The Bulwark Daily

@thebulwarkdaily · Podcast

Latest segments

• Hamilton's Kansas Senate run, 2026-10-30
  Reports Hamilton's message on rural hospital closures
  Coaston, fresh off talking to Hamilton, reports his closing message on rural hospital closures: 28 Kansas hospitals at risk of immediate closure, the most in the country, tied to the state's refusal to expand Medicaid. Also notes Marshall campaigning on drag queen story hour and Ted Cruz's presser line about Islamists.
• Kansas Senate poll, 2026-10-30
  Questions a Kansas poll's non-response problem
  Picks up a second Kansas poll, a Washington Post survey with Hamilton at 52 and Marshall at 43, and spends most of the segment on its non-response problem: 32 percent of Democrats finished the survey versus 12 percent of Republicans, leaving it essentially unweightable. Reads it as either a polling failure or a sign of a tsunami.
• El-Sayed's Michigan Senate bid, 2026-10-30
  Reads Stevens's statement as a backhanded endorsement
  Picks up the Sunday event announcement and the statement that followed it: Stevens put out a long statement criticizing El-Sayed over a video he did not appropriately condemn, after his campaign had already put out a statement against it. Miller reads the sequence as an endorsement with a list of reasons not to.
• Trump's Michigan rally attack on Omar, 2026-10-30
  Contrasts Trump's rally line with his 2018 denial
  Reads Trump's rally line about Omar and a shithouse country against his 2018 denial of the shithole countries remark, then widens into a riff on the right's racism toward Indian and Asian Americans. Commentary and framing, not new reporting.
• Trump's Kansas rally, 2026-10-30
  Recaps the canceled and uncanceled rallies
  Recaps the cancel-and-uncancel of the Kansas and Iowa rallies, with jokes about Trump's schedule and Bill Maher. Stays inside the day's coverage, adding only a leaked Joe Mitchell video and Paxton's canceled El Paso rally.
• El-Sayed's Michigan Senate bid, 2026-10-29
  Calls Rogers' campaign among the most bigoted
  French, who says El-Sayed is the Democrat he would agree with least, calls Rogers' campaign one of the most bigoted he has seen and argues Trump's rhetoric has pushed anti-Muslim bigotry past the days after 9-11. Opinion and framing, with RFK's 'Arabs are stupid' line already on the record.
• Times ties Peltola to Dan Sullivan…, 2026-10-29
  Recaps the Times story and calls the trick dirty
  Recaps the Times story on the Dan Sullivan recruitment and the fired campaign manager's admission and retraction, then argues the trick was dirty, stupid and dangerous. Stays inside the reporting already on the record, adding only the hosts' view that it cannot explain the primary gap.
• Obama's Cheesecake Factory line, 2026-10-29
  Plays Obama's joke response and frames the outrage
  Plays Obama's Georgia speech, where he says the administration mobilized a whole-of-government response to the joke while shrugging off the Saddam Hussein comparison. Frames the backlash as manufactured outrage, with a detour through Cheesecake Factory decor and Cracker Barrel.
• Paxton-Tallarico Texas Senate race tightens, 2026-10-29
  Argues Talarico's decency beats Paxton's attacks
  French makes the case that Talarico's decency, not his theology, draws non-fundamentalist Christians, and that Paxton's theological attacks backfire. Reads Abbott's Austin election-night venue and governor's-race anxiety as tea leaves that Texas is competitive.
• Paxton-Tallarico Texas Senate race tightens, 2026-10-29
  Reports a CNN poll showing Talarico ahead
  Walks through a batch of CNN Senate polls, then reports from Texas on the Paxton-Talarico race: Democratic voters hopeful but not overconfident, and a Republican woman in Beaumont open to voting for Talarico. Gives Talarico the edge.
• Acton's mother ad, 2026-10-29
  Adds the crying daughter the ad reopened
  Ties the ad's fallout to the family it reopened: a reporter knocked on the door of the stepfather's biological daughter, who answered crying and said she believes Amy Acton. Frames the ad as performative cruelty turned into a MAGA initiation rite.
• Trump's El-Sayed attack, 2026-10-29
  Reads Article VI against Moreno's religious test
  Plays the Moreno clip in full and reads Article VI aloud: French argues Moreno is asking voters to impose a religious test the Constitution bars, and notes Moreno was born in Colombia while El-Sayed was born here.
• Bo French's UT tweet, 2026-10-29
  Retells the tweet as an anti-DEI argument
  Uses the Bo French tweet as the hinge of a longer argument about anti-DEI politics: Texas's top-percent admissions plan was a conservative innovation that produced many Asian students, and the backlash to that is the real story. Retells the Rove reaction and stays inside the framing already on the record.
• El-Sayed's Michigan Senate bid, 2026-10-29
  Adds the Turkish endorsement and Rogers' bigotry
  Tim Miller's opening rant on the Turkish endorsement: he calls it an organized attempt to influence the race on Rogers' behalf, with Stevens on board, and argues Rogers is running an overtly bigoted campaign. Reaction and framing, but it puts the endorsement itself on the record.
• Serbia's student upset, 2026-10-28
  Adds the Pegasus spying and plenum democracy
  Borger fills in the movement behind the Serbian result: the 'Serbia or Mafia' slogan, Pegasus spyware used against students, plenum-based direct democracy, and a slate of little-known academics. Adds detail the seat-count coverage never had, and calls the win not close.
• Trump weighs pre-midterm Iran strikes, 2026-10-28
  Predicts renewed strikes and an IDF handoff
  Borger's read on what comes next with Iran: renewed military action is very likely given Trump's statements, and a caretaker Netanyahu would probably let the IDF follow a U.S. lead. Analysis and prediction, staying inside the reporting already on the record.
• Israeli election, final week, 2026-10-28
  Reports the full Tuesday count from Jerusalem
  Guardian correspondent reports from Jerusalem that all Tuesday ballots are counted: Netanyahu's bloc about 53, Eisenkot's about 48, Arab-Israeli parties possibly 19, with absentee ballots still outstanding. Explains the Arab surge as fear of Ben-Gvir and Smotrich and lays out the coalition paths.
• Alaska governor's race, 2026-10-28
  Adds Murkowski's endorsement in the governor race
  Breaks in on the Alaska governor's race to report Murkowski's endorsement of the Democratic candidate, then works through the House race and Peltola's ranked-choice odds. The endorsement is the new fact; the rest is handicapping built on Alaska's thin polling and its one Democratic senator this century.
• Israeli election, final week, 2026-10-28
  Floats coalition paths and direct PM elections
  Enten walks through the still-unfolding count and the paths out of it: a Netanyahu majority, a minority government kept alive by Arab parties abstaining, or another election. He floats returning to direct election of the prime minister, a system Israel used briefly in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Speculation, not new reporting.
• Democrats lead 2026 midterm polls, 2026-10-28
  Argues polling error can cut against Republicans
  Enten pushes back on the assumption that polling error always favors Republicans: in 2022 Democrats were underestimated in every close Senate race polled within five points in the final 10 days. He puts the Democratic Senate floor at 47 or 48 seats under a 2020-style miss, and notes Collins has beaten her polls three cycles running.