme Court deals a stunning setback to trans rights as it upholds Tennessee's ban on transgender healthcare for minors; cuts to FEMA are hammering communities that voted for Trump; the fed refuse to cut interest rates despite pressure from Trump to do so; the Small Business Administration is flying the far right appeal to heaven flag; the President is really mad a Pete Hegseth for his squeaky squeaky tank parade; Russ Vought eyes a rarely used power to override Congressional spending; and Allison and Dana deliver your Good News.Thank You, PiqueGet 10% off for life with the link piquelife.com/dailybeans.MSW Media, Blue Wave California Victory Fund | ActBlueAllison Gill Live With Adam Klasfeld | muellershewrote.comCheck out Dana's social media campaign highlighting LGBTQ+ heroes every day during Pride Month -  Dana Goldberg (@dgcomedy.bsky.social)Guest: Molly Jong-FastMolly encourages all to find her book at a local independent books store, and if it's not available, you can request it.How to Lose Your Mother by Molly Jong-Fast - Penguin Random HouseE-Book - How to Lose Your Mother, Audio Book - How to Lose Your Mother Audiobook | Libro.fmFast Politics with Molly Jong-Fast - Podcast - Apple PodcastsMolly Jong-Fast (@mollyjongfast.bsky.social) - BlueskyMolly Jong-Fast (@mollyjongfast) · Instagram StoriesSCOTUS Allows For Trans Discrimination In Medical Care: A Full Analysis Of Today's Ruling | Erin In The MorningTrump Official Eyes Power of Rescission to Override Congress on Spending | The New York TimesFederal Reserve holds interest rates, defying Trump's demand to lower them | The GuardianCuts to FEMA's storm prep program hammer communities that voted for Trump | CBS NewsMigrant deported to El Salvador after DPS labeled him a member of Tren de Aragua without evidence, lawyer says | The Texas TribuneFar-Right ‘Appeal to Heaven' Flag Flown Above Government Agency in DC | WIREDTrump ‘Reamed Out' Hegseth for Flop Birthday Parade: Author | Daily BeastGood Trouble: From an anonymous listener: Georgia comrades: #DougCollins will be speaking:June 29th at 10:30am - The Church of the Apostles3585 Northside Parkway,Atlanta, Georgia 30327404-842-0200Would hate if they got a ton of phone calls against Doug and protestors. That would suck.Proton Mail: Get a free email account with privacy and encryptionFind Upcoming Demonstrations And Actions50501 MovementNoKings.orgIndivisible.orgFederal workers - feel free to email me at fedoath@pm.me and let me know what you're going to do, or just vent. I'm always here to listen. Social MediaDr. Allison Gill Substack|Muellershewrote, BlueSky|@muellershewrote , Threads|@muellershewrote, TikTok|@muellershewrote, IG|muellershewrote, Twitter|@MuellerSheWrote,Dana GoldbergTwitter|@DGComedy, IG|dgcomedy, facebook|dgcomedy, IG|dgcomedy, danagoldberg.com, BlueSky|@dgcomedyCheck out other MSW Media podcastsShows - MSW Media, Cleanup On Aisle 45 podSubscribe for free to MuellerSheWrote on SubstackThe BreakdownFrom The Good News'No Kings' protest brings national voices to Downtown Madison | Top Stories | wkow.comHumane SocietyReminder - you can see the pod pics if you become a Patron. The good news pics are at the bottom of the show notes of each Patreon episode! That's just one of the perks of subscribing! patreon.com/muellershewrote Federal workers - feel free to email me at fedoath@pm.me and let me know what you're going to do, or just vent. I'm always here to listen.Share your Good News or Good TroubleMSW Good News and Good Trouble Check out other MSW Media podcastshttps://mswmedia.com/shows/Subscribe for free to MuellerSheWrote on Substackhttps://muellershewrote.substack.comFollow AG and Dana on Social MediaDr. Allison Gill Substack|Muellershewrote, BlueSky|@muellershewrote , Threads|@muellershewrote, TikTok|@muellershewrote, IG|muellershewrote, Twitter|@MuellerSheWrote,Dana GoldbergTwitter|@DGComedy, IG|dgcomedy, facebook|dgcomedy, IG|dgcomedy, danagoldberg.com, BlueSky|@dgcomedyHave some good news; a confession; or a correction to share?Good News & Confessions - The Daily Beanshttps://www.dailybeanspod.com/confessional/ Listener Survey:http://survey.podtrac.com/start-survey.aspx?pubid=BffJOlI7qQcF&ver=shortFollow the Podcast on Apple:The Daily Beans on Apple PodcastsWant to support the show and get it ad-free and early?Supercasthttps://dailybeans.supercast.com/Patreon https://patreon.com/thedailybeansOr subscribe on Apple Podcasts with our affiliate linkThe Daily Beans on Apple Podcasts

Weekend riots in Los Angeles stretch into the new week … but they are "mostly peaceful," according to the Left. President Trump sends in the National Guard to Los Angeles. Team Trump making the rounds to sell the undecideds on the "big, beautiful bill." When Vice President JD Vance first learned about the Elon Musk tweet about Trump and Jeffrey Epstein. Senator Chuck Schumer then and Senator Chuck Schumer now. Is leadership at the FBI compromised, overwhelmed, or just incompetent? The term "family" is for white supremacists? Social media showdown: Simone Biles vs. Riley Gaines. Pope Leo XIV receives an interesting gift from Argentina's Javier Milei. Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) has a message for Republicans. Karine Jean-Pierre's colleagues spill the tea on her time in the White House. 00:00 Pat Gray UNLEASHED 00:23 NEW Pat Gray BINGO! Card 05:12 The 2025 LA Riots 22:25 The Left Defends the "Mostly Peaceful Protests" 26:21 Door Shut on Maxine Waters 27:52 Protestor on Stilts 31:21 National Guard VS. LA Protestors 34:29 Stephen Miller Explains the 'Big Beautiful Bill' 37:42 Kevin Hassett on the 'Big Beautiful Bill' 38:59 Karoline Leavitt on the 'Big Beautiful Bill' 45:03 JD Vance on Elon Musk/Donald Trump Feud 49:04 Russ Vought on the 'Big Beautiful Bill' 50:12 Chuck Schumer Back in 1996 52:48 "Maryland Man" is Back in America, but... 55:06 Kash Patel on Joe Rogan Discussing the Epstein Files 1:05:02 Attorney on Trump & Epstein 1:06:35 Kash Patel on Joe Rogan Discussing Anthony Fauci 1:12:09 'Family' is a White Supremacy Term?! 1:16:16 Simone Biles VS. Riley Gaines 1:25:33 Javier Milei Meets with the Pope 1:28:30 Democrats Turning on KJP Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

AlabamaGov. Ivey appoints David Reed as chairman of Marshall County CommissionSeveral state leaders named in lawsuit on behalf of Birmingham WaterworksMarshall, Dekalb county joins DHS to locate unaccompanied minors in ALKristen Nelson announces run to fill HD 38 seat, after Debbie Wood resignsIslamic Academy of AL drops request to relocate to MeadowBrook ParkThe USS Enterprise is docked in Mobile for dismantling processNational2K National Guardsmen sent to LA by Trump as riots and violence developOMB director Russ Vought talks about the BBB and the national debtABC's Terry Moran suspended after spiteful post about Stephen MillerElon Musk takes down his spiteful post about Trump and Jeffrey EpsteinNeuroscientist calls for halt to C19 mRNA shots for pregnant women and children

