Must-watch 📱: A new ad narrated by the father of Flight 93 hero Todd Beamer.
Report from Texas‼️: The $100 million of outside money buying ads trashing James Talarico will start showing up in the polls over the next week or two.
Thought bubble💭: Talarico now faces a far more hostile environment than he ever has on a far bigger stage. There is not much more that can go badly for Ken Paxton — Trump even made fun of him at his own convention
Plus➕: Keep watching Minnesota — Michele Tafoya is now going after Kristi Noem over ICE.
This gets more, not less, interesting
Watch tonight📺: Kurt Bardella and Scott Tranter on checkerboard vs. wave.
What’s Changed in 2 Years⁉️
😵💫America feels out of control — almost like it did two years ago.
The difference is Trump is the establishment rather than fighting it
Two years ago, Trump was down five points and working the drive-thru at McDonald’s and driving a garbage truck.
He instinctively understood where the American people were and embraced it.
Today, he’s throwing CNN out of the White House. Building arches and ballrooms. Telling everyone not to worry about AI. Promising gas prices will go down sometime after the midterms.
🤷We know how Democrats will control things
The Green New Deal
Medicare for all
New restrictions on energy
🤦All will raise prices significantly — we know this because it happened before and it’s still happening in California.
Watch tonight📺: Bill O’Reilly, who warned for months about Republican problems over high prices, joins us with whether the “the other side is worse” argument can save Republicans.
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Are We Actually Ready?
‼️The greatest and bravest military in the world is unquestionably the United States military — but we don’t know if we are ready right now.
💥There are a lot of active fronts going on:
The Houthis are taking on the Saudis
The Iran war isn’t ending soon
The Chinese are messing with the Philippines
Vladimir Putin is getting frisky in Western Europe
Putin sees weakness and a chance to exploit and challenge NATO
European intelligence officials say Moscow is planning a more decisive action against NATO — saying it could intensify “in months, not years”
The Trump administration is now warning allies that missiles and interceptors could face delays of up to five years after the war with Iran depleted stockpiles and put pressure on production.
🤦Wait — I thought Secretary Pete Hegseth and testosterone tests would solve all our military’s problems.
Watch tonight📺: John Teichert on whether America’s military is actually ready to fight a two- or three-front war and defend against Russia’s drone army
It might have helped to listen to the Ukrainians.
Gambling on Gamblers💸
❗One of the things the government does well is to protect the most vulnerable from predatory businesses — and we’re learning sports betting companies are turning into predators.
Proof☑️: The big sports betting website DraftKings is preying on those who are least able to lose money.
📰The New York Times headlines, “How DraftKings Uses A.I. to Target the Gamblers Likeliest to Lose,” writing:
“Data science helps determine who receives betting incentives, but the company has resisted using similar technology to protect gamblers at risk of addiction.”
“DraftKings makes money when gamblers lose money. And the model sought to identify those it could get to lose the most. It scored each customer based on their habits: The higher the score, the more money a gambler was likely to lose for each promotion offered.”
📈Sports betting industry revenue hit a record $16.96 billion last year.
It’s not just DraftKings taking advantage of young men—
Polymarket and Kalshi are making it even easier to sports bet— telling people it’s a form of investing and purchasing stocks.
Good read 📰: “Prediction markets have made betting easier than ever — and young men are paying the price,” headlines Fortune
Year-to-date combined sports betting volume on Kalshi and Polymarket is $160.8 billion
Source: Paradigm (Paradigm is a Kalshi investor).
The American Gaming Association estimates that 18- to 20-year-olds, who are barred in most jurisdictions from sports betting, are responsible for driving $5.26 BILLION in sports betting volume on KALSHI alone.
What could be worse for young men than sitting alone at home, glued to their phones, losing money they don’t have?
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What's changed? Alot and nothing. Looking forward to the show to hear you and your guests, especially Teichert.
Consider revealing more personal information, like you used to do. It makes you more than just a pundit to folks who care about details. Understand that must be scary after the Savannah Guthrie kidnapping, but hope NN can figure that out.