The Kinzinger Report

The Justice Department's civil rights division has lost more than 300 career lawyers under Trump, and the New York Times just revealed who's replacing them. One hacked a Florida election system twice and was sent to monitor a polling place in Minneapolis. Another was pulled off a murder case for reading privileged defense communications. A new senior counsel called January 6th a false flag...

A plague outbreak in Russia, and the Kremlin wants everyone to stop asking. One lab worker is dead, a second death is reported, and nearly 200 contacts are in quarantine while Moscow insists it's pneumonia. Adam Kinzinger breaks down what we know, why the WHO is the only channel left, and why Trump sounds a lot friendlier about this outbreak than he ever did about COVID. Plus: Trump retreats o...

Dozens of Republicans are endorsing Democratic candidates ahead of the 2026 midterms, and new polls show Democrats competitive in red states Trump won by double digits. Conor Lamb fills in for Adam Kinzinger on why the GOP's "vote for the team" strategy is cracking. Plus: more leaked Ken Paxton audio, Trump doxxing Senator Tom Cotton, The Atlantic's report on Kash Patel and the FBI...

Trump told TIME he won't rule out invoking the Insurrection Act or declaring a state of emergency around the 2026 midterms. Adam Kinzinger breaks down what the Insurrection Act actually is, why federal law bans troops at polling places, and why a losing president five weeks out is talking about the military at all. Also today: the Justice Department reopens Watergate to review Richard Nixon&#3...

Trump is spending the final month before the midterms campaigning in Texas, Oklahoma, Iowa and Alabama, some of the reddest states in the country, while a new AP poll puts his approval at 30 percent and his economic approval at a record low 26 percent. Two thirds of Americans say Trump's policies are driving higher prices. Adam Kinzinger explains why the 2026 midterms have turned into a rescue...

Ken Paxton was secretly recorded at a private Washington fundraiser admitting Trump's Republican convention in Dallas dropped his poll numbers and hurt the whole GOP ticket. The tape went to the New York Times, Paxton's campaign is calling it manipulated, and James Talarico leads every independent poll in the Texas Senate race while Paxton dodges a Fox News debate. Plus, Republicans hype a...

Trump's grand conspiracy investigation loses a second prosecutor in a month. Kurt Olsen, the election denier sanctioned in Arizona for false statements in Kari Lake's case, walks away from the DOJ probe into Obama officials. Fourteen months, three lead prosecutors, zero indictments. Adam Kinzinger explains why this was never a real investigation. Also on the show, FBI deputy director Andre...

Farmers, truckers, and Trump's own rally superfans are turning on him. Soybean prices collapsed after China stopped buying, diesel hit a record six and a half dollars a gallon in the middle of harvest, and farm bankruptcies tripled in Iowa. One superfan who followed Trump in an RV for years now calls him a fraud. Adam Kinzinger explains what the MAGA defection means for the midterms. Plus: tax...

A government watchdog says ICE wasted tens of millions on detention space it never used, including tents and empty warehouses, after Congress gave the agency 45 billion dollars. Meanwhile new reporting shows ICE arrests are surging, spread out across the country and away from the cameras after the January backlash. Plus, Trump hosts Xi Jinping at the White House, the West Wing lets GOP candidates...

A Trump-appointed federal judge blocked Trump's press ban on CNN, MS NOW, and Politico, ruling it likely unconstitutional and ordering the White House to restore their press passes. Reporters were still turned away at the White House gates the next morning. Plus: Trump invites Putin to the G20 at his golf club, MAGA podcasters stop talking about Trump, F-35 parts turn up in China, and Cook Pol...

Republicans timed the One Big Beautiful Bill's Medicaid and SNAP cuts to land after the 2026 midterms. They're hitting early instead. Food stamp work requirements, expired health insurance subsidies, and rural hospital cuts are landing hardest in Trump country. Plus Trump's UN speech falls flat, Sen. John Curtis wants Don Jr. subpoenaed, the GOP spends big to defend safe seats, and JD...

Trump killed the FBI's bribery investigation into Congress. ProPublica reports the case ran through Susan Collins' office, built on a defense contractor who funneled $150,000 to her Super PAC through a shell company and then gave the FBI a road map naming more than a dozen members of Congress. Trump fired the agents working the case, including one targeted for investigating his 2020 electi...

