Dear listeners,
Wow, some of you had strong opinions about last week’s episode. Sometimes they were even strongly positive opinions! But not always. Here at Central Air, we hear your feedback, and we promise no Donald Trump impressions this week — but we can’t promise that forever, because we are fiercely independent journalists who don't take orders from anyone, not even our paying customers.
What we do have for you this week is a conversation with Tim Miller, host of The Bulwark podcast, about his recent trip to Minnesota, the apparent continuation of significant but less bombastic ICE operations in the state, and why we differ on the extent to which immigration is a political pitfall for Democrats in 2026, 2028 and 2029 — and on how much is gained by talking a lot about how terrible Donald Trump is.
We also talk about the especially lively debate on left-wing Twitter about whether it is pro-social for mentally ill homeless people to pee on the subway, and an undercurrent of discontent that’s driving that debate — New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani is increasingly breaking with the far left, including by having the NYPD resume sweeps of homeless encampments on city streets. As Tim notes, one thing that’s good about being charismatic is you can defy your core supporters and they let you get away with it.
Plus, we talk about the Supreme Court rebuke of Trump’s tariffs and we discuss the Citrini memo, a document that proposed an implausible scenario of an AI-driven financial crisis — but not implausible enough to be ignored by the stock market on Monday, apparently. (I also wrote about this yesterday).
We hope you enjoy the episode,
Josh
