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In Which We Discuss: 1. Afghanistan! We won in 2002. We’re finally leaving in 2021. Maybe… 2. We’ll tell you about some of the mass shootings this week, but not all of them because we lost track. 3. Rule #1 of the America First caucus is don’t talk about the America First caucus. 4. Biden tried his own hand at America First politics. Went as well as it did for Marjorie Taylor Greene. 5. Your resident public health experts are here with a creative list of how best to use the J&J vaccine. Also: CALL YOUR REPS. ABOUT EVERYTHING. Make this number your profile picture. Tweet it every day. Add it to your phonebook: Capitol Hill Main Switchboard: (202) 224-3121   Brain Trust Live is (still) Lila Nordstrom and Brent Thornburg's look at the week in electoral and political news. Join the millions of quarantiners, sirens, helicopters, barking dogs, and computer beeps who love our podcast and tell your friends about BTL!  Then rate us on iTunes or find us Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Stitcher, or Instagram!

In Which We Discuss: 1. So the giant corporation wins again in Bessemer. It doesn’t have to always be this way. 2. A Predictable Outcome: The Matt Gaetz Story. 3. Mar-A-Lago’s activities coordinator inexplicably has opinions on the world’s evilest man. 4. Andrew Cuomo is now a man without an enforcer or a clue, and it’s going awesomely. 5. John Boehner is back, and just as drunk as ever. 6. Caitlin Jenner is not a progressive icon, but she is a Republican trashbag and she cannot be the governor of California. Also: CALL YOUR REPS. ABOUT EVERYTHING. Make this number your profile picture. Tweet it every day. Add it to your phonebook: Capitol Hill Main Switchboard: (202) 224-3121   Brain Trust Live is (still) Lila Nordstrom and Brent Thornburg's look at the week in electoral and political news. Join the millions of quarantiners, sirens, helicopters, barking dogs, and computer beeps who love our podcast and tell your friends about BTL!  Then rate us on iTunes or find us Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Stitcher, or Instagram!  

In Which We Discuss: 1. The BTL Easter story tradition continues...with a twist! 2. Attacking the Capitol is now more regular than perhaps we’d want 3. In a surprising turn of events, infrastructure week actually yields something of an infrastructure plan 4. The Matt Gaetz revelations are somehow both the most mind boggling, and least shocking things we’ve heard in ages 5. Quick! Get more progressive legislation in front of Andrew Cuomo while he’s still scandal-ridden 6. Turns out Amazon knew about the bottle peeing all along Other than that, Happy Easter! Also: CALL YOUR REPS. ABOUT EVERYTHING. Make this number your profile picture. Tweet it every day. Add it to your phonebook: Capitol Hill Main Switchboard: (202) 224-3121   Brain Trust Live is (still) Lila Nordstrom and Brent Thornburg's look at the week in electoral and political news. Join the millions of quarantiners, sirens, helicopters, barking dogs, and computer beeps who love our podcast and tell your friends about BTL!  Then rate us on iTunes or find us Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Stitcher, or Instagram!

In Which We Discuss: 1. Now we all have to use all our disposable income to go to Georgia and hand out illegal water, an obligation absolutely nobody wanted. 2. Joe Biden has a surefire plan to ruin Kamala’s career in his first 100 days. 3. We will vaccinate 200 million people in Biden’s first 100 days, whether or not we plan for it.  4. Amazon workers in Alabama remind us that maybe we could unionize too. 5. Are boats too big? An exposé. 6. COVID is on the rise again.   Also: CALL YOUR REPS. ABOUT EVERYTHING. Make this number your profile picture. Tweet it every day. Add it to your phonebook: Capitol Hill Main Switchboard: (202) 224-3121   Brain Trust Live is (still) Lila Nordstrom and Brent Thornburg's look at the week in electoral and political news. Join the millions of quarantiners, sirens, helicopters, barking dogs, and computer beeps who love our podcast and tell your friends about BTL!  Then rate us on iTunes or find us Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Stitcher, or Instagram!  

In Which We Discuss: 1. We once again found out what happens when a 21 year-old white guy with a gun has a “bad day.” 2. Ted Cruz could finally get his chance to share recipes and re-read his beloved Dr. Seuss from the Senate floor. 3. Mild competence was, as it turned out, all we needed to get vaccines into arms. 4. If smoking pot gets you kicked out of the Biden admin, Lila Nordstrom will be only person in American qualified to serve. Medicare-for-all, coming soon! 5. The CA recall is shaping up to be a...huge waste of money. 6. Mar a Lago has just as many germs as you’d expect.   Also: CALL YOUR REPS. ABOUT EVERYTHING. Make this number your profile picture. Tweet it every day. Add it to your phonebook: Capitol Hill Main Switchboard: (202) 224-3121   Brain Trust Live is (still) Lila Nordstrom and Brent Thornburg's look at the week in electoral and political news. Join the millions of quarantiners, sirens, helicopters, barking dogs, and computer beeps who love our podcast and tell your friends about BTL!  Then rate us on iTunes or find us Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Stitcher, or Instagram!