Trump's secret drug pricing contracts are finally public, and they show the deals protected the pharmaceutical companies instead of lowering drug prices. Tariff exemptions, confidentiality clauses, and bestsellers carved out of the discounts entirely. RFK Jr. signed the deals, and now his Make America Healthy Again movement is holding a summit funded by corporate money. Plus: Republicans in Co...

The White House pulls its nominee to run ICE after Republican opposition in the Senate. Rand Paul wanted DHS files on the two American citizens killed by federal agents in Minneapolis, and the administration chose to lose its nominee instead of handing them over. As a result, ICE stays in the hands of an unconfirmed acting director. Plus: RFK Jr. speaks at an anti-vax conference as the Pennsylvani...

JD Vance gives the Republican closing message for the 2026 midterms, and it amounts to begging voters for another chance. Adam breaks down why the White House can't ask for forgiveness while insisting nothing is wrong. Plus, Republican candidates like Maria Salazar run away from Trump, the Federal Reserve raises interest rates over Trump's objections, House Republicans fight behind closed...

The Pentagon's inspector general and the Congressional Budget Office just revealed the true cost of the Iran war: dozens of aircraft destroyed, bases hammered by missile strikes, and $38 billion spent. Now Republicans are breaking ranks. Thomas Massie filed articles of impeachment against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and seven Republicans voted with Democrats to end the war. Adam also cover...

The Supreme Court rejects the Trump administration's attempt to rewrite mail-in voting rules weeks before the midterms, and a whistleblower report reveals a new scheme: federal immigration officers pulled off their jobs to hunt for noncitizens on state voter rolls. Plus, Trump calls AI safety warnings a hoax as industry leaders beg for regulation, Iran-backed Houthis seize a second oil chokepo...

A ProPublica investigation reveals Donald Trump Jr.'s Bahamas wedding was bankrolled by Umar Kremlev, a Russian oligarch in Vladimir Putin's inner circle who paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for the private island and fireworks. Adam reports from his trip to Ukraine, where a Russian drone hit a passenger train on the route he'd just avoided. Plus, 60 Minutes catches Trump allies s...

 Joe diGenova has resigned from the Justice Department's grand conspiracy investigation into Trump's enemies, saying on his way out that indictments without evidence are an ethical problem. Today's show breaks down why Trump's revenge probe keeps losing its own prosecutors. Plus, Republican election officials ask the Supreme Court to keep Trump's mail ballot order blocked, the...

The Trump administration wants to change who counts in the 2030 census. A new Commerce Department proposal would exclude millions of immigrants, including people here legally, and drop the race and ethnicity questions asked since 1790. The census decides House seats, electoral votes, and federal funding, and the Fourteenth Amendment says to count every person. Plus: Trump promises a $5,000 "Tr...

Trump told a fake story about firefighters carrying him to safety at Ground Zero on 9/11, days before the 25th anniversary. There's no record he was there until September 13th, and on the day of the attacks he called a news station to brag that his building was now the tallest in downtown Manhattan. Adam Kinzinger breaks down the lie, plus the GOP convention Republicans are skipping, Canada&#3...

The Wall Street Journal reports that Corey Lewandowski secretly ran Trump's Department of Homeland Security as an unpaid, unconfirmed adviser, controlling billions in DHS contracts, then offered his services to Qatar and the UAE on the side. Adam breaks down the shadow secretary scandal and the criminal referral now on the table. Plus: the White House marks Labor Day with AI videos that contai...

Adam Kinzinger marks Labor Day with a special episode on Trump's assault on organized labor, from stripping nearly a million federal workers of collective bargaining to firing career employees without due process. Then the 2026 midterm map, Democrats' path to the Senate, ICE at the polls, and what Adam learned running for Congress that every first time candidate needs to hear. Go deeper at...

Fox News fired Maria Bartiromo after she leaked internal Fox guidance about Trump's 2020 election claims straight to the White House. Adam Kinzinger breaks down how she finally lost her job, and why Trump calling her "a true warrior" says it all. Plus: the DOJ fires the prosecutor who wanted to hold an ICE agent accountable for shooting a man in Minneapolis, the Missouri Supreme Court...

Republicans are skipping Trump's first-ever midterm convention in Dallas. Politico surveyed more than 70 GOP candidates and most are staying away or won't answer, with swing-district Republicans leading the exodus sixty days before the 2026 midterms. Adam Kinzinger breaks down what it means for the election, plus DHS agents hunting voter fraud that doesn't exist, a whistleblower's...