The Dispatch Podcast - Can Redistricting Lead to a GOP Midterm Victory?

Episode Date: May 15, 2026

Mike Warren is joined by Jonah Goldberg, David Drucker, and Charles Hilu to discuss the nationwide redistricting battles happening in state legislatures and Donald Trump’s low approval for handling inflation. The Agenda: —Impact of Louisiana v. Callais SCOTUS decision —Louisiana, Tennessee, and Alabama redistricting —South Carolina Republican defies Trump —Race and representation —Abysmal inflation approval —Trump: “I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation” —Can Republicans win both chambers? —NWYT: Peak bagel? Dispatch Recommendations: —SCOTUS Clears Way for Alabama to Use Congressional Map —Could Hantavirus Go Global? —The Empire of Baloney —Why Surging Federal Debt Matters Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode is brought to you by Nespresso. Hear that? That's your next obsession. Every coffee, a new world. Every sip, a new taste. This is the new Nespresso. One touch, endless possibilities. Iced, flavored, long, short. Because some days call for that espresso kick.

And sometimes, a smooth, silky latte just wins. It's exceptional but effortless. Like actually effortless. Simply press, brew and explore. Nispresso, what else? Keep exploring at nespresso.com. Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm Mike Warren. On today's roundtable, we'll discuss the recent Supreme Court decision on the Voting Rights Act and the state redistricting battles happening across the country. We'll also discuss the state of the economy, one year into Trump's second term and two and a half months into the Iran war, and what it all means for Trump's popularity and the long-projected Democratic victory in the upcoming midterms. And finally, not worth your time.

Have we reached Peak Bagel? I'm joined today by my dispatch colleagues, Jonah Goldberg, David Drucker, and Charles Hilloo. Let's dive in. All right, well, let's talk about this strange convergence of all kinds of events and things that have been happening really over the last year or so. It's started with Texas and President Donald Trump encouraging the Republican legislature there to redistrict mid-decade and give Republicans an end. in the House of Representatives by giving Republicans five more seats from Texas. There was a response, of course, from California. Gavin Newsom did the same thing in California, getting behind this referendum, which passed

in 2025 on Election Day. And then it was off to the races with all these other states. You had Democratic-led states trying to redistrict mid-decade to add more Democratic seats. Republican states doing the same thing, a tip for tat, back and forth. Indiana, their Republicans sort of stood on principle in the state Senate and said no. And of course, recently last week, we saw a number of those state senators lose their primaries, thanks to some backing from Trump and the Republican establishment who was not happy with that. You had Virginia, the Democratic legislature there pushing through a referendum that passed to be able to allow

Virginia to redraw those districts and have 10 Democratic-leaning districts to just one Republican district in that state. Then, of course, we saw the state Supreme Court overturned that decision from Virginia. So there's this whole mess of stuff going on where states are redistricting or getting slapped down or somehow roadblocks being put up for all of that. How is it going to shake out? That seems to be a question that we can discuss here today. But then you throw in these other developments, particularly from the Supreme Court,

this recent ruling, this Calais decision from the Supreme Court, essentially holding that, and this is from our friends at SCOTUS blog, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, did not require the state of Louisiana to create an additional majority-minority district. No compelling interest justified the state's use of race in creating that map, and that map is an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. So this was involving a map in Louisiana that had been sort of drawn a really kind of ugly gerrymander to get in one majority minority district, black district

that is likely to go Democratic. The Supreme Court ruling essentially that map, you know, Louisiana was not required to create an additional district like that. And the floodgate seemed to be open in a bunch of these southern states that were compelled by the Voting Rights Act to create these majority minority districts. So now you've seen a number of states with Republican legislators trying to also redistrict create new maps that are drawing out Democratic districts drawing in new Republican districts. All this is all happening. Well, I don't know. We're in the middle of a midterm election. There are primaries going on. There's a question about what Louisiana was going to do with a primary election that's happening this Saturday, just, you know, a day

after this podcast goes live. So the state of Louisiana has moved the house. primary, the Senate primary, which is not affected by this redistricting, is going on still on Saturday. Anyway, it's a whole big mess. Charles, explain to us sort of what's happening right now in these states, Tennessee, South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Georgia, Florida. There's all these different southern states and they're kind of taking different tax. What's actually happening? What are they doing to change their maps or not change their maps at this critical moment?

Sure thing, Mike. several southern states, as you brought up in response to the Calais decision, they moved to eliminate some of their majority, minority districts. You know, Louisiana, of course, because their map was struck down by the court. They were put in kind of, darned if you do, darned if you don't situation where if they had used, gone ahead and used the maps and that the court struck down, and they said it was too late to change the maps, then they would have gotten criticism that they were using unconstitutional maps, and the election would have seen by many as illegitimate. but instead what they did do is, as you said, they delayed their House primaries, and now they're getting criticism about causing voter confusion and all this stuff.

The latest I just saw is it looks like the Senate is going to vote on a map, which will eliminate one of the two majority black districts. It looks like it's Cleo Fields' district that is on the chopping block. In Louisiana. In Louisiana, yes. So in Louisiana, he's a freshman, congressman. It looks like his district is on the chopping block. and that will add in total one more Republican district. Tennessee, in response to Calais, also did something similar where they had a majority-minority

district, represented by Steve Cohen, and they carved up his district. That's been signed by the governor. Again, one more Republican seats. And then Alabama, of course, they were kind of the most questionable as to whether they would actually be able to pull this off because they had this court injunction or this court stay, this court order that said that they weren't allowed to change their matter. before the end of the decade with the new census after 2030. They appealed to the Supreme Court, and the court actually granted them relief from that

court order, and now they, it looks like they're set to, again, eliminate one of their two majority-minority districts, and that, again, is going to give Republicans one more House seat. But the most interesting one is South Carolina, where this week the state Senate, they didn't have a supermajority to call to allow them to stay in session for a little longer this month and consider redistricting. And I think the speech that the Senate Majority Leader gave, a guy named Shane Massey in South Carolina, I think his speech is sort of worth unpacking because it's a very comprehensive case against redistricting both on the practical and pragmatic level, but also on the principal level. So he starts off with the reason why it might not be very

practical to do redistricting because he sort of makes the argument that you can't really squeeze any more Republican seats out of South Carolina. It has a 6-1 congressional delegation right now, and he said if you try and get too cute, you could actually make it 5-2. And the reason for that is that if you carve up a Democratic stronghold, a Democratic district, you're going to need to put those Democratic voters somewhere, and though you're going to have to put them into Republican districts. So that could dilute the districts of the incumbent Republican. and they're going to have to work a little harder. Yeah, I want to return to Massey's speech in a little bit,

but let's stick on this point, David Drucker, because this is the kind of gamble, I suppose, that these Republican legislatures that are deciding, unlike South Carolina, are deciding at this moment to sort of redraw these districts. Are they Democratic districts that Republicans are gerrymandering out of existence? Or are they black majority districts? And are Republicans sort of denying black representation in Congress?

