Independent Americans with Paul Rieckhoff

The Republican Party just took a beating it didn't see coming — and one of its sharpest young strategists is on the show to say the quiet part out loud. Shermichael Singleton joins Paul Rieckhoff for a candid, no-BS conversation about why the GOP's internal numbers missed the catastrophe, how the silent independent voter delivered the blow, and what it will actually take to rebuild a party that's lost the suburbs, the moral high ground, and any credible claim to being the party of Reagan, Bush, and McCain. Pete Hegseth's selfies at Arlington. Jim Jordan and Stephen Miller consolidating power. A...

Veterans Day 2026 should have been a unifying moment. Instead, the Secretary of Defense was caught giggling and snapping selfies on the steps of the tomb of the unknown soldier while a Sentinel of the Old Guard held the line and reminded him not to confuse his rank with the sentinel's authority. Paul Rieckhoff — Army infantry officer, Iraq War veteran, and founder of Independent Veterans of America — reports live from the biggest Veterans Day parade in America in New York City, then goes on News Nation to say plainly what the whole country just watched: Pete Hegseth is unfit, and ever...

The looming post-9/11 veteran showdown for president. Making every day Veterans Day.

Maryland Governor Wes Moore returns to Independent Americans for a Veterans Day conversation that refuses to let anyone spike the ball. Elon Musk's DOGE fired more than 31,000 federal workers in Maryland alone — one in four of them military veterans — and on January 1, up to 680,000 children could lose food assistance. Moore is blunt: the message from Tuesday's election wasn't that a party won, it was that the American people are losing. Trump still has two years, still has the power to deploy ICE into Amer...

Netanyahu on the brink. Russia hits rescue workers.

The circle is closing fast. With Susie Wiles out and Stephen Miller installed as chief of staff, Pete Hegseth is doubling down — posting memes with Miller, blocking promotions of women and officers of color, and dragging the Pentagon deeper into a culture war that has our enemies celebrating. Paul Rieckhoff calls it plainly: Hegseth is the most destructive force on the American military since the Iraq War, maybe since Vietnam. And this Veterans Week, Thomas Massie is moving to impeach him on eight articles. Paul argues the vo...

Miller in, Wiles out. The last guardrail inside Trump's West Wing just came down, and the architect of ICE and the Iran war is now running the building. Paul Rieckhoff opens Veterans Week with a no-BS read on what that means: a cornered president with the most powerful military the world has ever seen, a Secretary of Defense authorizing Humvees and boats into DC, and a proposed arch that would literally shadow Arlington Cemetery until a federal judge blocked the work. This is not a honeymoon. This is not a victory tour. This is the start of the most...

Trump picks Stephen Miller as chief of staff. 60% of independents broke against the GOP.

This was not a Democratic triumph. It was an independent revolt. Across Ohio, Colorado, North Carolina, and Arizona, Democrats flipped House seats in districts gerrymandered to keep them out — and they did it because 60% or more of independents in state after state broke hard against the GOP and against Donald Trump. Paul Rieckhoff cuts through the spin on cable and in the West Wing to name what actually happened: independents, 45% of this country, just decided the election. The question now is wh...

There were two electorates in this election, and almost nobody talks about the first one. The second is the one that voted on Tuesday. The first is the one that picked the names on that ballot: the people who voted in the primaries last spring and summer. TMI, our morning newsletter, put the two side by side, state by state, using the national voter file. Paul Rieckhoff walks through what it shows.

In the 28 states that register voters by party, 30% of registered voters belong to no party. They cast 16% of this year's primary ballots. In the 13 closed-primary...

Chuck Todd is back on Independent Americans, and he's not sugarcoating what just happened. Voters didn't fall in love with Democrats — they repudiated Trumpism, and independents were the fulcrum. Paul and Chuck unpack why 12 of the last 14 national elections have been change elections, why the pundit class keeps getting high on its own supply, and how candidates like Gina Hinojosa, Annie Andrews, and James Talarico actually met voters where they are instead of lecturing them. They also name the elephant in the room: Trump is still in power, Pete Hegseth is still the most dangerous man in the administration, an...

4 IVA wins. Vets win big nationally. Especially women vets. GOP sports figures win again. They’re coming for Hegseth. No more political ads in sports! 

