Vibes Only
The polls are broken, the stakes are unprecedented, and vibes drive the future of American politics.
Every Thursday, political strategist Brian Derrick (founder of Oath) and new media strategist Glennis Meagher (co-founder of Generator Collective) break down the biggest stories in American politics, elections, and culture.
This isn't your standard cable news commentary. Get an insider's look at the US political machine, current news of the week, and the digital strategy shaping our world - delivered with the honesty, insight, and humor of two people who've actually worked in the trenches of US politics.
Hit follow and stay ahead of the news cycle every Thursday.
Vibes Only
How SCOTUS Rewrote Campaign Finance & DSA Sweeps Colorado
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Melat Kiros toppled a longtime incumbent and Phil Weiser beat a sitting senator: Colorado's progressive wave is real and we brought the receipts.
This week Colorado handed progressives a statement night. Attorney General Phil Weiser defeated sitting US Senator Michael Bennet for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination, 29-year-old democratic socialist Melat Kiros unseated 15-term Denver incumbent Diana DeGette in the 1st District, and state Rep. Manny Rutinel won the Democratic primary in the battleground 8th. Brian and Glennis dig into what's actually driving these wins: not a DSA litmus test, but voters hungry for candidates who fight and communicate.
Then it's the Supreme Court's final day of the term. In National Republican Senatorial Committee v. FEC, the Court struck down limits on how much party committees can spend in coordination with their own candidates, a 6-3 ruling that reshapes money in the 2026 midterms. The justices also upheld state bans on transgender girls in girls' and women's school sports (West Virginia v. B.P.J. and Little v. Hecox) and, a day earlier, let states count mail ballots that arrive after Election Day. In this episode of Vibes Only, we break down what each ruling means for real for real.
Also: Trump's new financial disclosure showing more than $2 billion in 2025 income (roughly $1.4 billion tied to crypto and meme coins), the leaked 911 audio around Mitch McConnell being a breath from death, this week's Oath Candidate of the Week Keisha Lance Bottoms running for Georgia governor, and a rapid-fire round of Clickbait or Double Click.
New episodes drop every Thursday morning! Tap follow now and stay ahead of the news cycle with us.
EPISODE LINKS
Welcome back to Vibes Only. Today, we are breaking down two massive stories: a landmark day at the Supreme Court and DSA getting stronger than ever.
BRIAN:The High Court just fundamentally rewrote the rules on campaign finance alongside their rulings on transgender athletes and mail-in voting.
GLENNIS:We're breaking down the viral videos, the changing campaign landscape, and the latest leaked audio involving Mitch McConnell. It's not good. Let's dive in. Hi, Brian
BRIAN:Hey, G. How's it going?
GLENNIS:It's going. How are you?
BRIAN:You know how there are two kinds of very New York days, and in one it's like, "New York in the spring," and you run into your friend, and you walk through Central Park, and the sun is shining, and everything's amazing. You see a celebrity, and just the most New York things kind of happen. Mm-hmm. And then in the second kind of New York day, a dog shits on your shoe, and then you drop- Mm-hmm … your AirPod and it gets run over by a bus, and you miss the train, and I'm having the second kind of New York day. Uh-
GLENNIS:Can I tell you, when you just started that sentence I thought you said, "You know how there are two types of New York gays?"
BRIAN:Well- I was like, "Where is he?" … that's true as well. I saw them both this weekend. Happy end of Pride. Happy straight Pride month.
GLENNIS:Is July straight Pride?
BRIAN:Every month is straight Pride, except for June.
GLENNIS:Brian, Brian, Brian, we have a lot to discuss today. Let's start with a hot topic, and it's a hot topic because you knew you were gonna get shit for it, and you got shit for it. People were offended, I think, that you said that the voters may or may not know what exactly the DSA platform is. But your point about the status quo and people wanting change- It's continuing. Look at what happened in Colorado.
BRIAN:I said what I said. I said what I said, and let's talk about it. In Colorado, we got a bunch of upsets. For the governor's seat, we had Michael Bennet, sitting US senator, lose to Phil Weiser, the current attorney general of Colorado. We had Diana DeGette, an almost 30-year incumbent in the House, lose to Melat Kiros, a DSA-endorsed 20-something? Nine. 29? 29-year-old. We also had Manny Rutinel in Colorado 8 beat the D-Trip preferred moderate candidate, Shannon Bird. So a great night for progressives just a week after a banger of a night for progressives in New York.