It gets complicated, because that Tennessee district around Memphis that Charles mentioned, which is a majority black district, has been represented for a very long time by a white Democrat. And so there are questions about that. But to Charles's point, and to this leader in South Carolina's point, Shane Massey, if you draw out to maximize sort of Republican representation,

you end up not only diluting out of existence majority-minority districts in the South, but you dilute Republican districts as well to the point where you're not talking about R plus 15, you know, advantages. It might be R plus 10 or R plus 8 or R plus 5. And that isn't necessarily a guarantee that district is going to remain Republican from here on out. Is this a gamble some of these legislatures are making or is this just, you know, smart and ruthless politics? Well, that's a little bit of both, Mike. I mean, first of all, the Republicans, what do they have currently, like a two, two seat majority on any given

day in the House of Representatives in the in the U.S. Congress in the House of Representatives on Capitol Hills right so when you're thinking like a politician which means you don't think you know past next Tuesday all you're thinking is how can I maintain this majority and the president by instigating the redistricting in Texas and then the good fortune of the CalA decision from the Republican perspective means you can do everything you can to try and build a bigger majority and actually without having an election and Henry Olson the very student Washington Post columnist who is as good at this stuff as anybody that I know has now projected that when this is all said and done, redistricting in Florida, the big snafu in Virginia for the

Democrats, et cetera, the Republicans could have what is in effect a 12 to 14 seat majority if they get everything that's on the table for them. And that's a much bigger, you know, lift for Democrats than just trying to win four or five seats. And so who can blame them? But what we have learned over time is that number one, you can dilute districts, but number two, you create these districts today, and it all seems like everything is safe. In fact, just look at the normal course of reapportionment, if we take all this mid-decade shenanigans out of things. So every 10 years, we have re-apportionment, we have new districts, most of them are gerrymandered, and by the end of the decade, from that gerrymandering, usually you've begun to see political shifts. Some of these seats flip and wave elections, the political

make up because the population changes. And so these things are never set in stone on a permanent basis except certain states that just don't seem to move. Right. California on the one hand, you know, Texas on the other hand, more or less. And so, you know, Republicans could be gaining seats today, but costing themselves seats in 2028 or 2032 and so on and look back and this will be the sort of, you know, the root of the poisonous tree, so to speak. What I'd like to say, You know, we've had gerrymandering as long as the Republic. I mean, actually, literally. That's where the name comes from.

Right. And most people didn't complain about it. At least Democrats didn't until they weren't the only game in town. I personally miss the old days of the incumbent racket gerrymander. When Democrats and Republicans would get together in a room and say, well, I don't want to lose my seat. And, you know, the Republican, and the Democrats, well, I don't want to lose my seat. And whether you had a majority Republican state or majority Democratic state, what that did politically was create a lot of stability. So sure, the incumbents were drawing their own districts. They were drawing their own maps. They were keeping themselves in power. But you didn't have the sort of thing that, you know, we have seen lately, and particularly this year, because everybody was in cahoots to look out for each other. And therefore, lots of political stability. Sometimes one party gain, sometimes the other. party gained. But in general, you didn't have this sort of political volatility. And, you know,

you could argue that you got a lot better result out of Congress. And, you know, we'll just have to see where this leads. But, you know, as Olson pointed out in his Washington Post column, the Democrats, if they end up not winning the House of Representatives simply because they were drawn out of the ability to compete for seats, there are going to be a lot of hurt feelings there. and both parties always claim the other side started it, but this stuff just ends up going on and on and on. But, I mean, it's going to be a lot more than hurt feelings. I mean, people are going to be pissed off, right?

I mean, this could be something, I mean, especially as Henry Olson lays out, right, the possibility, given the way the politics, the national mood is, and where people, sort of the popular sentiment is, you could have Democrats win a majority of the vote in the House of Representatives, take all of the votes that are, cast in House of Representative elections and win the sort of popular vote but lose control of the or stay out of control. They will not have control, not gain the majority in the House of Representatives, which is

supposed to be the most reflective of the popular will, the popular majority of any sort of branch of the federal government. That is not just, people are just going to have their feelings hurt, trucker. They're going to be angry. And there's, I mean, we're talking about a time. when people are angry at all kinds of institutions in this country, the Supreme Court, you know, Democrats and liberals are furious at the Supreme Court, and this is related to this conversation. You know, Republicans have, under sort of Trump's direction, have lost complete

trust in sort of any election results that go against them, certain elements, things like mail-in voting. I mean, this used to be a big Republican advantage in a lot of states, and it's no longer that way in those states because there's so much distrust. I mean, you're talking about, like, distrusted institutions going through the roof if something like that happens. Jonah, I would love to know your thoughts, because you've written a little bit about this, the way that this issue, whether it's the Calais decision and all this has been demagogued by Democrats, that seems like it could lead to some really bad places, civic health-wise, for the country, right? Yeah, so, first of all, I just point a personal privilege. Please. We're about 15 minutes in, and I woke up this morning to hear on the news, both on NPR and on CNN and elsewhere, from the summit in China, which is going on as we speak.

There's actually a big state dinner as we speak. And I heard Donald Trump say that the one thing he can tell you is that in America, nobody is talking about anything else other than this summit. So I don't know what the hell we're doing here. We did not get our marching orders. They got lost in the mail. Sorry. And it might be the biggest summit. ever.

Jonah, this is what happens when you're politically isolated. That's right. Yeah, look, I have grievances and receipts in some of the stuff. So on the Calais stuff and the Voting Rights Act, I think it's worth appreciating,

and I don't think conservatives appreciate this enough. There's a whole generation of people of basically mainstream media, liberal reporters, Democratic Party people, you know, just citizens

who have imbibed, I think, wrongly, but like, but sincerely, the idea that the Voting Rights Act is one of these holy of holyes of American political history, and they take it as a given that any attempt to modify, tamper, update, reform, or repeal aspects of it has to be motivated by some sort of deep racist desire and that it is inherently prima facie illegitimate to want to do anything that changes the Voting Rights Act. And Democrats have leaned into this idea so much over the years because it benefits them, particularly in terms of these majority minority districts. And I get it. I get why it's

considered one of these great moments in American history. I totally get it. And I think it was, right? I think it was a worthwhile thing ending Jim Crow. was really important and good. But what people forget is that the whole point of the Voting Rights Act was to be temporary, to get us to that place that Martin Luther King was talking about, about, you know, where we judge people by the contents of their character, not the color of their skin. It was supposed to be transitional. The Supreme Court has talked about this stuff being transitional for decades. Yes. There are sincere arguments that were not there yet, and therefore we need to have this stuff in place. And I thought, Alanik Hagan made some good arguments in the

dissent about all that, and that's fine. But the problem is, as I wrote about this week, the problem is that the Constitution of the Voting Rights Act have always had this tension. Because the Constitution and the Equal Production Clause and other interpretations of the Constitution says you can't classify people by race. You can't give people special rights or privileges by race. The Voting Rights Act itself has that language that says nothing in this should be interpreted to say that we are going to classify voters purely by their race. It's like a balancing test kind of thing. And so the tension is that the Voting Rights Act says you need to give black people the opportunity to vote for black candidates. You can't guarantee that they'll have black candidates or officials, but you have to give them an opportunity.

