DEFIANCE Daily

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Every weekday at 5 PM ET, host Miles Taylor dives into today's biggest political headlines and an in depth check into resisting Trump's power grab. Welcome to the DEFIANCE!

  1. 10h ago

    Trump's War Numbers Don't Add Up

    Turns out, you can dodge the War Powers Act with a rebrand—if you’re creative enough. New reporting confirms the Pentagon didn’t just glitch its casualty count from 18 to 14 last week; it quietly invented a second, separate “war” to reset Trump’s legal clock on congressional authorization. Same conflict, new folder.  Meanwhile in Venezuela, Trump’s been bragging about a 97 percent drop in drug trafficking. But behind closed doors, officials have told Congress that, after 67 strikes and 221 people killed, the cocaine supply hasn’t budged; the cartels just bought bigger boats. Back home, Michigan is now the epicenter of the country’s largest cyclospora outbreak, with more than 8,100 cases and no end in sight. Trump’s own former FDA food safety chief says the federal response is “approaching catastrophic.” So gutting public health funding makes it harder to trace a foodborne illness—who knew? And then there’s the manosphere problem nobody in Trump World wants to talk about. Andrew Tate, one of the online figures who helped deliver young men to Trump in 2024, is sitting in federal custody fighting extradition on trafficking and rape charges. Suddenly the White House wants nothing to do with him, despite reportedly intervening on his behalf before. Now there are questions about what Barron Trump knew. We talk with Ross Morales Rocketto—who’s building an alternative vision of masculinity for the same young men Tate spent years courting—about what happens when the movement’s biggest star becomes radioactive. And finally, we welcome Houston into our DEFIANCE, after residents there reminded everyone what actual solidarity looks like. Over 50 businesses shut down this weekend to demand justice for Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, who was killed by ICE agents in his own neighborhood. Well done, Houstonians.

  2. 15h ago

    MORNING DISPATCH: Why does Trump keep toying with nuclear bombs?

    The president has terrified close advisers with the prospect of nuclear escalation. Now, he's spreading his radioactive dreams overseas.

  3. 3d ago

    Trump Gets Owned in MAGA Losses ft Cliff Schecter

    It’s Friday, which around here means one thing: MAGA losses of the week, and this batch is a doozy. We are joined by Cliff Schecter to laugh at the chaos. A rally kid stole Trump’s thunder with what might be the greatest impromptu impression of him ever caught on camera. Jack Reacher himself, Alan Ritchson, declined to be his conservative fanbase’s hero. John Thune told the White House to get its own SAVE Act votes if it’s so easy. Mike Lindell, voter fraud’s loudest crusader, apparently couldn’t produce his own Minnesota registration until one mysteriously appeared mid-week. And Citizens Bank finally dropped its financing of GEO Group and CoreCivic after enough pressure campaigns piled up. But it’s not all comedy. The Pentagon’s Iran casualty count quietly dropped from 18 to 14 overnight, officials called it a “data anomaly,” and behind that missing number is Sergeant Michael Swinton, whose widow says he just wanted to come home. Trump used his death to justify the war anyway, and the Gold Star families were not amused. Meanwhile, Democratic officials are already running drills for a stolen midterm, and Alaska just purged 3,000 voters over bad DMV data. All of it lands at the Solemate Awards, where Sean Duffy defends his crown for renaming Penn Station after his boss, and hubby, Donald Trump, Cynthia Lummis debuts with a crypto bill dressed up as an ethics defense, and Marco Rubio dodges a war crimes question hard enough to earn a permanent nomination. Find out who takes home the crown and licked Trump’s boot the cleanest in tonight’s episode.

  4. 4d ago

    MORNING DISPATCH: Trump is inspiring Democrats to vote

    The president's voter suppression campaign is poised to backfire by mobilizing the political opposition, while depressing MAGA voter turnout.

  5. 5d ago

    Growing the Defiance ft. Terry Moran and Andrew Weissmann

    This week's mission is growing the DEFIANCE. With every new DEFY-Ant you bring into our team, our fight agaisnt political corruption gets stronger.