GLENNIS:There's been a lot of discourse on the internet post the New York City primary election around the DSA, around Democrats, around what it means for the future of the party. Everyone's just getting too distracted with, like, the DSA of it all. To your point that you were making last week, maybe not all of the people who voted for Darializa were aware of her tweets or the things that… I don't know if you've seen, Jon Favreau is in a lot of shit online as well because he kind of went on a, a, a lecture of sorts about what she said in the past. And, and I think people on the internet, the comment section, were irate with you as they understood it, saying that people didn't know who they were voting for, what the platforms of the DSA were. I think the reality still is DSA or not, people want fighters. People want people who are going to challenge the status quo. People want candidates who know how to speak to them like human beings and communicate with them effectively. I'm a little frustrated with the internet of it all. It's giving a little bit like- McCarthy era at times. People are, like, saying that they're communists, that they're, you know- Yeah, yeah, yeah just wait till they get into the… And it's like, why don't we give them a chance? And let's, let's have them fight for working people in the House and in the Senate. My ass is a little chapped with the internet right now.
BRIAN:Yeah, no, I, I, I get that. I'm not calling voters dumb, and I do feel like in some bad faith cases, that's what people interpret it as. Of course. What I'm saying is I'm talking about what's important to voters. I'm talking about what voters are currently basing their decisions around, and I don't think that they're basing it on policy platforms of the DSA. I don't think that a DSA stamp of approval of a candidate currently carries weight with voters, that they're like, "Oh yeah, that is, uh, the candidate that I want." What I think people are voting for is change. We saw that again in Colorado. Phil Weiser taking on Bennet, I think, is a good example, where he wasn't really running to his left. He was running as a more direct and aggressive contrast to Trump, that he sued Trump more than any other AG in the country, and that he's trying to take the fight to Republicans, was a more important narrative in his campaign than I'm going to be more progressive or run the state to the, to the left of, of how Bennet will do it. I also think that Diana DeGette, who's been in Congress for a billion years, isn't moderate. She's what we would call a backbencher. She doesn't make news a lot- Mm… BRIAN: which is part of Uh-huh. But I just, like, pulled up her scores, and if you look at some of, like, the major raters, there's one called Progressive Punch. It's a little old school, but they rate- Okay … members of Congress on how progressive they are. Her composite progressive score is 95%. Her crucial- Hmm. Okay … progressive score is 92%. She's definitely not Marie Gluesenkamp Perez or Jared Golden or some shit. People know that Melat was running to her left. I'm not saying that they don't know that. Mm-hmm. But what I think was more important for voters is that she was a change in strategy, in vibe, in style- Mm-hmm … and that people felt like they've gotten very little or just not enough out of DeGette being in Congress for 30 years, and they wanted- Yeah somebody different. Also, as we talked about last week, had Chuck Schumer-- I know this wouldn't happen, but it should have. Had Chuck Schumer- Mm-hmm … come into this cycle and said, "Okay, there are almost 80 of us who are retirement age sitting in these seats who have been here for decades. Let's all get together and decide when we're gonna leave." Yeah. And had they announced, like, a mass changing of the guard of, like, "We're all-- We're gonna recruit and support young people to run for these offices," would the DSA be on the rise in the way that it is right now, I don't know. Mm-hmm. I don't know the answer to that. But as it played out, the establishment and newer center-left voices align themselves with billion-year-old incumbents- Yeah.
GLENNIS:Yeah… BRIAN: that people had already DSA is the remaining choice. Yeah. And these candidates can very clearly communicate, and they are persuading voters that they can and will fight for them. Yeah. I think the, the base is exhausted with the fact that Democrats feel and look spineless in the new America that we live in. We also saw last week, to your point on DSA policies, et cetera, Zohran Mamdani was in fact able to freeze the rent for 2 million rent-stabilized- Yeah… apartments in the city of New York. So they are seeing, the party DSA, they are seeing policy wins as well. I am energized by all of this, and I hope that our tent, which is very large, we've talked about this for the last three years, that there's more of us with, with different, uh, points of view on specific things. I would love for us to kind of lock arms and assume best intention and march forward together to fight fascism
BRIAN:I agree, and I think that we should hold our smoke for the right, right? Like-
GLENNIS:Yeah… BRIAN: that's, that's an No, but let's make it one. No,
BRIAN:I think that's a thing.
GLENNIS:You're like blowing the smoke? Is that the
BRIAN:idea? No, that's a thing. That's a thing. It's
GLENNIS:like who- I don't get it, though. Like, you're, you're inhaling and- Who do
BRIAN:you have smoke for? No, I think it's like a, a gun reference, right? Who do you have smoke for?
GLENNIS:Oh.
BRIAN:I don't know.
GLENNIS:Like was just shot and the gun is smoking?
BRIAN:Maybe.
GLENNIS:It might
BRIAN:be like a- I think it's an internet thing. I think it's an
GLENNIS:internet thing … might
BRIAN:be a Depression-era thing. No, no. Like I have never heard that. This is a Gen Z, this is Gen Z slang, and I'm y- I'm youthful.
GLENNIS:No cap.