But you can't take race so into account that you're just creating districts basically solely on race. And these things run into tension. What makes things even more complicated is that in the South, for now at least, and certainly for the last 50 years, 60 years, when you're talking about black voters, you're talking about Democratic voters. Right? This is one of their, and I remember talking to, you know,

democratic, you know, strategists about why the voter turnout thing, just get everyone to turn out the vote, don't ask them for partisan, you know, reasons, whatever, is that the model was that you could send vans to, I don't mean this in a pejority sense, to bus black voters to the polls. And you just knew it was a mathematical matter

that nine out of ten of them, at least we're going to vote Democratic. And so why have litmus tests about partisanship? Why ask people if they're a Democrat or a Republican? Because you know just demographically, that's how it's going to go. So the party has been rested on this stuff as a tactic, as a emotional construct for literally all of our lives. I think I'm the oldest person here. Drucker and I might be in attention here.

But like the Voting Rights Act was passed before we were born, right? and the Democratic Party is in large part, and again, I don't mean this pejoratively, but it's part of their, I was going to say it's a cult about the Voting Rights Act. It's mythology, which is a very honorable mythology to have is all wrapped up in the Voting Rights Act. And so when you change it, you immediately accuse people of racism. And that gets you to this absolutely ridiculous rhetoric that happens routinely in the Democratic Party, going back as long as I can remember, John Lewis was a hero of the civil rights movement, accused repeatedly Mitt Romney of wanting to go back to Jay. I just want to be real clear. Mitt Romney's not a big Jim Crow guy. And you had this weekend, last weekend on Meet the Press,

Cory Booker saying that this Calais decision, which is the one that says that basically whittles away at the room you have to create majority minority districts basically just on race, says it'll go down in history as Korematsu or Plessy versus Ferguson, as bad as all of that. And I just want to be clear, like, like, it's nowhere close. most, it's not even a bad decision. I mean, you can disagree with it, but it's not an evil. Plessy versus Ferguson was an evil decision. Korematsu was it, which allowed for the interminor to the Japanese,

was a really Japanese American, really problematic, right? But the point I didn't get into the column, I just want to address here, and I'll stop filibustering is, because I know Mike Lee wants to get rid of that, too, right? No, but the idea, you hear this formulation all the time from people like Cory Booker and Leonard Jeffrey, not Leonard Jerry's, that's his uncle, Hakeem Jeffreys. you get this formulation that Jim Crow was about using terror. I think Cory Booker said almost exactly it, using state-sponsored terror to prevent black people from voting.

This gets the correlation backwards. They stop people from voting so they could keep black people from voting in politicians that would end the state-sponsored terror. Right, right. Jim Crow was about brutalizing and denying the rights of black people. people. And in order to maintain that political reality, you needed to keep them from voting. But, like, Jim Crowe starts basically as a regulation of labor markets because they didn't want black people voting with their feet and creating competitive pressures that bid up the labor

of black people in the agriculture sector. And so all of the stuff about denying movement, denying, you know, education, well, the education thing was a separate part of it, but denying voting was to maintain that kind of system, that sort of keep the de facto plantation system in effect, even though the slavery had ended. But a whole generations have grown up thinking that the point of Jim Crow was to keep black people from voting in Democrats, essentially.

And it colors so much of their thinking about all this. That's a problem. Right. But can I raise something that I've been thinking about these last couple of weeks with all of the, just the demagoguery you've been discussing Jonah in your column and just now, and also what we've been seeing from these Republican-led legislatures in some, but not all, I think importantly,

and we'll come back to South Carolina in a bit, not all but some of these Republican state legislatures, which is a sort of maximalist attitude toward this. It's, you know, like this is go time. And in a way, a sort of, it's a different kind of denial of the competition or the vote with your feet kind of idea in our politics. And I think this, let's go back, I think, now to South Carolina because, Charles, something that Shane Massey said in his speech, again, this is the state Senate leader, the Republican, in this very interesting speech. Just I'll read a quick part of it here. Too many people in power just want to do whatever it takes to stay in power. They'll do whatever it takes to keep it.

But I ask, to what end? What do you do with it when you've attained it? And he sort of suggested it's the only point of attain, of getting power is to retain it and keep it. or is it to do things to better your community and your county and your state and your country? He brings up this idea in, you know, elsewhere in this speech about the competition in the political sphere. He says, basically, we Republicans always talk about how competition is good in the economic sphere. He said essentially a good Republican Party, a strong Republican Party, you know, requires a robust Democratic Party. That competition is good.

that is about as countercultural as you can get in today's, you know, politics, right? The mindset of everybody, whether it's Democrats who are sort of demagoguing or sort of making too much of the myth of the Voting Rights Act in order to kind of maintain it and not recognize the changes. You've got Republicans who are saying, you know, the only goal of our power here is to maximize the amount of partisan power we have. I don't know. Is state senator Massey, you know, just outside of the norm? Or, you know, is there some kind of sense that he could be representative of, I don't know, a little bit of a saner voice and a saner mindset and maybe even a saner sentiment within the electorate?

Or is he just going to get wiped out in the next election over a speech like this? I mean, obviously we're going to find out. I mean, if Indiana was any indication voters seem to have to be tilted toward this, we're just going to keep power. And we want to redistrict for partisan purposes. as Drucker, you know, as he's done the reporting on that. But I think Massey's speech is also notable for another sentiment that he expresses where Drucker was bringing up, I believe the phrase he used was that if you're a politician,

you're not thinking past next Tuesday. You're just focused on how can I maintain this power. But one of the arguments that Massey made against the redistricting proposal in South Carolina was essentially that it's, he sort of made this in a slightly backdoor way, but it was kind of clear this is what he was indicating, was that it's good to have at least one Democratic congressman, in this case, Jim Clyburn, from a largely Republican state,

because let's say you have a Democratic administration and your state needs something from that administration. It's good for you to have a person in Congress whom that Democratic administration is going to listen to. So the argument he makes sort of flows from the sentiment of, we're not going to be in power forever. At some point, the other side is going to be, in power. And, you know, whatever weapons we put in place, whatever weapons we use, they're going to

turn on us once they come back into power. So it's that sort of long-term thinking that is pretty lacking in American politics today. And then the other point that he made was essentially that, you know, it's just holding on to power at all costs is not the right thing to do. It's just wrong. He said, if Democrats were in power, we hear this, that they're, they would do the same to us. you know, they do the same. They've done it another place. And he says, you know, if this were the case in South Carolina, like, maybe they would do it. He says, but, like, he makes the argument, do we want to do that?

