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It’s hard to open the news these days and not get the sense that American democracy is on the fritz. And I’m not just talking about if you’re mainlining MSNBC. Within the past week, a headline at the Financial Times reads: “US sliding towards 1930s-style autocracy, warns Ray Dalio.”

The Wall Street Journal reads: “In Trump’s Second Term, a Bolder President Charges Ahead Unchecked. Trump is frequently riffing on authoritarianism and ignoring caution from advisers.” The New York Times reads: “Historians See Autocratic Playbook in Trump’s Attacks on Science.”

President Trump has tested and – according to the courts – exceeded the bounds of his power while in office.

He’s deployed the National Guard against governors' wishes, levied tariffs of all manner, frozen funding to universities, cut off law firms from federal contracts, fast tracked deportations using the Alien Enemies Act, fired a Fed governor and heads of independent agencies, installed allies at the Department of Justice… the list goes on.

Some of this may fall into the category of “things that Democrats don’t like,” and the remedy for that is to win elections. Some of it may be illegal. And in those instances, the remedy is the courts.

One of the most important tests of our system is whether the courts recognize breaches of the law when they happen and whether involved parties comply with court rulings once they’re made.

So on today’s podcast I want to get beyond what can sometimes feel like a nebulous freakout and talk about the cases asserting that Trump has exceeded his power and check in on where they stand.

According to Just Security, there are at least 390 legal challenges to the Trump administration's actions, so we don’t get to all of them, but we touch on some key ones. With me to do that is Professor of Law at Cardozo, Jessica Roth. She’s also the co-director of the Center for Ethics in the Practice of Law and a former federal prosecutor.

The video version of this podcast is available to paid subscribers at gdpolitics.com

Even before the mid-decade gerrymandering wars began, the 2026 midterms were on track to feature the fewest competitive House districts in modern elections.

According to Cook Political Report’s ratings, 84 percent of House districts are solidly in one camp and another 7 percent are likely Republican or Democrat. That means 91 percent of districts aren’t particularly competitive and 30 states don’t have a single competitive election for the House. Current gerrymandering efforts are likely to take more competitive districts off the table.

It’s a tricky moment for – well, the country – and also for good government groups that have long pursued election reforms like independent redistricting commissions. Common Cause, which has frequently sued over partisan gerrymandering, said it won’t fight California over its proposed gerrymander.

According to the nonpartisan group Unite America, which has also pursued independent redistricting reforms, this makes reforms to primary elections – where the vast majority of the midterm elections will essentially be decided – all the more important.

Unite America advocates for “open primaries” in which all voters (Republican, Democrat, and unaligned) can cast a ballot, and candidates from all parties compete together. They also advocate for instant runoffs in general elections, known as ranked choice voting.

Joining me on today’s podcast to make the case for these reforms is Richard Barton, a fellow at Unite America and political science professor at Syracuse University.

We’ve got a podcast full of election updates today. We kick things off with the latest in the gerrymandering wars. Both Texas and California approved new maps in their state legislatures. For Texas, that makes it pretty much a done deal, pending lawsuits. For California, that means the maps now go to the voters to approve and we have some new polling on what they think at the start of all of this.

Now eyes are turning to Missouri, Ohio, Indiana, and Florida for more Republican gerrymandering and to New York, Illinois, Maryland, Oregon and Virginia for more Democratic gerrymandering. Although, much of the Democratic gerrymandering may have to wait a cycle.

Next we look to the New York City mayoral race, one of the hottest items of the fall’s off-year elections. It’s getting about as New York as you can imagine. There’s more scandal surrounding Eric Adams, including one associate trying to bribe a reporter with cash stuffed in a bag of Herr’s potato chips. Zohran Mamdani led his supporters on a city-wide scavenger hunt and got panned online for failing to do a bench press rep solo at a campaign event. And Cuomo is attracting big money from Mamdani-skeptic New Yorkers, with his super PAC raising 1.3 million in a single week.

We also check in on the national environment, lest we get to Texas, California and New York-centric. With me to do it all is my former colleague and newly minted Chief Election Analyst at Decision Desk HQ Geoffrey Skelley.

Do moderate candidates do better in elections? It’s a question that has rocked the online world of election data nerds in recent days.

There has been hair pulling, locker stuffing, and swirly giving. Sorry, I mean, there has been online snark, Substack posts and replies, competing Twitter and Bluesky threads, academic credential waving, and accusations of bias.

What started this whole thing is a little metric called WAR, which is oftentimes used in sports and means “wins above replacement.” Basically, how well does a particular politician perform in an election compared to how a generic candidate from their own party would have done.