Glenn goes through the entire timeline of the feud, and he and Stu dissect how things went so wrong so fast. How did something that began as a disagreement on policy morph into horrific accusations and threats to pull funding?  In the aftermath of the falling-out between Trump and Musk, which began over disagreements regarding the "big, beautiful bill," Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought joins to defend the legislation and discuss where critics of the bill are mistaken. U.S. Secretary of Veterans Affairs Doug Collins joins to discuss how we can fix the VA and debate whether the VA should be privatized. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Glenn exposes the one person he thinks caused the massive Trump-Musk falling-out: Stu Burguiere. Glenn goes through the entire timeline of the feud, and he and Stu dissect how things went so wrong so fast. How did something that began as a disagreement on policy morph into horrific accusations and threats to pull funding? Glenn and Stu react to President Trump's impressive amount of restraint as Elon Musk went nuclear in this feud. In the aftermath of the falling-out between Trump and Musk, which began over disagreements regarding the "big, beautiful bill," Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought joins to defend the legislation and discuss where critics of the bill are mistaken. Glenn warns of the dangers that lie ahead if we don't get these disagreements with the bill settled. U.S. Secretary of Veterans Affairs Doug Collins joins to discuss how we can fix the VA and debate whether the VA should be privatized. Will Americans be paying more for their bananas? The guys react to a viral clip of Trump's commerce secretary and a congresswoman clashing over banana prices. They also discussed Michelle Obama's new book announcement.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hour 1 Segment 1 Kendall & Casey starts the show talking about Elon Musk on a rampage to kill the big, beautiful bill. They also talk about Russ Vought saying there will be recession if the big, beautiful bill fails. Hour 1 Segment 2 Kendall & Casey talk more about Oz the Mentalist going on the Joe Rogan Experience. Hour 1 Segment 3 Kendall & Casey are joined by Niki Kelley of the Indiana Capital Chronicle to talk about the Bohacek DUI. Hour 1 Segment 4 Kendall & Casey wrap up the first hour talking about a McCordsville dentist qualifying for the 2025 U.S. Open at Oakmont Country Club. They also talk about Karine Jean-Pierre leaving the Democratic party and releasing a new book. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

"Big, beautiful bill" hitting a snag in the U.S. Senate? President Trump isn't happy with Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.). Elon Musk expresses his displeasure over the "big, beautiful bill." White House reporting positive economic numbers, including a plummeting price of eggs. Air quality alerts in the U.S. because of the Canadian wildfires. NBA and NHL finals set to begin! Escaped prisoner makes plea to Donald Trump. Why you shouldn't make your bed first thing in the morning. The NFL is so gay. Washington Post was forced to correct its faulty reporting that was based on claims from Hamas. Senators Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) spend nearly a million dollars on their trip to Ukraine? ICE takes custody of the suspected Boulder terrorist and his family. Democrats blaming Trump for rise in anti-Semitism. ICE agents being doxxed, so they're wearing masks … and Democrats are upset. Tim Walz thinks he understands why young voters went for Trump. Chinese spy busted in U.S.? Man scales fence at Mar-a-Lago. 00:00 Pat Gray UNLEASHED 02:59 Russ Vought on the Big Beautiful Bill 06:04 Amy Klobuchar Calls Out the Big Beautiful Bill 07:33 Rand Paul is a NO on the Big Beautiful Bill 09:11 Mike Johnson Fires Back at Elon Musk 16:09 Karoline Leavitt on Elon's X 25:43 Pat Gray BINGO! Winner 26:52 Karoline on Egg Prices in America 34:32 Chewing the Fat with PRIDE??? 48:15 NFL is Still Gay 54:02 Hajj Walk Update 55:59 Karoline Leavitt Corrects the MSM 58:00 The Washington Post Correction 1:05:59 Richard Blumenthal Returns from Trip to Ukraine 1:07:06 Spending Reports from Lindsey Graham 1:16:10 Kristi Noem Update on Boulder Arrest 1:18:24 Trump Blamed for What Happened in Boulder?! 1:19:19 Dan Goldman on ICE Agents Wearing Masks 1:24:09 Tampon Timmy Walz Knows Why Trump Won 1:29:41 Ted Cruz vs. Cory Booker A.K.A. Spartacus 1:31:16 Chinese Caught Smuggling 1:33:16 Jackie Chan Talks about his Father 1:34:42 Texas Man Hops Mar-a-Lago Wall Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this June 4th edition of the RattlerGator Report, J.B. White broadcasts from Florida on a jam-packed Wednesday, blending personal updates with global analysis and deep Southern storytelling. He opens with reflections on Ukraine, praising American technological support and dismantling mainstream narratives about Putin, Russia, and the CIA's role. JB warns that global power structures are shifting, and those ignoring asymmetric warfare are already behind. He weaves in a heartfelt tribute to TK Adams, a legendary Georgia bandleader, and uses his story to highlight the beauty and self-sufficiency of the “True South”, not the caricature, but the real, complex cultural heritage. JB also dives into the transformative potential of Trump's “Big Beautiful Bill,” backed by Stephen Miller, Russ Vought, and Trump himself, calling it a monumental move against D.C. bloat. Between rants about Elon, shoutouts to the Badlands community, and critiques of both chiropractors and communists, JB offers wisdom, grit, and gut-level truth. As he says, “There can only be one, and we are that one.”

Mike Johnson and Russ Vought outright lied on camera about the proposed Medicaid cuts and the impact they would have on millions of Americans. Marco Rubio lied about the children who are dying because of USAID cuts. And Joni Ernst is reimagining Christianity to be about Jesus teaching his followers not to care about the sick and the poor because they're going to die anyway. And through it all, Peter Thiel is doing everything in his power not to die—or even age. But one saving grace is that Ukraine kicked some Russian ass this weekend. Bill Kristol joins Tim Miller.

On CNN's State of the Union, Dana Bash sits down for an exclusive interview with the man seen as the architect behind President Trump's scorched-earth effort to upend the federal government, White House Budget Director Russ Vought. Then, House Democratic Leader Rep. Hakeem Jeffries joins Dana to detail his party's plan to counter Trump's agenda, as well as respond to a new CNN poll showing Americans frustration with the Democratic Party. Next, Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy pushes back against Republican messaging around President Trump's massive spending and tax cut bill. Finally, Democratic Rep. Debbie Dingell, CNN Senior Political Commentator Scott Jennings, and CNN Political Commentators Jamal Simmons and Shermichael Singleton weigh in on Elon Musk's exit from the Trump administration, as well as early 2028 moves by Democrats. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

During the confirmation hearings of the Office of Management and Budget Director and Deputy Director for budget earlier this year, lawmakers pressed Russ Vought and Dan Bishop about whether they would comply with the Impoundment Control Act. The budget rules of the road require congressional approval if OMB decides not to spend money appropriated in law, while both Vought and Bishop promised to comply with the law. A new decision by the Government Accountability Office casts further doubt on whether OMB will follow the 1974 impoundment Control Act. For more on GAO's recent decision, Federal News Networks Executive Editor Jason Miller joins me.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Subscribe for $5.99 a month to get bonus content most Mondays, bonus episodes every month, ad-free listening, access to the entire 800-episode archive, Discord access, and more: https://axismundi.supercast.com/ Brad dives into the controversial Project 2025 with David Andrew Graham, a staff writer at The Atlantic. Graham discusses the origins, key figures, and goals of Project 2025, highlighting how the project aims to expand executive power and reshape America according to conservative ideals. Key individuals involved include Kevin Roberts, Russ Vought, and Paul Dans. The discussion also explores the interplay between religious convictions and political strategies, and the broader implications for American democracy. Linktree: https://linktr.ee/StraightWhiteJC Order Brad's book: https://bookshop.org/a/95982/9781506482163 Check out BetterHelp and use my code SWA for a great deal: www.betterhelp.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Episode 4505: Hostage Situation In The FBI; Exclusive With Russ Vought

This episode explores the dramatic changes in the US government following Elon Musk's departure and the appointment of Russ Vought. It delves into Vought's strategic moves to overhaul federal operations, emphasizing Schedule F, budget cuts, and policy reforms aimed at streamlining the government. Matt discusses the controversy surrounding these changes, their legal challenges, and the broader implications for government employees and services. He questions the balance between necessary reform and the potential for disruption, urging listeners to consider how much control the government should have over their lives. BUT BEFORE THAT, hear some news on a dollar reset date! About that thing we are doing in Vegas: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WCsH9-05vQzgZf9MAGBpUahyTqBcu9VgVqQ8pcACMT8/edit?tab=t.0 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

America has accepted gifts throughout it's existence but now Democrats are throwing a fit over an airplane being gifted to the DOD. It turns out even more of Joe Biden's jobs creation numbers were fake. Who's going to jail over that? Trump names Russ Vought to replace Elon Musk as DOGE Director. Supreme Court Judge Sonia Sotomayor plays the partisan card calling for lawyers to fight against the Trump administration. 