Independents were the water in the blue wave, and the water level is rising. In episode 668, Paul Rieckhoff rips through the midterm results with a combat helmet on and no illusions about what just happened. Yes, Democrats won big. No, America doesn't suddenly love Chuck Schumer or Hakeem Jeffries. What the data actually shows — pulled from CNN exit polling and Jeremy Gruber's analysis at Open Primaries — is that independent voters broke d...

Vets Win. Closed Primaries Cooked Results. Is Iran Imminent Now? Vets Day is Next. Election Results Breakdown.

Paul Rieckhoff records before sunrise on the morning after — and cuts through the celebration with a no-BS, intelligence-grade read on what actually happened. Yes, Democrats rolled: the House, likely the Senate, Troy Jackson knocking off Susan Collins in Maine, Talarico in Texas, Brown over Husted in Ohio, Annie Andrews in South Carolina. But Democrats are only 27% of the vote. Republicans are 27%. Independents are 45% — and we decided every one of these races. This wasn't a blue wave. It was an a...

It is election day 2026, and Paul Rieckhoff is wide awake before sunrise in New York with one message: expect the unexpected. The Wall Street Journal is reporting the US has been quietly striking Iran for weeks. The Pentagon hasn't held a routine press briefing since May 5th. Tucker Carlson is warning that Netanyahu is pressuring Trump toward a tactical nuke strike on Pickaxe Mountain. And a cornered Trump — if the walls close in tonight — is the most dangerous Trump we have ever seen. This is no-BS analysis from a combat veteran and institutional watchdog who refuses to let the elec...

On the eve of election day, Paul Rieckhoff sits down with Ty Pinkins — Army veteran of 21 years, three combat tours, Bronze Star recipient, Georgetown-trained attorney, and the independent candidate for U.S. Senate in Mississippi — for a no-BS conversation about what the rigged two-party system actually does to Black voters in the South. Pinkins lays out, with receipts going back to 1982, how the national Democratic Party keeps running doomed candidates in Mississippi not to win, but to harvest Black turnout for the next presidential cycle. He names names: Obama, Clinton, Schumer, Warnock, Booker, Benny Thompson. And he reveals that the...

Darlene Graham, Ken Paxton & the Herschel Walker problem. PLUS: Alaska’s dirty trick and the indy surge. Media Blitz Pod

Obama snatched the mic. That's the story heading into the final stretch — a more popular, more charismatic communicator back on the trail hammering corruption in Georgia with Jon Ossoff, while Trump's approval craters near 30 and his hand-picked candidates collapse under their own weight. Darlene Graham is on the ticket because she's Lindsey Graham's sister. Ken Paxton is Ken Paxton. The Herschel Walker problem is back, and independents — 37% of voters in Ohio alone — are fleeing in droves...

One week out from Election Day 2026, the country is staring at a split screen that tells you everything about the rigged two-party system. Barack Obama is finally deployed to Georgia and Michigan trying to pull Jon Ossoff and Keisha Lance Bottoms across the line. Donald Trump is on the same stage at the same hour cracking jokes about men's backsides while his approval sits near 30 and Flavio Bolsonaro — under investigation for financial crimes and screaming rigged election — gets safe harbor from the White House. Ohio, Georgia and Alaska are all down to the wire, and a bizarre New York Time...

AI’s threat to both parties? Osborn’s race in Nebraska. Trump loves talking about asses. Friday Football.

Two days out from the election, Paul Rieckhoff sits down with one of his longest-standing mentors: Senator Bob Kerrey. Combat-wounded Navy SEAL, Medal of Honor recipient, former governor of Nebraska, former presidential candidate, and one of the sharpest no-BS voices in American politics. Kerrey lays out why trust, not ideology, is the dominant issue on the ballot, why Elon Musk's $150 million bet on Ken Paxton in Texas should alarm every American, and why the unauthorized war in Iran...

Deadlock in Israeli Elections. Bolsonaro Lands in Miami After Fleeing Brazil. Remember Alex Pretti?

Idaho is one of the most independent-minded states in America, and for the first time in a generation it has an independent on the ballot who can actually win. Todd Achilles — army veteran, longtime public servant, and the first candidate endorsed by Independent Veterans of America — is within single digits of Jim Risch, an 83-year-old incumbent who won't debate, refuses town halls on the Iran war and the farm bill, and voted against the PACT Act. Paul Rieckhoff gets under the hood...