BRIAN:No cap. I think that we should be training our fire on the right. I'm not here to throw punches at the left. I know that people on the internet get mad and think that that's what I'm doing. That's not what I'm doing. I am trying to understand where the party is at as a whole so that we can win as many places as humanly possible. And so if I'm someone who identifies on the left right now, I would be super focused on winning the competitive seats where progressive challengers are emerging from primaries. Because- Mm-hmm … as we said last week, the biggest critique of the left is that they can't flip districts, and the data supports that. Sorry, that's just like a fact that- Yeah … of all the districts in the last six years that Democrats have flipped, it's been a, like, leftist in zero cases. So it's not that it's impossible, but you just have to make it happen. So Randy Viegas, Matt Dunlap, now Manny Rutinel, there are progressives- In really hotly contested general elections that need to prove they can win purple districts in order for people to nominate more candidates in that style next cycle.
GLENNIS:I agree, and I also wanna reflect back on a conversation we had three or four weeks ago about the fact that probably most Americans agree that the system is rigged, it's not working for us, and that progressive values, progressive policies actually do center working people and their best interests, the American people, and our economic interests. So again, it comes back to, like, can we effectively communicate and organize? And I think that's- Yeah … that's the other point I'll make, which is that all of these candidates that we've seen win over the last two weeks had a very robust IRL strategy.
BRIAN:Yeah.
GLENNIS:Digital and IRL.
BRIAN:My message to w- people who identify as moderate or, like, center left- Mm-hmm is if the mere existence of people on the left derails your ability to get elected, then people didn't really buy into what you were selling in the first place. People need to know where you stand, and if people know where you stand, then someone running a million dollars of ads calling you a socialist isn't going to be as effective or effective at all, right? It is possible to have candidates that connect with voters, can clearly communicate their own message, and be more impervious to those sorts of attacks. But you have to elect candidates that can do that, and I don't know any 20-year incumbents that meet that bar because people think that they are the system. They think that they are the problem. And so if you continue to double down, double down, double down on 70-year-old incumbents, yeah, people are not going to respond well when they're attacked for doing nothing or aligning with corporate interests. Yeah. You need a new playbook.
GLENNIS:Period. And I just wanna float again, Brian, maybe we should do the forced retirement parties.
BRIAN:I know. Just
GLENNIS:throw-
BRIAN:Well, it's, it's fucking late now. Yeah.
GLENNIS:I know, but maybe next cycle.
BRIAN:I mean, I haven't been in a room with Chuck Schumer in ages. We, we, like, keep missing each other. I keep missing events that he goes to. I, I really wanna confront Chuck Schumer.
GLENNIS:And what would you say?
BRIAN:Like, "Where the fuck are the pink slips? Why are you not-" Mm-hmm "… pushing people to retire publicly when they won't respond to it privately?" These people are surrounded by, like, yes men and donors, and-
GLENNIS:Totally… BRIAN: I would love to calmly such a drag on the party right now. And many of them are bought out by corporate interests. There's one Republican I wanna call out and shame really quickly, Tom Kean.
BRIAN:My God, Tom Kean Jr.
GLENNIS:Tom Kean Jr., he went missing. For those who missed this story, he's a House member out of New Jersey 7? Yeah. Seventh Congressional District. Yeah. Went missing for first it was a week, then it was two, then it was a month, then it was three months. No one had heard from him. It is your job. The American taxpayer pays your salary, pays your health insurance. You have a duty to your constituents to show up for your job. This was barely a story, right? It was kind of like, "Oh, he's missing. LOL. Ha ha ha. But he's fine." Cut to yesterday, he makes an announcement, "I was in treatment for depression Valid
BRIAN:Good
GLENNIS:Depression is real Go off,
BRIAN:king
GLENNIS:Right? However, I am-- What am I? Petty. So I wanted to look at some of his vote record. The big beautiful bill, big brutal bill, the MAGA murder budget, whatever you wanna call it, infamously had sweeping cuts to Medicaid. That was because of a work requirement. They were saying that you had to prove that you worked X amount of hours per week out of a month or whatever in order to qualify for Medicaid. Tom Kean Jr., of course, voted for this bill. Yep. Three hundred and fifteen thousand people in the state of New Jersey will now lose access to Medicaid because of this work requirement. Twenty thousand people in Kean's district alone will lose access to Medicaid because of this. Not only that, Kean voted for the bill that removed the ACA subsidies, which as we know increased health insurance for ACA users by upwards of 115%. The icing on the cake for me, which I did not know until I was creating my burn book against Tom Kean Jr., Medicaid is the primary way that Americans receive mental health services in this country. It is the single largest payer of mental health services in the country. He cut it, but for him, he got it because we pay for his health insurance. Right. So he could go in treatment for three months to save his life.
