After 75 Days of Shutdown, They End It Like This? (w/ Jake Sherman)
Bulwark Takes
The Bulwark
4.7 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 1 May 2026
⏱️ 23 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Sam Stein talks with Jake Sherman about a week of House chaos that somehow ended in a string of wins—key bills passed, a shutdown quietly ended, and hardliners once again backed down. They break down why the threats never stick, how Mike Johnson keeps his conference in line, and why Republicans are still sticking with Trump even as his numbers slide—plus what it all means for redistricting and the coming midterms.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey, everyone. It's me, Sam Stein again, managing out of The Bullwork, and I am joined by Jake Sherman, founder of Punch Bowl, a fellow Camp Lorwood alum. |
| 0:10.5 | Jake and I went to the same camp. I'm a little bit older, I think, than James. |
| 0:13.5 | Yeah, but Sam, people don't realize the significance of Camp Laurewood in northeastern Jewish camp lore. It's just, it is, it was such a |
| 0:24.1 | powerhouse for Connecticut kids for so long. And we're not talking, Sam, about a fancy camp. |
| 0:31.0 | No. We are talking about a very rudimentary. It had a lake. It had a lake. It had several lakes. |
| 0:54.2 | It has two pools. The facilities were great, but it's not like the kind of camp that you have like, you're like chilling in air, although I do think they have air-conditioned bunks now, but back in the 90s. Back in the 90s, we were not in air-conditioned bucks. All right? Elliot Honing went there too, right? He did. He did. And I'm trying to think who else. You know who else went there? Craig Breslow of the Red Sox. Oh, no. Yep. Oh, no. I have my problem with Craig these days, but we won't, we won't hold that against him. He's a camp, Laura would a love. That really sucks. |
| 1:11.5 | Okay, well, we're not here to talk about camp or Jewish camps, for that matter. |
| 1:14.5 | I could go on for hours. |
| 1:15.8 | We're here to talk about the house and what's happened here. Jake is, I think, I don't want to inflate your fucking ego. Fuck. All right. Jake's one of the best reporters on the house. |
| 1:24.9 | Get it out of my system. |
| 1:26.3 | He covers it better than anyone. |
| 1:29.3 | His head is |
| 1:30.1 | giant for that reason because everyone tells him how great he is, but he is good. So I haven't |
| 1:34.5 | been following the drama this week as closely as Jake has. And I just felt like it's important |
| 1:38.8 | to go over what actually transpired because it's meaningful. We're going to do that. |
| 1:42.1 | And then we're going to get into some larger picture stuff by the state of the race and what we think about redistricting and the |
| 1:49.0 | midterms. Before we do that, just a quick plug, subscribe to the bulwark. Subscribe to Punchball. |
| 1:54.3 | I'm going to do that too. And then we got two live shows coming up for the bulwark out in San Diego |
| 1:58.5 | in LA, May 20th and May 21st. Go to the bulwark.com |
| 2:02.2 | slash events for tickets to those. You get to go to those, Sam? Well, I'm in them. If you want to |
| 2:06.5 | come out west. I don't really, but that's exciting for you. Maybe we can make you our surprise |
| 2:13.8 | guest at the other one. All right, a lot of legislative business day. We're recording at like |
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