GD POLITICS

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.gdpolitics.comA quick note: If you’re not already a paid subscriber, now’s a great time to sign up. Annual subscriptions are currently 20 percent off, which comes out to just $5 a month for twice as many episodes, access to live shows like this one, and more. Come join the crew!The GD POLITICS podcast returned to the Comedy Cellar this week with Nate Silver and Clare Malone for another sold-out night of political analysis, games, audience questions, and jokes that were, as always, purely incidental.We started with “Hot Take Hat,” pulling buzzy topics at random and giving them the treatment they deserved — from Labour’s meltdown in the U.K. and the global incumbency curse, to Hantavirus panic, Trump’s Iran war, inflation, and the apparently urgent matter of the White House ballroom.Then we turned to the 2026 midterms, where the redistricting wars have taken another turn. After rulings from the U.S. Supreme Court and the Virginia Supreme Court, what once looked like a possible Democratic counteroffensive is now likely to net out in Republicans’ favor. We talked about how much the new maps could shift the House playing field, the politics of gerrymandering and the Voting Rights Act, and the eternal question: Do voters care about any of this, or just the price of gas?Finally, we debuted a new game: “True or False: Crosstab Diving Edition.” Clare, Nate, and the audience guessed their way through some of the quirkiest and most revealing findings buried inside recent polls — including whether Democrats think an average 8-year-old boy could beat Donald Trump in a fight, which age and gender groups have swung hardest against Trump, and what Americans really think about AI, marijuana, and bisexuality.Catch the full episode for hot takes, warped maps, cursed crosstabs, and a reminder that American politics remains, somehow, both very serious and worthy of laughter.

Heads up: We’ve got a live show at the Comedy Cellar in New York City with Nate Silver and Clare Malone coming up on May 13. We’ll talk about the midterms and the Trump administration, play some games, and take questions from the audience. Grab a ticket, grab a beer, and come join us!Just about every institution in America has taken a reputational beating this century. And still, the speed and severity with which Americans have turned on the public health establishment remain striking.In March 2020, when COVID began disrupting American life in earnest, 85 percent of Americans said they trusted the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as an information source. Today, six years later, that figure is 47 percent. Republicans were the first to lose faith, dropping to around 40 percent during Biden’s tenure, but Democrats have largely caught up during Trump’s second term.For public health folks, this is an existential threat. If they can’t be trusted, their information can’t persuade, and public health itself becomes more of an academic exercise than an effort to save lives. The current hantavirus outbreak is a stark reminder of the stakes.It’s easy to blame bad-faith actors for the bind public health now finds itself in. But it’s also hard to have lived through the past six years without a sense that experts have helped bring some of this on themselves. In fact, they’re increasingly acknowledging as much and setting out to course correct.Sandro Galea, dean of the School of Public Health at Washington University in St. Louis, and Salma Abdalla, a professor at WashU’s School of Public Health, have launched a yearlong project called Purple Public Health, which aims to rebuild credibility with Americans of all stripes. (Sandro came on the podcast last year to talk about MAHA, so he may sound familiar.)I’m excited to have them on today’s podcast to talk about their work — not just because it matters on its own terms, but also because there’s probably something for all of us to learn about earning credibility in a polarized world. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.gdpolitics.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.gdpolitics.comThe full episode is available to paid subscribers. Once you become a paid subscriber, you can connect your account to your preferred podcast player here.When we first started talking about prediction markets in the early days of the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast, back in 2016, they were something of a novelty and a joke.My then-colleague Clare Malone once quipped, “Who’s even putting money on these markets … Scottish teenagers?” From then on, we referred to online bettors as Scottish teens.Back then, the prediction markets that got the most attention were Betfair, based in the U.K., and PredictIt, based in New Zealand. Both took off in terms of volume and media attention during Brexit and Trump’s first election. But after 2016, PredictIt got bogged down in regulatory drama, and Betfair was largely inaccessible to Americans. In their place, Kalshi and Polymarket became the main characters in the American prediction market story.Today, prediction markets are no longer much of a novelty or a joke.Recently, an active-duty U.S. Army soldier was charged with using classified information for personal gain after he made more than $400,000 betting on Maduro’s ouster on Polymarket. He was allegedly involved in planning and executing Maduro’s capture.Betting trends point to potentially similar insider knowledge being used in Iran War prediction markets in February and March of this year. And Israeli prosecutors filed indictments against an Israel Defense Forces reservist and a civilian for allegedly using classified military intelligence to bet on Polymarket in the run-up to strikes on Iran last summer.The list goes on. Kalshi suspended three American political candidates for insider trading after an internal probe found they had bet on their own campaigns. Weather instruments at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris appear to have been tampered with in order to rapidly increase the temperature — perhaps with a lighter or hair dryer — and cash in on a weather prediction contract.As things stand, prediction markets seem likely to keep growing in popularity and media attention. On Polymarket, more than half a billion dollars has already been wagered on the outcome of the 2028 presidential election. One estimate suggests that total volume across prediction markets could reach $1 trillion annually by 2030.Meanwhile, lawmakers in Washington and the states are increasingly talking about cracking down on the markets, and state attorneys general have been filing lawsuits.So today, we’re diving into the messy world of prediction markets: their history, how they work, the arguments for and against them, how they’re regulated, and what their future holds.Joining me is Jacob Studwell, growth and engagement officer at PredictIt — home of the Scottish teens.

Heads up: We’ve got a live show at the Comedy Cellar in New York City with Nate Silver and Clare Malone coming up on May 13. We’ll talk about the midterms and the Trump administration, play some games, and take questions from the audience. Grab a ticket, grab a beer, and come join us!The Senate map is coming into focus. Maine Gov. Janet Mills dropped out of the Democratic primary last week, leaving former Marine and oyster farmer Graham Platner as the presumptive Democratic nominee against Sen. Susan Collins.Mills was trailing Platner by 30 points on average before she dropped out. Meanwhile, Platner — despite no shortage of early scandals, including the infamous Nazi tattoo and online writings that ranged from calling rural whites racist and stupid to asking why Black people don’t tip — was raking in cash and rallying voters. It was a poor showing for Mills herself, but also for the establishment that drafted her to run in the first place.On today’s podcast, Sahil Kapur of NBC News joins me to discuss what the truncated Maine primary tells us about the Democratic Party right now: the “Biden trauma tax,” the value of “authenticity,” and whether Democrats are experiencing something like their own Tea Party moment.We also survey the rest of the Senate map, from North Carolina and Alaska to Ohio and Texas, and ask which races are actually most likely to flip. Then we turn to Washington, where the longest partial government shutdown in history has ended and Trump’s war in Iran is testing the War Powers Act. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.gdpolitics.com/subscribe

Heads up: We’ve got a live show at the Comedy Cellar in New York City with Nate Silver and Clare Malone coming up on May 13. We’ll talk about the midterms and the Trump administration, play some games, and take questions from the audience. Grab a ticket, grab a beer, and come join us!The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday in Louisiana v. Callais, striking down Louisiana’s congressional map and significantly raising the bar for challenges under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.The decision was not the full doomsday scenario that some voting rights advocates feared. The Court did not strike down the Voting Rights Act altogether, nor did it say that race can never be considered in redistricting. But the 6-3 conservative majority did make it harder to prove that a map illegally dilutes minority voting power, especially in an era when race and party are so closely correlated.So where does the fight over gerrymandering go from here?Nathaniel Rakich of VoteBeat joined me to break down what the Court actually decided, how the ruling could affect the 2026 and 2028 House maps, and why the next phase of the redistricting wars may hinge less on the courts and more on federal legislation, constitutional amendments, or some future anti-politics reform movement. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.gdpolitics.com/subscribe

