Purple Political Breakdown

Next in my Senate series: Texas, James Talarico vs Ken Paxton. Early voting turnout is surging, polls call it a toss up, and Democrats have not won a Texas Senate race since 1988. I break down Paxton's record (securities fraud charges, the whistleblower firings, his 2023 impeachment, and refusing to debate), the attacks on Talarico over the border, trans issues, and "God is nonbinary," and why a Christian Democrat might be exactly what Texas needs.
CORRECTIONSMusk's documented spending for Paxton is over $150 million through Senate Leadership Fund and Texas PAC, not hundreds of millions. On "God is nonbinary," Talarico called the...

Six days out, I'm going race by race through the key Senate seats. First up: Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed vs Mike Rogers. Where the polls stand, how a razor-thin primary exposed El-Sayed's two biggest holes (the Black vote and the Jewish vote), what his THRIVE agenda and his break from Hasan Piker do to close them, and why I call Mike Rogers a coward for power over his shifting line on Trump and 2020. Then I make my call.
CORRECTIONSRogers was elected to the Michigan Senate in 1994 and served in the U.S. House from 2001 to 2015, not since the 1980s. On 2020...

Libertarian Don Kissick is on the Ohio governor ballot alongside Republican Vivek Ramaswamy and Democrat Dr. Amy Acton, and in this Ohio Edition interview he makes his case directly. Kissick, who lives in Ottawa in Putnam County, explains how a 2009 layoff from the Honda assembly line during the recession turned a former conservative into a Libertarian, and why he says his campaign rests on three issues: data centers, Flock cameras, and property taxes.
WHAT WE COVERED
The Ramaswamy ad featuring Amy Acton's mother. Ramaswamy's campaign confirmed it produced and is paying to air an ad in which Acton's...

Ohio's 1st Congressional District is one of the most watched House races in the country, and with Election Day on November 3, I sat down with Rep. Greg Landsman (D-Cincinnati) to hear his case for a third term against Republican Eric Conroy.
Landsman walks through his background as a former teacher, the Cincinnati Preschool Promise ballot measure he led, and his five years on Cincinnati City Council before Congress. From there we get into how Ohio went from the nation's bellwether to a reliably red state, what he says partisan gerrymandering and voter roll purges have done to turnout, and...

Trump has spent years calling mail-in voting a fraud machine. This week he told voters in Alaska, Minnesota, Nebraska and Virginia: if you have a mail-in ballot, return it immediately. We start there, twelve days before the midterms.
In Nuanced News: DOJ's new $25 million Fraud Whistleblower Incentive Program pays tipsters $10,000 to $30,000 once charges are filed, before any conviction. Trump pitched a 1% commission; DOJ caps the award. Is paying for accusations a fraud fighting tool or a way to aim the public at political targets? Then Trump, Putin and Ukraine: the Starshield slowdown nobody will own, the Russian diesel deal...

Ohio's two biggest races are close heading into Election Day on Tuesday, November 3. In this solo episode of Purple Political Breakdown, Ohio Edition, Radell Lewis is back from a short break to walk through current polling in the Ohio U.S. Senate race, the Ohio governor race, and all 15 Ohio congressional districts, then breaks down five Ohio issues that landed this week.
THE OHIO SENATE SPECIAL ELECTION: SHERROD BROWN VS JON HUSTEDRadell shows a polling average with Brown up about 3.5 points, says he has seen few polls with Husted ahead by more than a point, and explains why Senate...

I'm back after a few weeks off, and the show has a new format: less script, more conversation with the live chat. I start with where I've been. A bad faith debate in Vegas sent me back to the books on political philosophy, and I share where I landed on liberalism, equal starting points, and the role government plays in helping people become the best version of themselves.
In Nuanced News, I break down Trump's Russian diesel deal: Treasury's General License 135, the 2022 law Congress passed banning Russian energy imports, why Republicans like Susan Collins are pushing back, and why 4.8...

Dr. Diana Sorrentino, a social psychologist, author, and educator who has worked with transgender and gender diverse people and their families for 36 years, joins me to break down misconceptions about trans identity.

