Today, Explained

Is MAGA dead?

It lays out, within days of the vote, the competing stories Republicans are telling themselves about the 2026 midterm loss and who each story would help in 2028.

1. 01Republicans lost the 2026 midterms in what the episode calls the biggest congressional landslide in 50 years, with even Mississippi in play.
2. 02Andrew Prokop of Vox sees a split on prices: free-market conservatives blame tariffs and deficits, populists say the 2025 agenda never helped workers.
3. 03Rod Dreher dates the unravelling to April 2, 2025, the Liberation Day tariffs, and blames gut-instinct decisions and loyalty-based appointments.
4. 04J.D. Vance blamed the Iran war he opposed in private, yet Rod Dreher says Vance and Marco Rubio stay tied to every failure of the administration.

Dems won. Now what?

It pairs a reporter's read on why the Democratic wave happened with a veteran strategist's concrete to-do list for what the party should pass next.

1. 01Democrats won 2026 midterm races across Ohio, Texas, Kansas and Michigan, which Astead Herndon reads as a rejection of Trump more than an embrace of the party.
2. 02Herndon credits affordability, adopted after Zohran Mamdani's 2025 New York win, plus a corruption message, for beating gerrymanders and GOP money.
3. 03Rahm Emanuel's agenda: an ethics bill in two months, a $20 minimum wage by 2030 and tariff repeal, each built to force Trump to sign or veto.
4. 04Emanuel opposes impeaching Trump because it targets one man and will fail, though he backs probes of Venezuela oil money and Jared Kushner's Gulf funds.

Was populism worth it?

Two sharp writers give a compact, evidence-heavy account of why populism took over American politics and what could finally end it.

1. 01In the 2026 midterms, candidates from Gina Hinojosa in Texas to Dan Osborne in Nebraska ran on populist messages after a decade shaped by Donald Trump.
2. 02Jonathan Chait of The Atlantic defines populism as a zero-sum fight with one easy fix that a self-interested elite is supposedly blocking.
3. 03Mid-century American television had only three major networks, which Eric Levitz says let a small elite curate the national political conversation.
4. 04Trump's second-term dominance undercuts his populism, Chait argues, because a president claiming total control cannot pose as the deep state's victim.

Make groceries cheap again

Transcript available; summary, chapters and takeaways are on their way.

When hobbies take over your life

Transcript available; summary, chapters and takeaways are on their way.

Nevada's Trump slump

Transcript available; summary, chapters and takeaways are on their way.

Life in the rage economy

Transcript available; summary, chapters and takeaways are on their way.

Texas Talarico freakout

Transcript available; summary, chapters and takeaways are on their way.