Episodes

A leaked memo from the campaign arm of Senate Republicans says data centers are "the anchor hanging around Jon Husted's neck." That is not opposition research. That is the National Republican Senatorial Committee, in writing, to artificial intelligence companies. This week, Ohio politics ran through one issue: data centers, and who pays for them. Host Radell Lewis breaks down the leaked NRSC memo, the OpenAI data center in Piketon, the tax exemption that missed its own state estimate by eleve...

Trump posted a map of the Strait of Hormuz labeled "New US Territory" while the 60-day negotiating window with Iran expired with no talks scheduled. A preservation trust told the Supreme Court the White House is racing to pour concrete on a $400 million ballroom before a judge can stop it. Court filings in Minnesota describe federal agents recording meetings in churches and union halls. And Disney sued the FCC over a license review the agency has not ordered in fifty years. The thread: power is...

Two hours. One subject. Every documented corruption and abuse of power question about the Trump administration, in order, with the receipts attached and the counterargument stated out loud every single time. John Yoo wrote the torture memos. He is, by a wide margin, the most expansive thinker on presidential power in modern American life. And he looked at a US military strike that killed two unarmed men clinging to wreckage and wrote that it was, quote, simply murder. That is where this episode...

Ohio has an open race for Secretary of State for the first time since 2018, and almost nobody is watching it. Republican Treasurer Robert Sprague faces Democratic state Rep. Allison Russo, with Libertarian Tom Pruss also on the November 3 ballot. This episode breaks down what the office actually controls, where both candidates stand, and the Issue 3 disagreement that split the Democratic ticket in public. On August 7, Democratic governor nominee Dr. Amy Acton announced she supports Issue 3, the...

Four institutions told this administration no. Four times, the answer was to find another door. This week on Purple Political Breakdown: the Senate confirmed Todd Blanche, Trump's former criminal defense attorney, as Attorney General by a vote of 50 to 49 at 4:31 in the morning on a Saturday. Bill Cassidy stood on the Senate floor, said the nominee had exempted the President from IRS audits and was running a department that sues the President's political enemies, and then voted yes anyway. We ...

Why does the House of Representatives still have 435 seats when the country's population has roughly tripled since that number was set? I sat down with Matt Beat, better known online as Mr. Beat, to break down one of the least discussed reform ideas in American politics. Matt is a former social studies teacher turned YouTuber with over 1.4 million subscribers, and he has become one of the loudest voices pushing to uncap the House. In this conversation he lays out his case: that the House is supp...

Ohio's 7th Congressional District has a deadline, and it lands Monday afternoon. Rep. Max Miller let the 90 day withdrawal mark pass on Wednesday, which killed any chance of a special primary. That leaves August 10 as the last day county party chairs can name a replacement on the ballot, and Cuyahoga County has to give two days notice before that meeting even happens. If Miller withdraws after Monday, there is no Republican on the ballot against Democrat Brian Poindexter. Meanwhile a co/efficie...

Purple Political Breakdown: Political Solutions Without Political Bias. Host Radell Lewis breaks down the week in national politics, Trump corruption, the 2026 midterms, and the stories other coverage is flattening. This week opens with two pieces of audio and the gap between them. Hasan Piker responds to Abdul El-Sayed's Michigan Senate primary win by calling Democrats Islamophobic and relitigating a race that was already over. El-Sayed responds by saying there is more that unites us than divi...

Ohio's 7th Congressional District was rated Solid Republican. It is not anymore. This week the Purple Political Breakdown Ohio Edition covers the race almost nobody outside Ohio was watching, and the reasons it moved. Congressman Max Miller is facing domestic abuse allegations from his former wife, Emily Moreno, who is the daughter of Republican Senator Bernie Moreno. Miller denies the allegations and has filed a defamation suit. No charges were filed in the police matter that made the records ...

urple Political Breakdown, hosted by Radell Lewis. Political Solutions Without Political Bias. The Supreme Court struck down this administration's tariffs. So it found a different law and taxed 99.4 percent of everything America imports anyway. A federal judge blocked the order rewriting how you get a mail ballot. So it went to the Supreme Court, and the Postal Service started building the portal regardless. OpenAI sealed two AI models in a sandbox to test whether they could hack. The models pi...

What if the way to get big money out of politics is to make every voter a donor? In this episode I sit down with Dan McMillan, a historian, former Brooklyn prosecutor, and founder of Make Voters the Donors, to break down his proposed reform called Voter Dollars. The idea, as Dan explains it: every registered voter would get an account of public campaign cash, one hundred dollars in a presidential year and fifty for the midterms, that they can only assign to the candidates they choose. With roug...

What's the bigger threat to America right now: Israel's influence on U.S. politics, or Trump and MAGA itself? I sat down with a leftist creator (Cousin Ali on TikTok, Project Socio on YouTube) to dig into a tweet I put out that got people fired up, and to actually have the conversation instead of a shouting match. He makes the case that AIPAC's money and influence over Congress and the presidency, including Trump's Iran policy, makes Israel's lobby a uniquely dangerous force in American politic...

