When Politics Meets the Pulpit

For the Kids. Period. (ft. NCAE President Tamika Walker Kelly)

Send us a message!!! [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2403414/fan_mail/new] We sat down with Tamika Walker Kelly, the six-year President of the North Carolina Association of Educators (NCAE), the state’s largest professional organization for public school employees. Tamika is an 18-year NC public school educator, a North Carolina Teaching Fellows alumna, and someone our own Chuck Wills knows personally: she taught his daughter. Jeezy, Manny, and Chuck went deep on the issues that don’t get nearly enough airtime: the NC General Assembly budget that is 320-plus days overdue. The “8% average raise” is actually a pay cut when you run the real numbers. School closures are tearing through communities from Martin County to Cumberland County to Chapel Hill. Why the “far-left” label thrown at NCAE by the Monroe mayor is a misfire. And what it will take to fix an educator shortage that goes far deeper than pipeline programs. Support the show [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2403414/support] 🎤 Listen: https://pardonthepolitics.com/  | linktr.ee/pardonthepolitics | Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube

They Wrote Themselves a Check

Send us a message!!! [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2403414/fan_mail/new] Season 3, Episode 21. The chaos was in a crockpot this week, and it came out fully cooked. Jeezy, Manny, and Chuck are back to break down one of the most brazen moves in recent political memory: Trump’s $1.776 billion Anti-Weaponization Fund. Starting as a lawsuit over leaked tax returns, this deal ended with a taxpayer-funded slush fund controlled by Trump’s own DOJ, no public disclosure, no congressional oversight, and, as Chuck dropped, Trump and his family are no longer subject to IRS audits. Jeezy lays out the structure cleanly: Trump sued, Trump’s DOJ settled, Trump’s AG controls the fund, and Trump can remove fund members. The boys ask the only question that matters: Is this accountability, or is it a publicly funded grievance machine? Then, the 2026 midterm primary map. Georgia’s Republicans can’t stop fighting each other, Kentucky buries the McConnell era, Pennsylvania shows Democrats what disciplined coalition-building actually looks like, and Manny drops the long game: Josh Shapiro and 2028. Plus, Chuck goes deep on the Thomas Massey primary numbers in Kentucky, and something in those numbers doesn’t smell right. Jeezy debuts the Pardon the Eulogy segment to send off one Tulsi Gabbard, former Director of National Intelligence. The Pickle of the Week lands in Cuba, where 94-year-old Raul Castro just received a federal indictment for a 1996 shoot-down, and Jeezy breaks down exactly why the timing isn’t accidental. In Spotlights: Manny reads the DNC’s 192-page post-2024 autopsy, and it’s not pretty, no mention of Gaza, Black male voters scapegoated, and DNC Chair Ken Martin disowned his own report. Chuck watches Elon Musk vs. Sam Altman and the Georgia judicial elections. Jeezy closes with a warning about RFK Jr. gutting the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, the panel that keeps mammograms, colonoscopies, and cancer screenings free under the ACA. And before we close, a major announcement: Pardon the Politics’ first-ever guest episode drops this Wednesday. NCAE President Tamika Walker Kelly comes to the pod, and if you care about public education, teachers’ rights, or the fight for North Carolina’s students, you need to tap in. Like. Share. Follow. And if don’t nobody love you, you already know. Support the show [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2403414/support] 🎤 Listen: https://pardonthepolitics.com/  | linktr.ee/pardonthepolitics | Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube

Donnie T Goes East, Jerome Goes Home

Send us a message!!! [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2403414/fan_mail/new] They said it was a quiet week. They were wrong. This week, Jeezy, Manny, and Chuck break down three of the biggest stories shaping America right now: TRUMP IN CHINA: Donnie T touches down in Beijing to meet Xi Jinping. No major breakthroughs, no major blowups, but the optics, the semiconductor vulnerability, the farmer betrayal, and the Taiwan question tell a much deeper story. Xi played chess. What was Trump playing? JEROME POWELL’S LEGACY: After eight years as Federal Reserve Chair, Jerome Powell is out. Did he save the economy, or leave us with a mess? The team breaks down COVID-era rate cuts, the inflation call that defined his tenure, the “transitory” moment, the soft landing, and what incoming Chair Kevin Warsh means for the Fed’s independence. NC & NATIONAL VOTING RIGHTS: Seven constitutional amendments are moving toward North Carolina’s November ballot. Manny maps everyone. Chuck reports on voting rights marches from Montgomery to Atlanta, and issues a challenge to every organizer listening. Plus: Bill Cassidy gets the Pickle (tried to thread the needle, discovered that the needle can’t be threaded in 2026), Jeezy keeps his eye on Mark Wayne Mullin at DHS, and Manny might be cheering for the wrong team in a Hurricanes state. Support the show [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2403414/support] 🎤 Listen: https://pardonthepolitics.com/  | linktr.ee/pardonthepolitics | Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube

