Welcome to February, 2006, and congratulations on making it through January. I'm Charlie Sykes.

Welcome back to the To the Contrary podcast. A lot of things going on. Well, every week there's something going on.

We have to talk about the arrest of Don Lemon, the Department of Justice investigation.

Donald Trump's decision to shut down the Trump Kennedy Center.

Just imagine that.

And of course, we continue to wait on the U.S. Supreme Court

and ask the question whether the federal courts are actually going to serve as a guardrail to what's happening.

So we have a lot of ground to cover on this, the first podcast, February

2026.

So setting us off for our first podcast in February, our good friend Harry Littman from Talking Fed's

podcast. Boy, there's so much for us to talk about, Harry.

Yeah, no kidding.

It feels like if it's impossible and then the pace picks up and redoubles and redoubles.

And it does seem as if not just the pace, but the kinds of transgressions. They break new norms and

legal boundaries. Most recently, the Don Lemon indictment. It just keeps coming. And I see this morning,

CNN is reporting, Justice Department expected to ramp up efforts to deliver on Trump's weaponization priorities.

So whatever you think is happening, it is not de-escalating.

But can we just take a step back because I want to talk about something you wrote last week

that turned out to be, I think, remarkably timely.

As you know, over the weekend, Donald Trump, Brave Sir Donald ran away. He renames the

Kennedy Center, the Trump Kennedy Center, and then so on brand. He insidifies it and then shuts

it down, completely shuts it down, turns the lights off for the next two years because the

...