Ohio's governor race just got a new label. Cook Political Report moved Ramaswamy vs. Acton from Lean Republican to Toss Up, and Ohio's largest police union broke decades of habit to endorse a full Republican statewide ticket for the first time in recent memory. This episode covers both, plus the ten Ohio House seats that could decide whether Republicans keep veto proof control of Columbus. In this episode: the Fraternal Order of Police of Ohio endorses Vivek Ramaswamy, Jon Husted, and Keith Fab...

This week on Purple Political Breakdown, Radell Lewis breaks down a night where every major American institution seemed to bend under pressure at once. The Iran war didn't end, it got worse. After the June ceasefire collapsed, the US and Iran have traded strikes across the region, eighteen American service members have died since February, and Congress is now being asked to approve $87.6 billion more to keep funding it, all while Trump quietly approved a 30-year nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia i...

Ohio just landed at number one on CNBC's 2026 list of the best states for business, the first time it has ever finished first. In this Ohio Edition of the Purple Political Breakdown, Radell Lewis follows the money and the power lines behind that ranking, and breaks down who is actually on your 2026 ballot in Ohio's 11th and 12th Congressional Districts. We get into Elon Musk's five million dollar check to V PAC: Victors, Not Victims, the super PAC backing Vivek Ramaswamy, and the billionaire do...

The United States is bombing Iran for a fourth straight night, Senator Lindsey Graham is dead and his Senate seat went to his sister, the agency that certifies your voting machines just got emptied by email, and a text message that would not admit it was a bot tried to move Radell's opinion on Israel. The thread tonight is one question: who actually gets to decide, and who is being kept out of the room? In this episode of Purple Political Breakdown: Iran and the Strait of Hormuz: the June memo...

What would you actually change about American government if you could? On this bonus episode of Purple Political Breakdown, Radell Lewis runs through a full personal policy wish list built live on stream, covering Supreme Court reform (term limits, ethics enforcement, and a cautious lean toward court packing), presidential immunity, pardon reform, filibuster reform, House expansion, voting reform (STAR and approval voting), a proposed federal Election Day holiday, billionaire tax reform and clos...

This week on Purple Political Breakdown: Trump's financial disclosure shows over 1.4 billion dollars in crypto related income tied to a company nobody can find on paper, the FBI has surged 260 analysts into re examining a Georgia election that's already been counted three times, and Russia hit Kyiv twice in five days right before a NATO summit. Radell connects the dots between all three, then digs into new Pew polling showing the world's confidence in America and Americans' confidence in their o...

Ohio sold fifteen thousand acres of public wildlife land to out of state frackers this week, days after officials killed a solar farm in Clark County. Meanwhile, over two thousand provisional ballots got thrown out in the May primary, and only 23 percent of Ohio's 18 year olds are registered to vote at all. The Supreme Court also handed down three rulings this week that land right back in Ohio, on mail ballots, birthright citizenship, and campaign finance. We close out with the two U.S. House ra...

This week is a different kind of Purple Political Breakdown: a solo, chat-driven deep dive on one question. Do you support packing the Supreme Court? Before you answer, Radell Lewis walks the entire board, because the honest version of this debate starts earlier than most coverage admits. You do not need new seats to pack a court if you control who fills the seats you already have. In 2016, Justice Scalia dies and Mitch McConnell blocks Merrick Garland for nearly a year on a "let the voters dec...

A war the country thought was over is back on, a housing bill almost everyone in Congress agreed on is frozen on the President's desk, and the Supreme Court just told the courts to stay out of its own immigration rulings. This week on Purple Political Breakdown, Radell Lewis connects one thread through all of it: a President who keeps choosing the fight over the people. In Nuanced News: the Iran ceasefire that already looks broken as fresh U.S. airstrikes hit this weekend, the Senate flip-flop ...

What does it take for a young, progressive Democrat to run for the Ohio Statehouse in a district that leans Republican? This week on the Purple Political Breakdown, Ohio Edition, I sit down with Daquan Neal, the Democratic nominee for Ohio House District 39, covering Northern Montgomery County and the Dayton area: Vandalia, Englewood, Huber Heights, Clayton, Northridge, Fort McKinley, Harrison Township, and Butler Township. Daquan is 30 years old, a Central State University graduate, and a fo...

The Iran ceasefire was supposed to be the win of the year. Three days after the signatures, the Strait of Hormuz is closed again, Lebanon is still burning, and the only people who seem sure it is holding are the ones who signed it. This week's Purple Political Breakdown pulls one thread through everything: the decisions that shape your life keep getting made in rooms you are not allowed to see. We get into the Iran memorandum and why a deal neither Israel nor Hezbollah signed is now supposed to...

Purple Political Breakdown: Ohio Edition takes you through three Ohio congressional races and the statewide news shaping the 2026 midterms. Host Radell Lewis breaks down the 6th, 7th, and 8th districts: Michael Rulli versus Elizabeth Kirtley in the east, the more competitive Max Miller versus Brian Poindexter race in the northeast, and Warren Davidson versus Vanessa Enoch in the southwest, the district Radell calls home. Before the districts, Radell follows the money. New campaign finance repor...