When it comes to tariffs, we’ve done the hokey pokey and turned ourselves around — and yes, that is what it’s all about. Trump’s Liberation Day tariffs are back on the table, and it’s been a wild 24 hours.

Right after I wrapped our paid bonus episode, a three-judge panel ruled that Donald Trump doesn’t have the authority under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act — the IEPA — to unilaterally place tariffs on foreign nations. That law, which dates back to the 1970s, gives the president emergency powers to impose economic sanctions or tariffs if there’s a national emergency. Trump had been using it as the backbone for his tariff strategy, claiming national emergency status and going after trading partners.

The ruling, at least temporarily, blew that up. If Trump doesn’t have that authority, he loses a huge leverage point in trade negotiations. All of a sudden, the calls from the EU, from Japan, from India — which I’ve heard is close — they get a lot slower. The power dynamic shifts. Trump becomes just another guy asking for a deal, not the guy with a threat to back it up. And to be clear, he wasn’t actively raising tariffs — he’d actually pulled many of them back or paused them — but that’s part of the strategy. The threat of a tariff can be just as powerful as the tariff itself.

The markets liked the news. Stocks surged. And Trump was caught in a classic rock-and-a-hard-place moment. But then, just as I was landing and debating whether to even record, the appellate court reverses the first ruling. Suddenly, Trump’s back in the game. His authority over the IEPA is restored… for now.

Does this matter for what’s happening in the Senate right now? Probably not directly. But for trade negotiations? Absolutely. I think deals are going to move fast. If you’re a trading partner and you think there’s a window before this hits the Supreme Court — and it might — you move. You get your best deal now. You say, “Here’s the offer, take it or leave it,” and Trump might be more inclined to take it than he was before.

I’m not a trade expert. I’m just calling it like I see it. But from the seat of my pants, this looks like a flashpoint. The kind of legal back-and-forth that opens the door to some quicker deals than we otherwise might’ve seen.

Chapters

00:00:00 - Intro

00:00:55 - Interview with Kirk Bado

00:47:30 - Update and Tariff Madness

00:52:13 - Interview with Katherine Dee

01:25:25 - Wrap-up

The madman did it. Mike Johnson pushed the Big Beautiful Bill through the House in a razor-thin 215–214 vote, with one Republican voting present. It happened in the early hours of the morning, after an all-night session where, reportedly, one GOP member literally fell asleep during the vote. It’s wild how this keeps happening: Johnson, backed by Trump, threads the needle just enough to claim victory — first on his own speakership, then on the budget, and now on the crown jewel of Trump’s second-term domestic agenda.

The vote was close, but this wasn’t chaos. It was strategy. Johnson avoided making promises, waited out the loudest factions, and let Trump do the squeezing. First, the SALT caucus got its $40,000 cap. Then, once the blue-state Republicans were on board, the House Freedom Caucus got summoned to the White House. Trump made it clear — get in line. And they mostly did.

What’s Actually in the Bill

The bill itself is massive. It permanently extends the 2017 Trump tax cuts. It temporarily exempts tips, overtime, and auto loan interest from taxes through 2028. It raises the SALT deduction cap to $40,000 for households earning up to $500,000. It imposes work requirements on Medicaid recipients aged 18 to 65 who don’t have disabilities or young children. It bans Medicaid and CHIP from covering gender-affirming care. It cuts federal funding to states offering Medicaid to undocumented immigrants.

Then there’s the border and defense spending: $46.5 billion for the wall, $4.1 billion for more Border Patrol agents, $1,000 asylum application fees, nearly $150 billion for defense, including missile shields and naval expansion. It throws in a Trump Savings Account for kids, expands 529s for education, and guts clean energy tax credits earlier than expected. This is not a modest proposal. This is the full kitchen sink — and it cleared the House.

The Congressional Budget Office says it’ll add $3.8 trillion to the deficit over the next decade. For a party that used to live and die by fiscal restraint, it’s a hell of a turn. And yet, what’s striking is that Democrats are the ones now talking about debt again. The shift is real. But the counterargument is simple: we’ve been living under this tax structure for seven years. Making it permanent just formalizes the status quo. The new spending and credits? That’s where the fight will be.

Next Stop: The Senate Wall

None of this becomes law unless it gets through the Senate — and that’s a very different battlefield. The GOP has three votes to spare. And their best lobbyist is JD Vance, who’s barely spent any time in the chamber. This is not the House. Rand Paul is a hard no. Ron Johnson is already calling out the deficit. Susan Collins is watching the optics. McConnell still looms over the process, even if he’s stepping back from leadership.