MS Senate Race Tightens—the Indy is Ignored. Jay-Z for Super Bowl Halftime. Brewers Fever!

We are less than one week from the most consequential election of our lifetime, and Trump is already attacking it. Paul Rieckhoff breaks down the three-plan playbook for election interference — the military (and why Chairman Dan Caine may say no), ICE at the polls, and plan C: a million-dollar bounty paid out to any 'wahoo' who claims to spot voter fraud. Bolsonaro is reportedly fleeing Brazil for Florida. Netanyahu may be next. Mar-a-Lago is becoming a safe harbor for strongmen, and...

Seven days out. The marathon is almost over, and the 90 million independents who have been written off, condescended to, and told they don't really exist are about to decide every close race in the country. Paul lays out why this moment belongs to independents, why the Democrats need Barack Obama as their closer, and why Republican incumbent Mike Lawler is in genuine trouble in New York's 17th against combat veteran Cait Conley — whose breakout ad ran straight through the Giants game this weekend.

From there, Paul connects the dots to Israel's election this week, where Netanyahu faces fo...

Hegseth Broke Eisenhower’s World. Bloomberg - $80M to Dems. Vance Sells Out Ukraine and Continues to Suck.

The partisan machine is scared, and it's showing. In episode 658, Paul Rieckhoff goes solo to answer the growing chorus of independent-haters — from Hillary Clinton's smear of Matthew McConaughey on Kara Swisher's show to the online pundits recycling the tired "hidden partisan" talking point against the 45% of Americans who refuse to put on a jersey. Paul lays out why that smear falls apart the second you look at Nebraska, South Dakota, Idaho, and Montana, where a vote for the...

Something is cracking in the Midwest. Iowa farmers are staring at $1,000 fill-ups for their tractors, fertilizer costs through the roof, and a White House that only remembers rural America two weeks before an election. Meanwhile Donald Trump is spending $1.2 billion of taxpayer-adjacent money on an East Wing ballroom, a triumphal arch, a Garden of Heroes, and a plan to repaint the Eisenhower building because he thinks it should be whiter. Paul Rieckhoff joins Katie, Carrie Dan of the Cook Political Report, Mike Nellis, and McKay Coppins to connect the dots between the vanity projects, the $8 billion farmer bailout nobody...

93 counties, 200 events, and riding a wave McConaughey just supercharged. Iran, the USS Lincoln, and Christmas on a credit card. Plus: Friday Football picks.

Dan Osborn is back for a record sixth appearance, and he's walking into the final stretch of the most-watched Senate race in the country. Running as a true independent against Pete Ricketts — a sitting senator from a billionaire family that owns the Chicago Cubs — Osborn has outworked, out-hustled, and out-organized a $50 million machine. Fourteen counties left on a ninety-three county tour. More than two hundred public events. Small-dollar donations from all fifty stat...

Musk’s Starlink shutdown blindsides Kyiv. Bodnar, Osborn, Achilles, Bengs & the indy vets shaking up the Senate. Media Blitz Pod

Paul Rieckhoff joins Connell McShane on News Nation with retired Air Force Special Operations Commander Glenn Ignazio to call the Ukraine pivot what it is: a 180. Trump's envoy Steve Witkoff addressed Vladimir Putin as a "humanitarian" — a word for a man who has indiscriminately killed civilians from Odessa to Bucha and is still shipping lethal aid to Iran. Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal reports Elon Musk himself ordered the Starlink/Starshield throttle that blindsided Ukrainian forc...

The Iran forever war, the McConaughey moment, no debates and a rigged fight by design.

Paul Rieckhoff sits down with retired Marine Colonel Matt Baker, the independent veteran running for Congress in Virginia's 2nd District — a shipyard-and-base-heavy stretch of coastline where readiness is being ridden into the deck and families are watching their sailors cycle in and out of the Iran war. Baker is a Naval Academy grad, a combat veteran of Desert Storm, Iraq, and Afghanistan, and a battalion commander in Afghanistan who's now running against a Republican incumbent and a Democratic former Navy co...

