Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - Stories of Week 9/11: Ukraine Counteroffensive, Inflation Numbers, Railway Workers, & More!

Episode Date: September 17, 2022

Krystal and Saagar cover the Ukrainian counteroffensive, Federal Reserve policy, polling data, inflation, rail workers, & more!To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/To listen to Breaking Points as a podcast, check them out on Apple and SpotifyApple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/breaking-points-with-krystal-and-saagar/id1570045623 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4Kbsy61zJSzPxNZZ3PKbXl Merch: https://breaking-points.myshopify.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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We have an amazing show for everybody today. And we have Crystal. Indeed, we do. Big, big developments in Russia's war against Ukraine over the weekend. That Ukrainian counteroffensive, highly effective. Stunning. Shockingly so. Stunning victory. So big moves there. We'll tell you all about that. Also, new indications from the Fed, they're going to continue their aggressive move of hiking interest rates. That comes in spite of the fact that one

of their own economists is warning that their moves could cause a severe recession. So important to follow that as well. New developments in the midterms. Republicans realizing that their original strategy of, hey, let's just talk about inflation, is not landing the way that it once was, especially now that gas prices, look, they're still high, but they have come down quite significantly since June. We also have some new legal developments for former President Trump. Now his, and we've covered this from the beginning, his Save America PAC, which was all about we're going to stop this deal. And he raised like $150 million or something for that. And then they spent

none of it on any, like hardly any of it on any election related activities. That is coming under scrutiny now by a D.C. grand jury as well. So we've got the details of that. The same time, we do not want to lose sight of the fact that in Jackson, Mississippi, residents still cannot drink the water. They are still under a Boyle advisory. The mainstream media is already losing interest in the story, but some new stunning pictures coming out of Jackson, as well as a federal investigation into exactly what the hell is going on there. Yesterday, as you guys know, was 9-11. We've got some clips from just before the planes

hit the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, just to remember what it was like before that moment, the way that 9-11 turned everything upside down, the trajectory we've been on since then. So a little bit of reflection we're going to do there. Jeff Stein is going to join us to talk about the legal effort to overturn Biden's student loan debt relief action. Okay, with all of that out of the way, Sagar, what's going on in Ukraine? Let's start with Ukraine. Stunning development. So we brought everybody the news on Thursday. There was an initial campaign in which Ukraine seemed to be suffering some pretty major losses. Now, it turns out that that was actually a faint attack of what we were watching and what has now resulted in a absolutely stunning victory on the

part of the Ukrainian forces and a humiliating defeat on the battlefield so far for the Russians. Go ahead and put this up there on the screen. I chose the most complicated map that I could possibly find because of all of my research. I think actually just looking at it from a territorial perspective doesn't really convey just how complicated and really sophisticated the attack was by Ukrainian forces. I'm going to have a link down to this tweet in the description so everybody can go and look at it for themselves. It has the exact units, the exact forces, where the attacks occurred, and all that. But the top line, here's what you need to know. Now, according to the Ukrainian military forces, they have seized 3,000 square kilometers of territory. For those who are

wondering, that's about 1,100 square miles. Again, that is coming from the Ukrainian military defense forces. So not exactly 100% reliable. Now, what we do know, though, in terms of what's actually happened on the ground is the Ukrainians have obviously seized major towns and areas in the, quote, Kharkiv Oblast, Oblast being region in Ukraine. The reason that this matters is that that Oblast really was serving as the jump-off point for future Russian operations. The fact that the Ukrainians were able to take and seize so much territory so quickly, only in a couple of days. One of the things I mentioned in our last show is they really don't have that long. And that's something that Zelensky himself acknowledged ahead of the fighting season is that by reclaiming this Kharkiv Oblast, they have retaken and pushed back Russian defense

lines away from a potential jump off point that they could use in order to seize full military control of the entire like Eastern Donbass and Luhansk region. So everything that I've read so far on this is that it really is a stunning advance in combined arms operations and in maneuver warfare. It reminds actually a lot of people of the 1973 Israeli push in the Yom Kippur War. It also reminds us the tank is still very, very useful in warfare. Geeks like myself are very interested in that and watching it be very effective. Let's throw the next one up there on the screen, which is that the Ukrainian army is saying that it has essentially tripled the retaken area just in the last three days. So 48 hours,

thousands of square kilometers, 1,100 square miles of territory gained. Now, of course, all news organizations, including us, have to make the caveat. We cannot verify the Ukrainian figures. What we can verify is that even the Russians are claiming that they have had to pull back. They have confirmed they've pulled back their defensive lines. And the reason why that these particular towns mattered so much is they were major hubs for supply lines. And really what we're seeing is a humiliating crumble for the Russian defenses and their inability both to solidify supply lines. Some of the videos that are coming out here are stunning for a great power military. You're

seeing tanks straight up abandoned and unsupplied with no gas, no maintenance. I mean, clearly, this is unprecedented for a great power military to show such basic incompetence in shoring up your supply lines, shoring up your defenses. And look, I mean, there's no doubt about it. The Ukrainians would not be able to do this without the United States, without U.S.-provided weaponry and all of that. But this is just not supposed to happen in the annals of great power war. To watch it is just, I mean, stunning. There are barely words to describe what's happening right now. That's right. One military expert said that this advance from Ukraine marks the first time since World War II that whole Russian units have been lost. That gives you a sense of the scale of the defeat here. And I mean, first of all, it's incredibly humiliating for Russia. It's

incredibly humiliating for Putin. They's incredibly humiliating for Putin. They are even, you know, in Russian state media having to acknowledge that there were defeats that they had to retreat. I mean, they put a spin on it like we're gathering for the next defensive. But some of the images that are coming out, too, and some of the reports say, you know, these Russian soldiers are like ran away. Yeah, they literally were like dropping their rifles, running, taking civilian clothes from the local residents and stealing their bicycles to try to escape. So this was not like some, you know, organized retreat. Even this was everybody like fleeing for their lives is at least what the reports coming out are. And we're going to talk a little bit about how even the sort of like hard right, ultra-nationalist Russian bloggers are melting down over this, which puts a lot of pressure on Putin domestically as well. And we've always talked about how, you know, as hawkish as Putin is, there is a much more hawkish

contingent in the Russian body politic and also within the Kremlin to keep an eye on as well. So as important as this is for Ukrainian morale, that's really significant. We had said before that this was kind of Zelensky's put up or shut up moment. The winter is coming. If they were going to be able to make any significant advances back into the territory that had been taken by Russia, this was really the time to do it. Well, they showed they could do that. And, you know, that allows them to go and make the case to us and other European allies. Hey, look what we can do when you give us the weapons. We are able to make advances. We can win this war. So for Zelensky and the Ukrainians, incredible morale boost, incredible sort of like tactical strategic boost. In terms of Putin, this is really a difficult moment for him because

they're in the exact opposite position. Remember, he really thought at the beginning of this thing that they could wage this war without the Russian population really being taxed or stretched or really feeling it. And so as this was all going on, they were having these big celebrations in Moscow, trying to pretend like life was going on as normal, big fireworks display. And there are even some people who are saying like, this fireworks display looks like you're celebrating the Ukrainian military given the day that it's coming. So it's becoming increasingly untenable for him to be able to continue to prosecute this war without a broader national mobilization, which by the way, is exactly what the hard right factions are pushing for. So it really is a difficult position that he's in right now.

And it sort of undermines his whole project and branding effort that he's set up over decades now to portray himself as this tough minded leader and the strategic genius as they have these incredibly embarrassing defeats. Now, let's be clear. Russia still holds a lot more territory than they did before this invasion. There is a lot more that the Ukrainian military would have to do to push them back to the February 24th lines, let alone back to, you know, all the way out of the original Ukrainian territory. But in terms of when this is coming in the overall context, it's hard to understate just how significant it is. Right. And Zelensky also casting everything in terms of the winter. Let's put this up there. In his Saturday address, he said that the harsh winter will determine the fate of Ukrainian independence, that the

country's fate lies on what happens in the next couple of months. They said this is the most difficult winter for the world. Russia is doing everything in 90 days of this winter to break the resistance of Ukraine, the resistance of Europe, because this is what Russia hopes for. This is its last argument. These 90 days ahead will decide more than 30 years of Ukraine's independence. 90 days that will decide more than all the years of existence of the European Union. Winter will determine our future, casting it very much as, you know, really the decisive point. It's like Game of Thrones-esque if winter is coming. Listen, I mean, you know, if I lived there, I would think of the same thing.