Heads up: We’ve got a live show at the Comedy Cellar in New York City with Nate Silver and Clare Malone coming up on May 13. We’ll talk about the midterms and the Trump administration, play some games, and take questions from the audience. Grab a ticket, grab a beer, and come join us!Tuesday marks one year since the Liberals won Canada’s federal election, securing Mark Carney as prime minister despite a Conservative victory looking like a foregone conclusion just months earlier.A year later, Carney’s popularity and power have only grown. His approval rating sits at about 60 percent, and after winning three by-elections earlier this month, the Liberals now govern with a majority in Parliament.The combination of Carney’s tack to the center and a backlash against American economic threats has transformed Canadian politics. Minor parties have been sidelined, new parts of the electorate have been absorbed into the Liberal coalition, and Canadians appear to be giving Carney the benefit of the doubt despite challenging economic circumstances.The biggest question for Liberals now is how long Canadians’ economic patience will last — and how long Trump’s influence will, too. Philippe Fournier of 338Canada and Éric Grenier of The Writ joined me to discuss it all. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.gdpolitics.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.gdpolitics.comThe full episode is available to paid subscribers. Once you become a paid subscriber, you can connect your account to your preferred podcast player here.Virginia voters approved a gerrymander of their congressional map by a slim margin on Tuesday. As we discussed on Monday, the new map could elect 10 Democrats and just one Republican this fall, replacing the current delegation of six Democrats and five Republicans.It’s a dramatic turn in the mid-decade redistricting saga that began with Texas’s Republican gerrymander last summer. As things stand, Democrats could end up as the net beneficiaries of an effort initiated by President Trump.We dig into those results at the top of today’s podcast, then turn to the listener mailbag. We’ve been getting lots of great questions in the paid subscriber chat on Substack at gdpolitics.com. (A reminder to paid subscribers to take advantage of that!). I’ll start a new thread there so you can drop in questions whenever you like.Today’s questions cover the California governor’s race, whether candidate attractiveness affects election outcomes, that poll suggesting the Democratic Party is less popular than ICE and the GOP, whether MAGA identification has declined, and what to watch in the midterms — especially the Senate. We even get into the Nebraska race, which one listener argues deserves more attention.Joining me are Mary Radcliffe, head of research at FiftyPlusOne, and Lenny Bronner, senior data scientist at The Washington Post.

Heads up: We’ve got a live show at the Comedy Cellar in New York City with Nate Silver and Clare Malone coming up on May 13. We’ll talk about the midterms and the Trump administration, play some games, and take questions from the audience. Grab a ticket, grab a beer, and come join us!Virginians are heading to the polls on Tuesday to decide whether to redraw the state’s congressional map, part of Democrats’ response to Republicans’ push for mid-decade redistricting.If the measure passes, Virginia could go from a delegation of six Democrats and five Republicans to one with 10 Democrats and just one Republican. But that outcome is not yet certain: polling shows a closely divided public.In Florida, legislators are preparing for a special session next week to decide whether, and how, to redraw that state’s map. Recent Democratic overperformances, combined with a state constitution that bars partisan gerrymandering, make the politics there more complicated.Once Virginia and Florida settle on their paths forward, we should finally — in the middle of primary season — have a clearer sense of what the 2026 congressional map will look like.That’s our focus on today’s podcast. We also dig into broader questions around election administration, including Republicans’ push to pass the SAVE America Act, Trump’s executive orders, and decisions still pending at the Supreme Court.And we round things out with the latest midterm fundraising numbers and last week’s New Jersey special election. Joining me for all of it is Nathaniel Rakich, managing editor of Votebeat. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.gdpolitics.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.gdpolitics.comThe full episode is available to paid subscribers. Once you become a paid subscriber, you can connect your account to your preferred podcast player here.Heads up: We’ve got a live show at the Comedy Cellar in New York City with Nate Silver and Clare Malone coming up on May 13. We’ll talk about the midterms and the Trump administration, play some games, and take questions from the audience. Grab a ticket, grab a beer, and come join us!Last November, friend of the pod David Byler joined me to argue that, while artificial intelligence was still on the periphery of politics, it wouldn’t stay there for long. The parties, he said, should prepare for disruption.Less than six months later, it feels almost silly to have ever imagined otherwise. Over the past few months, the Department of Defense has publicly clashed with Anthropic over how its models could be used in war. Anthropic, for its part, developed a model so powerful that it is now back in talks with the Trump administration about how to protect the nation from its own capabilities.At the same time, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders proposed a national moratorium on data center construction in response to local concerns about energy costs and broader AI skepticism. Just this week, Maine passed the first-ever statewide version of that idea, banning the buildout of large data centers through the end of 2027. Meanwhile, the White House has proposed federal legislation that would preempt such state laws, and 2028 hopefuls are beginning to stake out positions of their own.AI has officially entered the political mainstream.To mark its arrival, I invited David Byler back on the podcast. He is the vice president of trends and futures at National Research Group, and together we talk through how AI became a live political issue. We also ask whether the latest examples of AI polling, described in the New York Times op-ed “This Is What Will Ruin Public Opinion Polling for Good,” count as good data, bad data, or not data.

When we last checked in on the economy on the podcast, on February 23, Harvard economist Jason Furman said it looked like the U.S. had pulled off the first soft landing of the postwar era. Inflation was largely under control, the labor market was solid, and growth looked decent too.Five days later, the United States went to war with Iran, upending the global economy. Since then, oil is up about 50 percent, average gas prices have risen by more than a dollar, and inflation has followed suit. On Friday, March inflation came in at 3.3 percent over the past year and about 1 percent since February, the fastest pace of Trump’s second term.So today we’re taking stock of the American economy a month and a half into the conflict. In addition to inflation data, we’ve got new data on jobs (not bad), economic growth (not good), and consumer sentiment (not happy). Plus, taxes are due by Wednesday, so we are taking the opportunity to assess the country’s fiscal picture. (Happy Tax Day to all who celebrate!) And we also get into that alarming headline from the Times last week that read, “This Is Starting to Look Like a Slow-Motion Bank Run.”Joining me is Martha Gimbel, executive director and co-founder of the Budget Lab at Yale University. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.gdpolitics.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.gdpolitics.comThe full episode is available to paid subscribers. Once you become a paid subscriber, you can connect your account to your preferred podcast player here.Where do we begin? Tuesday gave us plenty of election results worth digging into. In Georgia’s 14th Congressional District, Democrats turned in their biggest overperformance in a special House election since 2024, in the race to replace Marjorie Taylor Greene. Republicans still won, but by a margin 25 points more Democratic than the district’s baseline.And then there was Wisconsin, where the liberal candidate for the state Supreme Court won by — checks notes — 20 points. Twenty points, in a statewide race, in the consummate swing state. There are caveats, which we’ll get into, but taken together, it’s an unnerving picture for Republicans.Speaking of unnerving pictures, this is our first episode since President Trump threatened to kill “a whole civilization” early Tuesday and then, by day’s end, agreed to a ceasefire with Iran. We recorded this Wednesday afternoon, when a lot was still in flux, so some of the details may have changed by the time you hear this.At the moment, even the contours of the ceasefire are murky. Is the Strait of Hormuz actually open? Is an end to Israel’s invasion of Lebanon part of the deal? Have strikes in the Gulf really stopped? And that’s before you get to the longer-term problem: the American and Iranian visions for any lasting agreement still seem fundamentally incompatible.Politically, incompatible narratives are emerging too. The White House is claiming victory over a severely diminished Iranian military. But the regime is still in place, Iran still has its enriched uranium, and it now appears to have a say — and even a financial stake — in who passes through the Strait of Hormuz.Also on the docket today: the election this Sunday in Hungary and a “Good Data, Bad Data or Not Data” question on polling showing Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger floundering in approval polls after winning by 15 points last fall.With me to talk about all of it are Mary Radcliffe, head of research at FiftyPlusOne, and Lenny Bronner, senior data scientist at The Washington Post.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.gdpolitics.comThe full episode is available to paid subscribers. Once you become a paid subscriber, you can connect your account to your preferred podcast player here.President Trump’s approval rating now sits just below 40 percent, according to the Silver Bulletin average. That makes for a good headline, but it’s still well above the zone presidents reach when things truly fall apart. Both Bushes saw their approval sink into the mid-to-high twenties during their time in office, as did Jimmy Carter and Richard Nixon.And while approval in the high thirties to low forties is politically dangerous, it does not necessarily herald the kind of sea change that produced the Watergate reforms or the Reagan Revolution.For most of Trump’s decade in the political spotlight, the conventional wisdom has been that he is sui generis. No matter the controversy, the thinking goes, he will retain a base of support strong enough to keep his approval from falling to the levels reached by America’s least popular presidents.In light of the political backlash to the ongoing conflict in Iran, Nate Silver and I took to Substack Live to ask whether that wisdom will hold in Trump’s second term. We also talked about the midterms, the Democrats, and plenty more. Nate even shared when he plans to launch his midterm forecast, plus what Elon Musk called him in their latest beef 😬.

