There's a pattern worth naming in American politics right now, and it isn't a one-party story. It's about what happens when the institutions built to check power get cleared out or bent right when checking power matters most. Start with the Electio…
This month CNBC named Ohio the number one state for business in America, the first time the state has finished first since the rankings began in 2007. Ohio climbed from thirtieth in 2007 to fifth last year to first today. As an Ohioan, I think that …
Most political commentary is reactive. A ruling drops, a bill passes, a scandal breaks, and everyone scrambles to have the correct opinion about it within the hour. What almost nobody does is the opposite exercise: sit down, with no news peg, and wr…
Two rulings came down from the Supreme Court on the same day this term, both answering the same question: can a president fire the head of an independent agency? One went for the administration. One didn't. Most coverage ran it as a split decision, …
Ohio's 9th and 10th Congressional Districts are drawing national attention this cycle, and for good reason. Both feature incumbents facing real headwinds, and both illustrate something bigger about where Ohio politics stands heading into November. …
"Court packing" is a phrase that ends conversations. One side hears a partisan power grab, the other hears overdue payback, and everyone retreats to their corner. This week I tried to have the conversation anyway, start to finish, and the honest ver…
Every election season we are trained to focus on the names at the top of the ballot. This year in Ohio, the more important story may be the rules of the game itself, and who is paying to set them. Start with the money. The latest campaign finance r…
Every cycle we hear that Americans are exhausted by the two party system. Most of the time it stays an abstraction. Then occasionally a race comes along that turns the abstraction into a real test. Idaho's 2026 U.S. Senate race is shaping up to be o…
Every so often a single week in state politics tells you everything you need to know about who has power and who does not. The past week in Ohio was one of those weeks, and most of it never reached the average voter. So let me lay it out plainly. A…
I host a nonpartisan political podcast, which means I spend a lot of time watching politicians talk and asking one question: is this an answer or a performance? This week I tried a new format. I took the full Michigan U.S. Senate Democratic primary…
This week's Purple Political Breakdown opened with a single clip: the President, asked on national television why he broke his no-new-wars promise, replying that he never guaranteed no new wars. Set the politics aside for a moment and notice what th…
We are trained to ignore safe seats. When a district is drawn so far to one side that the result is a foregone conclusion, the political world moves on. This year, two Ohio congressional races test that habit, and both reward a second look. Ohio's …
When people ask me who is going to win Ohio's 1st Congressional District, I tell them to stop looking at the candidates for a second and look at the map. Because the most consequential decision in this race was not made by a voter. It was made at a …
"Progressive" might be the most used and least defined word in American politics. We throw it across the aisle as praise or as an accusation, and we rarely stop to agree on what it actually describes. That gap is not harmless. When a word means ever…
Most weeks, the news arrives as a pile of unrelated headlines. This week, they were the same story told three times. The thread: when the people in power arrange the system around themselves, everyone else gets handed the bill. Consider the cost o…
Here is something to consider. Every single statewide executive office in Ohio is on the ballot this year, and not one incumbent is defending a seat. Governor, attorney general, secretary of state, auditor, treasurer, all of it wide open, because te…
A note on purpose, from the host of Purple Political Breakdown I host a political podcast, and the honest temptation in this work right now is to show up every week and simply narrate how bad things are. There is an audience for that. There is even…
For the second cycle in a row, Ohio's 7th Congressional District has shown up on Democratic flip lists, and for the second cycle in a row, most national observers are about to talk themselves out of taking it seriously. They should not. The combinat…
Subtitle: Louisiana v. Callais, the gerrymandering cascade, and the pattern connecting four of this week's biggest stories. I want to walk you through something I think gets buried in the daily news cycle, because the version of this story most o…
On Tuesday, May 5, Ohio held its 2026 primary election. 791,355 Democrats requested ballots. 817,159 Republicans did the same. That gap is the tightest the state has seen in a midterm primary since 2006, the year that became a high-water mark for Oh…
When President Trump posted an AI generated image of himself in the likeness of Jesus Christ on Truth Social last month, the backlash came not just from the political left but from his own evangelical and Catholic base. Pope Leo XIV publicly called …
On May 5, 2026, I voted in the Ohio primary election. I also recorded the entire process, from voter lookup to polling booth, as a bonus episode of Purple Political Breakdown. What I want to share here is not who I voted for. It is what the experien…
Every once in a while a single week of American politics carries enough weight to reshape the next decade. The last week of April 2026 was one of those weeks, and most of the country is already moving on. As host of Purple Political Breakdown, I spe…
When the Ohio Redistricting Commission unanimously approved a new congressional map on October 31, 2025, most national coverage focused on Marcy Kaptur's 9th District becoming significantly tougher for Democrats. Far less attention went to what happ…