Primaries, Pickles & Pocketbooks

Send us a message!!! [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2403414/fan_mail/new] It's Mother's Day weekend, but Jeezy, Manny, and Chuck are still on the job. Season 3, Episode 19 of Pardon the Politics starts with the guys giving a salute to moms and mother figures everywhere, making it clear that pets don't count, before getting into the main topics. The episode starts in Ohio and Indiana, where last week's primaries gave an early preview of the 2026 midterms. In Ohio, Sherrod Brown won the Democratic primary with almost 90% of the vote, setting up a big Senate race against current senator John Husted. The hosts talk about how Brown's name helps him, why Husted's path to the general election is tougher than it seems, and why Vivek Ramaswamy's role in the Ohio governor's race could be the most interesting story in politics right now. If the hantavirus situation changes, and the hosts have thoughts on what that could mean for a public health doctor running for governor, Amy Acton's position could take the race in an unexpected direction. Next, the attention shifts to Indiana, where Trump made a $12 to $13 million statement to Republican state legislators across the country. Five out of seven Trump-backed challengers defeated incumbents who refused to redraw districts in the middle of the decade. The hosts call this a clear punishment move, with an eye on 2028. Manny points out that this spending was 4,000 times higher than the last cycle, all for state senate seats that pay thirty thousand dollars a year. Chuck brings up that the Indiana Constitution says redistricting should follow the federal census. Their conclusion: Ohio showed us a battleground, while Indiana gave us a warning. After that, the discussion moves to the economy, and the hosts are straightforward about the situation. Chuck shares the real numbers: 115,000 jobs were added in April, but 83,387 job cuts were also announced that month. The unemployment rate is at 4.3% and hasn't changed, but the hosts point out that this number leaves out many people. Manny points out the most important data: the University of Michigan consumer sentiment index is at its lowest in 74 years, even lower than in 2008 or throughout COVID. The economy is now split into a K-shape, and if you're not near the top, the numbers you see in the news don't match your reality. Support the show [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2403414/support] 🎤 Listen: https://pardonthepolitics.com/  | linktr.ee/pardonthepolitics | Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube

Democracy Does Not Protect Itself

Send us a message!!! [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2403414/fan_mail/new] Season 3, Episode 18 opens where it needed to: with North Carolina's teachers. This past week, thousands marched on Raleigh in the biggest public education demonstration in state history, and the reason is simple. North Carolina is the only state in the country where teacher pay is projected to go down in 2025-26. Not hold steady. Down. While the state sits on a $951 million surplus. While the Republican-led legislature cannot pass a budget. And while the NC Supreme Court just vacated the 32-year-old Leandro school-funding case, the last constitutional protection for majority-Black, low-wealth districts like Halifax, Vance, and Robeson. Jeezy, Manny, and Chuck don't just cover the numbers they bring the receipts: the county supplement gap (Chapel Hill teachers make $10,650 more per year than teachers in Caswell County for the same credentials), the teacher who waits tables at Chili's on weekends just to survive, and the moment Jeezy drops the line of the episode: "With the way these kids are coming out, somebody's kitchen is gonna be on fire." Then SCOTUS handed down Louisiana v. Callais on April 29, a 6-3 ruling that Jeezy calls "one of the toughest ones" of the entire season. Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act is now functionally dead. Gone is the 40-year-old "results test" that let plaintiffs prove discrimination by showing it happened. Now you have to prove intent, which is almost impossible by design, especially when the Supreme Court already ruled in Rucho that partisan gerrymandering can't be challenged in federal court at all. Alabama and Tennessee called special redistricting sessions within 48 hours. The Trump DOJ confirmed it will target majority-minority districts nationwide. And North Carolina's federal voter-ID law,  upheld by a judge who personally believed it discriminated, is now locked in. Chuck names the pattern, Manny names the legal trap, and Jeezy names the stakes: "Democracy does not protect itself." Manny's Spotlight covers Walmart's rollout of electronic shelf labels to all 5,200+ U.S. stores by the end of 2026, the largest retail tech deployment in history. The technology itself isn't the problem. The problem is what it enables: surge pricing, surveillance pricing, and discriminatory pricing-by-proxy for Black and low-income shoppers who depend on Walmart as their only grocery option. Manny walks through the FTC study, the 23% Instacart price-variation finding, Walmart's $1 billion contract with VusionGroup, and why 12 states are already moving to ban the technology. The episode closes with Jeezy's Spotlight on King Charles's address to Congress a moment that looked ceremonial and hit like a sermon. A king standing before a republic to remind it that checks and balances don't enforce themselves, that freedom doesn't survive if you only defend it when it benefits your team, and that political loyalty becoming stronger than constitutional loyalty is how democracies die quietly. "It's sad," Jeezy says, "that that mirror has to be held by a king." Chuck replies: "And not the fake king." Pickle of the Week: James Comey and the DOJ. Jeezy makes the case that Todd Blanch and the Justice Department are the real pickles this week, not Come, because if 11 months of investigation can't hold up a "threatening the president's life" charge, the DOJ's last shred of credibility goes with it. Support the show [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2403414/support] 🎤 Listen: https://pardonthepolitics.com/  | linktr.ee/pardonthepolitics | Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube