In Which We Discuss:

1. Tatenda Musapatike talks voting, Real Housewives, and Dem strategy

2. Infrastructure Update: Just…what?

3. Voting rights is filibuster reform. Everything is filibuster reform.

4. Joe Biden wants you to want to pay your student loans

5. A sentence we never thought would be necessary to say: India Walton is not David Duke

6. Apparently the solution to zebras on the loose is…more zebras on the loose

Follow Tatenda on Twitter and Instagram: @TatendaCheryl

Follow Voter Formation Project: @VoterFormation

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!

This week on the podcast...we’re blindly reacting to news headlines because we didn’t do our homework. Hold onto your hats!

Get a vaccine so you too can record a podcast in the same room as your co-host!

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. Joe Manchin’s brain is being held hostage by the ghost of Robert Byrd

2. Giving people money stops them from starving: an expose

3. Dem soul searching leads to exact answers we gave them before they started soul searching

4. Surprising that Andrew Yang, after participating in the democratic presidential primary, admitted publicly to wanting to be more like Michael Bloomberg.

5. In effort to undermine the meat industry, vegans find natural ally in Vladimir Putin

6. Donald Trump will be back in August according to the pillow industry

Also:

Get a vaccine so you too can record a podcast in the same room as your co-host!

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. Biden administration hellbent on up to one year of big structural change, which is actually the opposite of structural change

2. Biden debuts infrastructure month, which is exactly like infrastructure week in that nothing gets accomplished, it’s just longer.

3. Someone is about to have to take four months off work to to decide a question with a simple answer: Is Donald Trump a criminal? Yes.

4. The battle of the working class origin stories is coming to a Florida Senate primary near you.

5. There’s no one who wants Donald Trump to die more than Matt Gaetz.  Pass it on.

6. Tom Perez is joining Jay Carney in union-busting hell.

Also:

Get a vaccine so you too can record a podcast in the same room as your co-host!

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. Having proved himself a terrible senator, we’re now seeing why Rand Paul didn’t hack it in the medical field either.

2. Joe Biden loves to compromise so much, he’s decided to do it with himself

3. The squad is finally coordinating with each other! Just maybe not in the way you’d hope

4. Turns out one way to end a war is for everybody to declare victory at once and avoid specifics.

5. Abortions: Men and Amy Coney Barrett don’t want you to have them. 

6. In further proof that the space/time continuum is busted, it’s time to start talking about elections again!

Congrats to the winners of our anniversary trivia game, The Buttons!

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. CDC’s new mask guidance is to just embrace the chaos. We all have to die sometime.

2. It’s finally okay to work in DC and not want to kill Palestinians! Baby steps.

3. NYC Mayoral Debate season is upon us! Lots of 2020 vibes.

4. Let the one lesson we learn from the pandemic be that you can extract more from your governors if you threaten to fire them.

5. Message to Joe Biden: Success isn’t measured by how many meetings you take with asshat Kevin McCarthy. It’s measured by whether you actually pass a bill.

6. Horse junkies are sweeping the horse races!

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. 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. 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. 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!