Month: December 2024

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Mike and Jay open with a discussion of the murder of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson. While they agree that Luigi Mangione’s actions were absolutely wrong, Mike makes the case for a more nuanced understanding of both Mangione and the people in charge at health insurance companies like United Healthcare. This leads to a broader discussion of American healthcare. Mike argues that the system is fundamentally flawed, whereas Jay believes that things aren’t nearly as bad as Mike makes them out to be.

Then it’s a look at one of Donald Trump’s many Day 1 promises: ending birthright citizenship. While that will be highly unlikely without a constitutional amendment, they consider what the incoming Trump administration could do to disincentivize immigrants from attempting to come to the US to give birth. Mike doesn’t even see this as a problem, but even if it is, he argues that there are far more important immigration issues to tackle. Jay makes the point that Democrats are often too focused on ‘root causes’ and that even minor disincentives to illegal immigration might be worth enacting.

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Trey and Ken start with a look at the Hunter Biden pardon. Trey forcefully argues that it didn’t have to be a terrible move for President Biden. Still, because it involves lying and taking unnecessary shots at the Justice Department, it is wrong and bad for the Democratic Party. Ken argues that the pardon was not only necessary but justified. In Ken’s view, the primary problem is that the pardon did not cover enough people and, maybe due to mental decline, was not worded well.

Next is a discussion of Trump’s nominees with a special focus on Hegseth and Kennedy. They agree Hegseth is a bad nominee but have differing takes on what may happen next. Ken believes one possibility is that it is a flytrap: that is one bad nomination to take eyes off of other nominees.

They close with a look at the oral arguments for United States v. Skrmetti. Ken drills deep into the legal issues and the potential future for the case to return not under the 14th Amendment, but under a parental rights framework. Trey suggests that we live in a post-liberal world primarily concerned about good ends for people and not minimal liberal visions of justice.

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Listener support helps make The Politics Guys possible. You can support us or change your level of support at patreon.com/politicsguys or politicsguys.com/support. On Venmo we’re @PoliticsGuys.

The Politics Guys is part of The Democracy Group, a network of podcasts that examines what’s broken in our democracy and how we can work together to fix it.