The independent movement had a breakout weekend, and Paul Rieckhoff walks you through every piece of it. Matthew McConaughey went public with a message that lit up phones across the country — a Hollywood heavyweight planting a flag for the plurality of Americans who refuse to put on a jersey. In a deep-red state most pundits wrote off, independent veteran Brian Bengs is now tied with GOP Senator Mike Rounds at 43-42. And a new report says Elon Musk personally asked Donald Trump to throttle Starlink speeds in Ukraine — hampering drone defenses while Ukrainian kids were dying. If true, it's trea...

National Guard spotted at DC drop boxes. Four more years? The third-term flirt returns. Media Blitz Pod

Senator Mark Warner — the top Democrat on Senate Intelligence — just said the quiet part loud: the greatest threat to American election integrity is not Russia, not China, not Iran. It's the sitting president of the United States. On this episode of Independent Americans, Paul Rieckhoff and the panel break down what that assessment actually means, why National Guard troops standing near DC drop boxes should alarm every voter regardless of party, and how the MAGA machine is priming the...

Paul Rieckhoff hits the news circuit for a rapid-fire breakdown of a week where the wheels came off the Trump foreign policy machine. Elon Musk throttled Starlink in the middle of Russia's winter bombing campaign against Ukrainian civilians — and Republican Senator Thom Tillis called it what it is: participating in mass murder. Putin keeps pumping the pedal down. Zelensky gets a hero's welcome in London while America looks like the bad guy. And one tech billionaire is now the linchpin of a sovereign nation's defense, which is exactly the privatized national security nightmare we warned about.

From th...

The drone revolution is here. F1, Cadillac, and the sports-defense overlap. Plus: Friday Football Picks

Kevin Baron — founder of Elevation Global Strategies, former Defense One executive editor, and one of the sharpest national security minds in the business — joins Paul fresh off the AUSA conference in Washington. Forty thousand people. Seven hundred companies. Anduril and Palantir surrounded by throngs waiting for a meeting. Pete Hegseth on stage getting repeatedly disrupted by Code Pink protestors who registered their way in. And underneath all of it, a $1.5 trillion defense budget proposal, a drone revolution rewriting what a mode...

Indiana isn't supposed to be where the independent movement breaks through. It's a deep-red state, 41st in voter turnout, where 95% of the legislature is effectively decided in May primaries by a sliver of the electorate. That's exactly why Greg Ballard — Marine Corps Lieutenant Colonel, two-term Republican mayor of Indianapolis, and now independent candidate for Secretary of State — is running. Paul Rieckhoff sits down with Ballard a few weeks out from Election Day to talk about why he walked away from the GOP, what it cost him to even get his name on the ballot, and why this race matters far...

Donald Trump is in full spray-and-pray mode. One day he's threatening Iran and Cuba, the next he's cutting a diesel deal with the Kremlin and backstabbing Ukraine again. Vladimir Putin ignored Trump's latest ceasefire within hours, and the Wall Street Journal editorial board noticed. Most Americans and most American veterans still stand with Ukraine. The president does not speak for them. In this media blitz episode, Paul Rieckhoff joins Alicia Menendez and veteran national security reporter David Rhode to name what's actually happening: Zelensky is emerging as the real leader of the free world while the American president plays...

PLUS: Newsom, the 25th, and a failure of imagination by the democrats heading into the midterms. 

Trump floated the idea that Ukraine needs a new president because Zelensky keeps hitting Russian oil refineries and that's driving fuel prices up. Paul Rieckhoff flips the frame: Ukraine doesn't need a new president — America does. From a creek in the Catskills, with his boys skipping rocks in the background, Paul lays out why the most important story in the world is still that Donald Trump commands the most powerful military ever built and nothing — not the courts, not the D...

Texas is still red. But Ken Paxton is a scandal-plagued candidate standing on that stage only because Donald Trump put him there — and Trump knows it. With a forever war in Iran dragging on, home heating oil hitting six dollars a gallon in the northeast, and a barrel of crude at $105, Republicans are watching their own base turn on them. Paul Rieckhoff joins Katie Phang alongside The Atlantic's Jonathan Lemire and Lincoln Project strategist Stuart Stevens to pull apart a Senate race Trump personally owns, the 1.7 million Texas veterans and 16% independents who could decide it, and the quiet administration de...