Dr. Sorrentino lays out her case that gender identity forms before birth, explains how she helps parents move from rejection to support, and walks through the screening she says comes before puberty blockers, with hormones not before 16 and surgery after 18. We disagree on whether gender dysphoria is a mental illness, and she gives direct answers on trans athletes, military service, bathrooms, and whether Democrats should...

Jerrad Christian, the Democratic nominee in Ohio's 12th Congressional District, returns to Purple Political Breakdown: Ohio Edition for a general election follow-up as he challenges Republican Rep. Troy Balderson this November. Jerrad won the May primary and now faces a district he describes as running from some of Ohio's wealthiest suburbs to some of its poorest Appalachian counties. We cover where his platform stands, how it contrasts with Balderson, and the Ohio issues driving the 2026 midterms. Jerrad lays out his case for Medicare for All and a single payer system, and we steel-man the most common objections: government control, a...

The Supreme Court just blocked Trump's mail ballot rule for the midterms. Meanwhile, Trump is promising a $5,000 "Trump Dividend" only if Republicans keep Congress, and an end to the Iran war "right after" the midterms, while diesel hits a record. His own Speaker says the checks need Congress, and the cost tops $1.2 trillion.
Also: Trump's 28,700 stock trades, the Kennedy Center standoff, DOGE's $9.5 billion paid leave bill, measles deaths, the Fed's first hike since 2023, the Senate races in Maine, Georgia, Michigan, and Texas, whether AI is going to kill us all, LeBron James joining Polymarket, and good news the media...

Adam Terrell, author and director of The Joshua House, a halfway house ministry in Latah County, Idaho, joins the show to argue that prison is the wrong default punishment for non-violent crime. Adam says incarceration delays restitution to victims while taxpayers pay the bill, and he walks through the court-referred model his ministry runs: housing, employer connections, accountability reporting, and immediate work so repayment can begin. Radell pushes back on scalability, on whether Bible study alone rehabilitates anyone who is not religious, and on Adam's longer term biblical vision, which includes corporal punishment and treating offenses such as adultery...

Jim Jordan has represented Ohio's 4th District since 2006. He hasn't held apublic town hall since 2017. This week I sat down with Joshua Kolasinski, theDemocrat running against him, for a full hour on what he'd actually do inWashington and how he plans to reach voters in a district that isn't close.
We got into a total stock trading ban for members of Congress and their spouses,term limits, universal health care versus a public option, property taxes andschool vouchers, data centers taking water and power without leaving much behind,Flock cameras and the Fourth Amendment, and immigration. Springfield sits in...

Crispin Gravatt is the Communications Director for the Todd Achilles for Idaho campaign. Achilles is running as an independent for the U.S. Senate against three term Republican incumbent Jim Risch. The Democratic candidate has since exited, leaving a head to head race. Todd was on the road, so Gravatt joined in his place.
Gravatt argues most Idahoans sit in the independent middle and vote the person, not the party, and says the plan did not change when the Democrat exited. He argues Risch has never held a public town hall, has a thin Senate record, and as Foreign...

Sam Cebula, organizing director for Digital Ground Game, joins the show to explain the organization's roots in 2020's Georgia Senate runoffs, its scale up to seven canvassing houses and 330,000 plus doors knocked in 2024, and why the group, founded in 2025, is targeting Ohio's 9th and Michigan's 7th for the 2026 midterms. Sam also discusses how the org manages relationships with political content creators, its focus on Ukraine accountability and election integrity, and why he believes local political engagement builds the most durable power.
All positions and views expressed above are Sam Cebula's own and do not represent the views of Purple...

An armed man forced his way through a crowd toward Dr. Amy Acton, the Democratic nominee for Ohio governor, while she spoke at the Mahoning County Democratic Party tent at the Canfield Fair on Sunday, September 6, 2026. Multiple people were knocked down. Patrick Havas, 38, of Canfield, was taken into custody and booked at the Mahoning County Jail on charges of disorderly conduct and two counts of assault.
This is an emergency episode of Purple Political Breakdown, Ohio Edition. No script, no prep. I read the reporting as it stood, sourced it out loud, and gave my honest read of it...