The House version of this bill isn’t making it. Changes are coming — the question is whether they come from the right or the left. Johnson’s strategy got him this far. But in the Senate, Trump’s grip isn’t as strong, and the margin is even tighter. The message is clear: they passed it out of the House, but the real negotiation starts now.

Chapters

00:00:00 - Intro

00:03:12 - Big Beautiful Bill Passes House

00:13:34 - Interview with Ryan McBeth

00:46:17 - Update

00:47:21 - Israeli Embassy Shooting

01:02:26 - Senate Bill Response

01:04:15 - Texas Hemp Ban

01:06:06 - Interview with Ryan McBeth, cont.

01:34:29 - Wrap-up

Donald Trump went to Capitol Hill this week to push House Republicans across the finish line on his big domestic policy bill. Behind closed doors, he told conservatives not to “F— around with Medicaid,” and told blue-state Republicans to take the SALT deal on the table: $40,000 for four years, then snapping back to $30,000. That would cover about 90% of blue-state filers, but not the ones making the most noise. Even with Trump applying pressure, guys like Andy Harris and Mike Lawler are still holding out. Some members are softening, but others like Thomas Massie are dug in. So, for now, Speaker Mike Johnson’s goal of getting a vote within 48 hours is shaky at best.

The bill itself is massive — over 1,100 pages, with tax cuts, defense spending increases, and border policy changes. It would still remove Medicaid coverage for more than seven million people, depending on which estimate you believe. And of course, any version that passes the House is going to get shredded in the Senate. Whatever they vote on now, they’ll end up voting on something worse later. So a lot of this feels like performance. The fight is real if you’re in the trenches, but from the outside, it looks like an inevitable mess.

The bottom line is that they have to pass this. Everyone’s worried about the attack ads, about the carveouts, about what they’ll be blamed for, but if they don’t pass this, they’ve got nothing. No achievements. No wins. And that’s a death sentence for 2026. Trump knows it, and that’s why he’s pushing so hard. The longer this drags out, the more nervous the business community gets. Right now, things are relatively stable — tariffs are high but consistent, regulations are locked in, and the tax code hasn’t changed yet. That kind of stability is gold to investors. It gives them permission to move. If you pass this bill now, businesses start planning in Q3, making decisions in Q4, and consumers start to feel it by next summer — right as the midterms heat up.

And that’s the ballgame. Republicans don’t want to be running in 2026 on the ghost of Joe Biden’s presidency. They want to run on Trump’s second-term economy. They want to say, “This is what we did. Do you want to go back?” That’s the message — and it only works if the economy is good. So from a strategic perspective, if you’re a Democrat, you want this thing to grind. Drag it out. Make the House Freedom Caucus fight harder. Blow it all up and pray the delay ruins the timeline. Because that’s the only way this thing doesn’t end in a campaign-ready boom for Republicans.

My guess? The bill passes the House in the next five days. I don’t see what changes between now and the two-week delay the Freedom Caucus wants. Someone’s going to have to eat it, and most likely, that someone is going to realize there’s no better option coming. As for the SALT caucus — I’m still not sure what they’re waiting for. Whatever it is, it’s not making them look particularly sympathetic to the rest of the country.

Chapters

00:00:00 - Intro

00:01:37 - Original Sin Book Thoughts (with Chris Cillizza)

00:35:17 - Update

00:39:13 - Big Beautiful Bull

00:48:41 - Russia Talks

00:53:17 - Kristi Noem

00:57:42 - Original Sin and the State of Cable News (with Chris Cillizza)

01:37:56 - Wrap-up

Joe Biden has aggressive prostate cancer. That news dropped as we were getting ready to record today’s show, and it immediately redefined everything I had planned for this episode. The White House says he found out late last week. But after everything we’ve seen — after everything we now know — I just don’t buy it. Not on its face. Not without skepticism. And certainly not from a team that has serially misled the public about this president’s health.

This isn’t partisan. This isn’t about political advantage. It’s about trust. And the Biden White House has burned every ounce of trust it ever had on the question of Joe Biden’s mental and physical condition. We were told he was sharp. We were told he was healthy. We were told the only concerns were conspiracy theories. Now we’re told he has bone-level prostate cancer and just found out a few days ago. The story does not add up.

We’ve known — not speculated, but known — that Biden’s team actively suppressed signs of his decline. It’s the core premise of the new book Original Sin by Alex Thompson and Jake Tapper. In it, we learn the White House doctor predicted Biden would be wheelchair-bound in a second term. We hear about the memory lapses, the failures to recognize people close to him, the moments that were carefully hidden or brushed aside. The story isn’t new — it’s just finally being told with names attached. And that’s the part that stings.