In Which We Discuss: 1. We had to pass the American Rescue Plan to find out what was in it. 2. Joe Biden discovers that a regular speech can also get you good ratings. 3. Cuomo may get a crash course in NY’s exploitive rental laws. 4. Nevada now a place for socialists instead of Harry Reid. 5. The cancel culture debate confusingly gives Ted Cruz an opening to promote reading. Also: CALL YOUR REPS. ABOUT EVERYTHING. Make this number your profile picture. Tweet it every day. Add it to your phonebook: Capitol Hill Main Switchboard: (202) 224-3121   Brain Trust Live is (still) Lila Nordstrom and Brent Thornburg's look at the week in electoral and political news. Join the millions of quarantiners, sirens, helicopters, barking dogs, and computer beeps who love our podcast and tell your friends about BTL!  Then rate us on iTunes or find us Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Stitcher, or Instagram!

In Which We Discuss: 1. Less than $2000 could be coming to a checking account near you very soon! 2. Joe Manchin formed the problem causers caucus, whose political ideology seems vaguely similar to the problem solvers caucus. 3. Marie Antoinette voted no on increasing the minimum wage 4. Neera Tandan. Goodbye forever. We wish you nothing but the worst. 5. For second week in a row: Do not run for a third term in NY state. 6. March 4th has come and gone and Donald Trump has no risen from the swamp.   Also: CALL YOUR REPS. ABOUT EVERYTHING. Make this number your profile picture. Tweet it every day. Add it to your phonebook: Capitol Hill Main Switchboard: (202) 224-3121   Brain Trust Live is (still) Lila Nordstrom and Brent Thornburg's look at the week in electoral and political news. Join the millions of quarantiners, sirens, helicopters, barking dogs, and computer beeps who love our podcast and tell your friends about BTL!  Then rate us on iTunes or find us Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Stitcher, or Instagram!

In Which We Discuss: 1. The further right you get on the political scale, the more you should not be allowed to dance in public. And yet...CPAC still happened. 2. The House passed Biden’s stimulus bill, but was the less-than-$2000 really worth staying up all night for? 3. In classic Biden fashion, he figures out how to send bombs to Syria before checks to your bank account. 4. Kids in cages are being shuffled around to different cages under the Biden border plan. 5. Listen, kids, here’s some advice to live by: Never run for a third term in New York. 6. More vaccines are coming! So you can think about that while you continue to not be able to get an appointment. Also: CALL YOUR REPS. ABOUT EVERYTHING. Make this number your profile picture. Tweet it every day. Add it to your phonebook: Capitol Hill Main Switchboard: (202) 224-3121   Brain Trust Live is (still) Lila Nordstrom and Brent Thornburg's look at the week in electoral and political news. Join the millions of quarantiners, sirens, helicopters, barking dogs, and computer beeps who love our podcast and tell your friends about BTL!  Then rate us on iTunes or find us Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Stitcher, or Instagram!  

In Which We Discuss: 1. Rush Limbaugh: A terrible person, now with deadness. 2. The weather messed with Texas and...Texas folded immediately. 3. Ted Cruz picked himself up by his bootstraps and flew himself to Cancun for some fun in the sun while Texas froze. 4. “Joe Manchin saves the day” is a sentence we never thought we’d write. 5. Famous empath Joe Biden can’t seem to find the aforementioned empathy for minimum wage workers and student borrowers. 6. It’s so annoying that we’re going to have to boycott all the gig employers in California. Also: CALL YOUR REPS. ABOUT EVERYTHING. Make this number your profile picture. Tweet it every day. Add it to your phonebook: Capitol Hill Main Switchboard: (202) 224-3121   Brain Trust Live is (still) Lila Nordstrom and Brent Thornburg's look at the week in electoral and political news. Join the millions of quarantiners, sirens, helicopters, barking dogs, and computer beeps who love our podcast and tell your friends about BTL!  Then rate us on iTunes or find us Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Stitcher, or Instagram!