BRIAN:Hundred percent. And you have the right to go get healthcare and mental health treatment. We support that. Depression is very serious, and I'm glad he got it treated, and you can do that after you submit your letter of resignation and allow someone to sit in that seat who can fulfill the obligations of the job. To go missing without explanation and with zero plan to actually deliver for people. He missed over 100 votes in the House. There's not an absentee voting system. There is no justification. There was nothing he could come out and say, anything at all, that would have said to me, "Yeah, that makes sense. You should have three months off." It's not that type of job. No, you resign. You resign. You resign. It's not-- It's- And you go take care of yourself, you take care of your family, you take care of whatever the thing is, that's fine. It happens. To hold that seat vacant for three months, no ma'am.
GLENNIS:While also before he left, taking away healthcare for his constituents. And you know the only reason he probably didn't resign is because the federal health insurance is gold star. It's impeccable. I'm sure we also paid for his treatment. It just is so, so fucked up.
BRIAN:A hundred percent.
GLENNIS:Anyway, Tom Kean, quit
BRIAN:To your point, Glennis, Republicans are so hypocritical. A little bit of tea. I actually got some direct reporting, some IRL, not tea, if you will. One of my followers sent me a series of screenshots- … of a Republican who is married to a woman hitting him and one of his friends up on Instagram with X-rated content And I have receipts
GLENNIS:I wanna play 21 questions, but I know legally we, we can't.
BRIAN:Uh- Ask me who it is and I'm gonna tell you, and then Jason's gonna bleep it.
GLENNIS:Wait, House or Senate?
BRIAN:House.
GLENNIS:Who is it? Huh, that kind of tracks
BRIAN:Isn't that crazy? I have the nudes.
GLENNIS:Brian, that is one of many, I'm sure. Even when I worked in the Senate, which was in 2010, there were rumors abound about many, many Republican senators. Yeah. They're just so hypocritical.
BRIAN:There's one in Arizona as well that's been getting a lot of attention. Dan Savage just did a whole piece on it. He lives with, goes on vacations with, and goes and c- to the gym with his live-in- Mistress … advisor. It's Abe Hamadeh in Arizona. He ran against Kris Mayes for attorney general and then lost. He's in the House.
GLENNIS:Is his live-in companion a male or a female?
BRIAN:Oh, sorry, a man. It's a man. He's gay.
GLENNIS:There's, there's another person, a TikTok sleuth, has, not even a tracker, just someone who's like,"That's my elected, and that's not his wife," and just like filmed them. Oh
BRIAN:my God. Wait, Ken Paxton. No. Ken Paxton got- Ken Paxton? Yes. Ken Paxton got spotted on some sort of vacation with a woman- On the bus? On the- … unidentified who i- on the bus, who's not his wife.
GLENNIS:But, like Ken Paxton, are we surprised? He's like a mini Donald Trump, so wildly corrupt.
BRIAN:That man is just full of scandal at all times.
GLENNIS:Republicans are so hypocritical. We should just keep… Honestly, Brian Derrick's DMs are open. Sorry, Brian, I gotta say.
BRIAN:For hot tips, not for what you think they're for. Right.
GLENNIS:Right, right. For hot tips on hypocritical elected Republicans who are actively voting to take rights away from people that they potentially want to sleep with
BRIAN:Right. Can we also hit on our favorite demonic leader of the party, Mitch McConnell?
GLENNIS:Trump? Oh, I was on TikTok yesterday. There was like a 911 leaked audio. Have you seen this?
BRIAN:Mm-hmm.
GLENNIS:Is that real?
BRIAN:Yeah, he was found unconscious at his house- I thought it was fake … and he's been in the hospital for more than two weeks. No, that was legit reporting. Someone said that the heat wave sweeping the country right now are the gates of hell opening to welcome McConnell home.
GLENNIS:A couple weeks ago, I saw he was being wheeled in to the Senate floor, and I don't want to say it's elder abuse because I agree with you, he's evil, but it was just so pathetic. So pathetic.
BRIAN:We gotta get him up out of here, and I don't just mean Congress.
GLENNIS:I think the Lord is calling him home. Like- … is he on life support? What is going
BRIAN:on? That ain't the Lord, mama.
GLENNIS:Yeah. Mm. Nope.
BRIAN:Uh, we don't know. I don't think he's been seen or heard from since he was found unconscious, and I don't know if we ever will again. I genuinely don't know that there's any information available about his current status. I think that he's one of the most villainous characters in the American story. Mm-hmm. In the history of our country, I think that he stands out as someone who amassed as much power as humanly possible to inflict as much damage as he could long term on the well-being- Yeah … of the American experiment of democracy. To me, it will be a victory for the greater good when he's no longer able to twist the system into ill-fated contortions of his own perverse view of what America should be.
GLENNIS:And I gotta be real, he, he looks like he's been rotting from the inside for at least the last decade, so.