In today's episode:The Trump-trusters and plan-trusters don't trust Trump's latest endorsementGreg Gutfeld adopts Una Panoonah BankaA Congressman shows Fox News the hidden door in his office floor leading to tunnels beneath the CapitolCocaine in the UkraineNever look a gift plane in the emolumentsTrump announces a new plan on drug pricing, same as the old plan, like the last four years never happenedThe New York Times highlights Pam Bondi's role as a TV characterRuss Vought will lead DOGE after Elon Musk leavesNetanyahu says he's going back in to Gaza to "destroy Hamas"India and Pakistan resolve the war that never was with an assist from Donald TrumpScott Bessent and Jamieson Greer meet with China in Switzerland to agree to a temporary trade dealDonald Trump is treated as royalty by the Saudi royal familyTrump delivers an all-time great speech at the Saudi Investment Forum.Connect with Be Reasonable: https://linktr.ee/imyourmoderatorLinks, articles, ideas - follow the info stream at t.me/veryreasonableHear the show when it's released. Become a paid subscriber at imyourmoderator.substack.comVisit the show's sponsors:Diversify your assets into Bitcoin: https://partner.river.com/reasonableDiversify your assets into precious metals: reasonablegold.comJoin the new information infrastructure - get Starlink: https://www.starlink.com/residential?referral=RC-1975306-67744-74Other ways to support the work:ko-fi.com/imyourmoderatorDonate btc via coinbase: 3MEh9J5sRvMfkWd4EWczrFr1iP3DBMcKk5Make life more comfortable: mypillow.com/reasonableMerch site:https://cancelcouture.myspreadshop.com/https://cancelcouture.comFollow the podcast info stream: t.me/veryreasonableYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@imyourmoderatorOther social platforms: Truth Social, Gab, Rumble, or Gettr - @imyourmoderator Become a member at https://plus.acast.com/s/be-reasonable-with-your-moderator-chris-paul. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Will the papacy become Americanized? Glenn reacts to the first American pope and outlines the one thing the new pope should not do. Reporting from Rome, John-Henry Westen expressed concern about Pope Leo XIV. Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought joins Glenn to break down the House's push for a "big, beautiful bill." Vought also addresses some of the criticism this bill has been getting. A Massachusetts man brought Molotov cocktails and knives to the Capitol with plans to kill Cabinet members, but the mainstream media shrugged it off as misunderstood "activism." The Spectator associate editor Douglas Murray breaks down his appearance on "The Joe Rogan Experience." Glenn and Murray also discuss how our enemies are pushing an anti-American agenda and their hope that today's youngest generation will see through the propaganda. But can America's youth be expected to step up and save the country? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Judges across the country are calling BS on the Trump administration's lies in court. But the government has come up with a genius plan to impress the judiciary by perpwalking a Wisconsin judge out of her own courthouse. If that doesn't work, they'll try contaminated milk. Links:   STRENGTHENING AND UNLEASHING AMERICA'S LAW ENFORCEMENT TO PURSUE CRIMINALS AND PROTECT INNOCENT CITIZENS https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/04/strengthening-and-unleashing-americas-law-enforcement-to-pursue-criminals-and-protect-innocent-citizens/   State of NY v. Department of Education [Docket via Court Listener] https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/69944116/state-of-new-york-v-department-of-education/   American Bar Association v. DOJ [Docket via Court Listener] https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/69934429/american-bar-association-v-us-department-of-justice/   NTEU v. Vought [DDC docket] https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/69624423/national-treasury-employees-union-v-vought/?   NTEU v. Vought [DC Cir docket] https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/69821739/national-treasury-employees-union-v-russell-vought/   Trump Administration Previews Genius New Legal Strategy https://www.lawandchaospod.com/p/trump-admin-previes-genius-new-legal   US v. Dugan docket (E.D. Wisc.) https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/69943130/united-states-v-dugan/   Russell W. Currier and John A. Widness, A Brief History of Milk Hygiene and Its Impact on Infant Mortality from 1875 to 1925 and Implications for Today: A Review, Journal of Food Protection (Oct. 2018) https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0362028X22087610   Could changes at the FDA call the kosher status of milk into question? Many are asking. Jerusalem Post, April 25, 2025 https://www.jpost.com/food-recipes/article-851470   Show Links: https://www.lawandchaospod.com/ BlueSky: @LawAndChaosPod Threads: @LawAndChaosPod Twitter: @LawAndChaosPod  

Harvard University has been told to stop discriminating on race. Their reply: We dare you to stop us. Charlie and Russ Vought explain how important it is that Trump is daring to take on Harvard, NPR, and other left-wing leviathans. Charlie reacts to the Left's increasing embrace of violence to achieve its ends. Become a member at members.charliekirk.com! Get new merch at charliekirkstore.com!Support the show: http://www.charliekirk.com/supportSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Harvard University has been told to stop discriminating on race. Their reply: We dare you to stop us. Charlie and Russ Vought explain how important it is that Trump is daring to take on Harvard, NPR, and other left-wing leviathans. Charlie reacts to the Left's increasing embrace of violence to achieve its ends. Become a member at members.charliekirk.com! Get new merch at charliekirkstore.com!Support the show: http://www.charliekirk.com/supportSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Inside the Trump White House: Faith, Fierceness & Funny Moments with Sage Steele In this powerhouse episode of our exclusive podcast series from the White House, Sage Steele sits down with five of the most influential voices in the Trump administration: Karoline Leavitt, Harrison Fields, Linda McMahon, Kaelen Dorr, and Russ Vought. What do they all have in common? A fierce work ethic, a heart for public service—and most strikingly, a deep and unapologetic faith that guides their decision-making at the highest levels of government.