It's a tough winter out there. Absolutely. So it's interesting from a couple of perspectives, which is that number one, I mean, look, the Ukrainian military did show its fighting capability, let alone the fact that with U.S. assistance where it's at did lead to a battlefield victory. Now, as we said and cautioned, the Ukraine's minister, defense minister, actually came out this morning saying he's like, look, our guys are tired. They've been fighting six days straight. This is a tough thing. A lot of Western analysts are pointing out that, listen, if the Ukrainians do get too far ahead of their skis, they could stretch their supply lines and would be vulnerable to counterattack. The Russians are regrouping currently in the East. They are making their defense lines as impenetrable as possible. And now they are launching basically a full scale air campaign against this town and the region of Kharkiv. They're launching a lot of rockets, bombs. They wiped out power for the city and for the region. Some of it has been restored, but they're making it a full scale total war.

So don't, you know, obviously don't count them out just yet. But I don't think there's a way to describe it other than just an absolutely stunning fold. I mean, the way it is, is that Ukraine, the way the Russians are governing it, militarily campaigning there, is they have four different regions that military commanders are in charge of. You effectively had the collapse of the entire northernmost region of that force. I mean, that would be like, it's difficult to describe in a US context. But I mean, just imagine, you know, a regional commander just effectively folding in 72 hours. Again, it just does not happen for great power military. So clearly, they have a lot of issues, supply issues. The North Korea stuff looks a lot more important in this context, where it seems that

they've been having major ammunition and resupply problems as well. So maybe they're a lot more important in this context where it seems that they've been having major ammunition and resupply problems as well. So maybe they're a lot closer to crumbling than people think, although, you know, we should also be cautious of that possibility. So once again, you know, Ukrainians have seized about 3000 square miles of territory at their very, very best. That's what they're claiming. The Russians still hang on to a significant portion of Ukraine that they did seize from the very beginning. But this is just no question. I mean, this is going to boost morale in Kiev. Apparently there, you know, there's absolutely jubilant atmosphere. Same in the West, you know, in the Pentagon. We don't

want to underscore that this was done with a tremendous amount of U.S. help. Let's put this up there, which is that the Ukrainian officials drew heavily actually on U.S. intelligence to plan the counteroffensive. They basically, the Ukrainians were able to use U.S. resources to identify key Russian targets. And effectively, U.S. satellite intelligence and other intel that we were able to gather, who knows from where and more, were used by the Ukrainian military to draw up exactly where they wanted to attack. And it does seem clear that, right, that obviously our intel identified, they're like, well, they have resupply issues here.

This general, you know, think their troops here are probably conscripts. They are, you know, the least amount of morale. It's like, you should faint here and attack right here. I mean, for military, people who are interested in military campaigns like me, like, this is crazy. I mean, this really will be studied for a long time. Yeah, well, and that is part of why they were able to be so successful. Because, you know, we were talking about, okay, they're preparing for this counteroffensive, when is it coming, what's going on? And they were really focused on the

more southern region of Ukraine. And so there were reports that Russia sent their more seasoned troops in that direction and left them more vulnerable in this northeast area. Now, apparently, there's still a plan to move forward with the counteroffensive in the Kherson region down in the south. But going so strong and so hard in the northeast really allowed them to sort of trick the Russians into letting their guard down up there. And that's part of the story of why they were able to have such a stunning victory and success over such a short period of time. But that too, even that sort of tactical feint that they deployed here, which obviously was extraordinarily effective, kind of has U.S. fingerprints on it. They say that the decision by Ukraine to tout its counteroffensive in the South before striking the Northeast is a standard

technique for misdirection used by the American special operations troops who've been training the Ukrainians since the annexation of Crimea in 2014. They have a quote here from the top Pentagon official for Ukraine and Russia in the Obama administration. She says, these guys have been trained for eight years by special ops. They've been taught about irregular warfare. They've been taught by our intelligence operators about deception and psychological operations. So even that decision and the way they approach this has U.S. fingerprints on it. And the other thing they talk about here is, I don't know if you guys remember, we covered before how the U.S. actually had more insight early in the summer into what the Russians were doing on the battlefield than what the Ukrainians were. Because, of course, over decades and decades, we have developed all kinds of intelligence

assets to help us understand what the Russians are up to. But with Ukraine, which was an ally, we didn't have the same sort of insight. And they were very reluctant to share what exactly they were up to and how exactly it was going. According to this report, at least, they have now started to coordinate more directly and share more information so that the U.S. side could be more useful and could really help them in terms of intelligence sharing. So that's a piece of this as well. But listen, it was the put up or shut up moment. We sent them tens of billions of dollars in weapons. We've been

training them for almost a decade. And this is the result where just before the winter hits, they are able to have this incredibly successful counteroffensive, which is absolutely humiliating for Russia and could be a real game changer in this war. They deserve credit where due. I didn't personally think they could do it, and they did. And they deserve that credit because it's a tremendous thing. I mean, when you can beat a great power military in any battle like this, unlike, you know, I mean, if you think about it, the U.S. never, quote, unquote, lost a military campaign in Iraq or in Afghanistan. We were defeated strategically. This is an actual tactical defeat on the battlefield.

Again, I mean, you don't see this happening. It's not even considered within the realm of possibility. So obviously, you know, it happened with Kiev and all that. But, you know, I personally thought, you know, given the ability and the, given the strategic advantage that you have when you take territory and you're on the defensive to just crumble like this. Yeah. Stunning. I do want to, one more warning before we move on to the next part, which is also very revealing about the sort of Russian psyche and mindset, which is that now we have to see what the response is. And as we've warned from the beginning, the more desperate your adversary gets, you know, that can be a scary situation as well. And Putin domestically under increasing pressure as well to show that this can be a success, that they can still win this war in some sort of way. Because, you know, I mean, the original idea of, oh, we're just going to march into Kiev is going to be over in a few days

and the Russian public is barely even going to know what's going on. Obviously, that didn't pan out. And now they're having massive stuff. I mean, when things will really get difficult for Putin is if they are faced with retreating even back beyond those February 24th lines. So we'll see if the Ukrainians are able to get there. We're a long way from that. Big moves here domestically with obviously global implications as well. But of course, you know that the Fed has been hiking interest rates to try to get inflation

under control, even though, of course, the Fed's interest rate hikes can't really directly impact the major causes of inflation. But nevertheless, they continue down that direction in a very aggressive fashion. And we got new indications last week that they plan to 100% continue this course. Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen from the Wall Street Journal. So this is Lael Brannard, who is seen as more of a dovish figure within the Fed. She's the number two policymaker. And she still is saying that, yes, at some point in the tightening cycle, the risks will

become more two-sided. But she says that they need to keep going. If history is any guide, it's important to avoid the risk of pulling back too soon. Following a lengthy sequence of adverse supply shocks to goods, labor, and commodities that, in combination with strong demand, drove inflation to multi-decade highs, we must maintain a risk management posture to defend against the risk consumers and businesses will expect higher inflation to continue. So Sagar, she's saying full steam ahead. They are not changing course, even though there are some indications that inflation has come down, even though certainly gas prices have fallen, even though there are major risks on the other side of pushing the economy into a severe recession with massive impacts in terms of