On today’s podcast, we’re taking a break from American politics and diving into the seemingly consensus-driven — but in reality quite messy — politics of Japan.I spoke with Kenneth Mori McElwain, a professor of comparative politics at the University of Tokyo, on the final day of my two-week trip to Japan. It was a welcome chance to step off the American news-cycle hamster wheel and use the time to get a sense Japanese politics.The stereotype of Japanese politics is that it is staid and steady, conservative in both the capital-“C” and lowercase-“c” meanings of the word. The conservative party, the Liberal Democratic Party, has governed Japan for 66 of the 70 years it has existed. But even with this apparent political consensus, a bias for the status quo has made it difficult, at times, to tackle big questions.The LDP remains in power today, but Japanese politics has not felt especially staid or steady lately. Last month, Sanae Takaichi, the country’s first female prime minister, secured the largest majority in Japan’s postwar history — a two-thirds supermajority in the lower house. That came less than two years after scandal cost the LDP 28 percent of its seats and forced it into minority government.Now Takaichi is confronting a daunting set of problems. Japan has finally emerged from decades of deflation, but wages have not kept pace with rising prices, contributing to a cost-of-living crisis. While I was visiting, gas prices hit a record high.At the same time, Japan’s pacifist constitution is once again a live political issue. Drafted during the U.S. occupation after World War II, it renounced Japan’s right to wage war. In its 80-year history, it has never been amended, making it the world’s longest-lived unamended national constitution. Takaichi says she wants to change that.Japan also famously faces a rapidly aging population. Takaichi has promised to deliver economic growth, while maintaining tough limits on immigration and avoiding a further expansion of the national debt.And that is before getting to some of the country’s other high-profile cultural debates, including whether women should be allowed to become reigning empresses and whether married couples should be allowed to keep separate surnames. At the moment, the answer to both is no and Takaichi wants to keep it that way.The big question facing Takaichi at the moment is whether she can translate her sky-high popularity into tangible results for the Japanese people. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.gdpolitics.com/subscribe

I am back from Japan and I hope you enjoyed the evergreen conversations we published while I was away. Today it’s back to the news cycle, although in a somewhat different format.I’d planned on getting up to speed on the news I missed and talking to Nathaniel Rakich and Mary Radcliffe about it. However, when I woke up from an in-flight nap on Saturday, Nathaniel and Mary had messaged me telling me that they had planned the whole podcast already and that it would be best if I didn’t go on twitter or read up on the news ahead of time. Just show up and turn the show over to them.So (and this is how much I trust them) that is what we did on today’s podcast. I relinquished hosting duties to Mary and Nathaniel and they quizzed me on the twists and turns of the past two weeks. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.gdpolitics.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.gdpolitics.comThe full episode is available to paid subscribers. Once you become a paid subscriber, you can connect your account to your preferred podcast player here.Democrats are in the midst of an intraparty debate over how to win their way out of the wilderness. There are arguments about ideology, strategy, identity, and more. And while these debates always feel urgent for the party out of power, they are, at the very least, not new.Parties and politicians have been trying to figure out how to shore up their vulnerabilities, enhance their strengths, and fight another day for just about as long as representative politics have existed. Today we are going to focus on one such instance. We’re looking back at late-20th-century Nevada and the beginnings of a political machine built by former Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.It’s the subject of a new book by CEO of the Nevada Independent Jon Ralston, titled, “The Game Changer: How Harry Reid Remade the Rules and Showed Democrats How to Fight.”

If you’ve spent time reading think pieces on the internet during the past handful of years, you might have come across the following ideas: first, that American men are suffering from a loneliness epidemic and, second, that conservatives are happier than liberals.If you aren’t familiar with these takes, then you probably aren’t online enough to experience the sad loneliness of the American male liberal, so please carry on as you were. I joke, I joke.In any case, these ideas have caught on enough that friend of the pod Lakshya Jain — a machine learning engineer by day and head of political data at The Argument in his spare time — wanted to do more research into what differences actually exist across the political spectrum and between men and women.In this episode, he breaks down what he found and also gets into his latest research on affordability and whether Americans are lying to pollsters about how much they read. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.gdpolitics.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.gdpolitics.comThe full episode is available to paid subscribers. Once you become a paid subscriber, you can connect your account to your preferred podcast player here.Depending on who you ask, we’re either living through a moment that feels totally unprecedented or alarmingly familiar.Today’s guest argues it’s alarmingly familiar: great powers jostling for influence, nationalism on the rise, trade and technology turning into weapons, and festering conflicts with the potential to spiral.In his new book, “The Coming Storm: Power, Conflict, and Warnings from History,” Yale historian Odd Arne Westad compares today’s geopolitical landscape to the decades leading up to World War I.A hundred-plus years ago, the world looked modern, interconnected, and — at least to many people — too prosperous and rational for a major war. Then, in a matter of weeks, a localized conflict became a continent-wide crisis that ended in 40 million casualties.The percentage of people alive today who have experienced great power conflict is vanishingly small, and after 80 years of great power peace, it can be easy to think of the prospect as far-fetched. Westad argues that this, too, may be a similarity to the early 20th century.Today we talk about those similarities and differences and what lessons we can learn.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.gdpolitics.comThe full episode is available to paid subscribers. Once you become a paid subscriber, you can connect your account to your preferred podcast player here.On today’s episode, we open up the mailbag for an overdue round of listener questions — and you had some great ones! You asked whether Democrats might be locked out of the California governor’s race, who might win the heated primary in Illinois’ 9th Congressional District, and whether Iowa is actually in play for Democrats. You also had some more philosophical questions, like whether the Republican and Democratic parties will still exist in 2040 and what strategically is the best path forward for the GOP. Continuing a past theme, you also asked why Zohran Mamdani’s favorability rating is so high and what we expect turnout to look like in 2026.As a reminder, paid subscribers can share questions in the paid subscriber chat, which we’ll prioritize, and you can also reach me with questions on social media or by email at [email protected].

We are entering our thirteenth day of the war in Iran, and we’ve been getting conflicting signals about how long it might last and what the end goal actually is.At the start, it seemed the goal was regime change. President Trump called on Iran’s forces to lay down their arms and for civilians to revolt, saying the operation could last four to five weeks.Since then, Trump has also called for Iran’s unconditional surrender, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio framed the goal of the conflict as destroying Iran’s ballistic missile capabilities, missile production factories, and navy.On Monday, Trump said the war was ahead of schedule and “very complete, pretty much.” The same day, the Department of War said, “we have only just begun to fight.” On Tuesday, Democratic senators emerged from a briefing telling the press they were concerned about the likelihood of the U.S. putting boots in the ground in Iran.Meanwhile, the economic repercussions of the conflict and the near closure of the Strait of Hormuz, have rippled across the globe, amping up the stakes of the war.To borrow an analogy from a friend of the podcast, there is an awful lot of noise surrounding the operation. Today we are going to try to find the signal. Where do things stand? What are the upside and downside risks? And what are the possible outcomes?Joining me to do that is Mara Karlin, professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. She served in national security roles for six U.S. secretaries of defense and most recently served as Assistant Secretary of Defense for Strategy, Plans, and Capabilities under President Biden. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.gdpolitics.com/subscribe