Is that how we want to be that, you know, he says, like, you know, the golden rules do unto others as you would have them do unto you. It's not due unto others as you think they would do unto you. So at a certain point, you just need to, the point that Massey's making is you need to just, you know, be this blockage and this optical and stop this sort of pure power play. and this pure partisan politics that dominates our political life today. So there's another point to be getting here, like about when Michael was talking about how piss people are going to be,

how pissed Democrats are going to be if Democrats don't take back the House, right? So one of the concepts that I'm very related to what Charles is talking about is this expression, I think it started British, I'm not sure, of storing up trouble, right? Like there is Trump fatigue now. Yes. Congress's reputation is getting a bruising, because it's not standing up to Trump on anything, right?

Or at least it's not doing so publicly. Like the Trump, the Republicans you talk to from time to time, I mean, you guys do more reporting on this than I ever will, but they'll say, well, we hash this stuff out in private, right? That's Mike Johnson's thing. I go talk to him, and we prevent this from being public-facing disagreement. The problem is there are a lot of Republicans who could use politically some public-facing disagreement.

It would help them claim that they're not a lap dog. And if the Republicans hold on to the House, that means for two more years, there's no convenient foil for Donald Trump and the Republicans to blame anything that happens in politics or anything that happens in international relations until 2028. Like the entire course of the country will be owned by one party. And one of the things that I think, you know, this is something that Ramesh and I and a couple other people at National Review tried to impress on people from time to time that what is good

for the Republican Party is not necessarily good for America or the conservative movement. They then all move in perfect tandem. It would have been much better for the Republican Party if Herbert Hoover had lost the 1928 presidential election and the Great Depression hit Al Smith and the Democrats as their fault rather than the Republicans' fault, right? You can think of all sorts of things that if you hold all other history constant, it would have been better for Republicans not to be in charge. Or Democrats not to be in charge, right?

You know, things happen, events happen, and parties get blamed for them. Like, people say that Vance is going to be the, they're always, you know, I've been a skeptic from the beginning that Vance is this obvious error parent, chew in, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But no sitting vice president is ever going to run if a, if the guy at the top of the ticket is at 25% approval with inflation rates running high, and you're going to go and promise four more years. Right.

And so, like, I get having Democrats in and do impeachment stuff will drive Trump crazy. And that's the genesis of all of this is that Trump wanted to be able to hold on to Congress so that he doesn't have hassles from Democrats as a lame duck guy. But, like, avoiding Trump's headaches cannot be the single motivating principle of the Republican Party. and if it becomes that, which right now is, that is storing up massive trouble because the amount of Trump fatigue and Republican fatigue and saying we need fresh blood

and we need to get these guys out of there will be so massive come 2028 if there isn't a little bit of a release valve. And I think that Republicans cannot see that horizon at all. And they're going to pay a price for it if they succeed in all those. All right. We're going to take a quick break,

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I want to transition a little bit here, but I think it's related to what we've been talking about, which is this idea that we have talked about here on this podcast, that a Democratic majority is in our very near future in this midterm election. That seems to be in question now. on the other hand, on the other hand, the conditions particularly of the economy, and that's what I want to talk about, suggest that maybe even with all of this sort of gaming of the system by both parties that ends up benefiting Republicans in the end, even that cannot sort of surmount the economic conditions that we're living in. And I just want to read a couple of new bits of information. This is from a report now. The consumer price index rose 3.8%. This is essentially looking at the overall index of prices for everything.

3.8%, which was up from March's 3.3%. Oil prices spiked to $118 a barrel at the end of April, up from roughly $70 a barrel before the conflict with Iran began. You have airline fares rising. We've got the summer travel season coming. Those kind of prices are going. to be felt very acutely by Americans as we get into the summer season. And it seems like, you know, we've been hearing about this since at least the 1992

presidential election, right? It's the economy's stupid. And the economy does not look great. Now, it's not all bad, right? Pretty decent jobs report last month that came out earlier, I believe, last week from April, something like 115,000 new jobs. Unemployment is pretty steady. But I don't know.

Does any of that matter if everything just feels because it is more expensive? Is this, I don't know, trucker, what do you think? I mean, are we looking at a situation where even with all of the sort of everything stacked against Democrats in terms of the rules and the districts and all of that in this upcoming election, I mean, how can a Republican survive if the economy is doing this poorly when they've got total control? Yeah, I mean, this is the wind of the Democratic Party's back that I would be more willing to predict than not if I was in the prediction game, that they'll end up winning control of the House, even though they have to surmount a, what is in effect, a larger Republican House majority.

I mean, the atmosphere for Republicans has gotten so troubling since the war in Iran began, that we're even looking at a very favorable Senate map for the Republican Party begin to be competitive for a Democratic takeover. This is still going to have to play out on mostly rent territory, but you can't rule it out. I've seen a lot of private polling. And we should say, Drucker, we should say, this is not a Senate map that was ever going to be favorable to Democrats, right? I mean, this is your point, right? It was always going to be a tough slog, and the fact that we're even talking about it is remarkable. We're looking, look, I've seen polling in Iowa, Ohio, Texas, and Alaska, just to name four states. These are

contestable for Democrats. I don't know that they'll win. Any of them, I will never predict that Democrats are going to win a statewide race in Texas, so one day I'm just going to have to be wrong. But these are contestable. And they're contestable precisely because the environment has taken a nosedive. I think we've all gotten used to Donald Trump having lower than normal approval ratings, notwithstanding that Joe Biden ended up in the same place. But we've kind of looked at Trump as, look, he's just this polarizing figure.

His numbers are going to be good with Republicans, bad with Democrats, and independents, knows. His numbers with independence are in the tank. In fact, they've kind of escaped the bottom of the tank. His job approval rating, you know, when I was checking earlier this week was about 40%. His handling of inflation was about 29%. And so let me put all of this in context as to why things are so bad and why the economy, despite a lot of bright spots, is not helping President Trump and therefore or not helping the Republican Party in Congress. Voters hired Donald Trump or rehired them, rehired him to do one thing, bring down prices.