unemployment, in terms of consumer and just regular American pain, they still have no intention of changing course. Yeah, absolutely. Senator Elizabeth Warren, who look, many disagreements aside, I think she's actually done a decent job when discussing the Fed. She was actually on CNN discussing this. Let's take a listen. What he calls some pain means putting people out of work, shutting down small businesses because the cost of money goes up because the interest rates go up. So it sounds like you do think it's a mistake to raise interest rates again. I am very worried about this because the causes of inflation, things like the fact that COVID

is still shutting down parts of the economy around the world, that we still have supply chain kinks, that we still have a war going on in Ukraine that drives up the cost of energy, and that we still have these giant corporations that are engaging in price gouging. There is nothing in raising the interest rates, nothing in Jerome Powell's tool bag that deals directly with those. And he has admitted as much in congressional hearings when I've asked him about it. There you go. Yeah, it's actually I mean, look, it's true. He said it won't do anything about gas. The reason gas prices are down right now have much more to do with the strategic petroleum reserve, which we were begging the Biden administration to release for months, and they've depleted about a third of the SPR

so far. By the way, I think that's fine. We topped it up during the pandemic specifically for reasons like this, but that's the reason that gas prices have gone down. We'll go into that a little bit more. Same on food. I mean, food is dramatically impacted more by the supply chain, by fertilizer rates, nitrogen, and by drought than it has anything to do with demand. Demand has some to do with it, of course, but that's the only thing they can control and they're going after that. On the one hand, it's very difficult for me because I also see some companies which relied on cheap cash. Google, for example. Google has come out and they're like, well, guys, effectively Sundar Pichai is like, we need to boost productivity by 20%.

Effectively admitting that cheap cash was underwriting a whole lot of Google expansion and basically just like Google screwery. That probably was the case at the very much on the corporate level. So some of that quote unquote tightening had to happen, but Google will survive. Small businesses, they actually may not survive. And the people with unemployment, you know, who unemployment impacts and all that, they especially are really hurting. I'm most worried about housing. I mean, the fact that the average mortgage rate

continues to come up, I think it's like 6% right now, more than double, fastest rise in modern history, crushing the housing market. Housing market obviously needed to come down. I think it's like 6% right now, more than double, fastest rise in modern history, crushing the housing market. Housing market obviously needed to come down some, but we also need new housing stock. And a lot of that new housing stock either goes on pause in construction or just doesn't get sold, which that's the other problem. That's exactly right. I mean, it really is a complicated situation because on the one hand, the fact that you have had effective zero interest rates for so long, you have created this incredibly financialized economy, this bizarre and unsustainable froth. Companies that really don't deserve to exist and aren't profitable, but because cash was so easy to come by, they could just continue and continue and continue.

Massively inflating asset bubbles, which has been a huge driver of inequality so that if you're someone who owns stuff, those prices kept going up and up and up. We didn't call it inflation at that point, but that's what was going on with assets and certainly with the housing market. So if you're on the lucky side of that divide, that was great for you for a lot of years. So on the one hand, yeah, it's inevitable and it's not a bad thing to pull that froth back because that's part of what has been driving inequality. On the other hand, while it was great for, didn't really benefit a lot of people on the way up, it was a small sliver, it is really, really going to be devastating if there's a

severe recession. This all comes back to the fact that you have Congress and most of our government that is sort of unable to really act, that is stuck in gridlock small businesses so that they're able to borrow and do the things that they need to do and be able to hire and expand and survive this difficult time. But unless there's some mechanism I am not aware of with the Fed, that would have to come through government congressional action. And of course, we're nowhere inside of that. So it really is very difficult. But the worst possible world is that you have continued inflation because you aren't dealing with those real problems. And as Elizabeth Warren says, and you have a severe recession. That's exactly what one Fed economist is warning of. They don't want to talk about this, but this was a report, some research that was done here

under the Fed's umbrella. Here, this is reporting from our friend Ken Klippenstein. He says, Fed's own economist warns of severe recession from Chair Powell's rate hikes. That study, which was published back in July and sort of swept under the rug, was conducted by the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. And they're saying this is very reminiscent of actions taken by the Fed in 1920 that led to a severe recession. It was a very eerily similar dynamics. You'd just come out of the Spanish flu at that time. Of course, that killed 657,000 Americans. Many of those who died were workers. That meant there were more job openings than workers to fill them. So the

surviving workers had more bargaining power. You had a tight labor market. What does this all sound like? You had rising real wages. The study doesn't mention it. Labor strikes were also proliferating that were spurred by that low unemployment rate. So a very similar landscape to what we're facing now. Also, like today, consumer spending was also recovering. Then because World War I had ended, now, of course course because of the pandemic being over, despite the strong job market, inflation was also relatively high and for similar reasons. The quote from the study says at the end of World War I, the U.S. was experiencing strong growth and unruly inflation driven in part by an expansionary fiscal policy and accommodative

monetary policy. That's exactly what we had now. We have low interest rates, that's the accommodative monetary policy, but we also had stimulus in the form of direct checks and other support during the coronavirus pandemic. So very similar things there. And what they said is in 1920, the Federal Reserve Banks hiked their discount rates to tame inflation and the U.S. economy entered a severe recession now known as the Depression of 1920. And what they say in their warning here is that it's not that interest rates shouldn't be raised at all, but you've got to be really careful

because there's a delay between when you hike the rates and when the impact hits. And so if you just keep hiking and hiking and hiking without waiting to see how that's going to impact the economy, you can end up tripping the economy into a severe recession because there is that delay in the tightening and how it hits.

So that's what they're warning about. Yeah, no, I mean, look, it's very interesting. I mean, their counter would be, the counter to that right is, well, we came out of it and we had the roaring 20s. It's like, well, there was still a terrible time. A lot of people did suffer in the 19s. It took a couple of years for the roaring 20s to really take off.

And not like things worked out all that well at the end of the 1920s. So it's not like the structural problems were fixed. You wouldn't want to use that as your model to follow. Yeah, exactly. It's like anybody who's pointing to any economic policy between 1919 and 1929 as quote unquote effective, probably not the best thing to do and not exactly a path that we would go down. Look, the economy also is fundamentally different. The fact is that we're probably much more financialized today than we ever were before. So in a way, we may actually

may even be more vulnerable to rate hikes like that than before. And for how we come out of it and the possible ramifications of that, I'm really worried. I'm probably most worried about housing, you know, because that back then we didn't have the same level of housing crisis, but you could quite more easily build housing if you needed to. There was a big housing boom all throughout, you know, the post 1800s all the way up until even 1950. So some of the supply constraints and other plus were much more globalized, vulnerable to major global supply shocks.

I'm especially worried about Europe and the effect of their energy crisis as well. Not the only one. A lot of people are talking about it. Even apparently the White House this morning, just a report out that the White House thinks that one of their biggest fears is that the European energy crisis will bleed home and actually drive up the price of oil and will only continue inflation on the onward trajectory as rate hikes are going up. Another thing to remember, Europe also just hiked their rates by 0.75.

Yes, that's right. That's right. I mean, even the housing market thing is complicated because as we covered before, a lot of people cheering for the house. Yeah, I mean, it's too high. Because the prices are insane. First time buyers have been completely priced down. Now, there are more effective ways to do that than crash the economy. The biggest one is to build more houses. I mean, that's one of the huge issues that we have is a lack of supply of housing and especially affordable housing, but really housing of all kinds. And hiking interest rates is actually counterproductive in terms of increasing the housing supply.

That's number one. Number two, there's some impact from permanent capital buying up so many of the houses. I mean, we were talking about in some of these cities, it's like a quarter to a third of the homes being purchased are from private equity and other permanent capital. So that also is creating more demand and creating more competitive landscape

where if you don't have that, the whole thing in cash or close to it, very difficult to be able to compete. You also have in some local markets the impact, which, you know, is big picture positive, but can be very difficult in individual places where because of the work revolution coming out of the pandemic, where more people are working from home, working remotely, more people are just like changing their careers altogether and changing their priorities of life. You had some of these cities that if you're coming from San Francisco or you're coming from New York and you're moving

into Boise or wherever, and you've still got your New York and your California salary, you're bidding up the housing prices locally, making things very difficult as well. So even with the housing market, it's sort of complex because yeah, a lot of people would really like prices to come down, but crashing the economy. And by the way, when mortgage rates are very high, that also makes housing unaffordable, not the best way to achieve that end. That's right. Good morning, everybody. Happy Tuesday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed we do. Lots of interesting news that we are looking at this morning.