Ohio's Democratic nominee for governor won't debate. Ohio's Republican nomineehas accepted two invitations. Neither has ever held elected office, and right nowthe plan is for you to pick one without ever seeing them answer a hard questionin the same room.
This week: Issue 3 explained in plain English, including the part the officialballot language gets wrong. The Ohio Supreme Court orders Trenton, in ButlerCounty, to put a data center ban in front of its own voters. Two Republicans andtwo Democrats ask the state to stop expanding license plate surveillance. And afull breakdown of Amy Acton's COVID record against what Texas...

On Monday the Supreme Court let the President keep building a 400 million dollar ballroom on the White House grounds. It did not rule that the ballroom is legal. It ruled that the people who sued could not prove they were injured enough to be allowed through the door, and Chief Justice John Roberts dissented and called the project likely unlawful. Nobody has ruled on that question. Nobody may ever rule on it.

That is the thread running through this entire episode. The check still exists on paper. The question is whether anybody can actually reach it.

Todd Sloan is a defense attorney from Auburn, New York and an independent candidate for Congress in NY-24, a heavily Republican seat held by Rep. Claudia Tenney. He calls himself a fundamental constitutionalist, and his slogan is Kickstart Congress: affordability, integrity, and loyalty to the district. Sloan argues Congress has spent decades handing its Article I authority to the executive branch, and makes the case that tariffs are taxes and a congressional power. Radell presses him on New York's political moment, the socialism conversation dominating coverage of the state, and what running as an independent looks like where two thirds...

Ohio's two biggest races are both inside the margin of error, and this week the money, the ads, and the courts all moved at once.
A Pennsylvania financier has now put at least $30 million behind Vivek Ramaswamy through a federal super PAC, which is more than Amy Acton has reported raising for her entire campaign. Financial disclosures show Sen. Jon Husted's wife held Intel stock while he worked to advance the company's Ohio project. A federal judge blocked Ohio's new proof of citizenship requirement at the BMV ahead of the October 5 registration deadline. And a Sandusky County judge suspended...

Everybody in power announced something this week. Almost nobody showed the paperwork.
Trump promised an economic D-Day against Iran, then his Treasury Secretary stood at a podium and declined to pull the trigger, saying out loud that he did not want to blow up the global financial system. Trump announced a beef deal to bring your grocery bill down, but there is no executive order, no named suppliers, and the window closes days after you vote. The Supreme Court handed him a win on mail ballots without ever ruling on whether the order is legal. Mark Zuckerberg published a...

Iowa's 1st Congressional District was decided by fewer than 800 votes last cycle, and this year it is headed for a third straight rematch between the same two major-party candidates. Michael Bridgford thinks that fatigue is exactly the opening for something different. A seventh-generation farm kid turned small business owner and financial adviser from the Quad Cities, Bridgford is running as an independent in what he calls the tightest district in the country, and he joins Radell to make the case.

In this conversation, Bridgford lays out why he believes a handful of independents could reshape Congress from...

A leaked memo from the campaign arm of Senate Republicans says data centers are "the anchor hanging around Jon Husted's neck." That is not opposition research. That is the National Republican Senatorial Committee, in writing, to artificial intelligence companies. This week, Ohio politics ran through one issue: data centers, and who pays for them.

Host Radell Lewis breaks down the leaked NRSC memo, the OpenAI data center in Piketon, the tax exemption that missed its own state estimate by eleven times over, and the Ohio Attorney General race almost nobody is covering. Every figure is sourced on...

Trump posted a map of the Strait of Hormuz labeled "New US Territory" while the 60-day negotiating window with Iran expired with no talks scheduled. A preservation trust told the Supreme Court the White House is racing to pour concrete on a $400 million ballroom before a judge can stop it. Court filings in Minnesota describe federal agents recording meetings in churches and union halls. And Disney sued the FCC over a license review the agency has not ordered in fifty years.

The thread: power is testing how much it can finish before anyone can stop it. The...

Two hours. One subject. Every documented corruption and abuse of power question about the Trump administration, in order, with the receipts attached and the counterargument stated out loud every single time.