We are officially in the second week of the war with Iran and the fallout is intensifying.President Trump now says the goal is Iran’s unconditional surrender. Meanwhile, Iran’s clerics have appointed Ali Khamenei’s hardline son as the new Supreme Leader, suggesting surrender is unlikely for now.Fifteen countries have become involved in the conflict in some way, the number of U.S. service members killed has risen to seven, and the number of deaths in Iran is estimated to be more than 1,200.Markets have fallen around the world as the likelihood of this being a short, contained operation is fading. Perhaps most notably oil prices have gone vertical. They reached $120 a barrel overnight and were at about $100 a barrel at the time we recorded the podcast.That compares with $55 a barrel in December and $65 a barrel just before the war. The average price of gas nationally has shot up 50 cents per gallon in just a week and now sits at about $3.50 per gallon.Last week Congress declined to rein in Trump’s authority in the conflict, but that doesn’t mean the domestic politics of the matter are settled. Not by a long shot. With me to discuss the unfolding politics here at home is Gabe Fleisher, author of the “Wake Up To Politics” newsletter. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.gdpolitics.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.gdpolitics.comThe full episode is available to paid subscribers. Once you become a paid subscriber, you can connect your account to your preferred podcast player here.The war in Iran has set off a civil war within the Republican Party over whether the military adventurism of Trump’s second term is America first or America last. As one indication, Megyn Kelly kicked off her podcast on Monday (one of the most popular right-wing shows in the country) with withering criticism of Trump’s decision. Her first guest, Marjorie Taylor Greene, suggested it could lead her to stop voting.On Tuesday, Texas’s incumbent senator, John Cornyn, managed to fight his primary merely to a draw with scandal-plagued Ken Paxton after spending a record $70 million. Further down the ballot, once rising star Rep. Dan Crenshaw lost his primary outright. The tensions within the GOP, at least at the elite level, are already at a rolling boil. So what happens when Trump — a force helping to hold both parties’ coalitions together — leaves the scene?That is the question I attempted to answer, alongside friends of the podcast Nate Silver and Clare Malone, at a live show Wednesday night at the Comedy Cellar in New York City. Joined by a rowdy, sold-out crowd, we hosted our first-ever 2028 Republican primary draft. We even got a West Village audience to applaud for Tucker Carlson. (If you missed our Democratic primary draft from January, I encourage you to check it out!)We also discussed the political consequences of the big news stories of the day: the results in Texas on both sides of the aisle, the expanding war in the Middle East, and a torrent of attention-grabbing AI news. Plus, we opened the mics and answered audience questions.

Looking for nerdy yet irreverent coverage of the Texas primaries Tuesday night?! We’ll be live streaming with friends of the pod beginning at 7:30pm ET on March 3rd. Join us at the link here.We were originally planning on dedicating today’s whole episode to the kickoff of the 2026 primary calendar with Tuesday’s elections in Texas, North Carolina and Arkansas. However, if I’ve learned anything hosting the GD POLITICS podcast, it’s to be flexible — we might end up at war.The U.S. and Israel struck Iran beginning on Saturday, killing Iran’s supreme leader. Iran responded, attacking Israel, U.S. military assets, and civilian targets in the Gulf States. Hezbollah in Lebanon has also joined the fighting.As of the time of our recording, the back-and-forth bombing is continuing and there are more questions than answers about what will happen next. Will there be a revolution in Iran? Will it be successful? What would the current regime staying in power look like? How wide could the conflict spread and how long could it last?I’m sure those are questions we’ll contend with in the future. Today we are going to kick things off with how the American public views the conflict and how politicians are reacting.Then we will move on to Tuesday’s primaries. The blockbuster races are the Republican and Democratic Senate primaries in Texas. I’ve covered a lot of these races in my day and I can’t remember the last time I saw polling as contradictory as what we’re seeing in the race between Jasmine Crockett and James Talarico in Texas. We’ll also touch on some of the House primaries worth keeping an eye on Tuesday night.Joining me is director of data at FiftyPlusOne, Mary Radcliffe, and deputy editor of Inside Elections, Jacob Rubashkin. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.gdpolitics.com/subscribe

President Trump offered strikingly few proposals in the longest State of the Union address ever delivered and what he did offer was not particularly heavy on legislation or ambition. Instead, he leaned into conflict with the Democrats in the chamber and highlighted stories from guests in the audience that often included graphic details. Friends of the podcast Mary Radcliffe and Nathaniel Rakich joined this throwback late-night reaction episode to discuss this and much more. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.gdpolitics.com/subscribe

Today’s episode turned out to be serendipitous. Last Friday, I’d been planning to speak with Harvard economist Jason Furman, Obama’s top economic advisor, about the recent flood of economic data: the jobs report and revisions for the past year, inflation data, GDP growth, trade balances, consumer sentiment, and more.There was one piece of data I did not expect we’d be getting in advance of our conversation: the Supreme Court’s decision on President Trump’s emergency tariffs. Friday morning, the Court struck them down in a 6-3 decision, concluding that the power to enact such broad tariffs lies with Congress.So, on today’s episode, we begin with the latest tariff news and then widen the lens to the broader economy, including Furman’s suggestion that we may have achieved the first indisputable “soft landing” in postwar American history: bringing inflation under control without triggering a recession. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.gdpolitics.com/subscribe

Subscribe to GD POLITICS wherever you listen to podcasts. The video version of this interview is available here.My favorite interviews with politicians happen when they’ve run their last race and can reflect candidly on their time in office and the complexities of politics and the world. Today you’re going to hear such an interview with former governor of Texas and former secretary of energy Rick Perry.We begin by talking about the heated Senate primary in Texas. The former governor has thrown his support behind incumbent Sen. John Cornyn and doesn’t shy away from criticisms of Attorney General Ken Paxton or the Democratic side.We then turn to a more personal topic: Perry’s experience with the psychoactive drug ibogaine and his advocacy for its use in treating things like addiction, PTSD, brain trauma, and cognitive decline. It may seem like a counterintuitive position for a social conservative, and we get into that.We end by talking about the moment during the 2012 GOP primary debate when Perry forgot the name of one of the agencies he intended to shutter as president — the Department of Energy. It became something of a viral moment at the time, but in this interview we talk about what was going on in his personal life, which he describes as the most difficult six months of his life. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.gdpolitics.com/subscribe

Heads up: We have a live show scheduled for Wednesday, March 4 at the Comedy Cellar in New York City! After a rowdy live 2028 Democratic primary draft last month, Nate Silver, Clare Malone, and I will tackle the Republican side of the ledger. Grab tickets here!If you’ve been enjoying your long weekend, I apologize for the potentially panic-inducing content of today’s episode.We seem to be in something of freakout moment over artificial intelligence. In particular, several viral posts have been making the rounds on social media from people who work in AI warning about what’s coming.Mrinank Sharma, an AI safety researcher at Anthropic, quit last week and published a letter saying the “world is in peril” and that we need to wise up.Zoe Hitzig, an economist at OpenAI, also quit and wrote a New York Times op-ed criticizing how ChatGPT is implementing ads, suggesting the company could use people’s private motivations to manipulate them.Matt Shumer, the CEO of an AI startup, wrote a viral post on Twitter called “Something Big Is Happening,” comparing this moment in AI to what February 2020 felt like for COVID.As far as markets are concerned, software stocks have fallen 15 to 30 percent over the past month in reaction to new AI developments in coding.On today’s episode, I talk to John Burn-Murdoch, a columnist and chief data reporter at the Financial Times. He’s been using data to track AI’s effects on the world so far, particularly when it comes to work.Also, in case AI panic isn’t enough for one episode, John’s been doing a lot of work tracking democratic backsliding in the U.S. and around the world. So, fittingly for Presidents’ Day, we get into his research on that, and ask whether these two sources of anxiety — AI and democratic backsliding — might be connected in some way. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.gdpolitics.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.gdpolitics.comThe full episode is available to paid subscribers. Once you become a paid subscriber, you can connect your account to your preferred podcast player here.Also, heads up: We have a live show scheduled for Wednesday, March 4 at the Comedy Cellar in New York City! After a rowdy live 2028 Democratic presidential primary draft last month, Nate Silver, Clare Malone, and I will tackle the Republican side of the ledger. You can get tickets here.We’ve got a lot to talk about! In fact, I think this is our first-ever emergency edition of “Good Data, Bad Data, or Not Data.” Gallup announced this week that, after 88 years in the field, it will stop tracking Americans’ approval and disapproval of presidents. Its final approval rating for President Trump was just 36 percent.Gallup may no longer be asking how Americans feel about the president, but plenty of pollsters still are and that will be useful for two topics we’re discussing today: the showdown over Department of Homeland Security funding and the political fallout from the Epstein files.We’ve also got election news to check in on. The Democratic primary in New Jersey’s 11th District has become a microcosm of Democratic Party drama. A little-known progressive organizer won the primary after an AIPAC-backed group spent $2 million attacking a moderate, pro-Israel former congressman. Yes, you read that correctly.Susan Collins also formalized her bid for a sixth term in the Senate this week, which means another chance for us to talk about the 2026 race for control of the chamber. Plus, friend of the pod Mary Radcliffe did a deep dive into whether support for Trump is crashing among young men. She’s with me to discuss it all, along with Washington Post senior data scientist Lenny Bronner.