BRIAN:Hate will do that to you.
GLENNIS:Mm-hmm.
BRIAN:And it is crazy. I'm glad that he survived to see the demise of much of his own work on advancing conservatism, using air quotes, through Donald Trump. That Donald Trump- Mm-hmm has trampled so much of what he thought he was bringing about when he broke the system, when he stole Supreme Court seats, when he stacked an ideological extreme majority onto SCOTUS. When he played this long game to try to strip rights away from people and install minority rule in this country- Mm-hmm he thought that he was making this deal for conservatism, but MAGA blew it all up MAGA has nothing to do with being conservative. It has to do with worshiping at the altar of Donald Trump. So many of the seeds that he planted hath wrought doom for his own goals for the country. So I'm glad that he'll be going out at least knowing that much of what he aimed for might have seen the light of day or might have come close to fruition, but ultimately is doomed because of the corruption that he brought into the system himself.
GLENNIS:And let's talk about some of that corruption, shall we?
BRIAN:Let's. Let's. What a transition.
GLENNIS:The court that McConnell helped pack and what they were up to yesterday-
BRIAN:We should.
GLENNIS:Those fuckers … in their final day. We got the decision on trans athletes in schools, which- Yeah … I don't think was a surprise, but still- No was very, very disappointing. That is banning all female trans athletes from participating in team sports in the states where it is banned, which-- Where it's, it's banned in over 25 states in this country. So that was just a truly disappointing but not surprising reflection on the court and the country. Birthright citizenship. You know, I'm in Sweden, so I'm a little ahead of the news cycle, and I knew this decision was coming. How sad on, like, the eve of America's 250th anniversary, we're waiting for a decision from a packed court that was done in an unconstitutional way, an unfair way. It was just so un-American, just so deeply, deeply un-American. But that was decided. It's okay for now. It's okay for now. Campaign finance, which I wanna talk about. This is essentially saying that the parties themselves can get as much money as they want to give directly to a candidate. That's cray cray.
BRIAN:Yeah.
GLENNIS:One more. The Slaughter case, which was around Lisa Cook, who Trump was trying to remove from the Fed. This did overturn 90 plus years of precedent that these independent federal agencies did not have to answer to, specifically the president, in terms of keeping their job. They said, "Actually, you do, except for the Fed." But that's crazy. So just like zooming out before we get into some of the details, to me it feels like the Supreme Court is showing the country how much power they wanna have. The balance of powers here, it's like, is it that balance when the Supreme Court seems to just be doing the work of- Right … the president?
BRIAN:Right.
GLENNIS:And then with these cases, especially with Slaughter, it's like y- you are consolidating the power into the executive. This is always what Trump wanted, but it's happening. And I wanna talk about some of the immediate implications of these cases, but then I'm also trying to remain hopeful and I'm trying to imagine a world in which, you know, we have power and i- with this expanded presidential power, what in like good hands, good Democratic presidential hands could we do with some of this power? Let's start with the campaign finance'cause that's chopping my ass a little bit and clenching my butt thinking about '28.
BRIAN:Yeah. It's definitely the most confusing of the cases for sure. The ruling says that parties can spend as much as they want in direct coordination with the campaign. There were previously limits, around$130,000 for a Congressional, up to $4 million for a Senate race. What this does is it allows the parties more control over who runs, who gets supported in their election. It gives them more purchasing power because they can buy at candidate rates, which can be as little as a quarter of what the parties were previously paying for their IE- What does that mean? It means that by law, candidates get the lowest possible ad rates. When they buy advertising on TV or, or through a marketplace, they get the lowest possible rates. That didn't apply to parties. It doesn't apply to super PACs. Um- It's why Oath doesn't advise people to give to super PACs because they end up spending much, much more than a campaign will oftentimes on worse ads because there's no coordination between the two. The campaign has different data and information than the super PACs have. People have invented ways to sort of get around this. What this ruling does, the downstream effects are that it helps millionaires and billionaires. Shocker. This court's- Mm-hmm … best friends because those are the people sending them on vacation or buying them- Mm-hmm RVs or sending their kids to school at expensive private schools like-
GLENNIS:Clarence Thomas, we're looking at you.
BRIAN:Clarence Thomas, we're looking at you. The decision really adds more value to max out checks, that if I'm a billionaire, I can write a million-dollar check directly to the party committees, and they can use that in unrestricted ways to go support candidates of their choice. It gives the parties more power. The major parties will be at the detriment long term of, like, DSA and other- Mm-hmm… smaller party committees who won't necessarily benefit from the same thing. But for the immediate effects, it helps Republicans much, much more because they have eight times as much cash on hand in their national committee as Democrats do. Democrats currently have, like, $15 million and $18 million in debt, and Republicans have $130 million sitting in the bank ready to be spent on this. So it's about to make federal races even more expensive, push more money into politics, and benefit millionaires rather than grassroots donors.