Part of the price of admission was everything that happened in his first term, everything that happened at the end of his term, January 6th, the way he talks, the way he behaves. But, you know, when I was traveling in the country, you both were Mike for the dispatch in the 2024 campaign. And Democratic strategists and activists would tell me that they were concerned because people were,

memory-holling the pandemic. Yes. Memory-holling everything that concerned them about Donald Trump. And just saying to themselves, you know, pre-COVID, which was an anomaly and not anybody's fault, we had a great economy. I want to go back to that. Everything is costing me way too much money. And I still remember you and I had a door in Allentown, Pennsylvania, or thereabouts,

and a Republican saying, look, do I behave the way this guy does? No. When I prefer he behave like a normal person? Sure. But you know what? He talks a lot at the end of the day, knew how to run a great economy. And I should say Trump made this explicit in his campaign, right? This is a quote from a rally in Pittsburgh and on the other side of the state of Pennsylvania

in, I think something like October 2024, a vote for Trump means your groceries will be cheaper. I mean, there it was. That was the bitch. It's been a year plus and things are not just not cheaper. They're worse. And they're particularly worse on all fronts because of the impact that a barrel of oil has on our entire economy. That is why the atmosphere has gone from bad to worse for Republicans and why I'd still say

they're likely to win the House and why the Senate is at least in play where it was not in play before. One thing that's so interesting is how much Trump himself is getting the blame for these things. And it's partly because he said he could fix it. And so if it's worse, then I think voters get the sense that, you know, he was either lying or he didn't or he's sort of in over his head. He's, you know, again, there's an economist U-Gov poll that shows Trump's approval on inflation is worse than Biden's. At any point, right now, it's worse than Biden's approval on inflation at any time during Biden's presidency.

And certainly at any time during Trump's first term, Trump's approval is worse now. And you think about the tariffs? By the way, Mike, I just have to say, for geriatrics like Jonah and I, It's worse than Carter right now. That's pretty bad. And Jimmy Carter was the king of lose your job because of inflation. Right. That was stagflation.

And then Biden overtook him, and it's just bad. I want to point out one thing, which is really important. One of the reasons Trump is suffering, and therefore his party is suffering, his voters don't think he's focused on the economy. You know, he always says, oh, inflation, you know, fake news, hoax, I solved it. When you're not focused on the problems that voters want you focused on, then it's a double whammy against you. It's a double black mark.

And so not only is he not delivering, as voters look at him and they're like, he's not even trying. He's not even focused. He's got his ballroom. He's got the war. He's got everything except the one thing I want from him the most. At least try, at least focus on it.

When you're not doing that, voters punish you. Well, also, I should also say, just as it says in the town, it's worse than that. Because the other problem is pick a topic that's a problem for him. Iran, the ballroom. Venezuela is not a problem, but it's, I think we're storing up some trouble there, but we'll

see. He's now talking about making it the 51st state, which will be one can only imagine how much Stephen Miller is cutting himself at the idea that we just deported all these Venezuelans down there, and now you want to make them citizens, right? But I don't put all that aside, right? Make Ronald Ocuna Jr. a citizen. Sorry, I'm a praise fan. Because he has this, I have this, you know, I don't want to get into a whole no-case

thing, but he has this monarchical view of his own powers. He's actually told people that he's the most powerful man in the world, and the only limitation on him is his own conscience when it comes to what he does in the world and all that, right? And so you got this thing where he didn't ask permission from Congress for the ballroom. He didn't ask permission from Congress for Iran. He didn't ask permission from Congress or the relevant architectural gitchie goo, land, you know, whatever public, you know, aesthetic commissions for the reflecting point. in the ballroom and all these different things. Didn't ask him on tariffs.

It because he thinks he's right about everything and he thinks everything's going to be successful because he's got this power of positive thinking worldview. And so he doesn't want to go through process. He doesn't want to go through Congress. He doesn't want to go through anything. And part of the problem is that the point, part of the advantage of going through Congress

is that if things go south, you have people whose political interest have buy-in. And you can say it's like why every Schmuck CEO in the country hire as McKinsey. It's not because they think McKinsey is brilliant, right, or some other consultant firm. It's because they want to be able to say to their shareholders and their board, if things don't go well, hey, look, we hired the best consultants

and we just did what they told us to do kind of thing, right? Trump doesn't want to pass any bucks. He doesn't want to, when he's going into stuff, he wants to be pure, unilateral, monocrical guy. And then, you know, it's like him going to our NATO allies and saying, you didn't want to help us. You didn't ask until things went south. Like, asking people to join stuff after it's unpopular is not great politics. And so one of the reasons I think that people blame Trump more than they would otherwise blame another president for the economy is that he's the

I alone can fix it. I alone am doing this. I don't need Congress. I don't need courts. I don't need anybody. All you have to do is put your faith and trust in me. And when things go cattywampus, after making that public argument, no one's rushing to take blame that isn't theirs, and he can't really persuasively point and say, oh, well, the Democrats had only voted for this, everything would be fine because he never asked them for it. Never mind, you didn't ask the Republicans to vote for.

Right. Right. No, it's a good point. And I think you are correct in analyzing sort of why voters have this view. And I think it also has to do with the fact that he is so ubiquitous as well. I mean, you know, Joe Biden, the rap against Joe Biden was that, he wasn't out there and he seemed like he wasn't even in charge of his own administration. There is no doubt that Donald Trump is sort of in charge in his own chaotic way because he tells us all the time about that. I want to bring up and ask Charles about this. This happened this week sort of on the White House law, as I believe the president was either coming or going from somewhere

and he was asked a bunch of questions by the press, including some tough questions from some right-leaning outlets. I believe a question that prompted this answer came from the daily caller or another conservative outlet. But he was essentially asked when it comes to making a deal with the Iranians about opening the Strait-O-Formuz and ending the war, you know, does the economy, does financial considerations for American, you know, American consumers and American taxpayers, does that come into his thinking? And can we play that clip of his answer? Well, my heart negotiating with Iran, Mr. President. Not even a little bit. It's the only thing that matters without talking about.

Iran, they can't have a nuclear weapon. I don't think about American financial situation. I don't think about anybody. I think about one thing. You could not let Iran have a nuclear weapon. That's all. All right. Charles, you were in the field reporting on a Democratic House primary.

I'm looking forward to seeing that piece. When the president said this earlier this week, I want to know, did you see the Democratic staffers on the campaigns that you were covering? Were they actually rubbing their hands? together in excitement about being able to use a clip of Donald Trump and an ad this fall saying, I don't think about Americans financial situation, or were they just excited silently? I mean, this is gold for Democrats who want to, you know, I mean, take any other number of things that he said.

But this was a pretty big foot and mouth moment for Trump, right? That's right. And I'll tell you a story on Monday. I was at an event. It was because the district is Pennsylvania 7th district. Lehigh Valley, great hot dogs, beautiful area. And it's Ryan McKenzie's district, who's the incumbent Republican. He narrowly beat Susan Wilde, the three-term Democratic congresswoman in 2024. And this is going to be one of the most competitive districts in the country this fall. So it's a question of

who are Democrats going to nominate. So I attended this event that this protest outside of Ryan McKenzie's one of his district offices in Allentown. And people were just saying, like, you know, we don't like that Ryan McKenzie is enabling him. It's basically a bunch of his retirement. East elderly Democrats at noon on a Monday. And there were quite a few. There were like five dozen of them. But a bunch of people outlining the street and saying, we don't like Donald Trump.

