I’ve been doing the podcast rounds this week, chatting with the folks at The Bulwark and Raging Moderates. If you heard me there and are new to this podcast, I want to say a big welcome! I’m glad you’re here! For regular listeners who want to hear me spout off, you can find some of that spouting in those feeds.

I also talked to Gabe Fleisher of Waking Up To Politics in a live Substack chat on Wednesday and you’re gonna hear part of that conversation in this episode. For context, Gabe is 23 and has been writing a political newsletter since he was nine years old. So, although I’m a decade older than him, we’ve been at this about the same amount of time.

We began by talking about the piece I wrote in the Times last week. I won’t make you re-listen to all of that. I also had a conversation with Nathaniel Rakich about the piece, which is further down in this feed, titled “Why Democrats Need Their Own Trump.”

Gabe and I chatted while the House was considering the bill formerly known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The conversation begins with a good question that Gabe asked me: Trump campaigned as a populist but hasn’t necessarily governed that way, promoting policies like OBBBA that are more standard Republican fare. So, is he going to be able to actually transform the Republican Party longterm into a more populist party? Take a listen!

New York State Rep. Zohran Mamdani seriously outperformed expectations in the New York City Democratic mayoral primary on Tuesday, well positioning himself to win the general election this fall.

The election had become a two-way race between Mamdani and former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, with polls projecting the results would likely be close enough …