So first of all, some big questions about just how accurate the midterm polls are. A little bit of deja vu here. So a lot of caveats about some of the numbers you may be seeing coming out. Nate Cohn at the New York Times has been digging into that. So we'll break all of that down for you. Also, the very latest developments in terms of that Ukraine counteroffensive, wildly successful thus far. They continue to gain ground. What does it mean? And what is the reaction within Russia? That is also very interesting. Now we have a vote coming up, allegedly, on gay marriage. Some real questions of whether Democrats will be able to pull sufficient Republican votes to overcome the filibuster. Some new updates about who is in and who is out in terms of that vote and what all of that means. Also, some new legal developments

with regard to Trump and the whole MAGA world. Actually, very interesting. So you had sent this to me last week, Steve Bannon out there saying like 30s. I think he said 36 homes were raided. Right. Well, maybe not exactly accurate, but we have just learned that something like 40 subpoenas were served to various former Trump aides and acolytes just in the past week. So major escalation in terms of the DOJ's effort there. We also have an update for you on our good friend Brian Stelter, where he is headed next. Today, for real, Jeff Stein is going to join us to talk about some technical issues with Jeff yesterday. But today we feel confident we're going to get him in to talk about the legal case against student loan debt being crafted by Republicans. OK, so let's, that the polls in some key states are once again overstating Democratic support. So let's go ahead and put this first piece up on the screen here.

The headline here is, yes, the polling warning signs are flashing again. Let me read you a little bit of this because I think it is very illustrative, this one example they give in particular. He says that early in the 2020 cycle, they noticed that Joe Biden seemed to be outperforming Hillary Clinton in the same places where the polls overestimated her support four years earlier. The pattern didn't necessarily mean the polls would be wrong. It could have just reflected Mr. Biden's promised strength among white working class voters, for instance, but it was a warning sign. Of course, that warning sign did turn out to be correct in 2020. Of course, Joe Biden did win, but you'll recall some of the polls were

wildly off, especially in places like Ohio, Wisconsin. Certainly, the industrial Midwest has been a real issue for pollsters lately. So, they give the example of Wisconsin. On paper, they say the Republican Senator Ron Johnson ought to be favored to win re-election. The 538 Fundamentals Index, for instance, makes him a two-point favorite. Instead, the polls have exceeded the wildest expectations of Democrats. The state's gold standard Marquette Law School survey even showed the Democrat Mandela Barnes leading Mr. Johnson by seven percentage points. But in this case, good for Wisconsin Democrats might be too good to be true. The state was ground zero for survey error in 2020 when pre-election polls proved too good

to be true for Mr. Biden. In the end, the polls overestimated him by about eight percentage points. Eerily enough, Mr. Barnes is faring better than expected by an almost identical margin. Now, most pollsters, he also says, haven't made significant methodological changes since the misses of 2020. I mean, at least after 2016, there was a theory of why the polls might be better. In 2016, they had a theory about why they were so off. It was like, oh, we're underestimating. We're not looking at the education status and class status. We're undercounting white working class voters in particular. Okay, we've made the adjustments. This time we've got it. And then 2020 comes through and you have a very, very similar polling miss in some of the very same states that they missed in 2016. But this time around, the pollster didn't really even pretend to know why. There were some theories and there was some conjecture that we covered, like

liberals are home during the pandemic or liberals are just really excited to answer polls. But nothing was really adjusted in the methodology. So it would follow that you may have some of the very same polling errors that you had last time around. This is the thing I don't understand, which is that, and people who are polling nerds might recall this, the polls in 2012 were actually very good. Everybody remembers Nate Silver, the FiveThirtyEight website called almost all 50 states, most of the Senate races. His book became a national bestseller. I mean, me, many others were like, oh my God, it's finally been cracked. And I think really what has happened is that Trump genuinely did change everything about American politics. He changed the type of people who voted. He changed the type of people who came out,

basically made the models of the people who do come out to vote just completely change in the demographics and traditional ones that you could use. And from that point forward, they just haven't been able to figure out. In a way, it's like a reflection of our society. We've got a political realignment going on. We have a much more online population, people not answering phones as much. And at a certain point, the industry also just doesn't know what to do. And it does make it so that many of these have to be greeted by people like ourselves. We have the best data that we possibly can. But unfortunately, most people in the media, Crystal, are not giving the caveats outside of this one guy.

And even he's being criticized. I saw some people- He's getting a lot of criticism. People, the Democrats, predictably are like, well, no one's ever wrong for understating Democratic support. It's like, well, that hasn't happened in like eight years. Yeah.

So, you know, I don't know where you're coming from. Yeah, yeah. And I mean, there are occasional polls. Like for example, Colorado seems to be a state where the polls kind of consistently underestimate Democratic support. There are a few states that are like that. But overwhelmingly, the issue has been in the other direction, and especially in states where you have a large white working class vote. I think it's I mean, this is speculation because no one really knows exactly why this is going on. But I think it's not just changing who's voting, the types of people are voting, the coalitions of the various parties.

But I think with Trump, you have such an overt, like, anti-institution messaging and orientation that he's also making his voters more skeptical of responding to polls and, you know, talking to pollsters and those sorts of things. So I think that might be part of it as well. But like everybody else, I don't really know. Let's take a look at this next piece, which is a chart showing if the polling miss is as big as it was in 2020, what will the results actually look like? And let me just go through these. So in Colorado, basically, right now the poll says Dem is plus nine. If there's a 2020-like poll error, the Dem will win by nine. So Colorado is pretty much on the money last time around. In Pennsylvania, right now the polls have Fetterman up by eight. If you have a 2020-like poll error, you will end up with Fetterman by five. So he still wins, but by less. In Arizona,

you cut the Dem lead from eight, which is reflected in the polls, down to six. In Wisconsin, this is the big one, you cut the Dem lead from four to a Republican win by four. In Nevada, you have plus three for the Democrats right now. that one would be true top toss up less than one for the Dems. In Georgia right now, you've got plus two Dems. Georgia has been fairly accurate. And lo and behold, Georgia is also one of the states where the polling has continued to be very, very tight, basically in line with what your expectation would be for that state. North Carolina right now is showing Dem plus one. With that 2020-like poll error, you'd get plus two Republicans. Ohio, this is another big, big one.

Again, industrial Midwest, large white working class, voter base. Right now, you've got Tim Ryan, the Democrat, leading by less than one percentage point. With an error similar to 2020, you've got J.D. Vance easily winning here by seven points, which I think is more in line with what you would expect. Florida is the last one on the list here right now. They have Marco Rubio leading that, the Republican by five. If you have a 2020 like poll error, Marco Rubio will easily win that race by 11 points. So if you look at this in totality, first of all, you see the Senate, the race for the Senate to control the Senate is extremely, extremely close.

Republicans only have to net one single seat. So essentially, you're looking at probably control of the Senate coming down to very close races in Nevada and Georgia to determine control of the Senate. If you look at, and this is the commentary from Holly Otterbein here, she says, as it happens, the if polls were as wrong as they were in 2020 column from today's New York Times story seems more in line with where political insiders actually think these races are. So, you know, our general rule of thumb here has been, especially in states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, to knock a few points off of the Democratic, whatever their polls are saying, that's kind of a good rule of thumb if you look at this chart. Oh, completely. Look, I mean, the idea of runaway Democratic victories in these formerly quote blue wall states, I just think it's a fantasy, has been since 2016. The Fetterman

plus five as opposed to plus 811 or whatever people are saying, that reads much more in line with what Pennsylvania appears to be. I still think plus 5 for Fred O'Man might be overstating the point. Exactly. I mean, listen, Trump won Pennsylvania in 2016. It's just a very closely divided state.