John Yoo wrote the torture memos. He is, by a wide margin, the most expansive thinker on presidential power in modern American life. And he looked at a US military strike that killed two unarmed men clinging to wreckage and wrote that it was, quote, simply murder. That is where this episode starts.

Here is the thread running through all of it, and it...

Ohio has an open race for Secretary of State for the first time since 2018, and almost nobody is watching it. Republican Treasurer Robert Sprague faces Democratic state Rep. Allison Russo, with Libertarian Tom Pruss also on the November 3 ballot. This episode breaks down what the office actually controls, where both candidates stand, and the Issue 3 disagreement that split the Democratic ticket in public.

On August 7, Democratic governor nominee Dr. Amy Acton announced she supports Issue 3, the voter ID amendment. Allison Russo voted against the resolution that put it on the ballot and called it flawed and fast...

Four institutions told this administration no. Four times, the answer was to find another door.

This week on Purple Political Breakdown: the Senate confirmed Todd Blanche, Trump's former criminal defense attorney, as Attorney General by a vote of 50 to 49 at 4:31 in the morning on a Saturday. Bill Cassidy stood on the Senate floor, said the nominee had exempted the President from IRS audits and was running a department that sues the President's political enemies, and then voted yes anyway.

We follow the money to Greenland, where a Texas oil company tied to Trump's circle landed...

Why does the House of Representatives still have 435 seats when the country's population has roughly tripled since that number was set? I sat down with Matt Beat, better known online as Mr. Beat, to break down one of the least discussed reform ideas in American politics. Matt is a former social studies teacher turned YouTuber with over 1.4 million subscribers, and he has become one of the loudest voices pushing to uncap the House. In this conversation he lays out his case: that the House is supposed to be the people's house, that the cap dates to 1911 and was locked in...

Ohio's 7th Congressional District has a deadline, and it lands Monday afternoon.

Rep. Max Miller let the 90 day withdrawal mark pass on Wednesday, which killed any chance of a special primary. That leaves August 10 as the last day county party chairs can name a replacement on the ballot, and Cuyahoga County has to give two days notice before that meeting even happens. If Miller withdraws after Monday, there is no Republican on the ballot against Democrat Brian Poindexter. Meanwhile a co/efficient poll circulating this week has Miller down 14, Sen. Bernie Moreno says Miller fails any basic...

Purple Political Breakdown: Political Solutions Without Political Bias. Host Radell Lewis breaks down the week in national politics, Trump corruption, the 2026 midterms, and the stories other coverage is flattening.

This week opens with two pieces of audio and the gap between them. Hasan Piker responds to Abdul El-Sayed's Michigan Senate primary win by calling Democrats Islamophobic and relitigating a race that was already over. El-Sayed responds by saying there is more that unites us than divides us and that there are thirteen weeks to beat Mike Rogers. One of those people understands the political landscape. The other...

What if the way to get big money out of politics is to make every voter a donor?

In this episode I sit down with Dan McMillan, a historian, former Brooklyn prosecutor, and founder of Make Voters the Donors, to break down his proposed reform called Voter Dollars. The idea, as Dan explains it: every registered voter would get an account of public campaign cash, one hundred dollars in a presidential year and fifty for the midterms, that they can only assign to the candidates they choose. With roughly 174 million registered voters, Dan argues that would give...

Ohio's 7th Congressional District was rated Solid Republican. It is not anymore.

This week the Purple Political Breakdown Ohio Edition covers the race almost nobody outside Ohio was watching, and the reasons it moved. Congressman Max Miller is facing domestic abuse allegations from his former wife, Emily Moreno, who is the daughter of Republican Senator Bernie Moreno. Miller denies the allegations and has filed a defamation suit. No charges were filed in the police matter that made the records public. Those are allegations, they are not findings, and this episode labels them that way while covering the...

urple Political Breakdown, hosted by Radell Lewis. Political Solutions Without Political Bias.

The Supreme Court struck down this administration's tariffs. So it found a different law and taxed 99.4 percent of everything America imports anyway. A federal judge blocked the order rewriting how you get a mail ballot. So it went to the Supreme Court, and the Postal Service started building the portal regardless. OpenAI sealed two AI models in a sandbox to test whether they could hack. The models picked the lock and hacked a real company on the way out.

