Zeroing in on the three main battlegrounds shaping early 2026: healthcare reform, immigration enforcement, and President Trump’s assertive posture on the world stage. The hour opens with discussion of a Trump-hosted rural healthcare roundtable, where the president sharply criticized Obamacare for funneling resources away from rural hospitals while enriching insurance companies. Clay and Buck explain that Trump is positioning healthcare affordability as a core issue for working Americans, particularly in rural communities that have seen hospital closures, higher costs, and reduced access. Trump argues that despite massive increases in federal spending since Obamacare passed, rural hospitals have received only a fraction of Medicaid funding, reinforcing the hosts’ long-held claim that the law increased costs, expanded bureaucracy, and incentivized fraud rather than improving care.
The conversation expands into a broader critique of the U.S. healthcare system, with Buck highlighting estimates that 10 percent of the entire federal budget is lost to fraud, much of it tied to healthcare and Medicaid. They discuss Wall Street Journal reporting showing that millions of Obamacare enrollees appear to have no healthcare claims at all, suggesting mass auto-enrollment and subsidy abuse. Clay and Buck argue this undercuts Democratic warnings of an “Obamacare apocalypse” if subsidies were reduced, pointing instead to evidence that enrollment declines are largely the result of fraud crackdowns rather than people losing necessary coverage. Trump’s announcement of a $50 billion increase in rural healthcare funding over five years is framed as both policy correction and political reset, aimed squarely at voters Republicans lost in past midterms over healthcare.
Secretary of Agriculture, Brooke Rollins, outlines a fundamental overhaul of U.S. food, nutrition, and agricultural policy in this interview, describing it as a cornerstone of President Trump’s second‑term agenda to lower costs, improve public health, and strengthen rural America. Rollins explains that USDA, in close partnership with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has introduced new dietary guidelines that reverse the old food pyramid by prioritizing “real food” such as protein, whole milk, butter, fruits, and vegetables over carbohydrate‑heavy, ultra‑processed products, arguing this shift directly targets a chronic disease crisis that consumes roughly 40 percent of federal tax dollars. She links nutrition reform to economic policy, noting that nearly 70 percent of Americans’ diets come from processed foods while Biden‑era inflation, higher labor costs, fuel prices, and interest rates devastated farmers and drove grocery prices skyward, with cumulative inflation exceeding 23 percent and SNAP spending rising 40 percent. Rollins says early indicators under Trump show falling fuel costs, easing inflation, and improving wages, and she stresses that redirecting the roughly $400 million per day USDA spends on nutrition programs toward healthier, domestically produced food—by requiring SNAP retailers to significantly expand real‑food options—will both improve access for low‑income families and create a “golden age” for American farmers and ranchers, particularly beef producers. She frames the initiative as fiscally and strategically essential, arguing it will save hundreds of billions in long‑term healthcare costs, boost U.S. agriculture, and address a national security concern in which three‑quarters of young Americans currently fail military fitness standards, concluding that food policy is inseparable from America’s economic strength, public health, and future prosperity.
Our data guru Ryan Girdusky points out that Trump deported enough illegals from Minnesota that they'll lose a congressional seat. He lays out the far‑reaching consequences of immigration enforcement on the 2030 census, congressional apportionment, and Electoral College math. Girdusky explains that illegal immigrants are counted for House representation but cannot vote, giving blue states disproportionate political power with fewer actual voters. As Trump‑era enforcement reduces the foreign‑born population in states like California, New York, Illinois, and Minnesota, those states are poised to lose congressional seats and electoral votes, while fast‑growing red states such as Texas, Florida, Georgia, and Arizona gain power. Clay and Buck frame this as the real reason Democrats are fighting ICE so aggressively: not just ideological opposition, but fear of losing political influence for the next decade.
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