Heads up: We have a live show scheduled for Wednesday, March 4 at the Comedy Cellar in New York City! Nate Silver, Clare Malone, and I will share our reactions from the Texas primaries and much more. You can get tickets here.Primary season is starting with a bang in just three weeks. Texans will decide which Democrat and Republican they’d like to see face off in a potentially competitive Senate election this fall.Arkansas and North Carolina will also head to the polls on March 3, but few contests across the country compare to the matchups in Texas. On the Democratic side, the race is primarily between state Rep. James Talarico and U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett. On the Republican side, it’s incumbent Sen. John Cornyn, state Attorney General Ken Paxton, and U.S. Rep. Wesley Hunt.Both primaries feature some similarities: a better-funded, more mild-mannered establishment favorite on one side — Talarico and Cornyn — and a more bombastic presence known for riling up the base on the other — Crockett and Paxton. Of course, there are plenty of differences, too, which we’ll get into. For one, the Republican primary appears likely to head to a runoff.All of this comes shortly after a special state Senate election in historically Republican Tarrant County resulted in a 30-percentage-point swing to the left. Democrat Taylor Rehmet won by 14 points in a district Trump carried by 17. That gives Democrats some hope in their pursuit of winning a Senate race in Texas for the first time since 1988, though there’s plenty of disagreement within the party over what that path might look like.Today, we take a look at both Senate primaries in Texas, as well as the broader political environment in the state at a time when one of Republicans’ biggest success stories — gains with Latino voters — looks seriously imperiled. With me to do that is Patrick Svitek, a political reporter who has long covered Texas at The Texas Tribune and the Houston Chronicle and most recently covered national politics at The Washington Post. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.gdpolitics.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.gdpolitics.comThe full episode is available to paid subscribers. Once you become a paid subscriber, you can connect your account to your preferred podcast player here.On Monday’s episode we began to set the table for the 2026 midterms. Today we acknowledge that there’s something of a bull threatening all the fine china we’ve just laid out. Pardon the strained metaphor.Put bluntly, the 2026 midterms will be the first nationwide federal election with Trump as president since 2020, when he pushed to overturn the results. Some recent developments have already caused a tea cup or two to wobble. I promise I’m done with the metaphor now.This week, on Dan Bongino’s podcast, Trump suggested that Republicans move to nationalize elections in 15 unnamed states and later reiterated his push from behind the Resolute Desk at a bill signing ceremony. Last week, in an unusual move, the FBI raided a Fulton County elections office, seizing 2020 ballots and other voting records.In the background of all of this, starting last year, the Department of Justice began requesting full voter rolls with private voter information from states, in an apparent attempt to create a national voter file.Trump has also issued executive orders attempting to change the elections process nationally, including that all ballots be received by the time polls close on Election Day and that Americans show government-issued proof of U.S. citizenship when they register to vote. For what it’s worth, he has also quipped about canceling the election, something he can’t do, and about ending mail voting.Concerned about losses at the midterms, state Republicans, at Trump’s request, have already pursued mid-decade gerrymandering to try to buttress their majority. Trump’s latest comments about nationalizing elections came after a Democrat won a state Senate seat in Tarrant County, Texas, by over-performing Trump’s win in 2024 by 30 percentage points.It doesn’t take a detective to put these pieces together. A president who has a record of only accepting election results when he wins is concerned about Republican losses at the midterms. He has told Republicans himself that he doesn’t want the ensuing consequences, which would be Democratic investigations into his administration. In an attempt to prevent that, Trump may sow doubt in the results in 2026 or try more serious interventions.Today we dig into what that could look like and detail the ways American elections are designed to be resilient. After all, it’s not one bull in one china shop. There are more than 9,000 jurisdictions administering elections nationwide and no matter what Trump says, the constitution charges the states with running elections.With me to discuss it all is Nathaniel Rakich, managing editor at Votebeat, and Jessica Huseman, editorial director of Votebeat. Votebeat is a nonprofit newsroom that covers voting and election administration.

This is our start-of-the-year, table-setting episode for the 2026 midterms. A flood of January news pushed it back, but the clock is now ticking. The primaries begin in just four weeks.Republicans begin with control of the House by the slimmest of margins. To flip the chamber, Democrats would need to gain five seats. Republicans have a safer margin in the Senate, where Democrats would need to gain four seats, but in much redder territory than in the House.In polls that ask Americans if they prefer Democrats or Republicans to control Congress, Democrats lead by five percentage points on average. When it comes to the president’s approval rating, Trump is at net -14, a rating that puts him just slightly below where Biden was at this point in his own historically unpopular presidency.High-quality polling from the New York Times also shows that President Trump has given up his gains and then some with the voters who powered his popular vote victory in 2024 — a group that tended to be younger, lower propensity and less white than Republicans’ past coalitions.History is clear about the challenges for Republicans. The incumbent party has lost seats in the House in 20 of the last 22 midterms elections, with an average loss of 32 seats.With me to set the table are two friends of the pod: Jacob Rubashkin, deputy editor of Inside Elections and Leah Askarinam, elections reporter at the Associate Press. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.gdpolitics.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.gdpolitics.comThe full episode is available to paid subscribers. Once you become a paid subscriber, you can connect your account to your preferred podcast player here.Democrats are gearing up to turn the page on the Trump presidency and some 2028 hopefuls will likely announce their intentions by year’s end. At least a half-dozen candidates are, for all intents and purposes, already running.Will California Gov. Gavin Newsom be able to ride the wave of his current support for the next two years or is he cresting now? Will voter outrage and a consolidation of the left flank of the party power New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to the head of the pack or will a moderate prevail? And who is even likely to run in the first place?In a live 2028 Democratic primary draft at the Comedy Cellar in New York City, Nate Silver, Clare Malone and I debated those questions and many more. (Make sure to reply in the comments with who had the best roster!)As a heads up, we began the night on a more somber note, discussing Alex Pretti’s killing in Minneapolis and whether it is likely to serve as a turning point in our current political moment. As we moved to the draft, we got a little competitive and plenty silly. This is the second Democratic primary draft we’ve done on the GD POLITICS podcast. If you’d like to look back at our previous picks, you can do that here.