Paul Rieckhoff walks his kids to their public school on primary day in New York City — and has to explain to his seven-year-old why Dad, an Iraq veteran and 9/11 first responder, isn't allowed to vote. That's the story behind the Let Vets Vote lawsuit, and in this crossover special with the Independent Voter Podcast from IVN.US, Paul sits down with Chad and Sean to lay out the full strategy. One million veterans in New York City locked out. Sixteen fully closed primary states. Public resources funding private party elections where the real winners are chosen before November even ar...

Adam Kinzinger is back. The former GOP congressman, Air National Guard lieutenant colonel, January 6th committee member, and founder of Country First sits down with Paul to answer the question nobody in corporate media wants to touch head-on: will Donald Trump attack the 2026 elections, and if he does, what will it actually look like? Kinzinger lays out why a blowout is the best defense against an authoritarian steal, where the real danger lives — the margins, the close races, the House deciding who it seats — and why the two-thirds of Republicans who are not ride-or-die with Trump are finally starting to s...

Pete Hegseth wasn't on the USS Abraham Lincoln when sailors were stuck at sea for more than a year, running short on rations, reporting suicide attempts, and watching supply bases get taken out by drone strikes. He showed up for the homecoming photo op. Paul Rieckhoff joins Connell McShane at News Nation to call it exactly what it is — a 2028 presidential campaign being run out of the Pentagon, with internal camps already forming around JD Vance and Dan Driscoll on one side and Hegseth loyalists on the other. The only person in close November races people are running away fr...

President Mayhem is off the rails, and he's getting more desperate by the day. On this WTF Wednesday edition of Independent Americans, Paul Rieckhoff breaks down Trump's unhinged Iran remarks — publicly suggesting it would be "a very small price to pay" to let Iran take out Los Angeles and San Diego — and why that kind of talk about American cities can never be normalized, no matter how numb we've become. This is what reckless, unchecked executive power sounds like out loud.

From there, Paul pivots to the good news hiding below the radar. Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro just...

Trump is retreating to friendly turf while the ground shifts under the whole rigged two-party system. Paul Rieckhoff takes you inside a Media Blitz week — a CNN hit with Erin Burnett and a News Nation sit-down with Chris Cuomo and independent Senate candidate Seth Bodnar — to lay out what the polls, the propaganda machine, and the president's travel schedule are actually telling us one month out from the biggest election of our lifetime. GOP senators are quietly comparing 2026 to the 2006 wipeout. Internal numbers are worse than public ones. And Trump's approval with independents has fallen into single digits, a floo...

The last American troops have left Iraq. Donald Trump actually did what Obama and Biden wouldn't. But the present under the tree is a new, unauthorized, never-ending Iran war that most of the country opposes, 19 Americans dead since Operation Epic Fury began, carriers hung out to dry in the Gulf, and a Congress that has been steamrolled for a generation. Paul lays out the uncomfortable truth no elected leader wants to say out loud: you don't stop this war by firing Pete Hegseth or flipping the House. You stop it by stopping Trump.

From there, the conversation...

The rigged two-party system just picked a fight with the wrong people. Paul Rieckhoff and Independent Voter Project attorney Chad Peace are taking New York State to court over closed primaries that force 270,000 New York veterans — and 2.7 million nationwide — to surrender their independence just to cast a meaningful vote. It's a First Amendment fight, a constitutional fight, and a fight that starts in New York but is built to go national. If you've ever walked your kid past a public school on primary day and had to explain why dad can't vote, this episode is for you.

From...

Hegseth calls the press treasonous. From Fordham to Imus to NewsNation. Preparation beats panic. And a love letter to NYC.

Pete Hegseth just labeled the press treasonous. The White House calls reporters the enemy of the state. And somewhere between the hot takes and the hate mail, working journalists still have to show up every day and tell Americans the truth. On this Friday Football edition, Paul sits down with News Nation anchor Connell McShane — one of the most fair, prepared, and genuinely decent people in cable news — to pull back the curtain on how a ce...

Paul Rieckhoff is on the courthouse steps in Foley Square, filing suit against the state of New York. The question in front of the court is as old as the republic and as urgent as this news cycle: does the right to vote derive from citizenship, or from joining a political party? In New York, 25.4% of the electorate — 3.1 million voters — is shut out of the primaries that actually decide most elections. Public schools. Public workers. Public machines. Private party gatekeeping. It is unfair, un-American, and the plaintiffs argue, unconstitutional.

This episode captures the launch of Let Vets Vote...