We don't like what Ryan McKenzie is doing. And right across the street from that office was a gas station. And the, I believe the price was $4.69 a gallon there. So I was talking to one of the primary candidates, a Democrat named Ryan Crosswell at that protest. And I was interviewing him. And he actually references. he says, like, look at the gas prices just right across the streets.

So, you know, this is something that Democrats are going to be able to, you know, leverage, you know, sort of to leverage on for the campaign, both in the House. And then also in the Senate, the only thing that I wanted to add to what Drucker was saying about the Senate, where these races that are contestable in Ohio and Texas and the rest, where, you know, even if Democrats don't win them, they can still force Republicans to spend money there that they could be using to either help out. Susan Collins in Maine or help out Mike Rogers in Michigan or take down John Ossoff in Georgia. So even if they don't win, you know, that wouldn't be enough for them to take back the Senate completely.

But, you know, they can still hurt Republicans and sort of put a foundation on to build on for a future election just by making those states competitive like Texas and Ohio, even if they don't win them. Yeah, no, I think that's a great point. John, real quick before we move on, you know, what do you make of statements like these? Is this all baked in and it's just things are just bad and Donald Trump or the Republican Party is going to be, you know, are going to face the political

consequences or is Trump sort of unique in his ability to, you know, we always talk about how he's kind of able to say whatever he wants and people, I don't know, give him the benefit of the doubt or they don't care, they kind of look past it. Is his political luck running out? And is he sort of losing a step by kind of throwing out

lines like this that suggest that he's just as, if not more out of touch than Joe Biden was, you know, four years ago as inflation was raging in that administration. Is Trump losing a step on these kinds of things? Well, I mean, he's falling asleep in Oval Office meetings, which is problematic. But you do that in dispatch editorial meetings, too. That's true. But I'm not the president.

But look, I mean, there are a few things. One, I'm actually willing to defend what Trump meant to say here. I'm not trying to do with Trump's explaining thing and all that. But, like, he's been kind of. a clever attacking press saying, why would I tell you that? Why would I let the Iranians know what I'm thinking kind of thing, right? He does that all the time, even though he has told them the one thing that we really shouldn't have told them, which was the deadline for when he wanted to get out of the war, right? Which was incredibly stupid. But he says, like, he should,

he could have done a very easily, could have done a, hey, look, what you're asking me to say is that you want me to tell the Iranians that if they just squeeze the oil price, for a little while longer, I'm going to give up and let them have a nuclear weapon. I'm not going to play that game. He didn't say that. Instead, he said this thing that perfectly fair in politics, to quote, saying, I don't care about Americans' finances,

let him eat it. That's fine. I think he is kind of losing a step. I think he's just, he's tired, but it's more that I think Americans are getting tired of the act, right? They know the schick. They know when he gets in trouble with one thing, he tries to create a controversy someplace else,

They're tuning it out. Enormous numbers of Americans say they don't follow politics anymore, which is not great for us, because they just don't want to hear about Trump. He's in everybody's headspace. And I think that's kind of is, there's just not a lot of juice in the tank when you've been taboo violating and norm violating for so long, people price it into your personality in a way that it's just, it's not as entertaining as it once was. I do have a question for the group here since you guys follow this stuff.

I'm not on polymarket, I'm not on Calci, but at the beginning, Warren said something along the lines of, given the state of things with the gerrymandering and whatnot, the Democrats could win decisively the popular vote and still not take over Congress. Now, I'm with Drucker and the rest of you that if you're just going to make a straight line prediction bet, right? And as we have to keep telling Charles, the rule for pundits is a used percentages. Because then you can always say, like I said they had a 70% chance. Never do binary. But the government's definitely not going to shut down, Jonah. It's not going to. That's right.

But it dawned on me, just listening to you guys, talk about this. For the first time, something really funny could happen. And I mean funny in a sort of nonpartisan kind of just like, if the California gubernatorial primary leads to just two Republicans in the general election. Right. That would be funny. Right. Just on the merits. That would be funny.

What is, do you think it's zero? 1%, 5%, pick a number, I don't care. What is the likelihood that on the morning after the election, we all have this holy crap moment where the Republicans hold on to the House but take the Senate? Wait, the Republicans hold on the House, but Democrats take the Senate? But Democrats take the Senate. I mean...

Is it 0.0? Is it 1%? Because like, I can see, like, with all of this gerrymandering stuff, the logic of too big to steal, like what happened in Hungary, starts to kick in. And you can see since I think this is intuitively true, but I don't know, I haven't looked at the data, that even in the states like Texas, right, that you have to think Republicans have a built-in advantage in, which they do, right? They're still more competitive than a lot of these, they're still more purple than a lot of these Republican districts or Democratic districts, too. And could you have, we never seen this before, I don't think, where we have a wave election that. that doesn't take the House, but does take the Senate?

Is that total science fiction, or is it like in the realm of the possible? I mean, it seems like a non-zero chance. Drucker, what do you think? I mean, I would say it's non-zero, but I'm skeptical it could work out that way. As far as I know, the last time the Senate flip, but the House didn't was 1986, which was Reagan's second midterm. But, of course, districts were different. The country was different.

And so it may not be sort of an apt comparison. That was a Reagan Democrat moment where the Reagan, Democrats were the pivotal voters in America. Yeah, and, you know, Reagan had swept in a Republican Senate majority in 1980, and it was like in 86. They were just kind of swept out. By the way, there's a line that a consultant told me, I can't remember who years ago, that someone, one of the senators, or Republican senators who had sort of recruited that 1980 class said at 1980, if we had known we were going to win the Senate, Republicans were going to win the Senate in 1980, we would have recruited better candidates because they all got a bunch of them.

got washed out at 1986. Go ahead, Drucker. So here's the thing. I'm just going to, I mean, he was Olson here just because I trust him, and these are the numbers I have in my head. What he was writing in this column that just came out in the last, you know, 48 hours or so was that a four-point popular vote victory by the Democrats may not be enough to win the House. So my point is, is given where this battle for the Senate is taking place largely, like, let's just stipulate for the sake of argument that Plattenor, Collins and copper beats Mark Watley in that open till a seat in North Carolina. So two down, two to go.

The Democrats have to pick off the other two in places like Iowa and Ohio. Those have been, you know, Trump plus 10, three terms in a row on average or plus eight, plus nine, plus 10, right? But Sherrod Brown's kind of popular, kind of a different kind of Democrat, right? Yeah, I never trust retreads, though. And this Brown isn't looked at the way. the original brown was. Fair.