Call this something of an emergency podcast. I’d planned on airing an episode setting the table for the 2026 midterms today. We’re going to save that for another day, because on Saturday a federal immigration officer in Minneapolis shot and killed Alex Pretti, a 37 year-old Veterans Affairs hospital ICU nurse.It’s the second killing by a federal immigration officer in Minneapolis in less than three weeks — the first being Renee Good, a 37 year-old mother, who was shot while impeding traffic as part of a protest.We’ll get into some of the details of what happened on Saturday, but I think it’s fair to say the public, many lawmakers, and even some Republicans have lost patience with the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement tactics.In both killings in Minneapolis, the Trump administration rushed to brand Good and Pretti as domestic terrorists and fabricated events despite the shootings being visible in multiple videos. While there was plenty of pushback among Democrats, Independents and the press in the case of Good, this time a handful of Republicans, including the NRA, have joined that pushback as well.As listeners well know, it’s going to take a minute before we can fully understand the impact of this weekend on American politics, but we’ll share what we know at this moment. With me to do that is head of research at FiftyPlusOne, Mary Radcliffe, and managing editor at Votebeat, Nathaniel Rakich. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.gdpolitics.com/subscribe

Trump has now been back in office for a year. To help make sense of the past twelve months, on Tuesday I hosted a live Substack conversation with friend of the pod and author of the Wake Up To Politics newsletter, Gabe Fleischer.We began by assessing Trump’s accomplishments and failings by the standards he set at the beginning of his second term. We also discussed how Americans have reacted and took a closer look at the areas where Trump’s new assertions of presidential power have been allowed to stand and where they’ve been batted down.One of the themes of the conversation was that there’s often so much going on that it can be hard to actually follow a single story from beginning to end. We try to tie up some of those loose ends where possible. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.gdpolitics.com/subscribe

I hope everyone had a nice long weekend! Today’s episode is part two of our mailbag episodes, focusing on some of the more esoteric questions that listeners asked.Part one focused on current events. If you’re curious about how the public is reacting to the surge in ICE activity, possibility of military intervention in Iran, or the politicization of the Department of Justice, I encourage you to listen to that as well.Today we answer your questions, including: Are high profile politicians able to effectively rebrand? Why were polls noticeably better for Democrats right after the 2025 elections? What does it mean that there are a record number of independents in America? And who are the Republicans in polls that say they don’t approve of Trump — Never Trumpers, or people who voted for him and have since soured? We even share some career advice at one listener’s request.Joining me to dig through the mailbag is Lenny Bronner, senior data scientist at the Washington Post. A reminder to submit your own questions on Substack, on social media, or at [email protected]. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.gdpolitics.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.gdpolitics.comThe full episode is available to paid subscribers. Once you become a paid subscriber, you can connect your account to your preferred podcast player by following the directions here.I like to say that this podcast is driven by three principles: curiosity, rigor and a sense of humor. You, dear listeners, share those qualities, certainly when it comes to curiosity.I collected all the questions you submitted since we last recorded a mailbag episode at the end of November and even if I just limited us to the best ones, we’d be looking at a three hour podcast at least.I didn’t want to let your questions go unanswered, so I decided to sort them into two categories and we are doing two mailbag episodes. The theme of the first is current events and the second is esoteric political questions. Next week we’ll go esoteric; today we are doing current events and there’s a lot to discuss.There’s the ICE surge in Minneapolis, shooting of Renee Good and related protests, the federal investigation of Fed Chair Jerome Powell, major protests in Iran and threats of military action by President Trump, Democrat Mary Peletola is running for Senate in Alaska, the White House met with Denmark and Greenland, and there’s the story that was the only thing anyone could talk about just last week: Venezuela.We seem to be cycling between a different major headline just about every hour and with me to help make sense of it all is dear friend of the pod and senior data scientist at the Washington Post, Lenny Bronner.Also, a couple quick updates: 1) Our live show on January 27th is sold out. We can’t wait to see you there! Paid subscribers will get a recording of the show after the fact. 2) Our seasonal merch shop is going away at the end of the month, so get your merch at gdpolitics.com/merch. 3) A reminder to submit your own questions on Substack, on social media, or at [email protected].

Heads up: Our first live show of 2026 is scheduled for Tuesday, January 27th at the Comedy Cellar in New York City! Nate Silver, Clare Malone, and I are recording a live 2028 Democratic Primary draft. You can get tickets here.We are less than two months away from the start of the midterm primary calendar. Things will kick off in Arkansas, North Carolina, and Texas on March 3rd. We’re going to have plenty of coverage of those elections throughout the year and, of course, heading into the big election in November. You should expect a table setting episode in your feeds before too long.On today’s episode we hear from one of the more unique candidates running this cycle: Geoff Duncan, the former Republican lieutenant governor of Georgia, who is now running for governor as a Democrat.He began his political career as a Republican in the state legislature and then served as lieutenant governor alongside current Governor Brian Kemp from 2019 to 2023. He became better known on the national scene after the 2020 election, as one of a number of Republicans in the state who pushed back strongly against Trump’s attempts to overturn the results in Georgia.He chose not to run for reelection in 2022, endorsed Kamala Harris in 2024 and formally became a Democrat last year. Now he’s running for governor in a Democratic primary field that includes former Atlanta mayor, Keisha Lance Bottoms, and former DeKalb County CEO, Michael Thurmond.On the Republican side, Lieutenant Governor Burt Jones is competing against Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger, who notably rejected Trump’s request that he “find 11,780 votes” in 2020.Democrats have not won the governor’s mansion in Georgia since 1998, so will this be the year they do it? And will Geoff Duncan be the one to try? This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.gdpolitics.com/subscribe

I said on Monday’s podcast that we all needed to get a bigger imagination, so here we are. Let’s talk about Greenland.After capturing Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife over the weekend, the White House’s focus seems to have turned to the Danish territory of Greenland.It’s the largest island in the world, roughly the size of Western Europe, with a population of just 56,000. Denmark colonized it in the 18th century and today it’s a semi-autonomous part of the Danish Kingdom.According to President Trump, we “need” it. Trump advisor Stephen Miller told CNN this week, “obviously, Greenland should be part of the United States.” He went on to say, “nobody’s going to fight the United States militarily over the future of Greenland.”Reportedly, Marco Rubio told members of Congress that Trump actually wants to buy Greenland and that this posturing is a negotiation tactic, but White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt released a statement on the subject saying that, “utilizing the U.S. Military is always an option at the Commander in Chief’s disposal.”Democrats have rejected the Greenland idea and many Republicans, in a rare break from Trump, have as well. Among Americans, the idea of acquiring Greenland is 30 to 45 percentage points underwater and 85 percent of Greenlanders also reject it.For Denmark’s part, Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said in a statement to “stop the threats” and that, “the U.S. has no right to annex one of the three countries in the Danish Kingdom.” She also said an attack would end NATO.Denmark has a population of 6 million with about 16,000 active military personnel. The U.S. military, for its part, has 1.3 million active personnel. Denmark is also a longtime U.S. ally. They were one of only four European countries to invade Iraq alongside the U.S.I wanted to get a perspective on Trump’s threats from inside the Danish national security community, so joining me on today’s episode is Peter Viggo Jakobsen, professor in the Department of Strategy and War Studies at the Royal Danish Defense College in Copenhagen. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.gdpolitics.com/subscribe