He only lost Pennsylvania by one percentage point. It's like, in that environment, there's just no way a Democrat's going to win by 11 points. Even if they do win, it's going to be like Virginia where Glenn Youngkin, how much do you win by? Like 1.5%

in an absolute red wave victory. So that's what people have to consider. Same Wisconsin. Everybody's like, oh, Ron Johnson. And listen, we'll talk about Ron Johnson later in the show. Maybe he's trying everything he can do to lose, but he did that last time and he also won by basically coming out and defying the polls. You also found this, which I thought was really important. Let's put this up there, which is that those of us who were in 2018, the media cast it very much as a blue damn wave. But as Philip Bump points out here, 2018 was not the outlier that people think. Senate polls that year were also very off the mark. It's the national house polling, which wasn't.

Everybody focused on Pelosi and all of that. But I remember also at the time, people were considering, oh my gosh, Marsha Blackburn might lose in Tennessee. Yeah, that didn't happen. They're like, oh, we're going to see big red gains in some of these states. Is Amy McGrath going to win in Kentucky? None of these things happened. And everyone does seem to just memory hole. I mean, I will never forget ahead of the election, Wisconsin supposedly being Trump minus 17 or Biden plus 17 in Wisconsin, or even in 2020. I mean, remember Jamie Harrison? They were like, Jamie Harrison is within one point of South Carolina. He lost by 17 points. He literally lost by the same margin as the last person who ran against Lindsey Graham.

He just took $18 million more to do it. And now he's the DNC chair. Yeah. Somebody go in and riddle me that. Yeah, that's interesting, isn't it? Well, the important point about 2018 is, first of all, part of why the result, even though it was a good year for Democrats, you know, women really came out, the sort of suburban vote consolidated behind Democrats. They did, you know, they gained control of the House. Like, it was a good year for them. But part of why it fell short of

expectations is because you did have polling misses. So there's been this kind of conventional wisdom that has developed of like, oh, well, the problem with polling only happens when Trump's on the ballot. Happened in 2016 and happened in 2020. What this chart shows is that's not really true. You also had significant polling misses in 2018, even when Trump wasn't on the ballot. Now you might say, okay, but he was in the White House and the election was really a rough referendum on him. And it truly it was. But, you know, Trump is kind of still central to our politics right now. It's not like the guy is sidelined and not being talked about. He is very, very central to whatever is going to happen this midterm. So what I would say is if we think back to that

chart showing, OK, well, if you have as much of a polling this in this year as you had in 2020, what is the result going to be? Ultimately, if it came down that way, Democrats would still end up with control of the Senate. It would still be on balance a very good year for them and much, much better than what they were expecting going in. But it's not going to be as good as some of the most hopeful estimates and what the polling reflects right now. And also, by the way, this is a landscape with the, you know, assumed pollingness where Republicans easily gain control of the House, that that's not really in question. So, you know, we have been talking a lot about how much the mood has shifted, how much things have shifted towards Democrats post-Dobbs. That's all totally true. But just keep in mind, that doesn't mean they're

going to win control of the House, certainly. And it doesn't mean they're going to win control of the Senate. It's going to be very, very tight. And it is probably going to come down to very close races in Georgia and very close races in Nevada. So those things are all really important to keep in mind. Yeah, absolutely. Let's underscore that. It's tight. It's much tighter than people will have you believe. I think Dobbs made it so that it has the chance of a couple of Democratic victories and upsets, but the chance is all that exists, not like the shoe in that people are casting. And let me just play devil's advocate here and give the other side of the case, which is that,

okay, but we've had special election results. And not only have they gone for Democrats, those polls going into those special elections have actually understated Democratic support. So that's what someone who would argue in favor of, no, it's actually going to be a blue wave. No, actually, Ron Johnson is on the ropes. No, actually, Tim Ryan could pick up the seat in Ohio. That's what they would point to. Now, the, again, reason to sort of temper expectations, even with those results, which I do think are important and maybe the most important piece of data that we have that does indicate something is different happening here in terms of Democrats.

But what we saw in those elections is, first of all, in a special election, you're going to have a smaller voter turnout. You still had Republicans doing very well in rural areas and actually increasing their vote total even over Donald Trump doing very well in rural areas and actually increasing their vote total even over Donald Trump in certain instances in rural areas. But there was a huge flood in these sort of like liberal, especially college towns. That's not going to be representative of everywhere across the country. So that's a reason to take some of those results for with a little bit of a grain of salt. I think that's exactly what I was going to say. I was like, yeah, well, special elections are interesting, but they're more suburban,

more educated. That's not the whole electorate that doesn't work out in a white working class state, smaller turnout, higher national mood. You know, the midterms are just going to be more of a national referendum. And so whatever the way the winds are blowing, that's probably going to be more indicative. Breaking news here. It's breaking a little bit after we finished filming the show, but it's still important enough that we want to go ahead and include it. So that's why it's a little bit disjointed today. So the US inflation numbers have just come out for August. Here's what they are. Inflation is 8.3% in August year over year, very high down slightly from 8.5% year over year in July and 9.1% in June. However, and this is the most important one,

inflation actually rose by 0.1% in August when many expected it to drop. Shelter, food, and medical care are the ones which are up, which is offsetting the 10% decline in gas prices. Food in particular is the one which is really concerning, Crystal. Heather Long, The Washington Post, noting, quote, The food index has increased by 11.4% over the last year and the largest 12-month increase since the period ending in May of 1979. So even though gas prices are down by almost 10%, 11% over the last, I think, 100 days that they've dropped every single day, has not been enough to offset shelter and food costs. So shelter in particular coming in extraordinarily hot as to how high renters are paying. It's really a tragedy.

And it just shows you that you can't just get out of this by focusing on gas alone. Yeah, that's right. So gas is down 10.6% just in a single month. So the fact that you have these other factors which have pushed inflation to continue to rise really shows you how severe the price hikes were in those key categories that you're talking about here. So if you look year over year, some of the price hikes we're talking about here, airline fares up 33%, electricity up 15.8%, food at home up 13.5%. New vehicles up 10%. Food away from home up 8%. And on and on and on. Shelter year over year up 6.2%.

So obviously these are key categories that hit the household budget directly and people really feel immediately. The reason why this is such a big deal and why we wanted to do a breaking news segment on it is because the expectation had actually been that month to month, the inflation rate would tick down a bit. So maybe like 0.3% was roughly what the expectation was, that it would decline. Instead, you had a 0.1% increase. Now the markets are reacting very strongly. The last I looked at Jones was down like 500 points, all because now the expectation is set that for sure the Fed is going to continue with those aggressive rate hikes. We already covered yesterday how Lael

Brannard, who is the second policymaker in command over at the Fed, was sounding notes of we're going to continue this aggressive policy, this in spite of the fact that their own research in certain instances shows that there is a risk that they move too fast and too aggressively and spark a severe recession. Of course, we also now know that Jerome Powell, who is the president of the Fed, has said that he wants there to be some pain, that he thinks that that is necessary. And of course, you have people like Larry Summers out there saying, oh, we have to have unemployment at 10% in order to get inflation under control. So this is only going to continue to make the case to the Fed to hike interest rates. Even as you see, thus far, they've taken some aggressive action and it hasn't worked. Why? Well, one reason could be because as we've documented many times, as Elizabeth Warren, to her credit, has been pointing out, the Fed's tools do not get at the core reasons that we are having this inflationary spiral. that inflation might be easing and certainly gas prices have come down a lot. That has made consumers feel a little bit better. Consumer sentiment ticking up with these new numbers.

