GD POLITICS

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Democrats are gearing up to turn the page on the Trump presidency and some 2028 hopefuls will likely announce their intentions by year’s end. At least a half-dozen candidates are, for all intents and purposes, already running.
Will California Gov. Gavin Newsom be able to ride the wave of his current support for the next two years or is he cresting now? Will voter outrage and a consolidation of the left flank of the party power New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to the head of the pack or will a moderate prevail? And who is even likely to run in the first place?
In a live 2028 Democratic primary draft at the Comedy Cellar in New York City, Nate Silver, Clare Malone and I debated those questions and many more. (Make sure to reply in the comments with who had the best roster!)
As a heads up, we began the night on a more somber note, discussing Alex Pretti’s killing in Minneapolis and whether it is likely to serve as a turning point in our current political moment. As we moved to the draft, we got a little competitive and plenty silly. This is the second Democratic primary draft we’ve done on the GD POLITICS podcast. If you’d like to look back at our previous picks, you can do that here.

Call this something of an emergency podcast. I’d planned on airing an episode setting the table for the 2026 midterms today. We’re going to save that for another day, because on Saturday a federal immigration officer in Minneapolis shot and killed Alex Pretti, a 37 year-old Veterans Affairs hospital ICU nurse.
It’s the second killing by a federal immigration officer in Minneapolis in less than three weeks — the first being Renee Good, a 37 year-old mother, who was shot while impeding traffic as part of a protest.
We’ll get into some of the details of what happened on Saturday, but I think it’s fair to say the public, many lawmakers, and even some Republicans have lost patience with the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement tactics.
In both killings in Minneapolis, the Trump administration rushed to brand Good and Pretti as domestic terrorists and fabricated events despite the shootings being visible in multiple videos. While there was plenty of pushback among Democrats, Independents and the press in the case of Good, this time a handful of Republicans, including the NRA, have joined that pushback as well.
As listeners well know, it’s going to take a minute before we can fully understand the impact of this weekend on American politics, but we’ll share what we know at this moment. With me to do that is head of research at FiftyPlusOne, Mary Radcliffe, and managing editor at Votebeat, Nathaniel Rakich.



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Trump has now been back in office for a year. To help make sense of the past twelve months, on Tuesday I hosted a live Substack conversation with friend of the pod and author of the Wake Up To Politics newsletter, Gabe Fleischer.
We began by assessing Trump’s accomplishments and failings by the standards he set at the beginning of his second term. We also discussed how Americans have reacted and took a closer look at the areas where Trump’s new assertions of presidential power have been allowed to stand and where they’ve been batted down.
One of the themes of the conversation was that there’s often so much going on that it can be hard to actually follow a single story from beginning to end. We try to tie up some of those loose ends where possible.


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I hope everyone had a nice long weekend! Today’s episode is part two of our mailbag episodes, focusing on some of the more esoteric questions that listeners asked.
Part one focused on current events. If you’re curious about how the public is reacting to the surge in ICE activity, possibility of military intervention in Iran, or the politicization of the Department of Justice, I encourage you to listen to that as well.
Today we answer your questions, including: Are high profile politicians able to effectively rebrand? Why were polls noticeably better for Democrats right after the 2025 elections? What does it mean that there are a record number of independents in America? And who are the Republicans in polls that say they don’t approve of Trump — Never Trumpers, or people who voted for him and have since soured? We even share some career advice at one listener’s request.
Joining me to dig through the mailbag is Lenny Bronner, senior data scientist at the Washington Post. A reminder to submit your own questions on Substack, on social media, or at [email protected].


This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.gdpolitics.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.gdpolitics.com

The full episode is available to paid subscribers. Once you become a paid subscriber, you can connect your account to your preferred podcast player by following the directions here.
I like to say that this podcast is driven by three principles: curiosity, rigor and a sense of humor. You, dear listeners, share those qualities, certainly when it comes to curiosity.
I collected all the questions you submitted since we last recorded a mailbag episode at the end of November and even if I just limited us to the best ones, we’d be looking at a three hour podcast at least.
I didn’t want to let your questions go unanswered, so I decided to sort them into two categories and we are doing two mailbag episodes. The theme of the first is current events and the second is esoteric political questions. Next week we’ll go esoteric; today we are doing current events and there’s a lot to discuss.
There’s the ICE surge in Minneapolis, shooting of Renee Good and related protests, the federal investigation of Fed Chair Jerome Powell, major protests in Iran and threats of military action by President Trump, Democrat Mary Peletola is running for Senate in Alaska, the White House met with Denmark and Greenland, and there’s the story that was the only thing anyone could talk about just last week: Venezuela.
We seem to be cycling between a different major headline just about every hour and with me to help make sense of it all is dear friend of the pod and senior data scientist at the Washington Post, Lenny Bronner.
Also, a couple quick updates: 1) Our live show on January 27th is sold out. We can’t wait to see you there! Paid subscribers will get a recording of the show after the fact. 2) Our seasonal merch shop is going away at the end of the month, so get your merch at gdpolitics.com/merch. 3) A reminder to submit your own questions on Substack, on social media, or at [email protected].