Thursday, March 6th, 2025Today, the Supreme Court rules that the Trump administration must unfreeze foreign aid; a US district judge has blocked Trump's cuts to NIH funding; a US district judge in Maryland has issued a preliminary injunction against Trump withholding funds to hospitals that provide gender affirming care; the Merit Systems Protection Board has ordered Trump to reinstate thousands of USDA probationary employees they determined were wrongfully terminated; hundreds of pages of emails show the turmoil inside the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau after Russ Vought issued his stop work order; the VA is set to fire 83,000 people before the end of the year according to an internal document while the IRS is drafting a plan to fire 45,000 people; Trump is threatening to take away transportation funding from the District of Columbia unless the mayor paints over Black Lives Matter Plaza; Andrew and Tristan Tate are under criminal investigation; multiple lawsuits have been updated since Trump said Elon was in charge of DOGE during his the joint session address; House Speaker Mike Johnson's Chief of Staff has been arrested for DUI; and Allison and Dana deliver your Good News.Thank You Naked WinesTo get 6 bottles of wine for $39.99, head to nakedwines.com/DAILYBEANS and use code DAILYBEANS for both the code and password.Stories:OPM alters memo about probationary employees but does not order mass firings reversed | NPRFederal judge blocks drastic funding cuts to medical research | AP NewsAndrew Tate and Brother Tristan Are Under Criminal Investigation in Florida: Attorney General | Rolling StoneSupreme Court rules Trump administration must unfreeze foreign aid payments | ABC NewsJudge blocks Trump order threatening funding for institutions that provide gender-affirming care for minors -  Chloe Atkins | NBC NewsEmail trove reveals CFPB turmoil after Vought's work stoppage - KYLE CHENEY and KATY O'DONNELL | POLITICOHouse Speaker Mike Johnson's chief of staff arrested on DUI charge after Trump speech - Ted Oberg, Ryan J. Reilly, Frank Thorp V and Scott Wong | NBC News129. Untangling the Foreign Aid Ruling - by Steve VladeckGood Trouble:Local group holds 'funeral' as new library policy goes into place | WAAY31 ABCAt The Root Collective | FacebookFederal workers - feel free to email me at fedoath@pm.me and let me know what you're going to do, or just vent. I'm always here to listen. Check out muellershewrote.com for my interview with a systems security expert about the massive breach at opm.gov caused by Elon MuskCheck out other MSW Media podcastsShows - MSW MediaCleanup On Aisle 45 podSubscribe for free to MuellerSheWrote on SubstackThe BreakdownFollow AG and Dana on Social MediaAllison Gill Substack|Muellershewrote, Twitter|@MuellerSheWrote, Threads|@muellershewrote, TikTok|@muellershewrote, IG|muellershewrote, BlueSky|@muellershewroteDana GoldbergTwitter|@DGComedy, IG|dgcomedy, facebook|dgcomedy, danagoldberg.com, BlueSky|@dgcomedyHave some good news; a confession; or a correction to share?https://www.dailybeanspod.com/good/From The Good Newshttps://longislandrollerrebels.orgLocal group holds 'funeral' as new library policy goes into place | WAAY31 ABCAt The Root Collective | FacebookReminder - you can see the pod pics if you become a Patron. The good news pics are at the bottom of the show notes of each Patreon episode! That's just one of the perks of subscribing! Check out other MSW Media podcastshttps://mswmedia.com/shows/Subscribe for free to MuellerSheWrote on Substackhttps://muellershewrote.substack.comFollow AG and Dana on Social MediaDr. Allison Gill Substack|Muellershewrote, Twitter|@MuellerSheWrote, Threads|@muellershewrote, TikTok|@muellershewrote, IG|muellershewrote, BlueSky|@muellershewroteDana GoldbergTwitter|@DGComedy, IG|dgcomedy, facebook|dgcomedy, IG|dgcomedy, danagoldberg.com, BlueSky|@dgcomedyHave some good news; a confession; or a correction to share?Good News & Confessions - The Daily Beanshttps://www.dailybeanspod.com/confessional/ Listener Survey:http://survey.podtrac.com/start-survey.aspx?pubid=BffJOlI7qQcF&ver=shortFollow the Podcast on Apple:The Daily Beans on Apple PodcastsWant to support the show and get it ad-free and early?Supercasthttps://dailybeans.supercast.com/Patreon https://patreon.com/thedailybeansOr subscribe on Apple Podcasts with our affiliate linkThe Daily Beans on Apple Podcasts

David wants the CFPB dismantled, and he thinks Russ Vought's philosophy at OMB about deregulation is the right one. But did Vought use a really bad example of “weaponization” this weekend, and are some bad actors bad examples for good deregulation? David unpacks this dilemma of freedom and virtuousness in a quick, needed diatribe.

If Marco Rubio was NOT playing the long game masquerading as a patriotic neocon who gets placed in the State Department to then give Russia everything it wanted, what would he be doing differently? Meanwhile, a Democratic version of the Tea Party may be brewing, the tensions between Elon and Russ Vought are likely to pop out, and a psychoanalyst needs to explain Mitch McConnell. Plus, the Saudis are getting their claws in our sports with a LIV-PGA deal and Trump's astonishingly corrupt involvement. And also -- Trump doesn't know ball. Pablo Torre and David Graham join Tim Miller. show notes David's forthcoming book, "The Project: How Project 2025 Is Reshaping America" David's newsletter on the Department of Education Pablo's podcast, "Pablo Torre Finds Out"

In this episode, Pastor Raef goes through three separate articles from this week's news and evaluates them from a Christian worldview. First, we examine President Trump's Executive Order making IVF Treatment more accessible to American families. Second, we look at the recent controversy around Wheaton College that erupted when they removed a Facebook post celebrating their alumni Russ Vought's confirmation as the Director of the Office of Management and Budget. Third we look at a surprising new statistic that shows young men from Gen Z making their way back to Church.Chapters1:17 Trump Signs Executive Order Expanding Access to IVG20:38 Wheaton College Rescinds Facebook Post Celebrating Russ Vought39:06 Gen Z Men Are Coming To Church In NumbersResourceshttps://apnews.com/article/ivf-vitro-fertilization-trump-executive-order-65972cc1b10151bf1a0d9390fe5754d9https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/02/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-expands-access-to-in-vitro-fertilization-ivf/https://www.christianpost.com/news/wheaton-college-rebuked-for-removing-russ-vought-post.htmlhttps://encountertoday.com/blog/2024/10/08/gen-z-men-going-to-church-more/

Today, we're talking about Russell Vought's confirmation as director of the Office of Management and Budget in Trump's second term after Democrats in the Senate did everything in their power to prevent his confirmation from going through. After all, according to Chuck Schumer, Vought is "Project 2025 incarnate," when really, he's just doing his job as Trump directed him. Of course, that didn't stop Wheaton College, his alma mater, from retracting its congratulatory statement after the social media backlash. We also discuss Rick Warren's most recent post about Jesus being in the political middle. And is Kanye West's latest anti-Semitic X rant evidence of spiritual attack? Buy Allie's new book, "Toxic Empathy: How Progressives Exploit Christian Compassion": https://a.co/d/4COtBxy --- Timecodes: (00:51) Share the Arrows tickets on sale soon! (03:37) Tulsi Gabbard confirmed (05:40) Russ Vought confirmed as OMB Director (12:55) Wheaton College removes post congratulating Vought (25:33) Wheaton's past progressive leanings  (40:04) Kanye West's X rant  (49:51) Response to Rick Warren's post ---   Today's Sponsors: EveryLife — The only premium baby brand that is unapologetically pro-life. EveryLife offers high-performing, supremely soft diapers and wipes that protect and celebrate every precious life. Head to EveryLife.com and use promo code ALLIE10 to get 10% of your first order today! Good Ranchers — Go to https://GoodRanchers.com and use code ALLIE at checkout to claim $25 off, free express shipping, and your choice of FREE ground beef, chicken, or salmon in every order for an entire year. Pre-Born — Will you help rescue babies' lives? Donate by calling #250 & say keyword 'BABY' or go to Preborn.com/ALLIE. BlazeTV — Watch episode four of ‘The Coverup: Smoking Gun' on BlazeTV, releasing Thursday. Become a subscriber at faucicoverup.com/ALLIE and use code “SMOKINGGUN” for $30 off your subscription. --- Related Episodes: Ep 1136 | Christianity Today, Be the Bridge, & the Evangelical Underbelly of USAID Funds | Guest: Megan Basham https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-1136-christianity-today-be-the-bridge-the/id1359249098?i=1000689740204 Ep 945 | Churches: Beware of the 'After Party' Trojan Horse | Guest: Megan Basham https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-945-churches-beware-of-the-after-party-trojan/id1359249098?i=1000644262393 Ep 796 | Former Lesbian Activist Calls “Soft” Christians to Repentance | Guest: Rosaria Butterfield https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-796-former-lesbian-activist-calls-soft-christians/id1359249098?i=1000610921016 Ep 896 | From 'Trans Man' to Transformed by Christ | Guest: Laura Perry Smalts (Part One) https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-896-from-trans-man-to-transformed-by-christ-guest/id1359249098?i=1000632613519 Ep 897 | A Detransitioner on the Lie of Trans ‘Joy' | Guest: Laura Perry Smalts (Part Two) https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-897-a-detransitioner-on-the-lie-of-trans/id1359249098?i=1000632747460 ---   Buy Allie's book, You're Not Enough (& That's Okay): Escaping the Toxic Culture of Self-Love: https://alliebethstuckey.com/book Relatable merchandise – use promo code 'ALLIE10' for a discount: https://shop.blazemedia.com/collections/allie-stuckey Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Russ Vought halts CFPB operations, earning praise from crypto leaders like Elon Musk and Brian Armstrong. Coinbase, facing 7,600 complaints, stands to benefit. Kraken lists Portnoy's JAILSTOOL memecoin, CAR's $CAR token raises scam concerns, Proton launches a Bitcoin wallet, endowments invest in crypto, and Brazil expands Bitcoin options and futures.RESOURCEShttps://www.theblock.co/post/339663/coinbase-gemini-ceos-cheer-as-consumer-financial-protection-bureau-chief-defangs-agency?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rsshttps://www.theblock.co/post/339671/kraken-lists-jailstool-memecoin-adopted-by-barstools-dave-portnoy-boosting-200-million-token?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rsshttps://www.theblock.co/post/339680/central-african-republic-launches-memecoin-as-experiment-according-to-presidents-x-account?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rsshttps://www.theblock.co/post/339709/proton-wallet-bitcoin?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rsshttps://www.coindesk.com/policy/2025/02/10/u-s-endowments-are-leaning-into-crypto-fthttps://cryptonews.com/news/brazils-b3-stock-exchange-to-launch-bitcoin-options-and-futures-for-eth-and-sol/?feed_id=11422&_unique_id=67a9eb7ccd7b0Secure your Business & Digital Life with Cyber Strategy Institute https://www.thegrowmeco.com/course/https://cyberstrategyinstitute.com/warden/https://csi-store.samcart.com/products/wardenvault-personal-managed-1device-annual?coupon=DCN_Warden WHERE TO FIND DCNhttps://substack.com/@dcndailycryptonewshttps://twitter.com/DCNDailyCrypto Trader Cobb X: @TraderCobbEMAIL USmatt@dailycryptonews.net——————————————————————***NOT FINANCIAL, LEGAL, OR TAX ADVICE! JUST OPINION! I AM NOT AN EXPERT! I DO NOT GUARANTEE A PARTICULAR OUTCOME I HAVE NO INSIDE KNOWLEDGE! YOU NEED TO DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH AND MAKE YOUR OWN DECISIONS! THIS IS JUST EDUCATION & ENTERTAINMENT! ©Copyright 2024 Matthew Aaron Podcasts LLC Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

