We've talked about having the best economy in the world.

We've talked about asserting American leadership around the world

with the best and the safest roads, railroads, ports, airports.

Here in Washington, we've heard countless speeches and promises

and white papers from experts.

But today, we're finally getting this done. So my message to the American

people is this. America's moving again, and your life is going to change for the better.

I'm Sarah Kensier, the author of the bestselling books, The View from Flyover Country, and Hiding in Plain Sight.

I'm Andrea Chalupa, a journalist and filmmaker, and the writer and producer of the journalistic thriller, Mr. Jones, about Stalin's genocide famine in Ukraine.

And this is Gaslit Nation, a podcast covering corruption in the United States and rising autocracy around the world.

It's finally Infrastructure Week, as you heard from our opening clip, of President Biden finally

signing a infrastructure package. Happy Infrastructure Week, everyone. Infrastructure Week is much like

Shark Week, but with more sharks, because this was a bipartisan infrastructure bill supported by

Republicans, including Mitch McConnell. To be clear, the Republicans in the House, who are a trashier

version of the Republicans in the Senate, are moving a trashier version of the Republicans in the Senate,

are moving to harass and punish along with their Trumpian base, the Republican colleagues

who dared to help their constituents by voting for the bipartisan infrastructure package.

If that sounds ridiculously stupid, we keep telling you that autocrats and aspiring autocrats are ridiculously stupid and in a lot of

ways self-destructive. Putin, for instance, who will get to later in the show, may wield a lot of

power as a global terrorist, but Russia continues to suffer, its economy shrinking and poverty

on the rise, fueling political arrest that's being

met by increasingly brutal repression. That pattern cannot sustain itself. Something eventually has got

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