The Nicole Sandler Show

Emptywheel Fridays with Marcy Wheeler of emptywheel.net on the Nicole Sandler Show

September 25, 2026·1h 30m
Episode Description from the Publisher

It's Empty Wheel Friday, and Marcy Wheeler is here to make sense of an absolutely chaotic week. We start with Trump's underwhelming state visit with Xi Jinping — the press bans, the Thucydides trap reference, and the trade detente that buys us two more months before the real reckoning. From there it's straight into the numbers that should terrify Republicans: diesel prices spiking, bond markets flashing warning signs, and a Senate map that now includes Kansas and maybe even Mississippi. Marcy walks through race after race — Roger Marshall's brutal OB-GYN lawsuit story, Susan Collins' bribery scandal, Mary Peltola's iguana, Sherrod Brown and the crypto money that showed up too late to do much damage. Then we go deep on the legal front: a DOJ prosecutor in the Broadview 6 case just resigned and filed a bombshell response that puts the US Attorney at the center of the misconduct he tried to pin on her. And Marcy breaks down what she's calling Judge Aileen Cannon's "two-hat problem" — running a grand jury designed for vengeance while also enforcing her own gag order, in a case built on a legal theory so thin the 11th Circuit already rejected it back in 2022. Forty days to the end of this election. It's going to get crazier before it gets better. Read Marcy's work and support it at emptywheel.net. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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