Episodes

Dr. Diana Sorrentino, a social psychologist, author, and educator who has worked with transgender and gender diverse people and their families for 36 years, joins me to break down misconceptions about trans identity. Dr. Sorrentino lays out her case that gender identity forms before birth, explains how she helps parents move from rejection to support, and walks through the screening she says comes before puberty blockers, with hormones not before 16 and surgery after 18. We disagree on whether ...

Jerrad Christian, the Democratic nominee in Ohio's 12th Congressional District, returns to Purple Political Breakdown: Ohio Edition for a general election follow-up as he challenges Republican Rep. Troy Balderson this November. Jerrad won the May primary and now faces a district he describes as running from some of Ohio's wealthiest suburbs to some of its poorest Appalachian counties. We cover where his platform stands, how it contrasts with Balderson, and the Ohio issues driving the 2026 midter...

The Supreme Court just blocked Trump's mail ballot rule for the midterms. Meanwhile, Trump is promising a $5,000 "Trump Dividend" only if Republicans keep Congress, and an end to the Iran war "right after" the midterms, while diesel hits a record. His own Speaker says the checks need Congress, and the cost tops $1.2 trillion. Also: Trump's 28,700 stock trades, the Kennedy Center standoff, DOGE's $9.5 billion paid leave bill, measles deaths, the Fed's first hike since 2023, the Senate races in M...

Adam Terrell, author and director of The Joshua House, a halfway house ministry in Latah County, Idaho, joins the show to argue that prison is the wrong default punishment for non-violent crime. Adam says incarceration delays restitution to victims while taxpayers pay the bill, and he walks through the court-referred model his ministry runs: housing, employer connections, accountability reporting, and immediate work so repayment can begin. Radell pushes back on scalability, on whether Bible stud...

Jim Jordan has represented Ohio's 4th District since 2006. He hasn't held a public town hall since 2017. This week I sat down with Joshua Kolasinski, the Democrat running against him, for a full hour on what he'd actually do in Washington and how he plans to reach voters in a district that isn't close. We got into a total stock trading ban for members of Congress and their spouses, term limits, universal health care versus a public option, property taxes and school vouchers, d...

Crispin Gravatt is the Communications Director for the Todd Achilles for Idaho campaign. Achilles is running as an independent for the U.S. Senate against three term Republican incumbent Jim Risch. The Democratic candidate has since exited, leaving a head to head race. Todd was on the road, so Gravatt joined in his place. Gravatt argues most Idahoans sit in the independent middle and vote the person, not the party, and says the plan did not change when the Democrat exited. He argues Risch ha...

Sam Cebula, organizing director for Digital Ground Game, joins the show to explain the organization's roots in 2020's Georgia Senate runoffs, its scale up to seven canvassing houses and 330,000 plus doors knocked in 2024, and why the group, founded in 2025, is targeting Ohio's 9th and Michigan's 7th for the 2026 midterms. Sam also discusses how the org manages relationships with political content creators, its focus on Ukraine accountability and election integrity, and why he believes local poli...

An armed man forced his way through a crowd toward Dr. Amy Acton, the Democratic nominee for Ohio governor, while she spoke at the Mahoning County Democratic Party tent at the Canfield Fair on Sunday, September 6, 2026. Multiple people were knocked down. Patrick Havas, 38, of Canfield, was taken into custody and booked at the Mahoning County Jail on charges of disorderly conduct and two counts of assault. This is an emergency episode of Purple Political Breakdown, Ohio Edition. No script, no pr...

Ohio's Democratic nominee for governor won't debate. Ohio's Republican nominee has accepted two invitations. Neither has ever held elected office, and right now the plan is for you to pick one without ever seeing them answer a hard question in the same room. This week: Issue 3 explained in plain English, including the part the official ballot language gets wrong. The Ohio Supreme Court orders Trenton, in Butler County, to put a data center ban in front of its own voters. Two Republicans an...

On Monday the Supreme Court let the President keep building a 400 million dollar ballroom on the White House grounds. It did not rule that the ballroom is legal. It ruled that the people who sued could not prove they were injured enough to be allowed through the door, and Chief Justice John Roberts dissented and called the project likely unlawful. Nobody has ruled on that question. Nobody may ever rule on it. That is the thread running through this entire episode. The check still exists on pape...

Todd Sloan is a defense attorney from Auburn, New York and an independent candidate for Congress in NY-24, a heavily Republican seat held by Rep. Claudia Tenney. He calls himself a fundamental constitutionalist, and his slogan is Kickstart Congress: affordability, integrity, and loyalty to the district. Sloan argues Congress has spent decades handing its Article I authority to the executive branch, and makes the case that tariffs are taxes and a congressional power. Radell presses him on New ...

Ohio's two biggest races are both inside the margin of error, and this week the money, the ads, and the courts all moved at once. A Pennsylvania financier has now put at least $30 million behind Vivek Ramaswamy through a federal super PAC, which is more than Amy Acton has reported raising for her entire campaign. Financial disclosures show Sen. Jon Husted's wife held Intel stock while he worked to advance the company's Ohio project. A federal judge blocked Ohio's new proof of citizenship requir...

Everybody in power announced something this week. Almost nobody showed the paperwork. Trump promised an economic D-Day against Iran, then his Treasury Secretary stood at a podium and declined to pull the trigger, saying out loud that he did not want to blow up the global financial system. Trump announced a beef deal to bring your grocery bill down, but there is no executive order, no named suppliers, and the window closes days after you vote. The Supreme Court handed him a win on mail ballots w...

Iowa's 1st Congressional District was decided by fewer than 800 votes last cycle, and this year it is headed for a third straight rematch between the same two major-party candidates. Michael Bridgford thinks that fatigue is exactly the opening for something different. A seventh-generation farm kid turned small business owner and financial adviser from the Quad Cities, Bridgford is running as an independent in what he calls the tightest district in the country, and he joins Radell to make the cas...

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...