Nobody in this episode...

What's the bigger threat to America right now: Israel's influence on U.S. politics, or Trump and MAGA itself? I sat down with a leftist creator (Cousin Ali on TikTok, Project Socio on YouTube) to dig into a tweet I put out that got people fired up, and to actually have the conversation instead of a shouting match.

He makes the case that AIPAC's money and influence over Congress and the presidency, including Trump's Iran policy, makes Israel's lobby a uniquely dangerous force in American politics, one he argues is more entrenched and harder to challenge than...

Ohio's governor race just got a new label. Cook Political Report moved Ramaswamy vs. Acton from Lean Republican to Toss Up, and Ohio's largest police union broke decades of habit to endorse a full Republican statewide ticket for the first time in recent memory. This episode covers both, plus the ten Ohio House seats that could decide whether Republicans keep veto proof control of Columbus.

In this episode: the Fraternal Order of Police of Ohio endorses Vivek Ramaswamy, Jon Husted, and Keith Faber for Attorney General, its first Republican AG endorsement in twenty years. Statehouse Watch covers...

This week on Purple Political Breakdown, Radell Lewis breaks down a night where every major American institution seemed to bend under pressure at once.

The Iran war didn't end, it got worse. After the June ceasefire collapsed, the US and Iran have traded strikes across the region, eighteen American service members have died since February, and Congress is now being asked to approve $87.6 billion more to keep funding it, all while Trump quietly approved a 30-year nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia in the middle of the fighting.

Back home, attorney general nominee Todd Blanche confirmed...

Ohio just landed at number one on CNBC's 2026 list of the best states for business, the first time it has ever finished first. In this Ohio Edition of the Purple Political Breakdown, Radell Lewis follows the money and the power lines behind that ranking, and breaks down who is actually on your 2026 ballot in Ohio's 11th and 12th Congressional Districts.

We get into Elon Musk's five million dollar check to V PAC: Victors, Not Victims, the super PAC backing Vivek Ramaswamy, and the billionaire donors behind its nearly forty two million dollar haul (Jeff Yass, Ratmir Timashev...

The United States is bombing Iran for a fourth straight night, Senator Lindsey Graham is dead and his Senate seat went to his sister, the agency that certifies your voting machines just got emptied by email, and a text message that would not admit it was a bot tried to move Radell's opinion on Israel. The thread tonight is one question: who actually gets to decide, and who is being kept out of the room?

In this episode of Purple Political Breakdown:

Iran and the Strait of Hormuz: the June memorandum collapsed, the strikes and...

What would you actually change about American government if you could? On this bonus episode of Purple Political Breakdown, Radell Lewis runs through a full personal policy wish list built live on stream, covering Supreme Court reform (term limits, ethics enforcement, and a cautious lean toward court packing), presidential immunity, pardon reform, filibuster reform, House expansion, voting reform (STAR and approval voting), a proposed federal Election Day holiday, billionaire tax reform and closing the stepped up basis loophole, a mandatory or incentivized civil service program for eighteen year olds, an overhaul of public education toward financial literacy and critical...

This week on Purple Political Breakdown: Trump's financial disclosure shows over 1.4 billion dollars in crypto related income tied to a company nobody can find on paper, the FBI has surged 260 analysts into re examining a Georgia election that's already been counted three times, and Russia hit Kyiv twice in five days right before a NATO summit. Radell connects the dots between all three, then digs into new Pew polling showing the world's confidence in America and Americans' confidence in their own democracy collapsing at the same time. Plus, a full breakdown of this Supreme Court term's biggest rulings on...

Ohio sold fifteen thousand acres of public wildlife land to out of state frackers this week, days after officials killed a solar farm in Clark County. Meanwhile, over two thousand provisional ballots got thrown out in the May primary, and only 23 percent of Ohio's 18 year olds are registered to vote at all. The Supreme Court also handed down three rulings this week that land right back in Ohio, on mail ballots, birthright citizenship, and campaign finance. We close out with the two U.S. House races the whole country is watching this fall: Kaptur versus Merrin in the 9th...