In Which We Discuss: 1. We joked Donald Trump would not need an impeachment defense to get off scott free and he didn’t have one. 2. Blowback for GOP convictors. Not yet enough blowback for Mitch McConnell’s open hypocrisy. 3. Trump’s COVID was more serious than we were told. And yet, it was also less serious than it should have been. 4. I guess local GOP officials would be the ones to know if Antifa caused the Capitol riots because tons of them were active participants. 5. In the Biden administration, threatening the press gets you suspended, not promoted. 6. Weather. It’s everywhere. We’ll tell you what to do. Also: CALL YOUR REPS. ABOUT EVERYTHING. Make this number your profile picture. Tweet it every day. Add it to your phonebook: Capitol Hill Main Switchboard: (202) 224-3121   Brain Trust Live is (still) Lila Nordstrom and Brent Thornburg's look at the week in electoral and political news. Join the millions of quarantiners, sirens, helicopters, barking dogs, and computer beeps who love our podcast and tell your friends about BTL!  Then rate us on iTunes or find us Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Stitcher, or Instagram!  

In Which We Discuss: 1. The Iowa Caucus was one year ago this week in real time and this week last millennium in thought time. 2. How can we tell Donald Trump that testifying himself at his impeachment trial would be so good for his ratings? 3. Looking to compromise with someone, Democrats choose themselves in COVID stimulus reconciliation process.  4. Marjorie Taylor Green makes desperate attempt to cling to respectability by admitting 9-11 was real. 5. Alert: The Newsom recall is actually happening. 6. Pillows are now political: A treatise on bad puns gone too far. Also: CALL YOUR REPS. ABOUT EVERYTHING. Make this number your profile picture. Tweet it every day. Add it to your phonebook: Capitol Hill Main Switchboard: (202) 224-3121   Brain Trust Live is (still) Lila Nordstrom and Brent Thornburg's look at the week in electoral and political news. Join the millions of quarantiners, sirens, helicopters, barking dogs, and computer beeps who love our podcast and tell your friends about BTL!  Then rate us on iTunes or find us Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Stitcher, or Instagram!

In Which We Discuss: 1. It’s Occupy Wall Street, but instead of sleeping on a park bench, you get to make millions of dollars! 2. Democrats continue to compromise with themselves over direct payments 3. “Unity” with the GOP is not the same thing as unity with the American people 4. Every day we’re a step closer to Donald Trump potentially representing himself in his second Impeachment trial 5. Jewish Space Lasers: Where do you buy them and how do you use them? 6. Schumer is a man who really, really, really doesn’t want to get primaried in 2022. Let’s dash that hope. Also: CALL YOUR REPS. ABOUT EVERYTHING. Make this number your profile picture. Tweet it every day. Add it to your phonebook: Capitol Hill Main Switchboard: (202) 224-3121   Brain Trust Live is (still) Lila Nordstrom and Brent Thornburg's look at the week in electoral and political news. Join the millions of quarantiners, sirens, helicopters, barking dogs, and computer beeps who love our podcast and tell your friends about BTL!  Then rate us on iTunes or find us Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Stitcher, or Instagram!

In Which We Discuss: 1. We finally found a competent Trump official! His airplane choreography guy was top notch. Goodbye to a legend. 2. The Inauguration was just one stop on a list of errands Bernie Sanders had to run on Wednesday 3. Joe Biden’s version of "Infrastructure Week" might include actual policy 4. Introducing the 117th Senate: A place of chaos! 5. Nobody wants to hear a peep out of any of these fools until we have $2000 burning a hole in our pockets 6. The Trump era’s collateral damage: conspiracy theorists were left sad and confused Also: CALL YOUR REPS. ABOUT EVERYTHING. Make this number your profile picture. Tweet it every day. Add it to your phonebook: Capitol Hill Main Switchboard: (202) 224-3121   Brain Trust Live is (still) Lila Nordstrom and Brent Thornburg's look at the week in electoral and political news. Join the millions of quarantiners, sirens, helicopters, barking dogs, and computer beeps who love our podcast and tell your friends about BTL!  Then rate us on iTunes or find us Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Stitcher, or Instagram!

In Which We Discuss: 1. Happy MLK day! Please enjoy our yearly reminder that MLK was a socialist. Be like MLK. 2. Donald Trump did succeed at one aim - making DC into a military state. Unfortunately they’re doing it to keep his people out. 3. Biden won’t get to take the train ride he’s been waiting for 40 years for. 4. Trump earns a place in history as the most impeached president ever! 5. Our Vaccine stockpile didn’t exist, which, when you think about it, tracks perfectly. 6. Trump has been the best accidental cheerleader for his arch nemesis CNN. Brain Trust Live is Lila Nordstrom and Brent Thornburg's look at the week in electoral and political news. Join the millions of quarantiners, sirens, helicopters, barking dogs, and computer beeps who love our podcast and tell your friends about BTL!  Then rate us on iTunes or find us Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Stitcher, or Instagram!