How are deportations proceeding in the first weeks of the Trump Admin, and what are the plans to get them sped up even more? Border Czar Tom Homan joins Charlie to map it all out and respond to the attacks lobbed by the left. Charlie also explains why the confirmation of Russ Vought to run OMB is quietly of Trump's most important early appointments. Watch ad-free on members.charliekirk.com!Support the show: http://www.charliekirk.com/supportSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It's Casual Friday! Emma speaks with Ben Dixon, host of the Benjamin Dixon Show, to discuss the week in news. First, Emma runs through updates on the confirmation of Project 2025 leader Russ Vought to the OMB, Trump's official destruction of USAID and the devastating impact it could have on US Agriculture, Trump's targeting of HHS, Pam Bondi's repeal of anti-foreign influence efforts, birthright citizenship, ICE's detainment of a DACA middle school teacher, the NCAA's transphobic policy, Mike Johnson's tax cuts for the rich, and Trump's ICC sanctions, before diving a little deeper into the Trump/Musk Administration's attempts to obscure the insane levels of their executive overreach. Ben Dixon then joins, jumping right into the need for the US public to rally behind their federal workers in the face of genuine intimidation and threats from the Trump/Musk Administration, exploring the obvious and extensive danger posed by allowing more space for Trump loyalists and obstructionists in the government alongside the necessary role they play in bolstering genuine attempts to resist this regime. After expanding on the major solidarity being shown between federal workers at this moment – including relevant unions – Dixon and Emma parse through Trump's declaration of a US-backed plan to ethnically cleanse Gaza, and Democrats' ongoing inability (or genuine lack of desire) to stand up for marginalized communities at home or abroad, wrapping up the show by reiterating his call to rally behind our federal workers. And in the Fun Half: Emma touches on the struggle from Democratic leadership and media actually to address the ongoing administrative coup, before looking to some exceptions to that trend, including Kyle Clark's coverage of recent blunders in Colorado and Texas Rep. James Talarico's tirade against the lies of “school choice.” The MR Team also watches Ben Shapiro's gleeful defence of Trump's ethnic cleansing plan for Gaza, and gets an update from the Crowder & Co. deposition, before diving deep into the long history of fascist regimes relying on rhetorics of efficiency and bureaucratic cutbacks to obscure their destruction of public welfare, plus, your IMs! Follow Ben on Twitter here: https://x.com/BenjaminPDixon Check out Ben's show on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/@TheBenjaminDixonShow/featured Follow us on TikTok here!: https://www.tiktok.com/@majorityreportfm Check us out on Twitch here!: https://www.twitch.tv/themajorityreport Find our Rumble stream here!: https://rumble.com/user/majorityreport Check out our alt YouTube channel here!: https://www.youtube.com/majorityreportlive Gift a Majority Report subscription here: https://fans.fm/majority/gift Subscribe to the ESVN YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/esvnshow Subscribe to the AMQuickie newsletter here: https://am-quickie.ghost.io/ Join the Majority Report Discord! https://majoritydiscord.com/ Get all your MR merch at our store: https://shop.majorityreportradio.com/ Get the free Majority Report App!: https://majority.fm/app Go to https://JustCoffee.coop and use coupon code majority to get 10% off your purchase! Check out today's sponsors: Zippix Toothpicks: Ditch the cigarettes, ditch the vapes and get some nicotine infused toothpicks at https://ZippixToothpicks.com today. Get 10% off your first order by using the code MAJORITYREPORT at checkout. Your lungs will be glad you did. Naked Wines: To get 6 bottles of wine for $39.99, head to https://NakedWines.com/MAJORITY and use code MAJORITY for both the code AND PASSWORD.   Sunset Lake CBD: Skip the stress of shopping for your valentine and head on over to https://SunsetLakeCBD.com and use code Valentine to save 35% on edibles. This sale ends February 9th at midnight. See their site for additional terms and conditions. Beautiful Day Granola: Beautiful Day is offering Free Shipping for all Majority Report listeners when you go to https://www.beautifuldayri.org and USE code MAJORITY (all caps) at Checkout until March 7. Follow the Majority Report crew on Twitter: @SamSeder @EmmaVigeland @MattLech @BradKAlsop Check out Matt's show, Left Reckoning, on Youtube, and subscribe on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/leftreckoning Check out Matt Binder's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/mattbinder Subscribe to Brandon's show The Discourse on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/ExpandTheDiscourse Check out Ava Raiza's music here! https://avaraiza.bandcamp.com/ The Majority Report with Sam Seder - https://majorityreportradio.com/    

In the 8 AM Hour: Larry O’Connor and Patrice Onwuka discussed: 8:05 AM - INTERVIEW - RAYMOND ARROYO - Host of Arroyo Grande podcast, NYT Best-Selling author and a Fox News contributor, and New Orleans resident - previewed the Super Bowl coming to New Orleans this weekend. SOCIAL MEDIA: https://x.com/RaymondArroyo Senate confirms Russ Vought as Trump’s budget director despite Democrats’ stall tactics WMAL GUEST: 8:35 AM - INT ERVIEW - BRET BAIER - Anchor of Special Report on Fox News Channel – discussed his upcoming Trump interview at the Super Bowl. SOCIAL MEDIA: https://x.com/BretBaier Elon Musk Drags CNN Segment About His Teen DOGE Minion ‘Big Balls’ Where to find more about WMAL's morning show: Follow the Show Podcasts on Apple podcasts, Audible and Spotify. Follow WMAL's "O'Connor and Company" on X: @WMALDC, @LarryOConnor, @Jgunlock, @patricepinkfile, and @heatherhunterdc. Facebook: WMALDC and Larry O'Connor Instagram: WMALDC Show Website: https://www.wmal.com/oconnor-company/ How to listen live weekdays from 5 to 9 AM: https://www.wmal.com/listenlive/ Episode: Friday, February 7, 2025 / 8 AM Hour See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Trump Administration officials purge top FBI executives as Donald Trump's retribution campaign begins in full force against his perceived enemies. Plus, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker on how Democrats can fight back against Trump's agenda of chaos. 

