The Fed Holds, Redistricting Wars, DOGE’s New AI Tool

The Politics Guys

Michael Baranowski

Politics, News

4.5 • 772 Ratings

🗓️ 1 August 2025

⏱️ 70 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Mike and Ken open with a discussion of the Federal Reserve’s decision to leave interest rates unchanged, despite hectoring from President Trump for a major rate cut. The guys consider the case for and against lower interest rates, as well as the effect the Trump tariffs are having on the decision. From there, they consider the likelihood that the Supreme Court will ultimately invalidate most of President Trump’s tariffs. Next is a look at Texas’ mid-decade redistricting and the possibility that Democratic-controlled states (like California, most notably) may conduct their own between-Censuses redistricting in retaliation. Along the way, Ken convinces Mike that walking out of a mid-decade redistricting, as Texas Democrats are considering, is a reasonable response to the situation. They close with a discussion of DOGE’s new “AI Deregulation Decision Tool”, which is intended to be a key component in the agency’s goal of cutting 100,000 federal regulations by the one-year anniversary of President Trump’s second term. Mike sees the possibilities - and the peril - with Ken being highly skeptical that this tool won’t be used for highly partisan ends. The Politics Guys on Facebook | X Mike’s Substack: What Fresh Hell is This? Check out the excellent Sustainable Planet podcast. Listener support helps make The Politics Guys possible. You can support us or change your level of support at patreon.com/politicsguys or politicsguys.com/support. On Venmo, we’re @PoliticsGuys. The Politics Guys is part of The Democracy Group, a network of podcasts that examines what's broken in our democracy and how we can work together to fix it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Atheists, agnostics, long-haired widows, short-haired widows, vandal,
0:04.9	ghoulog.
0:05.1	I love the government, hug the government, hug the government, hug the government, love, the government, hug the government.
0:12.1	Welcome to the politics, guys, a place for bipartisan, rational, and civil debate on American politics and policy.
0:18.7	I'm Northern Kentucky University political scientist Michael
0:21.4	Barronowski. I'm joined today by my counterpart on the left, professor of law at Chase Law School,
0:26.7	Ken Katkin. Oh, hey, it's great to be back, Michael. Yeah, it's always enjoyable to do the show with you.
0:32.1	We don't get a chance to do it that often, and I am very much looking forward to it. But before we do get to our stories for this
0:41.2	week, I want to thank Estevan, a longtime listener and supporter. He recently renewed support
0:46.7	through Venmo, which is a thing that you can do. And as always, support links are in the show
0:51.1	notes. But Estefan, thank you so much. We really do appreciate our
0:54.7	supporters. We literally could not do this without you. So thanks very much. All right. So we'll open with,
1:01.7	well, this week, the Federal Reserve's Open Market Committee declined to lower interest rates
1:06.7	for the fifth consecutive time, keeping them at the current 4.25 to 4.5% level.
1:13.1	Now, this non-move, though, wasn't without controversy. And as you would expect, the
1:17.7	controversy was led by President Trump, who's been pushing very hard for the Fed to drop rates.
1:23.4	On True Social, he posted that. Jerome, too late Powell, has done it again, three exclamation points, you know, when you really want to make that point. that Jerome too late Powell has done it again three exclamation points
1:29.1	you know when you really want to make that point he's too late too angry too stupid and too
1:33.8	political to have the job of Fed share ah there was a bunch more there but I think you get the
1:38.6	point at this point now on the vote most Fed votes are unanimous, but this one wasn't.
1:45.8	Fed governors Christopher Waller and Michelle Bowman, who were both appointed by Trump,
1:50.2	voted against the decision to hold the rate steady for the first time in 32 years
	...

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