In Which We Discuss: 1. Trump interfered so badly in the Georgia runoffs that even the muesli caucus was able to win 2. Speaking of muesli caucus, they were awarded three cabinet positions this week 3. You know the president is dangerous when even Pinterest has a Trump ban  4. The vaccine rollout is chaos. See you guys in December. 5. It’s women that are losing all of the jobs. 6. We’re joined by Spread the Vote founder and guest extraordinaire Kat Calvin! Donate or volunteer for Kat's fantastic organizations, which help get IDs to the people who need them to work, get healthcare, get services, and more!  Spread The Vote Project ID   Brain Trust Live is Lila Nordstrom and Brent Thornburg's look at the week in electoral and political news. Join the millions of quarantiners, sirens, helicopters, barking dogs, and computer beeps who love our podcast and tell your friends about BTL!  Then rate us on iTunes or find us Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Stitcher, or Instagram!

Our first, and hopefully last, Special Mid-Week Coup-Cast! Come for the boring grandstanding, stay for the insurrection, Brain Trust Live is Lila Nordstrom and Brent Thornburg's look at the week in electoral and political news. Join the millions of quarantiners, sirens, helicopters, barking dogs, and computer beeps who love our podcast and tell your friends about BTL!  Then rate us on iTunes or find us Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Stitcher, or Instagram!    

No structure. No rules. No doc. But plenty of updates on the COVID, the stimulus, CA's new senator, and how to be a pain in the ass for Congress from day one! Brain Trust Live is Lila Nordstrom and Brent Thornburg's look at the week in electoral and political news. Join the millions of quarantiners, sirens, helicopters, barking dogs, and computer beeps who love our podcast and tell your friends about BTL!  Then rate us on iTunes or find us Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Stitcher, or Instagram!

In Which We Discuss: 1. Latest stimulus bill has insulting checks that will arrive just after your kid’s Christmas is ruined 2. The Vaccines are coming for doctors...and America’s leading science-deniers 3. Mayor Mouseface for transpo and other questionable cabinet picks 4. Bill Barr should never be allowed back on the DC dinner party circuit 5. Could it be that asking voters to vote for you is the best way to get voters to vote for you? An experiment moderate Democrats waited until after the election to try! 6. Guardians of the Galaxy joins Star Trek in the Trump Space Force fictional universe Brain Trust Live is Lila Nordstrom and Brent Thornburg's look at the week in electoral and political news. Join the millions of quarantiners, sirens, helicopters, barking dogs, and computer beeps who love our podcast and tell your friends about BTL!  Then rate us on iTunes or find us Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Stitcher, or Instagram!

In Which We Discuss: 1. White House adds a second bad bill to our grand American stimulus mess. Current count is bad bills: 2, good bills: 0. 2. Even SCOTUS wants there to be a government 3. Biden promised his administration would be a “bridge to the next generation.” We didn’t realize he only meant Boomers.  4. People of various levels of fun and not-fun are announcing runs for office 5. Let me just defend Iowa for a moment: It was the DNC that actually ruined the caucuses. 6. It’s too bad we waited for Facebook to ruin America before deciding to break it up Brain Trust Live is Lila Nordstrom and Brent Thornburg's look at the week in electoral and political news. Join the millions of quarantiners, sirens, helicopters, barking dogs, and computer beeps who love our podcast and tell your friends about BTL!  Then rate us on iTunes or find us Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Stitcher, or Instagram!

In Which We Discuss: 1. Rudy getting COVID is how this had to end, guys... 2. If you loved having a boring, awkward convention, you’ll love the plans for this year’s inauguration! 3. Democratic campaign leadership promises not to do any introspection before 2022 races 4. “Toot-liani” and the world’s star-iest witness come together to make hearings fun again 5. The COVID relief package may not involve any actual relief, but by golly Mitch McConnell will make sure you can’t sue your employer for killing you if it’s the last thing he does! 6. Where do you stand in the vaccine order? (We’ll see you never!) Brain Trust Live is Lila Nordstrom and Brent Thornburg's look at the week in electoral and political news. Join the millions of quarantiners, sirens, helicopters, barking dogs, and computer beeps who love our podcast and tell your friends about BTL!  Then rate us on iTunes or find us Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Stitcher, or Instagram!