This is going to almost set in stone that the Fed will at least do another 0.75 rate hike next time. At the very least, that's happening. One of the important points pointed out by Derek Thompson is part of the reason why inflation is so high in shelter is that, yeah, the current rent rates might be down, but everybody else is still locked in at the past one. So housing policy and rent inflation and shelter is still going to very much be high for six to eight months. Fed policy has no impact on the current locked in rates at all or many of the other things that people have had to pay. So look, we'll see how it works out. But undoubtedly,

it means the Fed will hike rates. What's the Dow at right now? Did the markets drop? Oh, yeah. I'm assuming that that's going to... Yeah. So we're down 625 points when we're filming this segment. Not great. So we'll see how it all works out. Good morning, everybody. Happy Thursday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed we do. Big news breaking just this morning. It looks like there is a tentative deal to at least temporarily prevent a rail strike or full rail lockout. So we've got some details there and we'll talk to you about everything that is going on there as well. Also, Senator Lindsey Graham throwing the Republican caucus into some disarray, some further disarray by going forward with a 15 week abortion ban at the federal level that conflicts with some of their messaging. So we've got all the political dynamics and the minor meltdown going on over there for you as well.

Also, we have some really actually very disturbing news regarding inflation, which is that the Fed may use these latest inflation numbers to justify a full percentage point hike. But the reason I'm chuckling is also because we have on the same day that, you know, the bad inflation numbers come out and the market tanks and whatever binds out there like things are great. It is one of the most hilarious split screens you'll ever see. Yeah, it didn't didn't work out well for him there. We also have some new midterm numbers, both in the Pennsylvania race, also nationally. And we have to share with you this video that was shared by the L.A. Unified School District, which is, I think, the largest school district in the country. One of the largest. I'm pretty sure.

Certainly one of the largest. Anyway, they used this lady who was like a representative of the company that makes Oreos and all kinds of other junk. To use like social justice language to try to claim that, oh, all food is equal and eating a cookie is just as good as eating broccoli. It's so evil. Honestly, there's no other word for it. It is straight up evil. Got those details for you. Sagar is looking into the case of Columbia University, fudging their statistics so that they can get a better ranking. I am looking into maybe the craziest story I have ever dug into, which is this massive welfare fraud scandal that involves Brett Favre getting millions of dollars from the state of Mississippi. Again, from the welfare fund intended for poor

people. Brett Favre is getting millions of dollars to build a volleyball stadium for his daughter. It's nuts. We also have Ryan Grimm and Emily Jashinsky here. CounterPoints launches tomorrow. They're going to give us a little bit of preview. Very excited about that. So as I said before, it looks like we at least have a tentative deal that may, for the short term, maybe not permanently, we'll see, avert a rail strike or a rail lockout. So we've been covering this for a while. Let's give you a little bit of the backstory, and then I'll tell you what we know about the deal. Go ahead and put this first part up on the screen. So negotiations have been ongoing for close to three years at this point. Railroad workers have been really screwed during the pandemic and post-pandemic because

these railroad companies are making record-breaking profits, but they laid off a significant chunk of their workforce, and they're forcing their current workers to really shoulder the burden. What that has meant is that they've had these incredibly onerous schedules, and they don't have things like the ability to just take a day to go to the doctor when they have routine medical appointments. They don't have sick time off. And unlike a lot of regular jobs, they don't get weekends. So when they're saying we don't get time off, they mean like literally no days off. Incredibly, incredibly onerous schedule. So the railroad labor relations is governed by specific law. So they couldn't just

strike. There's a whole process they have to go through. One key part of that process happened a couple months ago. President Biden intervened with this presidential board. They put together a set of recommendations that was supposed to be a kind of metal ground, but it completely punted on that key issue of time off. So it had some decent wage provisions in it, but on those key sort of quality of life issues that workers were really stressed down over, it had nothing to say. So that deal basically sided with the bosses, the workers themselves overwhelmingly opposed to it. In fact, there's a number of different unions that represent these workers throughout the industry. So some of the union bosses had said, you know, we're okay with the presidential board recommendations. When the members went to vote, you know, we're OK with the presidential board recommendations.

When the members went to vote, they said, no, no, no, no, we're not. So you had the bulk of workers still saying we are not satisfied with this deal. And it was really coming down to the wire. The deadline was this Friday. up this week where they either had to strike a deal or then the rail workers would be able to either go on a strike or the carriers could lock them out of their jobs. And there were some signs the carriers were moving towards that. They already started to slow down certain things, long distance routes, et cetera. The last piece of this, before I get into some of the details of what the purported deal is or tentative deal here, is that there is a provision that also allows Congress to intervene to prevent a work stoppage by basically cramming down a contract on both the workers and

on the railroad companies. Now, the expectation was that if Congress intervenes, they would probably just pick up that recommendations from the presidential board, which again, basically sided with the bosses and did nothing regarding the workers' key demands and needs. Republicans made a big push yesterday to try to get that proposal through and force this bad deal upon workers who would then be bound by it legally. President Biden has been personally involved and his labor secretary, Marty Walsh, has been really leading conversations and talks between union leaders and between the railroad companies to try to strike some sort of a deal. And in fact, this morning, reporting is that there has been a breakthrough. Now, as I said, we know very little about what this tentative deal is. And there's a lot of reasons to be

cautious about this and to avoid premature celebration, because ultimately, even though this is a deal between the bosses and the union leadership, the rank and file workers are going to have a say. Yes. And they were over like 80 percent overwhelmingly opposed to the previous recommendations. So this would have to be significantly better than what President Biden's board came up with before for them to agree to that. But at the very least, there's a 60-day what they call cooling off period in which they sort of go through the deal, sell it to their members, and the members get to decide whether they're going to ratify this agreement or not. If they don't, then we're kind of back to the drawing board and facing down

a similar deadline. Let me tell you what Jeff Stein, who has some reporting from behind the scenes about some of the details here, he says, people familiar tell me the deal does give rail workers ability to take days off for medical care without being subject to punishment. That was a key demand of the unions. He also says that President Biden was personally animated by the need to get this done.

Further reporting says workers will receive voluntary assigned days off and single additional paid day off. They previously did not receive sick days. Let that sink in. And the agreement provides members with the ability to take unpaid days to go to their routine medical appointments for medical care without being subject to attendance policy. So that's what we know at this point. Yeah. I mean, a lot of the coverage of this pissed me off. Oh, it was me off because it seemed as if they were being unreasonable. And I think a lot of people are blackpilled because of the way the teachers unions acted during COVID. Listen, these put these things completely separate as like in crazy teachers unions, uh, being COVID crazy is not the

same as guys who were actually getting fired and disciplined for getting COVID. They had COVID and they were like, I literally either got fired from my job or faced discipline. Same with getting the flu in other cases. I mean, these are not unreasonable expectations. Like if you don't get a single day off, like how is your body supposed to recover? And then whenever you get pretty sick, especially, you know, if you're having COVID and you need to be out for a couple of days, you actually face a penalty for reporting that when it's not like you want to get your other coworkers sick, like regardless of whether you're going to die or not. It's just very unpleasant to be sick. The other point that I was hearing was, by the way, don't we all remember that crazy rail crash

that happened a couple of years ago in which the rail driver was accelerating too often and apparently was tired on the job and it killed a couple people. Do you want somebody who is underslept, no day off, and sick behind the wheel of a passenger or even freight? I mean, I just looked it up. 28% of freight in this country moves by rail. And a tremendous amount of that is not just cargo like retail goods. A lot of it is like iron ore, steel, gas.

I mean, it's a key thing to keep our economy and all that. We're about to get into some of that. But yeah, the demands of these guys was really being overlooked, I think, in a lot of the media coverage. And also the Republicans handled themselves disgracefully in this way because they were acting as if they were being unreasonable. Again, citing teachers unions. I'm like, it's not every, obviously not every union is the same, but look at the, my always thing is look at the specifics.