And retreads often lose. Sullivan seems seemingly vulnerable. I know Republicans are super worried about it. It's in Alaska. But it's a red state. They haven't elected a Democrat to the U.S. Senate since 2008. He lasted one term. And in the entire history of the state, which granted is not as, you know, old as some of the colonies,

they've only elected a Democrat to the Senate one other time. And then, of course, Texas, right? It's like the white, the perennial, you know, blue whale. Democrats keep trying to get it. and occasionally they come close, but it never really happens. And I'd say 2018 was a bit of an anomaly where Cruz wins only by like two and a half points. He was so reviled by Republicans in Texas for how he handled the 2016 convention that it was this weird place where, you know, everything came together for a narrow, better

auric loss. So all that to say is that the popular vote margin for Democrats nationwide, I think, would have to be in the five to maybe the five point range or at least above plus four. And if it's above plus four, then you're getting into the area where there's no way Democrats are not winning the House. And that's kind of all I'm getting at. It's my initial thumbnail sketch on, you know, in answering your question without giving it much previous thought. But it would be so much fun, Jonah, if it happened. I mean, like, wouldn't it?

The amount of analysis that would come out. I mean, it would help our industry, you know, for, the next six months just like grow in ways that unforeseen. I mean, there would be full-time cable network janitors behind Kornacki and Enten just mopping up as they were like wetting themselves trying to figure out how to explain all of it. That's all I, look, some people just want to see the world burn, right? I'm here just for the weird cephalogical abnormalities.

I'm right there with you. Honestly, for the Democrats in 2028, the best thing for them might be to just not win any chamber of Congress because if they sweep this year, they're going to think they've solved all of their problems and they're going to roll into 2028 running so far left, they're going to fall into the Pacific Ocean. And if they only win at least one chamber, it'll give them some food for thought. If they win neither, it's going to be back to the autopsy they're never going to release. You know, I mean, and it'll really train minds in terms of the candidates that are running in 2028 for that. But yeah, that's the flip side of my side of my job.

point about Republicans storing up trouble, right? Is that they would arguably be better off for 28 if you had a powerless Democratic House being incredibly performative, letting AOC and Elon Omar define news cycles, giving Trump someone to attack, right? That would be good for Republicans for a little while. Another pointless impeachment trial, totally. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

All right. Well, we will keep our tabs on all of this, both the economy and, well, be, watching Polly Market to see right now, by the way, since you asked about it, Polymarket has 79% is the likelihood that Democrats win the House in 2026, but maybe they're a lagging indicator, not a leading indicator. Before we take an ad break, consider becoming a member of the dispatch. You'll unlock access to bonus podcast episodes and all of our exclusive newsletters and articles. You can sign up at the dispatch.com slash join.

And if you use the promo code Roundtable, you'll get one month free. And speaking of ads, if they aren't your thing, you can upgrade to a premium membership. No ads. Early access to all episodes, two free gift memberships to give away, exclusive town halls with the founders, and so much more. Okay, we'll be right back. One day, you're negotiating with suppliers. The next, you're installing a shelf in the back room. Running a business means moving in many directions all the time.

TD's new small business banking accounts are built for how your business moves. It's how we're making banking more human. Welcome back. Let's return to our discussion. Let's move on, though. Before we head to Not Worth Your Time, I want to ask all of our panel here to recommend something that they've read or listen to here at the dispatch that they'd like to recommend to our listeners here on the Dispatch

podcast. and I'm going to just real quick mention mine, and then I'm going to go to Charles and hear his, just because it's in the vein of what we've been talking about on this podcast, I really want to recommend the most recent and actually several of the recent episodes of advisory opinions, but a very useful and helpful, deeper understanding of some of the particular cases and the fallout to Calais

and that decision, the most recent episode talking about this Alabama case, why it was sent down, what the dissents from the Supreme Court, the liberals on the Supreme Court said. So definitely check out that most recent episode of advisory opinions. Charles, what's your dispatch recommends? Well, like you, I lived through COVID, and it was not a very fun time. And I see the news about Hanta virus. And I thought, well, I really hope that doesn't happen again. And I think it was Friday, TMD, last Friday, TMD published a very good report on Hantavirus, you know, saying it's probably not going to be in the next pandemic, but also

there has been some sort of institutional problems that can kind of hurt pandemic response. So I think, as always, a very level-headed and very worth your time issue of TMD. Jonah. Just because every now and then I like it when Kevin Williamson takes out his trusty Davy Crockett pocket knife and opens up his spleen in rage. He had a great piece called Empire of Bologna. Great headline. That just sort of cataloged all the ways in which we're debating things. And our politics is defined by what social scientists call lies.

And I just thought it was, for people who sometimes don't like Kevin's extremely adjectival pros about politics and Trump sometimes, it might be a bit much for them. But for those who find it cathartic, I thought it was great. All right. Chucker. Jessica Ridale's piece on the federal debt, why the federal debt matters. And a really instructive piece. What I liked about it is right up top.

she references an obvious and problematic fact, and that is that voters do not care about the federal debt, and it's one of the reasons why politicians do nothing about it, because there is no incentive to do anything about it. So I recommend that piece because it tells you why we should be doing something about it, but it turns it back on, I mean, the reader broadly, it turns it back on all of us because politicians are in the service business, and if they thought we really cared,

and we're going to reward them for fixing it, trust me, they'd fix it. Deits and deficits, they are worth our time, but nobody seems to understand it. Speaking of worth your time, some not worth your time today, I read a piece in the Wall Street Journal recently. They reported that we live in a golden age of the bagel. And the article suggests that perhaps we have reached peak bagel. I'm going to read this from a recent journal piece. At the sixth bagel fest, I had no idea there was bagel fest. At the sixth bagel fest, more than two, 2,000 devotees of New York's most iconic breakfast food had lined up to try samples and smears from local favorites and shops

as far away as Denmark and Hawaii. When a panel of expert judges announced its pick for best bagel, the crowd erupted with a mix of elation and disbelief. The winner? Starship bagel, which is not based in New York, or even London or Montreal, all cities with venerable bagel traditions of their own, but in Dallas, Texas. So my first question here to the resident New York native, Jonah, why is Texas making a better

bagel than New York? I want to be really clear about something here. Okay. So you know how there's a whole school of left-wing post-colonial thought that talks about settler colonizing and all of these things, right? And they say that they had to deny that Jews were ever indigenous to the Middle East because, and call them European implants, right? Uh-huh.