GLENNIS:I, I'm just like, great.
BRIAN:I know.
GLENNIS:And Citizens United. I worked at a super PAC in 2012. I worked at the very first Democratic super PAC, and I remember leaving specifically because I left politics because I was like,"Wow, we raised over $100 million. This feels like a lot of money, and really wasteful in a lot of ways." And it's just really disheartening to think about how corporations and millionaires and billionaires can now put even that much more money into politics to pick and choose who they wanna win and to buy up- Tens of millions of dollars of ads
BRIAN:This all goes back in principle to Citizens United and the court deciding that political spending is speech. No, ma'am, that is the wrong take. Our Founding Fathers, when they fricking signed the Constitution a zillion years ago, and then we passed the First Amendment, when we enshrined the right to free speech, they were not like, "Oh, thank God Elon Musk will be able to write $250 million checks to exercise his free speech." Like, are you joking? That's of- Right … like, that's preposterous. That's literally ridiculous. So for an originalist court to be like, "Yeah, that's definitely speech," is so bananas to me. What the assumption is, is that Republicans have been teeing up case after case after case. People only know Citizens United and now this one, but there have been- Yeah three intervening cases that also chipped away at campaign finance regulation. A lot of people think that the next one is going to be aimed at eliminating contribution limits altogether, that any limit on how much an individual can give is a limit on their free speech. That is on its face ridiculous. Republicans are so confused about what a right is. That part- That having a right to something does not actually mean no common sense restrictions on it whatsoever. That's not how it works. But they certainly believe that there should be unrestricted access to guns, unlimited- Mm-hmm … spending by trillionaires in our elections, but- Mm-hmm extreme restrictions on who's able to cast a vote. It's so backwards.
GLENNIS:For the listeners, as a reminder on, like, originalist, originalism, it's these Supreme Court justices who believe that the Constitution of the United States of America should be interpreted as it was written at the time that it was written. They don't necessarily have legal nuance around guns shoot faster now, or- Right … there's a trillionaire on planet Earth who lives in the United States of America, which is al- that also is just absolutely absurd. It's like you think that the Founding Fathers could even conceive of the internet?
BRIAN:Right. You hit on some more Supreme Court cases there.
GLENNIS:Mm-hmm.
BRIAN:Just some hot takes generally. With the LGBT case, this cycle being focused on trans people in sports, now that they've greenlit it at the state level, yes, we need to fight that battle and defeat those bans where we can, but my hope is that we can actually start to really look past sports as an issue. If every state that is going to ban it has banned it, can we take some of the energy out of Republicans' fight on that particular thing, refocus around things like healthcare? Should the government decide who can and cannot have access to specific healthcare? Most people think no. Most people think that the government doesn't have a role in that. The sports issue has always been our worst footing on trans rights. I hope that the movement can take a cue, not give up on this part of the fight But to pivot the strategy to focus on should people be allowed to discriminate in housing, employment, public accommodations law? There are all these other things that need a focus and protection, and I think that there's a potential strategic value in a pivot away from sports.
GLENNIS:It's still remarkably sad for all of the kids who are impacted by this, and it is, you know, a win for Donald Trump given that it was one of his campaign slogans.
BRIAN:Yeah. Uh, Becky is the plaintiff, and she plays sports in West Virginia.
GLENNIS:Mm-hmm.
BRIAN:And she's the only out trans kid playing sports in the state. So the fact that this case is in front of the Supreme Court when it's one person in the state is so wild to me.
GLENNIS:I know. And this is what the Republicans are so good at, is that they're able to nationalize these state-based issues and make them, like, a rallying cry for their conservative, homophobic, white nationalist, racist base.
BRIAN:Before we move on from the Supreme Court, there was a little freak-out on the internet this week because NPR posted a story that Alito was retiring, and then they within a couple minutes retracted it. Did you see this?
GLENNIS:Hmm. No, I did
BRIAN:not. So NPR, the, like, preeminent Supreme Court reporter, posted a story online that Alito was retiring. It was retracted. She has apologized and said that she had stepped out of the court and then misheard from someone and didn't wanna miss the breaking news and so hit go on something that wasn't actually the truth. But then the internet fully believes that it was embargoed and was supposed to run later this week or next when he actually- Yeah … announces it and that this is coming imminently, which they deny. We don't know, but this is the time. Most people don't know that. This is the time that justices announce their retirements- Yeah after the end of the term so that they're not seen as a lame duck while they're issuing decisions. We're in the hot zone right now, and I've been saying that either Alito, Thomas, or both would announce their retirements now knowing that the Senate majority is at risk and that because they are politicians in robes, the two of them want- Mm-hmm Trump to pick their replacement. They might lose out on the ability for that to happen after November. Because if Democrats flip the Senate, they will not confirm a justice for Trump.