I'm like, I think they were acting crazy for the teachers' unions in this case. I'm like, I look at this, guys are getting sick behind multi-ton freight. I'm like, that sounds crazy. This is not good for anybody. This is good for no one. I mean, the thing that I just kept coming back to

is because before they struck this tentative deal, the freight carriers were engaging in basically economic warfare, throwing their weight around, trying to. Their position was they wanted Congress to intervene because they knew if Congress would intervene, and this is what Republicans were pushing yesterday, that they would end up with the deal from the presidential board. Those recommendations, which completely screwed workers, again, did not address their key concerns at all. And we covered it at the time. And by the way, I think it's really important to take a look around at which outlets were actually covering this. We're covering it accurately. We're covering it before, you know, the last two seconds. And that weren't just talking to like whatever is called the Rail Carriers Association or whatever that represents the bosses, but actually had the voices of the workers. I mean, we had Maximilian Alvarez on here this week. He was talking to some of the workers.

He's obviously with the Real News. You have the labor outlets, labor notes in these times. Jacobin had been on top of this story. The mainstream press, they were asleep at the wheel. I mean, they didn't even notice that this was going on until literally two days ago. And then the coverage was so slanted. They didn't mention in a lot of these pieces, they didn't mention at all what the workers' demands were. They didn't have the workers' voices in their pieces at all. And so the impression you come away with could very easily be like, oh my God, they're just willing to risk the economy so carelessly when, in fact, they've been engaged in negotiations for years and their demands are so incredibly

basic and reasonable. And then you look at these companies that are making record-breaking profits. BNSF owned by Warren Buffett. And you're willing to shut down the entire economy because you don't want to give your workers a freaking paid, like unpaid sick day. That's not, they're not even asking for paid sick, unpaid sick days that they could go and go to doctor's appointments. Like you're willing to shut down the economy just to keep your workers nose to the grindstone and make sure they are completely just crushed under this onerous work burden. Again, as you are making record-breaking profits, completely grotesque behavior. There is a tweet thread that laid out some of this context that I think is important

to remember even as we have this tentative deal. Go ahead and put this tweet thread up on the screen. This is Jeff Shirky I'm going to go with. As the possible rail strike lockout gains more national attention, some important context. Number one, bargaining started in January 2020. Workers have been waiting nearly three years for a new contract. Class 1 railroads have slashed their workforce by 29% in the past six years while making record profits. So again, they cut their workforce and they're forcing the workers to shoulder all the burden. Presidential emergency board that we've been referring to was supposed to propose a fair settlement to avert a strike. It ignored key

bargaining issues. You have the unions that reach tentative agreements based on those recommendations. Two, once they put it to the membership, actually rejected those agreements. That's what I mentioned before. And the last thing he says here is the Railway Labor Act is designed to prevent strikes. So the fact that it has gotten this far shows you how truly, truly pissed off the workers are. The next piece, this is now a little bit dated now that we have a tentative agreement, but go ahead and put this Politico piece up. They talk about in this piece how the fact that a couple of the unions that look like they had resolved their disputes, then the members were like, no, we reject this. That put more pressure ultimately here on the White House. Let's go ahead to the next piece.

Again, this is what I was referring to with regards to the Republican senators. They sought to advance legislation at 4 p.m. yesterday to avert looming rail strike by forcing an admin of presidential board recommendations if the unions and carriers can't meet Friday deadline. That was blocked by Democrats led by Bernie Sanders. Jonah Furman has been essential. Guys, make sure you follow Jonah for labor reporting. He says he feels like people are not appreciating. Warren Buffett and his friends are shutting down the supply chain to force Congress to mandate 125,000 railroad workers

to go to work with no weekends or sick leave. They're not just thinking about doing it. They've already started doing it. This is the lockout that I was referring to. Norfolk Southern has already announced planned embargoes on intermodal and automotive cargo, even though it's supposed to be a cooling off period. And the potential economic impacts were extraordinarily real. Jeff Stein saying emerging impacts, Amtrak cancels, long distance trips, ammonia, fertilizer, ag products pulled from trains, price of ethanol, other product sores. Grain shipments could stop tomorrow if rail shuts down our entire agricultural system.

Shuts down. White House has been in emergency meetings all week trying to, this is the next piece, trying to figure out any sort of workaround in case there was a lockout or a strike. Working with other modes of transportation, including shippers, truckers, and air freight to see how they can step in and keep goods moving if rail workers go on strike at the end of this week. But, you know, this is a real education, I think, for some folks about exactly what the concerns were, exactly how unreasonable the companies have ultimately been. All right, everybody, it is my pleasure to introduce you. Well, you already know who they are. They already know.

But to have joining us now, our great friends and new colleagues, Ryan Grim and Emily Jaschinski, the co-hosts of CounterPoints, launching tomorrow. Welcome, guys. It's fun to be here. Yeah, this is your set now, too. So we have a few modifications for you, but-

That's right. Yeah, more or less right here. Well, that's true. And people will see the modifications tomorrow. So all the more reason to tune in. Big reveal. That's a big reveal. On point already. Modification reveal.

I didn't even have to plug that one. Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. We've been hurriedly making new graphics. I love this particular graphic. This is going to be the widescreen. This is what we're going to have in general. Emily, Ryan, I sent you guys

your new monologue templates. I think they look amazing. We've got a nice little bottom graphic. Everything's debuting tomorrow. Ryan's really got the smolder going on here. He does.

I think that might be the best photo I've ever seen. It's a phenomenal photograph, for real. It's Annie Leibovitz. Annie Leibovitz or Ryan. So tell us how you guys feel. We did a video like this

whenever we launched here on the KKF set I'll never forget it actually got a lot of views so tell us how you guys feel to be here what you're most excited about how exactly you want

to change things up keep things the same like what are you thinking well Ryan likes to talk about his feelings so I think this is how do you feel Ryan

he's got kids he's more touch so for better and for worse in some ways for better, some ways for worse, back at Rising, the production staff,

and very grateful for it, did a ton of prep work for us. So sometimes we could just roll in and just do the show. Like write a radar, but otherwise just kind of, all right, what do we got next? What do we got next?

What do we got next? And what I'm looking forward to is crafting the show ourselves so that we're going to be picking. And also I'm looking forward to is crafting the show ourselves so that we're going to be picking. And also, you know, there's so much content that Rising puts out that sometimes you're kind of reaching. Yes. That was actually one of our big, you know, big reasons we wanted to make a similar move was that same thing, because you just, you know, the model over there is just as much content as you possibly can. And I mean, we helped to create that model, frankly,

because in the early days, we're like, we just got to get this thing going. You got to feed the algorithm. But at a certain point, yeah, you're doing a segment and you're like, I don't care about this topic. I don't think it's important for people to know about this topic. Like I'm just, you know, it's not a good feeling to put things out in the world that you don't actually think are important. So that makes a lot of sense to me. Emily, what did you guys think about in terms of the sort of like overall ethos of the show, your approach to it, the structure of it? What was sort of the thought that went into it? Well, and that's another thing I like about this model is that it's not just we get to sort of put our fingerprints on the what we're covering, but also how we cover it.

So I like that we're going to be able to take a topic. For instance, I think we're going to talk about Ken Starr tomorrow in the news. He passed away this week. And we don't have to do an eight-minute segment. We can actually really say, what does this tell us about our politics? What does the arc of this man tell us about our politics?

And spend a little bit more time going into different things and in ways that we want to go into them, even if they aren't perfect sort of news cycle fits, we can spend the time to give more context. Something I love about this format is a huge portion of listenership is audio, and they're just going to listen to the entire thing. They don't even necessarily care or know what the headline is or whatever. And so they may just stumble into that Ken Starr segment and be like, wow, that's really interesting. I never learned about Ken Starr before, which he is a fascinating

figure in his own right. I'm kind of jealous that you guys get to cover that. So what are some other things that you guys, like in terms of programming? So it's going to be every Friday. Obviously, I'm assuming you'll just hit if there's some major, major news. But what you guys have been doing over at Rising has been kind of the same thing. Like taking a step back,

looking at bigger stories, like give some people a preview. You don't have to give everything, your whole rundown away, but what are you guys thinking? I think the format

also allows you to go a little bit longer on the topics that really, really need it. Or if you're on a roll. Right. Sometimes people

would be like, if I'm winning and they're trying to shut it down. You know, our Ukraine invasion day, that was a 37 minute segment. And that's still one of the highest rated segments

that the show has ever done. So just to show you, like if it's big news, people will watch the hell out of it. And sometimes people would say like, what do you mean you have to run? Like it's not cable. What are you talking about?