  6. 6d ago

    Legal Tourist Killed by ICE Shatters Trump's Narrative

    Even the people paid to defend this administration can’t keep their stories straight today. Start with Juan Jairo Coronilla Duran, the Mexican tourist killed running from ICE agents in St. Augustine. The right rushed to call him “illegal.” He wasn’t. He was in the country legally, two days into a vacation, with a return flight already booked. And according to an eyewitness, even the people standing there watching didn’t know the men chasing him were federal agents. So how was he supposed to know?  Then there’s Canada, which got quite the two-for-one yesterday. In the morning, Trump’s own ambassador was in Edmonton toasting “friendship, partnership and success” and admitting the U.S. needs three to four million more barrels of Canadian oil a day. By the afternoon, Trump announced 50 percent tariffs and declared Canada can’t survive without us. Somebody might want to loop those two guys in on the messaging. And then there’s Iran, where the war Trump swore would be quick just got a $37.5 billion price tag and a request for $87.6 billion more. Pete Hegseth told the Senate that without the money, training gets cut, maintenance gets delayed, and paychecks could be at risk. He also admitted Iran still has capabilities hidden underground, which is an interesting thing to say after months of insisting Iran’s military was finished. We’re joined by Jason Pack of The Disorder Podcast to make sense of all of it, including new reporting that the Pentagon sat on three earlier Iranian attacks in Jordan and quietly updated its injury count to nearly 100 service members. We also get into Kash Patel’s reportedly planned October trip to Russia, hosted by the FSB, for reasons nobody at the FBI or DOJ seems willing to explain.

  7. 6d ago

    MORNING DISPATCH: We haven’t forgotten the Epstein Files. We’re making sure no one else does either.

    Next week, we're unveiling the Trump-Epstein Bookmobile in our nation's capital, and it will travel across America for the midterms.

  8. Jul 20

    Could Congress Hand Trump the Midterms?

    Trump got booed at the World Cup final. Honestly, the least important thing that happened this weekend, but it’s the one moment that felt good. Because everything else didn’t. Iran is escalating into what one U.S. official is now calling a “wider war,” American troops are dying, and even some of Trump’s own supporters online are starting to ask why, if his administration insists Iran’s military is basically destroyed, Iran is still hitting U.S. bases. That’s not a question from the left. That’s confusion from MAGA accounts. On immigration, the administration pulled out a court that hasn’t been used once in almost 30 years — built for terrorism cases, running on classified evidence the accused may never get to see — and used it for the first time to try to deport someone. Even the judge reviewing the case sent it back, unconvinced.  At the same time, a New York Times investigation was quietly showing that a lot of the government’s own cases against people accused of assaulting ICE agents don’t hold up. Almost immediately after, the FBI told field offices to stop investigating confrontations involving ICE, and handed that job to a DHS division that doesn’t actually have authority to look into civil rights violations. DOJ and DHS say nothing changed. The internal memo says otherwise. All of it comes back to the same question we keep circling on this show: how much power is this administration trying to consolidate, and what’s actually left to check it. That question gets a direct answer today from David Walbert, who’s spent more than four decades litigating voting rights cases, including several before the Supreme Court. He recently wrote a piece for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution asking why the FBI really wants Fulton County’s election records, and his argument isn’t that this is about relitigating 2020. He walks through why he thinks this is groundwork for handing a future election to Congress. His book, Stealing Elections: American Style, is available for preorder now here. We also welcome photographer and conservationist Thomas D. Mangelsen to the DEFIANCE today, after he responded to Trump’s new national park pass design — which features Trump’s face — by making something better. Go check out his work here.

See All (127)

Ratings & Reviews

4.9
out of 5
27 Ratings

About

Every weekday at 5 PM ET, host Miles Taylor dives into today's biggest political headlines and an in depth check into resisting Trump's power grab. Welcome to the DEFIANCE!

Information

  • Creator
    DEFIANCE.org
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    127
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © DEFIANCE.org
  • Show Website
    DEFIANCE Daily

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