Heads up: Our first live show of 2026 is scheduled for Tuesday, January 27th at the Comedy Cellar in New York City! Nate Silver, Clare Malone, and I are recording a live 2028 Democratic Primary draft. You can get tickets here.If you listened to the end of our 2025 time capsule episode, you heard me say that I might have to put a disclaimer at the top of the episode because we invaded Venezuela in between when we recorded the podcast and when we published it. Well, that didn’t quite happen, but we weren’t so far off.Early Saturday morning the U.S. launched a series of strikes on Venezuela, captured President Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores, and brought them to New York, where Maduro was indicted in 2020 and Flores was added to an updated indictment.It’s an uncertain moment for Venezuela and American policy towards the country. President Trump said during his Saturday press conference, “We’re going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition,” without giving much more detail than that.He suggested that Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodríguez would comply with U.S. demands under threat of further military action, though Rodríguez subsequently referred to the U.S. intervention as illegal armed aggression and stated that Maduro remains the president of Venezuela.There are plenty of questions about the legality of Trump’s approach to Venezuela, the internal dynamics of the country and how this compares to past American foreign intervention. We covered a good amount of that in our December 18th episode titled “Is Venezuela The Next Iraq?” and I encourage folks to listen to that if they haven’t already.In today’s episode, Nathaniel Rakich and Mary Radcliffe join me to discuss how Americans are already reacting to U.S. involvement in Venezuela and how it could reverberate politically from here. In classic fashion, we also dissect some questionable uses of data, including tracking of pizza orders near the Pentagon and alleged insider trading on online betting markets. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.gdpolitics.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.gdpolitics.comHappy almost new year! 2025 has been a big year for this GD podcast. It’s the year of our birth, of course, but we didn’t stop there. We hosted live shows, got rebranded, created merch, and even made some news. An enormous thank you to everyone who joined us this year 🙏. You made this all possible.2025 was also a big year for America. We began our semiquincentennial year, for the second time ever a U.S. president was inaugurated to a nonconsecutive term. The country also got a rebrand of sorts. There’s more gold detailing on the walls these days and the East Wing no longer exists.A lot more happened, but I don’t want to give away today’s episode. To mark the end of 2025 we are building a time capsule and filling it with numbers that represent the year in politics. I asked friends of the podcast Nathaniel Rakich and Mary Radcliffe to choose five numbers each they’d like to place in the capsule. I also have plenty of numbers of my own. The bad news is that only 10 numbers fit in the time capsule, so we have to duke it out to see who gets their way. We also shared new year’s resolutions for the two parties and ourselves in 2026.As a sneak preview, here are the 10 numbers we settled on, without any indication of what they represent. See if you can guess!

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.gdpolitics.comThis is the second installment of “Roman Empire” elections, in which friends of the podcast Jacob Rubashkin and Leah Askarinam join me to discuss the elections that we just can’t stop thinking about. If you missed the first installment, definitely start there. We talked about the 2000 election (of course), the crazy turn of events that indirectly resulted in Glenn Youngkin becoming the governor of Virginia, and the even crazier turn of events that links the election of Barack Obama to the reboot of Star Trek.Today the fun doesn’t stop. We discuss the nomination of Andrew Johnson at the Republican convention of 1864 (he ended up taking the oath of office blackout drunk), the story of the only dead person in U.S. history to win an Senate race, and how the Republican party might be different today if Mitt Romney won the presidency in 2012.Today’s episode is for paid subscribers and will cut off shortly for free subscribers. If you are not a paid subscriber, now is a great time to upgrade! If you are a paid subscriber, thank you! Sit back, relax, and enjoy the show.

In 2022, a Swedish influencer told her followers on Instagram to ask the men in their lives about the Roman Empire. Her instinct was that men, for some reason, have plenty of thoughts about the ancient civilization. She turned out to be correct.The suggestion led to a proliferation of videos on social media of women asking men how often they think about the Roman Empire. For some men, it was daily. For others, weekly.(This is the part where I admit that as a teenager I got a large SPQR henna tattoo on my forearm, although technically those are the initials of the Roman Republic, not the Roman Empire, and with that distinction, I am probably already telling on myself.)In any case, a meme was born. What began as a question of how often men think about the Roman Empire, morphed into the idea that any topic that occupies an inordinate amount of one’s mental space is one’s own personal Roman Empire.For example, someone might say their Roman Empire is 2003-era pop culture or The Titanic. You can quickly fall down a Reddit rabbit hole where people share obsessions as wide ranging as women’s bible studies groups and Chicago’s alleyways.Now that I’ve got all of the Boomers who listen to this podcast up to speed (hi, dad), you have the context for today’s episode, which is “Roman Empire elections.” Not elections that happened in the Roman Empire (which, again, wouldn’t be possible because the start of the empire marked the end of representative government), but instead American elections that take up an inordinate amount of our mental space.Dear friends of the podcast Leah Askarinam, Jacob Rubashkin and I came up with this idea while we were recording a different podcast a while back, so this week we are actually indulging. Part 2 will publish Tuesday, December 23rd for paid subscribers. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.gdpolitics.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.gdpolitics.comThe full episode is available to paid subscribers. Once you become a paid subscriber, you can connect your account to your preferred podcast player by following the directions here.On Monday’s podcast, while we were talking about shifting political landscapes, I quipped that perhaps by the midterms we would be at war with Venezuela. If you keep up with the news coming out of the Caribbean, it seems like it could be a lot sooner than that.Things appear to be escalating quickly. The U.S. has launched 26 strikes in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific since early September, killing 99 people, per tracking at the New York Times.The stated goal of the strikes has been to stop drug traffickers that the Trump administration has labeled terrorist organizations, but there are questions about the legality of the strikes, as well as questions about whether the goal is really to put pressure on Maduro with the hopes of ousting him.Speaking of pressure, last week the U.S. seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela, and this week President Trump announced a “complete blockade” on sanctioned oil tankers going to and from Venezuela. This comes closer to threatening the lifeblood of the Venezuelan economy. Venezuela holds the world’s largest proven oil reserves and oil makes up 90-95 percent of its export revenue.The U.S. has also deployed military assets to the region capable of land strikes and disabling Venezuela’s defenses and Trump has said he’s authorized covert CIA operations in the country.To better understand the unfolding conflict with Venezuela, I invited on Michael O’Hanlon on today’s podcast. He’s the Phil Knight Chair in Defense and Strategy at the Brookings Institution and author of the forthcoming book To Dare Mighty Things: U.S. Defense Strategy Since the Revolution.

The politics of healthcare are again front and center in Washington. Last week, Senate Democrats’ proposal to extend the enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies for three years failed to get 60 votes, as did a Republican proposal that would end the subsidies but provide direct payments to some Americans to cover healthcare costs.Monday, December 15th is also the last day for enrollment in insurance that begins January 1st on the ACA marketplace. All that is a long way of saying that the cake appears mostly baked. Healthcare coverage costs will rise dramatically for millions of Americans next year and many will opt out of coverage altogether.A bipartisan group is still holding out hope of coming to some compromise, but if that does happen it will likely be after Americans have already started to feel those costs. So what exactly will the impact be and what do Americans think about it? On today’s podcast we dig into the data.We also take a broader look at President Trump’s approval rating and the recent claim from a friend of the pod that, “Trump’s Approval Ratings Are Low Again. This Time It Might Matter.” Plus we discuss Indiana Republicans’ rejection of an effort to gerrymander their state. Is it a story about redistricting or is it really a story about the power limitations of a lame duck president? And is that a leading question?Joining me on the podcast to keep me honest are Mary Radcliffe, head of research at FiftyPlusOne, and Nathaniel Rakich, managing editor at VoteBeat. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.gdpolitics.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.gdpolitics.comThe full episode is available to paid subscribers. Once you become a paid subscriber, you can connect your account to your preferred podcast player by following the directions here.Democratic Rep. Jasmine Crockett has jumped into the Texas Senate primary with just three months to go until Election Day. She’s controversial, at times outright offensive, and gets the cable news part of her party very excited. She also appears to be leading in early primary polling. (Sound familiar?) So, is the candidate The Atlantic is calling “a Democrat for the Trump era” up to the task of flipping Texas? Frankly, is any Democrat up to the task?On today’s podcast we take a look at how 2026 primaries are shaping up around the country in both the House and Senate. Beyond Texas, we check in on the latest in Maine, Michigan, and Georgia and debate whether the dividing lines are mainly generational, ideological, or just a fighter mentality. We also look at the results of recent elections in Miami and Tennessee where Democrats over-performed.Lastly, a case at the Supreme Court this week considers how much money the political parties should be able to spend in coordination with candidates. Should the relatively low caps be kept in place or should the flood gates be opened? With me to talk about it all is Deputy Editor of Inside Elections Jacob Rubashkin.