Actually you do, you have to wrap. They don't understand the scheduling. Right, exactly. Guests and all that. Exactly. So we have it set up. And just the turn and burn of, we know we've got 10 more segments we've got to do today.

So we've got to move on from this one because otherwise we're going to literally be here all day and the show will never get out. So I think that flexibility is really important. I'm really excited to see you guys sort of put your spin on what the show looks like, what it feels like, what the vibe is. And, you know, the list of topics that you floated, looking at the potential stock band and things like that are actually things that we didn't get around to covering this week too. I know. Yeah. Sometimes we now have the opposite problem of like there's more news in the week than we're able to get into the three days that we do the show.

So it'll be great to have you guys in there on Friday. You know, there's a lot of news that's breaking Thursdays and Fridays now in the news cycle. So it'll be really useful. Yeah, and I was joking about like winning an argument, but what I like about the show is that it's actually not an argument show.

Like one of the reasons we called it kind of counterpoints is like, here's a point. Yes. Here's a counterpoint. All right. And now, now we can, now we can move on to the next thing. We're not trying to actually win. And a lot of the times when I'm asking Emily a question, sometimes it's because I want to further the conversation. I know she has a good point to make and I'm trying to like tee that up. About half the time, I genuinely don't know the answer. And I'm like, like curious like it's a real question yeah like an authentic actual question yeah not like a debate bro people get vibe of

like i'm gonna own you not trying to move you into a corner and then oh you've said this thing now now by your logic logic chokehold yeah it's like actually we have two people here who are both thoughtful and have different opinions and like, let's work through that in real time. I mean, that's,

I think, why we felt really comfortable bringing you guys onto the channel, which is something that we are kind of like a little nervous about, reluctant about.

Initially, well, not even about you, just the idea. No, not about you guys in general, but the idea of it. I mean,

number one, you guys have been an important part of helping to create Rising and make it what it was, helping to create Breaking Points. You guys were original friends of the show on the collection panels and all that stuff over at Rising. So we obviously have a great level of comfort with you. But we also felt like you really get that kind of core ethos of like, you know, I think at our best, my ideal goal for the show is to be able to show that we can disagree and it's okay. And it doesn't have to like break apart the union.

And I do feel like, yeah, if I can't have like a real hard disagreement with Sagar and be able to like work through that, then what hope is there for the country at large? So that's kind of, you know, always been my best hope for this show and what I think you guys have really demonstrated a great ability to do in good faith as well over at Rising. And so we're excited to have you here. We're excited too. And people are smart. Like if you, like if you show people the same contrast that you want to get to, as Ryan's talking about, like I actually want to know what's different here and what's the same. Yeah.

That's what I feel like all of us need. Like me as a viewer, it's the thing that I love about breaking points. Like viewers don't need to be handheld. Like CNN tries to handhold people from point A to point B so you know exactly what you think. And not let in any other differing view. Exactly. They're gatekeepers. But like we just have a conversation and try to get to

what the actual contrast is and then we can all think about what the road forward looks like. It really comes through. People, it's the thing that people love the most about the show

and every time I meet them, you know, sometimes some of the things people say are like really heavy where they're like, you really improved my relationship with my dad, Crystal.

I was like, Jesus, dude. I'm like, don't put that on me. Yeah, it's like, we found a way to be able to talk about these things where we don't just hate each other. He's like, I'm more like Crystal. He's like, but you made me understand what my dad means, whatever he said.

I was like, wow, that's strong. That's a heavy responsibility. And people are starting to get it. And actually, the corporation that bought the Hill, Hill TV, called Nextar, they actually have the right diagnosis. They think that cable news is completely broken and people don't trust it anymore. Their solution is wrong. Like the solution, they're coming forward. It's like, we're going to be the ones who are down the middle and fair. That doesn't work. That doesn't scan to either side. So their diagnosis is right. But I think the answer is give people options. Give people different viewpoints

and then let them decide for themselves. I talk to a ton of people who watch CNN, Fox, and MSNBC because they don't trust any of them, but they think if they get enough of the different viewpoints, then they can decide for themselves. And here we're just kind of doing that all in one place. It's good for people to not be in ideological bubbles. It's good for people right yeah it's good for people to not to mostly be in ideological bubbles like it's good it's like sometimes i wish saga would just agree with me on everything but but we'll get them there i know ultimately there's no fun in that like there is no fun in that and i mean i get a lot out of our exchange i get out a lot a lot out of preparing for our exchanges because i know i'm not going to just have somebody there who's going to amen me on everything and is actually going to challenge me. So I have to

bring like the best argument that I possibly can. And it's caused me to like rethink some of the ways that I approach my, you know, my views, my values in the way that I want to, you know, live in this world and approach politics. So I think it's a beneficial thing. Obviously, we believe in it. We have seen you guys, you know, living a lot of the same values and are just excited to see what you are putting together and honored that you have decided to join. Thank you for choosing us. We're honored by it. I think we mean it when we say that it's an honor for us because what you guys have built here, I think is so important. I've covered it at the federalist, like how important this is. So it's truly an

honor and we're very excited. It's not us. Truly is all about them. As we have said, we've got a 10% discount for the annual. You get 90%. 10% is off. Let's throw the graphic up there one more time. Counterpoints for the

annual membership. It helps fund this, other expansions, status coup, the reporting, to be able to send reporters to wherever anything is happening. By the way, you guys will benefit

from that. You'll have live footage. If you ever want to dispatch Jordan or anywhere, or one of his cameramen, we can help and we

can send a reporter out onto the ground and have exclusive footage like we did at Jackson. This stuff costs a lot of money, guys. The studio,

the technical, the graphics, the reporting, all the other contributors. Max had that awesome railway segment. These things are things that you alone are funding. Can never rely on the YouTube and Spotify gods to just show up for us one day. So thank you all so much. We've got that link in the description and they will see you all tomorrow. Yes, tomorrow. And it will be distributed. So their show will come out

just like ours does. There's no extra price for whatever. You're a premium member. You're going to get it just like you get breaking points. So, you know,

it'll be in your inbox. I think at noon, right? Noon is the starting point. So for premiums, it will come out at noon for everybody else 1 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. So California people,

don't worry. You'll still watch it in the morning. I want to hear about it. Indeed. So good luck to our guys. We're very excited. Excellent. All right Time. Yeah, the free version. So California people, don't worry, you'll still watch it in the morning. Yes. I want to hear about it. Indeed. So good luck to our guys. We're very excited. Excellent. All right.

And then Crystal and I are going to meet Atlanta. Yes. So that'll be fun. And if we feel like it, maybe we'll put some clips out of it. Stay tuned.

We'll see how it goes. We'll see you guys later. Our iHeartRadio Music Festival presented by Capital One is coming back to Las Vegas. Vegas! September 19th and 20th. On your feet!

Streaming live only on Hulu. Ladies and gentlemen. Bryan Adams. Ed Sheeran. Fade. Chlorilla. Jelly Roll. John Fogerty.

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Tickets are on sale now at AXS.com. Get your tickets today. AXS.com. We asked parents who adopted teens to share their journey. We just kind of knew from the beginning that we were family. They showcased a sense of love that I never had before. I mean, he's not only my parent, like he's like my best friend. At the end of the day, it's all been worth it. I wouldn't change a thing about our lives. Learn about adopting a teen from foster care. Visit adoptuskids.org

to learn more. Brought to you by AdoptUSKids, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and the Ad Council. I've seen a lot of stuff over 30 years, you know, some very despicable crime and things that are kind of tough to wrap your head around. And this ranks right up there in the pantheon of Rhode Island fraudsters. I've always been told I'm a really good listener, right? And I maximized that while I was lying. Listen to Deep Cover, The Truth About Sarah on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast.