The Nicole Sandler Show

Today ushers in the first day of Spring! It's only fitting that it's also the first day of the rebooted Bruce SPRINGsteen tour, and it's kicking off in Phoenix. It is Bruce so of course I'll be there. Yes, I'm giddy. There's nothing like a Springsteen concert! I'm glad today's guest is a fellow music lover. Jason Leopold's seeing him in LA on April 4... but he's not here to talk Bruce today. These days the man who's been dubbed the "FOIA Terrorist" by our government just launched "The FOIA Files," a weekly newsletter through Bloomberg News, for whom Jason is now working. I had invited Jason on the show to promote the newsletter. But when I reached out to him about it last week, he was in an undisclosed location working on a big story, using only burner phones. He'll give us the scoop today... but it has to do with the story I told you about on Friday with Marcy Wheeler about the FBI agents in Florida who served Trump the search warrant at Mar A Largo and were not very happy about it. (Houston I think we have a big problem).

The 2024 presidential election is in full swing. My husband David and I were fortunate enough to be at a Biden-Harris event in Tempe, AZ yesterday where the featured speaker was our favorite member of Congress, Jamie Raskin.I hope to have him on the show sometime soon for a real interview, but we got to say hello, shake his hand, take a photo and hear him speak for about 30 minutes. It was one of the best political speeches I've ever attended, and he did it extemporaneously - no notes, no teleprompter. Just his quick wit and brilliant mind. I started recording his speech and let it roll for the whole thing. It was so brilliant that I'm going to share the whole thing with you today. After hearing from Congressman Raskin, we'll check in to see what's happening in my former state of Florida with my old friend Hillary Keyes, who's trying to keep some blue in that place...

Fridays are special aside from the obvious reasons. Marcy Wheeler, an independent journalist who covers legal and national security issues better than the corporate media at emptywheel.net, is our standing date to wrap up every week. Today we'll talk about the breaking news out of Fulton County, GA where Fani Willis will remain on the case as long as Nathan Wade doesn't, from NY where DA Alvin Bragg agreed to a 30-day postponement in TFG's fraud trial that was supposed to begin in 10 days, to the Aileen Cannon court in Florida where she's doing Trump's bidding in the stolen classified documents case, to the Robert Hur House Judiciary Committee hearing and more. Yes, it was a busy week... Today, I'll once again go into overtime. Last week we covered the State of the Union address. Today, I'll pay tribute to a dear friend and amazing musician who died yesterday. Angela McCluskey's is not a household name, but I've been a fan and friend of hers for coming up on 30 years. She was in a band called Wild Colonials who we championed when I worked at KSCA fm 101.9 in Los Angeles in the 90s. I thought I'd share with you a live session from December 9, 1996 when the band joined me on the air for an interview and performance. I hope you'll stick around and enjoy the music and get a feel for Angela's larger-than-life personality, and understand why I'm already missing her.

It's Thursday, so time for our weekly get-together with Howie Klein of downwithtyranny.com & the Blue America PAC. This week, both Biden and TFG clinched their party's nominations, so buckle in for a loooonger than our already ridiculously long election season and all that comes with it. There's lots of political news to discuss with Howie today, but I'll certainly save a few minutes to talk about this week's losses (of some amazing musicians)...

Because sometimes you just need to sit with a brilliant friend and shoot the shit about all the craziness in our world. That's how I approach the shows when Heather "Digby" Parton is our guest.Digby is, of course, one of the OG bloggers of progressive politics. Her Hullabaloo blog is still a daily must-read, as are her columns at Salon.com.I love it when Digby is my guest because I truly adore her and love our conversations, which can go in any direction. We never know where it'll go until the interview progresses.Too bad there's nothing big happening in the news to discuss today /sarcasm

Post-show note from Nicole:Never mind! Time to fire my producer again as she apparently forgot to re-confirm Barb McQuade and send the Zoom link, so Barb will be rescheduled in the next week or two. Time to go flog Nicole again. JFC, you'd think she'd learn by now how to do her job. Legal scholar and analyst Barbara McQuade became known to many of us due to her spot-on punditry on MSNBC and her role in the sistersinlaw podcast. Now she's sharing her expertise -compounded by her past work as US Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan, her private practice, and as a law professor at the University of Michigan Law School in a new book, ATTACK FROM WITHIN: HOW DISINFORMATION IS SABOTAGING AMERICA.

Mondays. They happen like clockwork every week, coming right after the weekend to put an official end to our fun. So on Mondays, we check in with Jonathan Larsen of The Fucking News  to help ease us back into the work week with an irreverent discussion of the serious shit happening in our world. Jonathan joins in at the bottom of the hour... And we check in with Spocko who fact checks the crazy rebuttal from Katie Britt who apparently learned one thing from the head of the Republican party: how to lie! While the rest of the nation is struggling after losing an hour yesterday morning for Daylight Savings Time, here in Arizona our clocks stayed on standard time. You'd think that would make me happy, right? Well, I didn't lose an hour of sleep, but I did lose an hour of show prep time! This show still airs from 5-6pm ET/2-3pm PT... That means here in AZ, I hit the air at 2pm instead of 3 each weekday afternoon... I'll try not to be late.

I always look forward to Fridays for the obvious reasons: the weekend and Marcy Wheeler! Emptywheel.net's Marcy Wheeler and I have a standing date every Friday to discuss the week's happenings in Trump Trial and other national security and other news of importance. Today we speak on the morning after President Joe Biden's State of the Union address, likely the last time before the convention that he'll have the opportunity to speak to the nation and the world. My quick review? He hit it out of the park, exactly what we needed at this juncture. Marcy Wheeler is a self described SOTU fan, so we begin with her thoughts on what happened last night. Of course, we'll also bring you the latest news in insurrectionists, the extreme court, and lots of other somewhat related news to complete the hour. But today is SOTU Bonus day. After Marcy leaves, we'll go into overtime!

It's been a politically busy week in the US, so we have lots to discuss with Howie Klein of downwithtyranny.com and the Blue America PAC today. Super Tuesday solidified Trump as the Republican nominee with Nikki Haley dropping out. California finalized its two senatorial candidates who'll be vying for Dianne Feinstein's former seat, and Katie Porter isn't one of them (but she did something really stupid after she lost)... What else did we learn from Super Tuesday? I'll ask Howie. And, oh yeah, tonight's the State of the Union. And in case you hadn't heard, Joe Biden is old. /snark.

A new book is out and making waves because it points out an ugly truth about a huge swatch of this nation. Following yesterday's Super Tuesday primaries, the top of the 2024 presidential ticket is now set. It'll be a rematch between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, as if we didn't know that would be the case. What has changed is the political landscape of middle America - or Rural America.Tom Schaller, Political Science Professor at University of Maryland, Baltimore and journalist/columnist Paul Waldman have co-authored a new book that helps to explain the divide: WHITE RURAL RAGE: THE THREAT TO AMERICAN DEMOCRACY. After a quick recap of yesterday's (and today's) developments, I welcome Tom and Paul back to the show to talk about the ugliness plaguing our country.