Happy Friday! Sam and Emma speak with Ryan Grim, reporter at and co-founder of Drop Site News, co-host of Counter Points, to round up the week in news. Sam and Emma run through updates on Elon Musk's takeover of the US Treasury, Paramount's multi-million dollar payoff to Trump, Trump's attempt to blame a recent plane crash on desegregation, Trump's impending tariffs, the confirmation hearings for RFK, Kash Patel, Tulsi Gabbard, Russ Vought, and Doug Bergum, tax cuts for the wealthy, Trump's gutting of the FBI's Cyber investigation department, and the FCC's targeting of PBS and NPR, before expanding on the Trump Administration's failures in the lead-up to, and response to the recent aviation crash outside of Reagan Airport in DC. Ryan Grim then joins, briefly touching on some of the major reporting coming out of Drop Site News over the last few months – including a major report on Israel's US of an AI-weapons system to target Hamas leadership when home with their family – before he, Sam, and Emma dive deep into the recent hostile takeover by Elon Musk at the US Treasury, with the Treasury's place signing the checks that keep our government working central to Elon's first-order goals of personal enrichment and gutting the government – with the former particularly influential for an individual who makes most of his money off of federal contracts. After expanding on the latter with the Trump Administration's ongoing campaign to “traumatize” (per OMB head Russ Vought) federal workers, and the ultimate goal of the Administration to shift into an era of corporate governance, Ryan, Sam, and Emma look to the Trump Administration's attacks on DEI and DEIA, with Ryan addressing some of his recent comments on the failure of DEI to actually address issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion beyond shielding corporations from responsibility, before wrapping up the free half by touching on the threat of Trump's impending tariffs. And in the Fun Half: First, Sam and Emma unpack the Trump Administration's predictably insane and destructive response to the recent plane crash out of DC and plead with Democratic leadership to follow Gov. Pritzker's lead and act like an actual opposition party. They also dive deep into the embarrassing lack of knowledge about Medicare and Medicaid that RFK puts on display in his confirmation hearing for HHS director and the GOP's continuing attacks on Social Security, before watching Stephen Crowder stumble through self-incrimination at his defamation deposition, plus, your calls and IMs! Follow Ryan on Twitter here: https://x.com/ryangrim Check out Drop Site here: https://www.dropsitenews.com/ Check out Counter Points here: https://www.youtube.com/@breakingpoints Donate to friend of the show Annie Fitzgerald's GoFundMe if you can: https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-annie-fitzgerald-afford-lifesaving-treatment Become a member at JoinTheMajorityReport.com: https://fans.fm/majority/join Follow us on TikTok here!: https://www.tiktok.com/@majorityreportfm Check us out on Twitch here!: https://www.twitch.tv/themajorityreport Find our Rumble stream here!: https://rumble.com/user/majorityreport Check out our alt YouTube channel here!: https://www.youtube.com/majorityreportlive Gift a Majority Report subscription here: https://fans.fm/majority/gift Subscribe to the ESVN YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/esvnshow Subscribe to the AMQuickie newsletter here: https://am-quickie.ghost.io/ Join the Majority Report Discord! https://majoritydiscord.com/ Get all your MR merch at our store: https://shop.majorityreportradio.com/ Get the free Majority Report App!: https://majority.fm/app Go to https://JustCoffee.coop and use coupon code majority to get 10% off your purchase! Check out today's sponsors: Liquid IV: Embrace your ritual with extraordinary hydration from Liquid I.V. Get 20% off your first order of Liquid I.V. when you go to https://LiquidIV.com and use code MAJORITYREP at checkout. That's 20% off your first order when you shop better hydration today using promo code MAJORITYREP at https://LiquidIV.com. Select Quote: Get the RIGHT life insurance for YOU, for LESS, at https://SelectQuote.com/MAJORITY. That's https://SelectQuote.com/MAJORITY. Sunset Lake CBD: Sunsetlakecbd is a majority employee owned farm in Vermont, producing 100% pesticide free CBD products. Use code Leftisbest and get 20% off at http://www.sunsetlakecbd.com. Follow the Majority Report crew on Twitter: @SamSeder @EmmaVigeland @MattLech @BradKAlsop Check out Matt's show, Left Reckoning, on Youtube, and subscribe on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/leftreckoning Check out Matt Binder's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/mattbinder Subscribe to Brandon's show The Discourse on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/ExpandTheDiscourse Check out Ava Raiza's music here! https://avaraiza.bandcamp.com/ The Majority Report with Sam Seder - https://majorityreportradio.com/

Headlines for January 30, 2025; “He Cannot Be Trusted”: Sen. Ron Wyden Says HHS Nominee RFK Jr. Can’t Hide His Anti-Vax History; Medicaid Under Attack: Wyden on Funding Freeze Fiasco & Project 2025’s Russ Vought, Trump’s OMB Pick; Deadly D.C. Plane Crash Comes Months After Congress Ignored Warning About Traffic at Reagan Airport; Netanyahu to Meet Trump in D.C. as Israel Escalates War on West Bank Amid Gaza Ceasefire

The directives putting a pause on federal grants and the firing of career DOJ prosecutors is about trying to make the entirety of the federal government the tool of the man occupying the presidency. And it's all illegal and unconstitutional. Meanwhile, Trump is exactly the kind of broken sociopath who can dominate the war for attention—the defining resource of our time. Plus, a rundown on DeepSeek, the new Chinese AI model, and why Bitcoin fans aren't more angry about the worthless, scammy Trump and Melania coins.  Chris Hayes and Alex Kantrowitz join Tim Miller. show notes Chris's new book, “The Siren's Call: How Attention Became the World's Most Endangered Resource." Undercover video of Russ Vought on Project 2025, from August 2024 Alex's "Big Technology" on Substack Alex's "Big Technology" podcast