Because for those of us who were watching this unfold in real time, the media’s about-face is galling. Take Jake Tapper. He’s now co-author of the book and the face of its rollout — doing long, self-congratulatory segments on CNN about the secrets he’s finally exposing. But these weren’t secrets to people who were paying attention. Fox News ran segments on Biden’s decline all throughout 2023 and 2024. Clips went viral. The press dismissed them as “cheap fakes.” And now Tapper’s shocked — shocked — to find out the emperor has no clothes?

That’s what grates. Not just the cover-up, but the theater around its unmasking. The same people who waved it away are now acting like they cracked the case. And worse, they’re treating the rest of us like we weren’t there watching them do it. CNN actually responded to a viral clip reel of Tapper’s past dismissals by calling it “disingenuously edited.” The same playbook they criticized the White House for using. You can’t gaslight people and then write a book about how gaslighting is wrong.

And now we get to the real question: what did they know, and when did they know it? Did Biden already have this diagnosis when he decided to run for reelection? Did his inner circle? Did the press? These aren’t cynical questions — they’re essential ones. Because if the answer is yes, then everything about 2024 shifts. Every calculation, every debate, every moment the press refused to ask harder questions — it all changes. Because this wasn’t about a stutter or a slip of the tongue. This was about a man with a potentially terminal illness running for the most demanding job on the planet.

The cleanest way for Biden to bow out was always going to be health-related. I said it on this show more than once. If he ever had to step aside, cancer would be the story. Not scandal, not defeat — just a body failing a man who still wanted to fight. I didn’t think he’d actually get cancer. But now that he has, the question isn’t whether he should drop out. The question is whether he was ever in the race honestly to begin with.

We deserve the truth. Not just out of respect for the office, but because the American people shouldn’t be the last to know that their president is unwell. And certainly not after being lied to for years about how well he was.

Chapters

00:00 - Intro

01:26 - Joe Biden’s Cancer Diagnosis

13:04 - Jake Tapper’s CNN Broadcast

27:17 - Wrap-up

The Big Beautiful Bill is finally past the quiet phase. The behind-the-scenes negotiations have spilled into the open, and now we’re in the bloodletting. Speaker Mike Johnson wants this out of the House by Memorial Day, which means committee votes need to happen, and fast. But right now, the Budget Committee is a problem. Hardliners are balking — Ralph Norman, Josh Brecheen, and Chip Roy are all leaning no. They’re not satisfied with the Congressional Budget Office’s timeline for a cost estimate, and they’re worried the Medicaid changes could pressure red states into expanding coverage.

Mike Lawler and Marjorie Taylor Greene are fighting on Twitter over SALT deductions — state and local tax breaks — and that fight is not going away. There’s talk of raising the cap from $30,000 to $40,000 or adjusting the phase-out thresholds. But this is exactly why they’re doing one big bill instead of multiple smaller ones. Everyone knew it was going to be painful. Nobody wanted to go through this kind of battle again and again for every policy item.

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Still, I’m bullish. It’s ugly right now, but that doesn’t mean it’s doomed. The usual sign of failure — a flood of press conferences from members declaring the bill dead — hasn’t happened. Republicans aren’t holding cameras. They’re texting reporters. They’re venting in group chats. But they’re not going on record saying they’ll tank Trump’s agenda. That’s a big difference. This isn’t like other bills I’ve seen die. It still feels like something they’re going to get through — just barely.

The key players are all doing what they need to do. Trump is overseas for now, but his influence is still real. He got Johnson the speaker’s gavel. He’s kept this whole thing moving. When he’s back, the pressure campaign ramps up. Meanwhile, JD Vance is already starting his Senate charm offensive to get reconciliation done once it clears the House. They know they’ll lose a few senators, but they’re planning for that. The goal is to get something — anything — through.

And here’s what’s actually in it: no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, and no tax on Social Security for anyone making under $150,000. Yes, those provisions sunset in four years, but let’s be honest — once they go into effect, they’re not going anywhere. Nobody’s going to vote to take those benefits away from working people. Republicans used to hate that logic — the “give a mouse a cookie” approach to entitlements — but now they’re writing the cookies themselves. And they’re going to love running on them.

This bill is messy. It’s jammed with contradictions. It’s being held together with string and prayers. But I still think it passes. And if it does, the Trump administration gets to claim a huge legislative win — not just a headline, but real, sticky policy that people will feel in their paychecks. That’s the ballgame.

Chapters

00:00:00 - Intro

00:03:52 - Big Beautiful Bill Progress

00:15:51 - Interview with Bill Scher

00:39:39 - Update

00:40:23 - Inflation

00:43:36 - Supreme Court Birthright Citizenship

00:45:44 - Iran Nuclear Deal, "Sort Of"

00:47:57 - The News Sheriff

00:53:03 - Interview with Bill Scher (con't)

01:18:02 - Wrap-up