GLENNIS:No.
BRIAN:They can't, o- obviously, after what Mitch McConnell did to Obama. Yeah. So I'm expecting a potential announcement in the next couple of weeks, and it's gonna be a horror show thinking about who's gonna replace these nutcases.
GLENNIS:One ironic thing I wanna note on the birthright citizenship stuff, 'cause I'm thinking about Alito'cause I think he said that … I took a note 'cause it was so dramatic. One of the most important decisions in the court's history and a serious mistake. Warning it could have grotesque results, including encouraging birth tourism. Like, bro, what are you, what are you talking about? Like- Right … literally massive eye roll. You're a politician, you're bought, you're full of shit. But the irony is the World Cup, you're following Team USA, you know our star player, the only reason he's able to play for America is because when his mom was seven months pregnant, the airline wouldn't let her board, so she gave birth in New York City, and then they went back to England, you know, when he was two months old. No, I didn't know that. And he's our pride and joy on Team America. In fact, I think the Department of Homeland Security Instagrammed a photo of him. You guys are so full of shit. Everything is, like, for me, but not for thee. What with, like, the World Cup and, like, how joyous it's been and seeing all these cultures come together and the celebrations, and to just know the court is there issuing these decisions, and then the Trump administration is just cherry-picking the examples that they want that completely are hypocritical to the policies that they're supporting
BRIAN:It's a reminder that being afraid of Brown people will make you do and say crazy things. Mm-hmm. Alito being so obsessed with having a white Christian nation that he wants a president to be able to change the Constitution by executive order is wild. You know what I mean? That's- No,
GLENNIS:it's
BRIAN:crazy … so far afoot from what his fucking job is, and you can justify anything when so much of your worldview is rooted in a fear of anyone who does not think exactly like you do. Bananas.
GLENNIS:Yeah. Sick in the head. Okay, so I wanna talk about the bombshell. I'm using air quotes because we've been talking about this a lot over the last year. The Times just published reports based on the mandatory release of Trump's financial disclosures that he has made at least, at least $2 billion since returning to the White House.
BRIAN:So sickening. Jon Ossoff, where are you? Come save us. Did you see his speech on this?
GLENNIS:Yeah,
BRIAN:it was, it was- He gave a rousing speech at a rally about the Trump family being a bunch of criminals- Mm-hmm… and how they're taking food out of babies' mouths in order to buy islands. It's crazy. They, they
GLENNIS:literally are, though. They literally are. I know. I,
BRIAN:I ain't joking, bitch.
GLENNIS:I think I've made this point before. I wanna make it again. A huge portion of Trump's net worth going up in the last year of that $2 billion is from crypto, which is a scam. He made a ton of money off of it. People lost tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars from it because it tanked.
BRIAN:It's down 99%, is it not? It
GLENNIS:is. That's such a joke. That is such a joke. But the only reason that Donald Trump, as the President of the United States of America, is allowed to make a personal profit from crypto is because the United States Congress allowed him to. In the Genius Act, members of Congress are not allowed to benefit from the use of crypto in their name and likeness or stablecoins, which is a type of crypto. But there's a specific provision that says the President of the United States can.
BRIAN:Yeah. I mean, when's the last time you heard the word emoluments? You know what I mean? I feel like that's all we talked about in Trump 1.0 was like, "Oh my God, he's keeping his businesses. Oh my God, he's gonna be able to see that his people are doing trades." And now he just literally shows up at foreign leaders' doors with a can and, like, shakes it and says,"Gimme," and then says, "What do you want?" And then gives it to them. No. You know what I mean? Like, we're literally giving our most sensitive technology away to countries who invest in his personal bullshit. It's absurd. It's so- Yeah … brazen. There's no other word for it. It's the most brazen corruption that's ever happened on the face of planet Earth. Planet Earth. And it's happening in the country that really for a long time thought that we had a system in place that, like, put us above all of that, that these other countries were like banana republics and were susceptible to all of these things and regime change. And, and now here we are, and he's the poster child for it.
GLENNIS:Yeah. Are you referencing the fact that the president of the UAE and a senior national security advisor purchased 49% of World Liberty Financial for $500 million? And then, oh, the Trump administration ap- approves a plan to export advanced AI chips to the UAE despite intense, intense national security concerns about China getting that information.
BRIAN:Yeah, it was like two weeks later, was it not? They didn't even try to, like, make it look like they were unconnected events. It was literally payment.
GLENNIS:Mm-hmm.
BRIAN:Two weeks later, policy change. You can't sort of make it any more obvious than that.
GLENNIS:No, it's, it's cartoonish and truly villainous. The government is filled with villains. I also just wanna say 18 Democrats voted for the Genius Act to pass.
