4.2 • 4.8K Ratings
🗓️ 21 November 2025
⏱️ 51 minutes
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President Trump signed a bill ordering the Department of Justice to release all unclassified material related to Jeffrey Epstein. The bill - signed on November 19th - calls on the DoJ to deliver the files within 30 days. The president initially resisted Congressional efforts to sign the bill before reversing course ahead of a House vote. Democrats rallied around the push to get the files out, but are they picking the wrong fight?
The affordability issue was a boon for Democrats in their sweeping victories in the 2025 elections. It could be the defining issue of the midterms. In the face of a cost of living crisis, the president rescinded a number of tariffs on vital goods last week. Will it be enough to win back the political ground he’s lost? Plus, the redistricting effort in Texas faces a loss in federal court. Could that impact the effort to create more seats in California and other blue states that looked to counter Texas Republicans?
As we look ahead to the Thanksgiving holiday, the panel shares what they're thankful for (with help from a few friends). Plus, KCRW remembers broadcasting pioneer Susan Stamberg.
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| 0:00.0 | Hey there, it's David Plotz, host of Slate's Political GabFest, the longest running politics podcast. |
| 0:05.5 | It can be hard to know what news is worth your attention, which is why every week my co-hosts, Emily Bazelon and John Dickerson and I find the most important stories of the week so you don't have to. |
| 0:14.5 | We dig into everything from Trump's immigration policies to critical court cases and everything in between. |
| 0:19.9 | We also keep some good humor while doing it. |
| 0:22.2 | Why is the tick-tack shape that way? |
| 0:24.9 | Listen to the political gap fest now and join us as we go even deeper on the daily news you're |
| 0:29.4 | already following. That's political gap vest wherever you get your podcasts. |
| 0:35.9 | Welcome to another left, right and center, everybody. I'm David Green. You know, I think by any measure the past couple weeks have been ones President Trump would like to forget. November's elections brought victories for Democrats by margins that outpaced even their rosiest predictions. A government shutdown ended when Democrats appeared to cave. |
| 0:56.1 | That should have played as a win for Republicans. |
| 0:58.2 | But among the first orders of business when Congress came back was the release of emails in the Jeffrey Epstein case. |
| 1:05.1 | That story is now dominating the news, despite Trump and House Majority Leader Mike Johnson doing everything they could to squash it. |
| 1:12.0 | Trump's once allies, like Georgia Republican Marjorie Taylor Green, are seeing the Epstein saga |
| 1:16.3 | as potentially destructive for the president and his movement. |
| 1:19.4 | For people that stood hours, slept in their cars to go to rallies, have fought for truth and transparency, and to hold what we |
| 1:32.4 | consider a corrupt government accountable. Watching this actually turn into a fight has ripped MAGA apart. |
| 1:40.8 | Then another issue that even the president can't blister his way out of, |
| 1:45.2 | in a word, affordability. It was a con job. It was a con job. Affordability, they call it, |
| 1:51.1 | was a con job by the Democrats. The Democrats are good at a few things, cheating in elections |
| 1:56.7 | and conning people with facts that aren't true. It's no good if we do a great job and you don't talk about it. |
| 2:03.8 | And I don't think they talk about it enough. |
| 2:05.5 | You know, they have this new word called affordability and they don't talk about it enough. |
| 2:08.9 | It did not help that over those weeks of government shutdown, the White House found itself arguing against funding the federal nutrition program, supporting over 40 million Americans, |
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