Riley on news · June 25th

Good morning. I’m Thom Hartmann. Senate Republicans are siding with Majority Leader John Thune over Trump as the president demands senators blow up the rules to pass his agenda. The LA Times’ billionaire owner is falling months behind on payments to contractors and vendors, raising serious questions about the 144 year-old paper’s potential IPO down the road. Pete Hegseth just did a quiet one-eighty on his flu vaccine requirement reversal after an outbreak at a Texas Air Force base sickened more than 200 recruits and killed one.

Good evening. I’m British Chris, and this is Raw America. A federal appeals court just shut down one of Trump’s most brazen attempts to disrupt the midterms. New details are emerging about how the billionaire Ellison family’s $45 million in secret donations to Trump-aligned groups helped grease the wheels for their media empire. A Democratic senator is demanding Trump reimburse taxpayers from his own pocket for the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool debacle.

Joy Reid always- I mean always—brings the fire. And she did just that in our conversation on Tuesday that began by focusing on corporate media failing us and how independent media is rising to fill that void. Joy noted that corporate media has become so untrustworthy that she now gets her news from Lego memes. As Joy joked, “I promise you the Legos are my new CNN.” She added, “Legos have never steered me wrong.” In reality, there have been articles about how people learned more from the Lego memes about the Iran war than from US media or Trump regime.

For years, Americans were told that the greatest threat to national security was an unelected “deep state” secretly pulling the strings of government. Then came reports that the nation’s top intelligence official may have spent much of her political career receiving guidance that allegedly originated from a reclusive spiritual guru whose followers regard him as an enlightened authority. Apparently, the deep state was fine.

Fresh off of last week’s model release, in which our director of political data, Lakshya Jain, argued that The Cook Political Report’s election ratings were strangely pessimistic for Democrats, Cook’s Erin Covey gamely agreed to sort it out live in conversation. Erin argued that Cook’s ratings, which take into account a large amount of internal and public information alike, are designed to be “stickier,” erring on the side of caution.

In 1928, on the eve of the Great Depression, the richest 1 percent of Americans collected 23.9 percent of all income in the United States. Over the next fifty years, that share would be cut by more than half. Through progressive era trust-busting, labor reform, taxation, social insurance, and public investment, Americans built the broadest middle class in the nation’s history.

I have written about Bill Maher more in the last two months than I have in my entire career. I want to be clear that this was not the plan. I did not sit down at my computer and think, “You know what my political science career needs? A seventy-year-old comedian with a podcast, a persecution complex, and the emotional resilience of an unplugged air fryer.” Yet here we are. Every time I think I am done writing about Bill Maher, he opens his mouth and another article falls out.

One year ago this week, Zohran Mamdani rocked the political world with his New York City mayoral primary victory over Andrew Cuomo. Yesterday, Mayor Mamdani followed that up with a second political earthquake, as his three endorsed House primary candidates all won their races, ousting two sitting Democratic Representatives in the process. The message Mamdani has sent to the Democratic establishment is unmistakable. But will they listen? In the wake of Mamdani’s remarkable winning streak last night, both the left and the right are spinning the results to advance their preferred narratives.

Morning all. I did a comprehensive overview of the elections last night and the midterms more broadly in a live talk with Katie Phang over at The Contrarian this morning. A video recording and rough transcript are above. Here is some of what we discuss: Mamdani Has A Big Night - The Mayor’s three candidates won their House primaries in NYC last night, unseating two incumbents, including the Chair of the Hispanic Caucus. His coalition also won some down ballot state legislative primaries. He comes out of the night stronger than ever in NYC and as a rising power in American politics.

Greetings all. Sending along one of my favorite candidate conversations of the cycle so far, one we just completed with Rebecca Cooke, who’s running in the Third District of Wisconsin. One of the things I’ve learned in my many years in the game is that good candidates, those who win, get stronger, better, and more confident as the cycle goes on. They grow, and get bigger and more powerful as politicians and orators. As you will see in our conversation Rebecca Cooke has become one of those candidates who grow and become more powerful as the race goes on.