It's Casual Friday! Sam and Emma speak with Krystal Ball, co-host of Krystal, Kyle, & Friends and Breaking Points, to round up the week in news. First, Sam and Emma run through updates on Trump's assault on civil servants, his attempt to overturn birthright citizenship, the arrival of federal troops to the southern border, Trump's dangerous empowerment of ICE, the likely confirmation of Pete Hegseth, more Trump pardons, Meta's anti-abortion actions, Mike Johnson's request of Casey Hutchinson, and Trump's halting of police reform agreements, before expanding on the role of Trump's “Schedule F” attack on civil servants, and watching Jeff Merkley come right at Russ Vought for his desire to trap sick people in poverty. Krystal Ball then joins, diving right into Trump's clear and active effort to exercise his plan of maximalist lawlessness, with blanket pardons to violent January 6th rioters, blatantly unconstitutional acts like overturning birthright citizenship, and the launching of a shady cryptocurrency to hide backroom dealings. Expanding on this, Ball explores the particular role the Big Tech oligarchy plays in backing the Trump regime, with mass amounts of wealth stored in and funding the world of AI and cryptocurrency – two institutions whose primary uses are in bolstering and protecting exploitation – and why this political move by the industry is a necessity in an era where they are becoming more and more representative of the massive, unproductive hoards of wealth tied up among elite capitalists. After tackling the particular role the Democratic Party played in making this era of Big Money and Big Tech a bipartisan one, and how that, alongside the corporate capture of the media, has created an environment with utterly weakened opposition to fascism – with Dems having capitulated to the Trump worldview in the hopes of bringing about a kinder, gentler fascism –  wrapping up with the need to stay clear about the anti-fascist and anti-oligarchy messaging, and the environmental, social, and economic impacts they create. Sam and Emma also touch on Trump's recent actions to overturn the federal pledge to not discriminate in federal contracts, and the snitch-order sent out over federal DEI practices. And in the Fun Half: Sam and Emma unpack the immediate impact of Trump's severe mass criminalization and threat of deportation of undocumented migrants, with farmers in the citrus and dairy industries seeing their workforce disappear overnight, before talking with Kieth from Chicago about Trump's NIH shutdown and the collective nature of science, and exploring Trump's crackdown on the administrative state with the perspective of USDA worker Leo from CA. Elon sycophants Ben Shapiro and PBD jump to his defense over the “did a literal Sieg Heil at the inauguration” allegations, and the MR Team reflects on videos from the Aldaghma family in the wake of a tentative ceasefire in Gaza, plus, your calls and IMs! Follow Krystal on Twitter here: https://x.com/krystalball Check out Krystal, Kyle & Friends: https://krystalkyleandfriends.substack.com/ Check out Breaking Points here: https://www.youtube.com/c/breakingpoints Donate to the Gaza Bakery here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/gaza-bakery-feeding-displaced-families Become a member at JoinTheMajorityReport.com: https://fans.fm/majority/join Follow us on TikTok here!: https://www.tiktok.com/@majorityreportfm Check us out on Twitch here!: https://www.twitch.tv/themajorityreport Find our Rumble stream here!: https://rumble.com/user/majorityreport Check out our alt YouTube channel here!: https://www.youtube.com/majorityreportlive Gift a Majority Report subscription here: https://fans.fm/majority/gift Subscribe to the ESVN YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/esvnshow Subscribe to the AMQuickie newsletter here: https://am-quickie.ghost.io/ Join the Majority Report Discord! https://majoritydiscord.com/ Get all your MR merch at our store: https://shop.majorityreportradio.com/ Get the free Majority Report App!: https://majority.fm/app Go to https://JustCoffee.coop and use coupon code majority to get 10% off your purchase! Check out today's sponsors: Ritual: Essential for Men is a quality multivitamin from a company you can actually trust. Get 25% off your first month for a limited time at https://ritual.com/MAJORITY. That's https://ritual.com/MAJORITY for 25% off your first month. Sunset Lake CBD: Head on over to https://SunsetLakeCBD.com and use code Tincture to save 35% on tinctures. See their site for terms and conditions. Follow the Majority Report crew on Twitter: @SamSeder @EmmaVigeland @MattLech @BradKAlsop Check out Matt's show, Left Reckoning, on Youtube, and subscribe on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/leftreckoning Check out Matt Binder's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/mattbinder Subscribe to Brandon's show The Discourse on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/ExpandTheDiscourse Check out Ava Raiza's music here! https://avaraiza.bandcamp.com/ The Majority Report with Sam Seder - https://majorityreportradio.com/

Ceasefire and hostage deal between Israel and Hamas hits a snag. Joe Biden gaslights America one last time in his farewell address before he leaves office. More confirmation hearings. Attorney general hopeful Pam Bondi destroys Democrat senators. Secretary of state hopeful Marco Rubio is strong in his hearing. PatHeads own the word "throft" now! Is California going to turn red in the wake of the wildfire mismanagement? Dallas Cowboys' new coach search continues. Explosives found in a Chicago apartment ... what was planned? Get ready for the ERS … the External Revenue Service. Will Trump ride to Puerto Rico's rescue? Caitlin Clark's stalker is one weird guy. Trump's former attorney is begging for a presidential pardon. Kamala Harris and Jill Biden hung out last night?! 00:00 Pat Gray UNLEASHED 01:01 Ceasefire between Israel & Hamas 03:58 Joe Biden's Farewell Speech 15:46 Pam Bondi's Opening Statement 17:51 Pam Bondi vs. Adam Schiff 20:47 Pam Bondi vs. Alex Padilla 23:09 Pam Bondi vs. Sheldon Whitehouse 25:21 Pam Bondi vs. Richard Blumenthal 26:02 Pam Bondi vs. Mazie Hirono 28:26 Marco Rubio Explains Trump's Directives 34:13 Marco Rubio Explains China 36:16 Marco Rubio talks Liberal World Order 42:46 Russ Vought sets Gary Peters Straight 45:01 Red Dye 3 Banned in America 50:00 English Lesson for Kris Cruz 53:34 Klaus Schwab Warning about Climate Change 57:59 California Going Red? 1:04:15 Dallas Cowboys Head Coach  1:06:21 Suspicious Items Found in Chicago 1:10:05 Trump Talks about the ERS 1:12:02 Venezuela Wants to Attack Puerto Rico 1:17:36 Caitlin Clark Stalker 1:20:15 Michael Cohen Begs Biden for a Pardon 1:28:30 Trump Inauguration Performance 1:32:27 No More Joe & Jill Biden 1:35:18 Hunter Biden's Paintings Lost Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Russ Vought, Trump's nominee to run the Office of Management and Budget—and a Project 2025 author—believes we are living in a post-constitutional America and that any check on Trump's power would be illegitimate. And what's really scary is that Vought knows how the government works. Meanwhile, jihadi technocrats effortlessly took over Syria's second-largest city because Assad's protectors—Russia and Iran—are a bit distracted. Plus, Ukraine prepares for Trump.  Michael Weiss and Georgetown's Thomas Zimmer join Tim Miller. show notes Zimmer's piece on Russ Vought Michael's piece on the fall of Aleppo Cathy Young's latest regarding Russia's war on Ukraine

On this episode of the MeidasTouch Podcast: Trump advisors are at war with each other as some leak to CNN about investigating Boris Epshteyn, who is threatening lawsuits in response. Trump taps Russ Vought to lead the Office of Management and Budget, while egg prices are expected to skyrocket in 2025 due to the Avian Flu H5N1 outbreak. Meanwhile, the GOP downplays allegations against Pete Hegseth as "flirting," and farmers push for exemptions to protect migrant workers from deportation. In legal news, Jack Smith has dismissed the January 6 federal case against Donald Trump. Ben, Brett and Jordy break it all down! Subscribe to Meidas+ at https://meidasplus.com Subscribe to Adam Mockler on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@adammockler Deals from our sponsors!  Netsuite: Do you know your own numbers for your business? Download NetSuite's ultimate KPI checklist right now at https://netsuite.com/meidas Fum: Head to https://TryFum.com/meidas and use code MEIDAS to get a FREE GIFT with the Journey Pack today! Qualia: To boost YOUR NAD+ levels up to 74%, Go to https://qualialife.com/JORDY for up to 50% off and use code JORDY at checkout for an additional 15% off. ZBiotics: Head to https://zbiotics.com/MEIDAS to get 15% off your first order when you use MEIDAS at checkout. Miracle Made: Go to https://trymiracle.com/meidas to save 40% off and use code MEIDAS to claim your free 3-piece towel set Remember to subscribe to ALL the MeidasTouch Network Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/meidastouch-podcast Legal AF: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/legal-af MissTrial: https://meidasnews.com/tag/miss-trial The PoliticsGirl Podcast: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-politicsgirl-podcast The Influence Continuum: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-influence-continuum-with-dr-steven-hassan Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/mea-culpa-with-michael-cohen The Weekend Show: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-weekend-show Burn the Boats: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/burn-the-boats Majority 54: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/majority-54 Political Beatdown: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/political-beatdown On Democracy with FP Wellman: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/on-democracy-with-fpwellman Uncovered: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/maga-uncovered Coalition of the Sane: https://meidasnews.com/tag/coalition-of-the-sane  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The danger of Trump's nominees is that the main condition of employment—aside from being on Fox—is their fealty to him, and a willingness to go along with the ideological fervor of Stephen Miller, Russ Vought and JD Vance. Meanwhile, the math may not add up for Tulsi, Sarah McBride shows grace and dignity in response to Nancy Mace, and Trump goes weirdly quiet.   Bill Kristol joins Tim Miller. show notes Clip of Sarah McBride on MSNBC

Ben Meiselas and Michael Popok are back for a new episode of the top-rated Legal AF podcast. On tap? 1. A close examination of how the Gaetz take down can be used to successfully kill Trump's other obscenely unfit cabinet picks, like Hegseth, Gabbard and RFK Jr.; 2. a drill down on Trump's hatchet man to slash entitlements, Russ Vought and how to limit his influence as head of the OMB; 3. Judge Merchan's decision to deny Trump's efforts to immediately "dismiss" his NY convictions and postpone sentencing until matters are fully briefed for appeal; 4. The democrats strike a deal to get another 20+ Biden judges confirmed, and so much more at the intersection of law and politics. Subscribe to the new Legal AF channel: https://youtube.com/@LegalAFMTN Subscribe to Meidas+ at https://meidasplus.com Thanks to our sponsors: Henson Shaving: Visit https://HensonShaving.com/LEGALAF to pick the razor for you and use code LEGALAF for 2 years worth of free blades! Rocket Money: Let Rocket Money reach your financial goals faster by going to https://rocketmoney.com/legalaf Fum: Head to https://TryFum.com/legalaf or scan the QR code on screen and get a FREE GIFT with the JOURNEY PACK today when you use code LEGALAF Zbiotics: Head to https://zbiotics.com/LegalAF to get 15% off your first order when you use LEGALAF at checkout. Fatty15: Get an additional 15% off their 90-day subscription Starter Kit by going to https://fatty15.com/LEGALAF and using code LEGALAF at checkout. Beam: Get up to 40% off for a limited time when you go to https://shopbeam.com/LEGALAF and use code LEGALAF at checkout! Remember to subscribe to ALL the MeidasTouch Network Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/meidastouch-podcast Legal AF: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/legal-af MissTrial: https://meidasnews.com/tag/miss-trial The PoliticsGirl Podcast: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-politicsgirl-podcast The Influence Continuum: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-influence-continuum-with-dr-steven-hassan Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/mea-culpa-with-michael-cohen The Weekend Show: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-weekend-show Burn the Boats: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/burn-the-boats Majority 54: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/majority-54 Political Beatdown: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/political-beatdown On Democracy with FP Wellman: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/on-democracy-with-fpwellman Uncovered: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/maga-uncovered Coalition of the Sane: https://meidasnews.com/tag/coalition-of-the-sane Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Rich Zeoli Show- Hour 1: 3:05pm- On Thursday, former Congressman Matt Gaetz announced he is withdrawing as Donald Trump's nominee to serve as U.S. Attorney General. According to reports, Gaetz concluded he had no pathway towards confirmation after meeting with Senators earlier in the week and determining that at least four—Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Mitch McConnell, and John Curtis—would not support him. Republicans will hold a 53 to 47 advantage in the Senate, consequently cabinet nominees cannot afford to lose the support of more than four Republicans. Later that day, Trump selected former Attorney General of Florida Pam Bondi to serve as Attorney General of the United States. 3:15pm- The Police Report About Pete Hegseth's Alleged Sexual Assault Vindicates Him Of Criminality. Eddie Scarry of The Federalist writes: “What you're going to hear now and in the coming days from the national media is that there are “graphic” details in a police report related to an alleged sexual assault involving Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald Trump's incoming nominee for Defense secretary. It's certainly graphic, but the media will bet you won't bother reading the report, which in reality looks really bad for the alleged victim and effectively clears Hegseth of criminality.” You can read the full article here: https://thefederalist.com/2024/11/21/the-police-report-about-pete-hegseths-alleged-sexual-assault-vindicates-him-of-criminality/ 3:30pm- Did Jaguar Just “Bud Light” Itself? In a newly released, 30-second advertisement luxury automaker Jaguar did not show a single car—but it did feature several androgynous models dressed in strange clothing. In response, many on social media called the commercial “woke.” 3:50pm- According to CBS News, Donald Trump is expected to select Russ Vought to serve as Director of the Office of Management and Budget. Vought held the position during Trump's first term.

It's Casual Friday! Sam and Emma speak with Heather Digby Parton, contributing writer at Salon.com and proprietor of the blog Hullabaloo, to round up the week in news. First, Sam and Emma run through updates on the indefinite cancellation of Trump's hush money sentencing, Trump's cabinet of rapists and fraudsters, the MTG-Musk-Ramaswamy connection, the House's passage of the non-profit killer bill, Schumer's weak politics, the divide between US-Israel and the rest of the international order over the ICC's charges, Bolsonaro's criminal charges, and UAW action in Kentucky, before parsing a little deeper through the vastly different responses to the ICC's charges against Netanyahu, Gallant, and others, with an adamant defense of genocide from the Biden administration rebuked both internationally and domestically. Digby then joins, as she, Sam, and Emma first reflect on their gut reactions to Trump's second presidential victory, the distinctions between their responses to 2016 and 2024, and the particular feeling of defeat for the feminist movement as an anti-abortion candidate begins to name his overwhelmingly predatory cabinet. Shifting more toward the policy impact of a second Trump term, Digby dives into the major threat of a “competent” Trump administration, backed by four years of drafting the blueprint for Project 2025, and what to make of growing tensions between Trump and the Senate, be it over leadership or cabinet appointments, expanding on that latter element by assessing the major (and controversial) roles to be played by potential cabinet members Pete Hegseth and Russ Vought. The three of them also touch on the major backing Trump has in the financial power of Elon Musk, and the evolution of the GOP's clamor for power, before Sam and Emma wrap up the free half with some ancient (as in a mere 8 years ago) comments from RFK about one Donald Trump. And in the Fun Half: Emma dives deep into the impressive progressive representation coming out of Georgia, from the Senate to local politics, with some help from DSA Aaron from Atlanta, before briefly touching on the evolution of the Biden-Netanyahu relationship and what the future of a Trump-Netanyahu alliance will mean for the fight for a free Palestine. The MR Team also highlights Stavros Halkias' strong appearance with Theo Von, talks with Jake the Teacher about New York's conservative shift and the future of the governor's race, and unpacks the rampant bigotry of Nancy Mace and the right's desire to put queer people back in the closet, plus, your calls and IMs! Follow Heather on Twitter here: https://x.com/digby56 Check out Digby's work at Salon here: https://www.salon.com/writer/heather_digby_parton Check out Hullabaloo here: https://digbysblog.net/ Become a member at JoinTheMajorityReport.com: https://fans.fm/majority/join Follow us on TikTok here!: https://www.tiktok.com/@majorityreportfm Check us out on Twitch here!: https://www.twitch.tv/themajorityreport Find our Rumble stream here!: https://rumble.com/user/majorityrep ort Check out our alt YouTube channel here!: https://www.youtube.com/majorityreportlive Join Sam on the Nation Magazine Cruise! 7 days in December 2024!!: https://nationcruise.com/mr/ Check out StrikeAid here!; https://strikeaid.com/ Gift a Majority Report subscription here: https://fans.fm/majority/gift Subscribe to the ESVN YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/esvnshow Subscribe to the AMQuickie newsletter here: https://am-quickie.ghost.io/ Join the Majority Report Discord! http://majoritydiscord.com/ Get all your MR merch at our store: https://shop.majorityreportradio.com/ Get the free Majority Report App!: http://majority.fm/app Go to https://JustCoffee.coop and use coupon code majority to get 20% off your purchase! 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