It’s Casual Friday! Sam hosts David Dayen, executive editor at the American Prospect, to break down the week in news. Then, Sam is joined by Jordan Holmes and Dan Friesen, co-hosts of the Knowledge Fight podcast, to discuss the recent Alex Jones-Sandy Hook trial. First, Sam walks through Merrick Garland’s first impactful moment as Donald Trump put him front and center in the raid on Mar-a-Lago, also touching on today’s IRA vote in the House, the banning of gender-affirming care for ADULTS in Florida, and Europe seeing its worst drought in five centuries. David Dayen then joins as he and Sam discuss how Manchin’s Inflation Reduction Act impacts the US’ healthcare infrastructure, looking first at its changes to ACA and ARP exchange rates, before diving deep into its empowerment of Medicare to negotiate drug prices, and why it’s so important despite its limitation to 10 drugs per year, and not kicking until the next presidential election is over, meaning a Ron DeSantis or Donald J. Trump might be able to take credit for capped Medicare prices. Next, they move on to the Climate provisions of the IRA, with David walking through the positives we can take, including significant investment in domestic production in next-gen tech, particularly when it comes to EVs and batteries, before parsing through the myriad carrots that drive the bill’s policy, how it employs the tax code throughout all of this, and why this essentially deputizes the US Treasury to interpret out climate provisions. After expanding on the tax credits that come from EVs that don’t yet exist, they wrap up by taking on Manchin’s disastrous fossil fuel provisions, from wider-scale requirements to lease fossil fuel extraction before leasing any permits for building renewable energy sites, to literally just “let me build my pipeline.” Then, Dan Friesen and Jordan Holmes join as they reflect on the evolution of the Alex Jones Conspiratorial Multiverse, his slow shift to Televangelism, and how the roots of his income (beyond largely being fear-driven) are still obscured from even the most learned Info Warrior.

And in the Fun Half, Sam and the MR Crew dive into the the interesting push by Republicans in Congress to now all of a sudden hate the FBI. Steve Doocy has had just about enough of that, as he spars with Elise Stefanik and Steve Scalise over their inability to “back the blue” anymore now that they’ve raided Trump’s home. Then they look at whether Brian Kilmeade’s producers hate him or if they were really that dumb to accidentally put on screen a photoshopped image of a Florida judge on Jeffrey Epstein’s body onboard the Lolita Express. Then, the MR universe gets a look behind the curtain as to what went down when Sam was able to mole his way onto the Dennis Prager Show (for approximately 5 seconds), and how, despite Prager’s aching for it, he won’t engage in spirited intellectual debate. Plus, your IM’s!

Check out David’s work at the Prospect here: https://prospect.org/topics/david-dayen/

Check out Knowledge Fight here: https://knowledgefight.com/