From WNYC Studios. I'm Brian Lehrer. This is my daily politics podcast. It's Wednesday, February 25th.

We're going to start with a specific angle on the State of the Union address. I'll assume you either heard enough of it

yourself or have heard enough coverage this morning of the speech in general. We're going to look at

this as a big national campaign kickoff speech for the 26 midterms and how it intersects

with concerns that Trump will be doing everything he can to suppress democratic votes.

Our central clip from the speech, funny enough, and we'll play it right now, is where he references

Zeran Mamdani in a mostly positive way as Trump is urging Congress to pass the so-called

Save Act, which would require proof of citizenship documents to

register to vote, and that's not just for immigrants, by the way, and then government IDs

when you show up to vote, and a nationwide ban on most mail-in ballots. Trump actually called this

part of his hour and 47-minute speech, perhaps the most

important part, so let's take him seriously and add his word. Here's that clip.

And no more crooked mail-in ballots except for illness, disability, military, or travel. None.

And this should be an easy one. And by the way, it's polling at 89% including Democrats,

89%. And even the new communist mayor of New York City, I think he's a nice guy, actually.

Speak to him a lot.

Bad policy, but nice guy.

He just said they want people to shovel snow.

They got hit hard.

Want some to shovel snow, but if you apply for that job, you need to show two original forms of ID and a Social Security card.

Yet they don't want identification for the greatest privilege of them all voting in America.

Now it's no good. All right, that's from the

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