These foreign outside things in. New York City has so completely colonized the concept of the bagel that even in Dallas, they are paying homage to the New York bagel and working within the paradigms created by the New York bagel. And I, growing up, always thought that this is what the New York bagel was bagels. Like if you went to the Plato's realm of the ideal and looked at a bagel, it would mirror basically the H&H bagel I grew up eating three blocks from my house. And it was not until I went to Montreal where I found out that the Montreal bagel is just

as old as the New York bagel. Yep. Has just as much acclaim. You know, it's like when like some guy in exile has just so much of a claim to the British throne as somebody else if you actually do the bagats and look at their family trees and all kind of stuff you cannot deny the authenticity and the legitimacy of the Montreal bagels claim because the immigrants who came to New York also went to Montreal from the pale of the settlement and they brought their kind of bagel and it's just slightly different it's more like a Biali I have to say but like

so I don't mind really it's like it's like bringing democracy to the world like I don't I don't resent when some country becomes a thriving liberal democracy. capitalist democracy on the American model. I'm like, see, this is the power of our influence. You know, we try really hard with New York-style pizza to similarly colonize the mind in the palate of the world, and we failed. Like, Chicago still has this major resistance

with this souffle that they call Chicago pizza. The Midwest has these little squares of pizza, but I, you know, whatever, it's like, it's a trisket with cheese and tomato sauce on it, but it's fine. But, like, the New York bagel is supreme and the fact that the desire to emulate the perfection of the New York bagel has brought Dallas with its resources to take the top spot, I do not mind at all. Okay, well, this place in Dallas apparently does a pretty traditional New York style bagel,

but the journal story does not stop there and say basically, you know, this traditional New York bagel is what is being, you know, propagated. This is not alone why we're at peak bagel. I'm going to read you some of these other bagel places and other bagel style. that are, you know, happening throughout the culinary world. So there's a chain that has really exploded in the last couple of years. Pop-up bagels, they come whole. They do not slice their bagels.

And you get a tub of some kind of smear or butter or something, different flavors. And at pop-up bagel, the motto is grip, rip, and dip your bagel in chunks. You pull a chunk and you dip it in your tub of smear. And that's how you eat it. You don't spread it on or eat it in a sandwich. Of course, there's sourdough bagels, open-faced sandwich bagels, stuffed bagels is a big thing. There's a place in Brooklyn, now we're back in New York, called Bagel Joint,

which makes a miso-flavored bagel. Rize bagels in Orange County, California, serves a bagel egg sandwich that includes cheese, bulgogi, kimchi, and cream cheese. And then at Chicago's Rosca, you can get a bagel topped with red moly. Drucker, which of these wacky bagels are you going to try? I'm out of here. I got to go get lunch. Driving me crazy here. Look, you know, a sign of economic and cultural gentrification around the country is the rise of a great bagel shop in your neighborhood.

I've lived on Capitol Hill now 20 plus years, and when Capitol Hill started to acquire some really good restaurants and bars beyond dive bars, which I'm a big fan of, And one of the signs that that was happening was not one but two really good bagel shops. It may not be as good as New York, but, you know, these were signs of improvement. I'm actually not surprised that the best rated bagel would be in Texas. There are, I mean, just to be crass about it, but there are a lot of Jews in Texas. The Galveston port was a huge pipeline for immigrants, right? We think of Ellis Island all the time, but so many European Jews came through Galveston. And so you have a really great Jewish diaspora in Texas from the old country and their descendants,

not just, you know, people who came west from New York and the Northeast. And so it totally makes sense to me, particularly as Texas has become more cultured beyond the things that we think about Texas, that you would end up with, you know, the country's, you know, best-rated bagel, even if it's not quite the best-rated bagel. But it's one of those cultural, you know, things about the United States where, you know, there are particular ethnic foods or foods we think of as ethnic and they start as ethnic. You know, I'm from Southern California. I mean, the places now where you can get great street tacos.

But it all started from these catering trucks that I used to, you know, spend a dollar, you know, spend whatever, 75 cents for a taco while I was working for my parents in a factory in downtown L.A. in the summers in the 80s. It's just, it's what happens as the U.S. assimilates other cultures and people start to experiment. And that last bagel, I'll just finish with that, that last bagel you mentioned in Orange County with the Bugoggi and the kinsenging. I mean, this is the classic Southern California melting pot sandwich where there's probably six and a half cultures in that one sandwich. And I bet you would taste amazing. By the way, there's a lot of Jews in Texas. sounds like a lost kinky Friedman track.

So maybe we could find that and play that. All right, Charles, I'm guessing, tell me if I'm wrong, I'm guessing you're a bagel traditionalist, right? Maybe you go a little crazy with an everything bagel, but plain cream cheese, toasted, all that, or not toasted? What's your bagel order? I'll tell you my ideal bagel order as well. I guess my normal bagel order is actually,

I'll usually go with the plain cream cheese. You're actually right. You are right about me being a bagel traditionalist. I knew it. Although, unless it's like a bagel, bagel breakfast sandwich. If I do like an egg and cheese and bacon type of thing, that's pretty good. I will tell you, and I don't know if Panera still has these, but I kind of grew up on the French toast bagel at Panera when I was younger, and I would always have it, and it was delicious.

And I can't remember if they discontinued it or not, but they think they might have or they didn't have it at one point. So I haven't had one in legitimately years. So now I'm going to inquire as to whether it's on their secret menu or if they have actually discontinued it. So this, I guess, Panera, here's an appeal if you're listening right now. Bring back the French toast bagel if it's discontinued. Please, I will get one if you do it. The sound that everyone just heard was the screaming of New Yorkers listening to this podcast as soon as Charles said, Panera bagels.

It was outrage. It's like vegan pastrami. It's just not a thing. It just ain't right, as we say, down south. I don't know. I'm impressed, actually, that, you know, there has been less from, you, Joan, a kind of bagel, you know, Philistines, or accusing others of being Philistines on these bagels. And I welcome it. I think it's a good thing, right? I mean, I think there is a sense

that not just with bagels, but with pizza as well, that New Yorkers can be a little snooty about these food products, but everybody's just trying, I think, to emulate what they know is the best. And I think that is the case with New York bagels, although I have had delicious bagels in places as far-flung as as Drucker would say L.A., and also Charlottesville, Virginia. So I think bagels can be found anywhere. Bobos and Charlottesville is very good. I mean, this is my point. It's like I think Drucker is exactly right.

It's just a sign of sophistication and economic development and prosperity and enlightenment when various places outside of New York recognize the indisputable superiority of the New York bagel and start trying to make it on their own. And that's great. You know, it's like you can tell a place as something. when they can offer you a really good cheeseburger. And one of the really shocking things is when you go to Europe and you discover most of Europe still doesn't know how to make a cheeseburger in part because EU beef is horrible.

But that's another conversation. Indeed. Indeed. It is another conversation. But I think this conversation about bagels has been worth our time. Thank you, Jonah Drucker and Charles for joining this conversation. And we will talk to you all next time. If you like what we're doing here, you can rate, review, and subscribe to the show on your podcast

player of choice to help new listeners find us. As always, if you've got questions, comments, concerns, or corrections, you can email us at roundtable at the dispatch.com. We read everything, even the ones from people who prefer bagels from Panera. That's going to do it for today's show. Thanks so much for tuning in, and thank you to the folks behind the scenes who made this episode possible, Noah Hickey and Peter Bonaventure. Thanks again for listening. Please join us next time.