This week, editors Peter Suderman, Katherine Mangu-Ward, Nick Gillespie, and Matt Welch discuss Katherine's New York Times op-ed, "Libertarians Tried to Warn You About Trump," which lays out how Trump-era governance has repeatedly vindicated libertarian warnings about executive power, civil liberties, and the risks of trading principle for partisan advantage. The group then turns to Speaker of the House Mike Johnson's defense of warrantless Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) searches as a concrete example of how quickly Republican commitments to constitutional limits can erode once a party is in power, and why libertarian ideas so often get embraced only in opposition.
The conversation then shifts to Bad Bunny's Super Bowl halftime show and the now-permanent state of the American culture war, as political figures and influencers on the right, including President Donald Trump himself, weighed in to bash the performance. They discuss whether this cycle of outrage is simply what audiences and politicians now want, and how it crowds out serious debate about governance and the economy. A listener asks when each panelist had their own "aha" moment about the failures of the two-party system, before the editors turn to Trump's decision to continue funding the Department of Education, despite his promises to dismantle it.