If you are tired of hearing about how messy American politics are, today I’m offering you a reprieve. You’re going to hear about how messy British politics are.Last week I was in London, exploring the city and speaking with journalists, friends and strangers alike about life in Britain. I visited a couple newsrooms and toured parliament during Prime Minister’s Questions. The big news of the day was the Labour government’s budget proposal and, despite their largest majority in nearly 30 years, Labour seems to be facing challenges on all sides.If American politics can feel disappointing or frustrating, wait till you hear Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s approval rating: net -52 percentage points. By comparison President Trump, facing his own second term low of net -14 points, looks utterly popular.Today we get into the challenges facing the Labour party and much more – the rise of the populist Right in the UK and Europe, relations with the US, and yes, people are still talking about Brexit.To do this I reassembled the team from the dearly departed Talking Politics podcast. The former hosts, Helen Thompson and David Runciman, used to join me on the also departed FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast during the height of the Brexit drama. Think of this as the ghosts of two podcasts past.Helen Thompson is a professor of political economy at Cambridge and author of the book “Disorder: Hard times in the 21st Century.” David Runciman is an honorary professor of politics at Cambridge and the host of the “Past Present Future” podcast. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.gdpolitics.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.gdpolitics.comThe full episode is available to paid subscribers. Once you become a paid subscriber, you can connect your account to your preferred podcast player by following the directions here.Oftentimes when we talk about what divides the United States we talk about things like education, race, gender, or class. My guest today makes the argument that there’s something else fundamental at play, stretching back hundreds of years, to well before the founding of the country: the regional cultures that were developed by the people who settled America.It may seem like a stretch to say that after waves of immigration and internal migration, technological and social change, that the pilgrims, quakers, aristocrats, and pioneers are still culturally with us. But Colin Woodard argues that you can’t actually understand our contemporary politics and the fights we’re having without that context.In his previous book “American Nations” he laid out what he described as the 11 different “nations” – or culturally distinct regions – within America. In his new book “Nations Apart” he looks at the political and social differences across them on everything from voting, to health outcomes, to gun violence.He also discusses what kinds of common narratives have united us in the past and what might work again today based on public opinion research. Colin is the director of Nationhood Lab at the Pell Center for International Relations and Public Policy at Salve Regina University.

If everything is going to plan, I am on vacation this week. Fear not! I have recorded podcasts ahead of time so you’ll still have two episodes this week. However, don’t be surprised if something crazy has happened in the world and you don’t hear it mentioned in conversation. I haven’t forgotten, it’s just that whatever crazy thing we are now dealing with had not yet happened when the podcasts were recorded. If past is prologue, hold onto your seats, the news cycle rarely behaves while I’m away.Today we are opening up the mailbag to sort through our backlog of listener mail. Listeners have been sending in great questions lately! As a reminder, you can always share your questions in the paid subscriber chat at gdpolitics.com. You can also send questions to [email protected] and reach me via the usual social media channels.On today’s episode we discuss the power of celebrity in politics, the possibility of the Democratic presidential primary moving to a ranked choice voting system in 2028, the state of the Republican Texas Senate primary, and much more. With me to do it all is friend of the podcast and data scientist at the Washington Post, Lenny Bronner.P.S. — I am currently in London for a combination of work and fun. Feel free to use the channels above to share any recs! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.gdpolitics.com/subscribe

Even in our topsy turvy political world, last Friday stood out as one for the books. President Trump seemed to embrace New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, complimenting his underdog victory, saying he thinks “he’s going to do some things that are going to be really great,” and even smilingly saying that it’s ok if Mamdani calls him a fascist.Just hours later, one of Trump’s formerly fiercest defenders, Marjorie Taylor Greene, announced that she will resign from Congress in the new year, after disagreements with Trump led him to brand her “Marjorie Traitor Greene” and threaten support for a primary opponent against her. This all would have been hard to dream up just a couple months ago, but does it say anything meaningful about our politics?On today’s episode we also check in on the state of gerrymandering around the country after a federal panel of judges struck down Texas’s new map designed to add five seats to Republicans’ ranks in the House. If it stands, in a turn of fate, Democrats could end up being the net winners of the ongoing mid-decade redistricting spat. That decision now heads to the Supreme CourtAnd finally, Happy Thanksgiving week! Have you heard of the pre-Thanksgiving dinner “cousin walk?” It’s apparently when the younger members of the family get stoned before sitting down for turkey. The idea has become popularized online and the Wall Street Journal even called it a “full-blown commercial holiday,” with dispensaries reporting the second biggest sales of the year for “Green Wednesday.” (Second to 420). But is this all coming at a time when Americans are turning against marijuana?With me to discuss it all are two dear friends of the pod: head of research at FiftyPlusOne, Mary Radcliffe, and managing editor of Votebeat, Nathaniel Rakich. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.gdpolitics.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.gdpolitics.comThe full episode is available to paid subscribers. Once you become a paid subscriber, you can connect your account to your preferred podcast player by following the directions here.I was at a conference earlier this week giving a talk about politics. These things can be kind of fun. I get up on a stage, do my song and dance, and show folks a bunch of charts.As I was getting into the elevator, one of the attendees stepped in beside me and I asked him how he was enjoying the conference. He sighed and said, “Well, everything is about AI. Even the sessions that are supposed to be about other things end up being about AI.”His comment struck me because that’s what so many topics can feel like these days, whether it’s the workplace and economy, social media and entertainment, our own homes and vehicles, or even matchmaking and intimacy — and of course politics and geopolitics.Some of the political debates over AI have faded into the background as the Trump administration’s laissez-faire approach to regulation has set the tone in Washington and Democrats have had little to no power to challenge it, if they wanted to. But it’s probably a good bet that political debates over the role of Artificial Intelligence in society won’t remain in the background for long.Recently AI stocks have been in pullback mode and chatter about a bubble has reemerged. “Is it a blip, a dip, a pullback or the beginning of the end?” reads one headline. And lately, hardly a day goes by without another company announcing a reduction in its white collar job force.Polling also suggests Americans are somewhere between skeptical and pessimistic about the future of AI. They see it as doing more harm than good when it comes to people’s ability to think creatively, have meaningful relationships with each other, and make difficult decisions. And importantly, this is not an area where Americans are highly polarized along party lines either.The combination of those two things: the possibility of a crisis or displacement in which AI is seen as central and the lack of clear party divisions means that the new technology may be in a unique position to reshape politics.That is the topic of today’s episode with David Byler, public opinion researcher and VP at National Research Group. We also get into questions about the use of AI in polling and a “Good Data, Bad Data, or Not Data?” question from a listener.

When President Trump became the first Republican in 20 years to win the national popular vote in 2024, one Republican pollster was in a position to say: “I told you so.”Patrick Ruffini, the co-founder of Echelon Insights, had written a book the year prior titled, “Party of the People: Inside the Multiracial Populist Coalition Remaking the GOP.”He wrote, “The Republicans used to be seen as the party of wealthy elites and the Democrats the party of blue collar workers—and now that’s being turned upside down. Because of this, the ‘demography is destiny’ ideas of eternal Democratic majorities never materialized. And now it’s Republicans who are on offense with voting blocs who represent a decisive majority of the country.”He went on to say, “Contrary to the media myths, the old divisions that separated Americans politically and in other ways by race and ethnicity are gradually fading. This is what’s making Republicans competitive in areas they never dreamed of winning before.”This was hard to deny in 2024. Republicans made decisive gains with voters of color and young voters, with eye-popping rightward shifts in places like Florida, Texas and the urban Northeast.But if Trump’s already souring polling this year hadn’t been reason for pause, this fall’s elections certainly were. As we discussed on last week’s podcast, in New Jersey, there appeared to be something of a snap back amongst Hispanic and young voters to coalitions resembling the 2020 election.In light of that, I invited Patrick Ruffini on the podcast to talk about the ever-shifting American political coalitions. He joined me to discuss his book on the forbearer to this podcast, but this was his first time on GD POLITICS. We also discussed his work at Echelon Insights highlighting the diversity of opinion that sits below the polarized red/blue surface of American politics. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.gdpolitics.com/subscribe