The folks at SplitTicket, helmed by Lakshya Jain, have been using this metric to analyze electoral politics for a while and have found that the benefit to being a moderate is notable. From 2018 to 2024, according to their data, Blue Dog Democrats did about 5 percentage points better than progressive Democrats in House elections.

The folks at Strength In Numbers, helmed by Elliott Morris, recently published their own version of WAR, showing a smaller benefit to political moderation, about a 1 to 1.5 percentage point benefit, with significant uncertainty bands around those numbers. Elliott concluded in an article that moderation is overrated in electoral politics.

This initial disagreement sparked a broader debate between other Substackers, academics, and election wonks who took one side or another.

Today, for the first time since this debate began, the two sides sit down together to hash it out on the GD POLITICS podcast. Joining me on this episode are Lakshya Jain and Elliott Morris.

The video version of this podcast is available to paid subscribers here.

The gerrymandering wars are continuing apace. Texas Democratic legislators are returning to their state this week after leaving in order to block a Republican attempt to redraw the state’s congressional maps. Their return means Texas Republicans can move forward with their gerrymandered maps, which aim to add five Republicans to the state’s congressional ranks.

California Governor Gavin Newsom has kicked off his own retaliatory gambit, attempting to add five seats to the Democratic roster in his state, with new maps that will be considered by the California legislature this week and – if all goes to plan – considered by California voters in a referendum this fall.

Speaking of gambits, Ipsos announced that it is partnering with Stanford to create AI survey respondents that are twinned with real people. Is this “Good Data, Bad Data or Not Data?” And will survey respondents be the first casualties of the great AI job displacement?

Also, as we sat down to record Monday morning, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and European leaders were meeting with President Trump to present their vision for how to bring about an end to the war in Ukraine, after Trump seemed to side with Russian President Vladimir Putin last Friday.

Trump’s relationship with Russia was a highly scrutinized part of his first term, but what do Americans think now? And how involved do they want the US to be in ending the war in Ukraine?

With me to discuss it all are two dear friends of the pod, Mary Radcliffe and Nathaniel Rakich.

The 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.

As students begin to head back to school, American higher education is in its most fraught position in recent memory. Most prominent among the challenges is President Trump’s pressure campaign against elite universities.

There have been federal funding freezes linked to accusations that schools haven’t done enough to stem anti-semitism and remove race considerations from admissions. There have also been cuts to scientific research, roadblocks for international student visas, and new limits on federal student loans.

There are also broader concerns about higher education that predate Trump or have little to do with him: The rising cost of tuition, concerns about the return on investment, and the growing gender imbalance amongst those who graduate. Women now receive about 60 percent of bachelor’s degrees in the U.S.

To top it all off, there are emerging questions about whether artificial intelligence will shrink the availability of entry level jobs that a degree prepares many students for.

On today’s episode we get into as many of these challenges as possible with Preston Cooper. He’s an economist and senior fellow at the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute. He’s done extensive research into the value proposition of American higher education, and has estimated the return on investment of 53,000 different degree and certificate programs across the country.

Low-key, the whole political scene is such an L right now. Everyone’s either gaslighting, rage farming, or displaying NPC behavior. American politics is just vibe-check after vibe-check, but it’s mostly giving flop era with zero accountability.

If you’re confused as to why I — a millennial podcaster — am writing like a Gen Z TikToker, it’s because today we are talking about how the Internet shapes our language and in doing so also shapes our culture and politics. (Also, yes, in case you were wondering, ChatGPT wrote that.)

Today, the spread of ideas happens in large part on social media, where what content gets promoted or demoted or even what words we are allowed to use is largely determined by algorithms. This has created a new dynamic where algorithms are increasingly influencing how we communicate.

A simple example might be the emergence of the word “unalive,” because social media platforms banned content about suicide, but it goes well beyond that.

This is the argument Adam Aleksic lays out in his new book, “Algospeak: How Social Media Is Transforming the Future of Language.” Adam is a linguist known online as “Etymology Nerd.”

The 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.

We’ve got lots of election updates for you today. It’s that time of the cycle when potential candidates are increasingly making moves. As you probably heard, Kamala Harris is not running for governor of California, which has opened up a crowded primary there.

Longtime New York Congressman Jerry Nadler got a primary challenger from a 26-year old who is making Nadler’s old age a prime issue. The blockbuster Texas Senate primary is continuing to heat up on both sides.

And, of course, the Texas legislature has released its newly gerrymandered maps, with the goal of adding to five seats to Republicans’ congressional numbers in what will likely be a tough midterm for the party.

Oh, and lest we forget, we are three months away from Election Day 2025, which will feature statewide elections in New Jersey and Virginia.

Today we talk about all that and focus in particular on the Senate. Inside Elections just released its overview for the Senate in 2026 and lucky for us our guest today is the deputy editor of Inside Elections, Jacob Rubashkin.