Your Town Lost Its Local News and No One Is Watching What Your Mayor Does Anymore

Your Town Lost Its Local News and No One Is Watching What Your Mayor Does Anymore

Local news is dying and no one is replacing it. Newsrooms have shut down across the country. No one is sitting in on your city council meetings anymore. No one is filing public records requests on your school board. The platforms that filled that gap were built to spread the most engaging content, not the most accurate. Misinformation travels 70% farther than truth on social media and the people running these platforms are not going to fix it. Jon and Lisa talk with Rachel Lobdell, founder of News Creator Corps, about why local news is collapsing, what independent creators are doing to fill the gap, and why your media diet is harder to control than you think.

Tesla, Pepsi and 86 Other Companies Paid Zero Taxes Last Year and Got Refunds

Why do corporations pay no taxes? 88 of the biggest companies in America paid zero in federal taxes last year. Some got money back from the government. Tesla made $5 billion in profit and paid nothing. Pepsi and Yum Brands did the same thing. This is completely legal. Jon and Lisa break down how companies avoid taxes by moving billions through Ireland, Malta and the Cayman Islands. They cover the SpaceX IPO and why everyday people are going to lose money on a $1.75 trillion company that has never turned a profit. They get into the housing crisis and why working people keep getting blamed for problems created by the ultra wealthy.

She Spent 17 Years Documenting How Christian Nationalism Is Being Used to Destroy Democracy

Katherine Stewart has spent 17 years going inside the rooms where the movement to dismantle American democracy operates. Her newest book Money Lies and God documents the machinery, the money, and the people behind it. And she says it is further along than most people realize. Christian nationalism is not a religion. It is an anti-democratic political ideology that exploits faith for power. It has a billionaire funded legal machine, voter turnout operations, dark money networks, and a disinformation infrastructure that has been building for decades. And it is now operating at the highest levels of the American government. Katherine breaks down who is funding it, why rank and file believers are being used to advance an agenda that works against their own economic interests, why the Supreme Court is not a firewall against authoritarianism, and how public schools became a deliberate target for the movement. This is not a conversation about religion. It is a conversation about power, money, and the deliberate dismantling of American democracy.

Inflation Is Up, Wages Are Down, Debt Is at a Record High. So Tell Me Again How America Is First.

In this episode of Signal Fire, Lisa Senecal and Jon Zieger examine the real-world outcomes of the modern “America First” agenda and ask who is actually benefiting from it. The conversation explores rising debt, inflation, Social Security, immigration, healthcare, and the growing influence of political patronage in American policymaking. They also discuss the long-term consequences of governing through short-term grievance politics rather than serious economic planning. Throughout the episode, they return to a larger question facing the country: what do citizens owe each other in a functioning democracy?

Elon Musk Is Not Avoiding Taxes. He Is Taxing You.

Jon Zieger and Lisa Senecal break down artificial intelligence and wealth inequality — and the alarming ways they are accelerating each other. Elon Musk is about to become the world's first trillionaire. He just called Social Security a Ponzi scheme. Jon argues the real story is not that billionaires avoid taxes. It is that they have engineered a system that taxes you instead. Data centers are driving electricity bills up 30% in the poorest communities. CEOs make 350 times what their median worker makes. Billionaire fortunes pass to heirs completely tax free. The system was not broken. It was designed this way.