BRIAN:Yeah. Right.
GLENNIS:Brian, hit me with your candidate of the week, please, that you are excited about.
BRIAN:Keisha Lance Bottoms is running for Georgia governor, and- Hell yeah … this is a big one. Jon Ossoff is doing exceptionally well in the state of Georgia. We've talked about him a bunch. Right now, he's favored to win. Most prognosticators have that leaning Democratic, which the state of Georgia leaning Democratic at this point in the cycle is a really big deal. He has the potential to win by several points after the last handful of Senate races have been decided by under a point, oftentimes under half a point, like tiny, tiny margins. And that could be really helpful to Keisha Lance Bottoms, who's running to flip the governor's seat in Georgia ahead of potential redistricting in the state, which has been blocked for the time being. We could prevent Republicans from stealing more seats in Georgia if we win this seat. Really important race, currently rated as a nine point seven out of ten on OTH's impact score.
GLENNIS:If you or someone you know lives in Georgia, spread the word.
BRIAN:She is a great candidate, the former mayor of Atlanta, and had served on their city council before that, so an amazing candidate to support. G, we gotta dive into some clickbait or double-click. As a reminder, there's so much trash out there that we wanna help you guys sort through what is clickbait that you should ignore, and what is really important that you should be paying attention to. Our first one is a new lawsuit from over two dozen states against the Trump administration over the Medicaid work requirements they tried to implement last year.
GLENNIS:Double-click. We've talked about this, the power of state AGs, the power of your state government to fight back against federal law. Support your state and local officials who are supporting you. Like, I think this is really important. We need as much fight as we can get, especially with, like, these insane laws coming out of the federal government.
BRIAN:Double-click, agreed. We all pay so much taxes. What are we getting for it? Foreign wars? Pass. I want healthcare and transportation and, like, basic safety net so that when people retire, they can afford food and housing. Republicans are trying to cut all the things that we paid for. For our entire lives, we pay into these systems, so big double-click for me. I
GLENNIS:actually just went into my Social Security portal to see how much I'd put in to date, and it's kind of depressing.
BRIAN:I didn't even know that was a thing
GLENNIS:Oh, it's a thing. This is, I guess, a PSA to all listeners. You can log into Social Security and see how much you've put in and what you're projected to get out once you can start taking from it. I started working at 14, okay? I've been putting in that money for a while. Headline from CNN, "Crowd Size Gripes, State Fair Troubles: The Problem of an America 250 Celebration Tied to Trump."
BRIAN:Clickbait. I know that it's like great schadenfreude and that people love seeing Trump fail embarrassingly, especially when it comes to crowd size, but ultimately nobody gives a shit.
GLENNIS:I know.
BRIAN:What are you
GLENNIS:doing? The videos are hilarious. No, it's definitely clickbait. No one cares. It's a lot more energizing to see, like, the electoral wins that we're having and progress, but the videos are pathetic and also funny.
BRIAN:Hm. Next one, also from The New York Times,"Supreme Court Mail Ballot Ruling Deals New Blow to Trump's Election Plans."
GLENNIS:This is a double-click 'cause it's a win. As far as I understand the decision, as long as your ballot is mailed in by election day, it's gonna count, and there was a risk that it wouldn't, question mark?
BRIAN:Correct. Yeah. Yeah. They were trying to get a ruling that it had to be received by election day, even though there's no guarantee as to how long it will take to mail. So it was a- Right … bananas case to begin with, but it is a, a positive ruling, for sure.
GLENNIS:Did I tell you I voted at the election office this last primary? It was- No … thrilling. Yeah.
BRIAN:I love that for you. Board
GLENNIS:of Elections.
BRIAN:Our next headline here, Trump has moved the time of the firework
show in DC from 10:30 to past 11:00 PM so that he can give a speech on
America's 250th, starting at 9:50 PM.
GLENNIS:I think Trump's 250, all of it is clickbait, 'cause it's just- Yeah … so pathetic and so, so anti-American. Everything that Donald Trump has done and is trying to do to the United States of America is anti-American. He hates this country. He hates the people of this country. He only loves himself. He only loves enriching himself and his family. He has leeched America of its net worth in order to personally enrich himself, and he can eat shit.
BRIAN:Period. Imagine being in 110 degree swamp ass DC heat at 10:30 PM listening to Trump drone on and on- No … and on 'cause he can't stick to a script, 'cause he can't read.
GLENNIS:He can't. And also, how's he gonna stay awake? Oh, I guess he doesn't sleep. That's like the whole thing with him. Anyway, what a loser. That's it for this week of Vibes Only.
BRIAN:If you wanna stay ahead of the news cycle every week, be sure to hit follow or subscribe wherever you're listening.
GLENNIS:And we'll be back next Thursday, wherever you get your podcasts, for another Vibe Check. See you then.
