We had a little trouble with the video upload on today’s podcast: it is inconsistent, so if you will find that annoying, please just listen!
We began our episode with a clip from this video, made by NBC journalist Savannah Guthrie, offering $1 million for the return of her mother. Eighty-four-year-old Nancy Guthrie was reported missing from her Tucson, Arizona home on February 1, 2026, and is believed to have been abducted by persons unknown. The FBI has also offered a $100,000 reward for information leading to her recovery.
Today’s theme music is Mirror by New Alkemi$t.
FBI Director Kash Patel at the head of the table as the task force assigned to Nancy Guthrie’s abduction meets on February 10, 2026. Photo credit: Federal Bureau of Investigation/Wikimedia Commons
In the News:
* With a hat tip to journalist Erin Reed, we have a report from Kansas that a bill passed over Democratic Governor Laura Kelly’s veto has invalidated the drivers licenses of trans people across the state, and that licenses are to be surrendered by end of business today. Senate Bill 244 requires that all drivers’ licenses reflect “sex at birth:” there is no grace period for updating credentials, and anyone found driving without a license is subject to fines and imprisonment. The legislation also awards a bounty of $1,000 to anyone uncovering a transgender person using a bathroom that the state deems incorrect.
* Donald Trump gave the State of the Union speech on Tuesday night. It was 108 minutes long, soup to nuts, and the longest SOTU ever, breaking the record held by...Donald Trump last year at 100 minutes. You can read a transcript here, and highlights here. Nearly all of the people honored that night were men, including the gold medal Olympic US Ice Hockey team that partied with Kash Patel and laughed when the President dissed the gold medal women’s team. The exceptions were National Guard member Sarah Beckstrom, killed near the White House last year, a little girl who was rescued at the Texas summer camp that suffered a deadly flood last year, and a woman who benefitted from IVF.
* On Wednesday, Dr. Casey Means came before a Senate Committee charged with vetting her for the position of Surgeon General of the United States. Means is a wellness influencer and popular author who dropped out of her surgical residency, no longer has a license to practice medicine, and promotes the idea that individuals, not doctors, are the experts on their own bodies. Not surprisingly, she is an influential figure in the MAHA movement; when asked about vaccines, she refused to commit to any position. The United States does not currently have a surgeon general: that role has been temporarily filled by Stephanie Haridopolos, a Florida family practice physician who was appointed as the acting chief of staff and senior advisor to the U.S. Surgeon General. She is married to Representative Mike Haridopolos (R, FL-08). This may be the longest that post—created in 1879 and usually filled by a high-ranking physician in the military--has remained vacant.
* Primary voting is underway in Texas for the Senate seat currently held by Republican John Cornyn. On the Democratic side, the polls are all over the place: YouGov sees Representative Jasmine Crockett (TX-30) in firm command of the race; Emerson gives James Talarico (HD-52) a 9-point lead. The Ft. Worth Star-Telegram poll gives Crockett a comfortable 8-point lead. On the Republican side, John Cornyn is clearly struggling, and ahead by only 2 points in a single poll, with Attorney General Ken Paxton leading the pack in most polls. Cornyn warns that if he is not nominated, and if the primary goes to a runoff (as it is likely to, with three strong candidates, none of whom Trump has endorsed) Democrats will win the seat.
Your hosts:
Claire Potter is a historian of politics and media, a writer, a podcaster, and the sole author and editor of the Political Junkie Substack. Her most recent book is Political Junkies: From Talk Radio to Twitter, How Alternative Media Hooked Us on Politics and Broke Our Democracy (Basic Books, 2020), and she is currently writing a biography of feminist journalist Susan Brownmiller.
Neil J. Young is a historian of religion and politics, a journalist, and a former co-host of the Past Present podcast. His most recent book is Coming Out Republican: A History of the Gay Right (University of Chicago Press, 2024).
Image credit: Federal Bureau of Investigation
News focus: the kidnapping of Nancy Guthrie
* Last weekend, video of Kash Patel partying with the US Men’s gold medal ice hockey team in Milan once again pointed attention to his use of federal assets for personal travel and entertainment. But it also underlined what he was not doing: overseeing the search for Nancy Guthrie, now well into its fourth week.
* The New York Times has summarized all information that can be known to the public, and a timeline of the investigation here.
* It is unusual for Guthrie not to have been found by now. While murder only has a 61% clearance rate, kidnapping has upwards of a 90% clearance rate; for children, it is 92%, because children are usually snatched by relatives. Kidnappings targeting adults are rare; kidnapping elderly adults is even rarer.
* The New York Post reports that the investigation is at a dead end; the FBI is currently engaged in genetic genealogy, using DNA in a glove found away from the crime scene that seems to match a glove worn by the person who disabled Guthrie’s Ring camera.
* Tip lines are common in a case like this. They can produce useful leads—but they also draw kooks, and require manpower to run down plausible leads. The FBI eliminated 1500 positions in 2025; 18 of 53 Special Agents in Charge were forced out; around 1,000 FBI agents and personnel were reassigned to redacting the Epstein files; and nearly half of the agents across the country (or 23% of the remaining workforce) were reassigned to immigration enforcement.
* Then, the search is complicated by misinformation, volunteers, amateur detectives stoked on CSI episodes, and conspiracy theorists. Influencers and content creators are also a problem: one innocent family who had a degree of separation from Nancy Guthrie was targeted by an internet mob.
* Like many high-profile kidnappings, the Guthrie case has become a media spectacle.
* Are the kidnappers particularly deft—or is the turmoil at the FBI at fault? Donald Trump appointed podcaster Dan Bongino (who recently resigned) as Associate Director and Kash Patel as Director. Neither one had any senior law enforcement or investigative experience; Patel was said last December to be virtually unable to function at an agency paralyzed by chaos and lack of leadership.
What we want to go viral:
* Neil wants you to read Natalia Mehlman Petrzela’s take on the RFK Jr./Kid Rock workout video, “RFK Jr. and Kid Rock’s MAHA manosphere mashup,” MS NOW (February 22, 2026). There are so many questions! By “whole milk,” do they mean “raw milk”—you know, the kind with all kinds of wild bacteria? But most of all—where are the women on MAHA’s agenda, when Trump claimed he was going to forward the interests of women?
* Claire wants you to read Charles Duhigg, “What MAGA Can Teach Democrats About Organizing—and Infighting,” The New Yorker (January 26, 2026), about the difference between community based activism and top-down political organizations.
13-year-old Gerson Lopéz Garcia wrote: “We are all stuck in rooms that can hold 12 people they won’t let us go out to the playgrounds and park and it’s very boring to do every day God touch the hearts of those at ICE let us out We are not criminals I want to go home.” Image obtained by ProPublica
Short takes:
* One of the ways children process trauma is through art, but ICE isn’t having it. During room searches at Dilley Detention Center in Texas, “Guards have taken away crayons, colored pencils and drawing paper,” McKenzie Funk and Mica Rosenberg report at ProPublica. “Guards have taken artwork, too, they said — even one child’s drawing of Bratz fashion dolls.” Detainees are also losing access to Gmail and other computer services, making it harder to contact attorneys. “The detainees and others interviewed for this story said these measures increased after the Jan. 22 arrival of Liam Conejo Ramos, a 5-year-old in a blue bunny hat, sparked protests and congressional visits. They said the clampdown intensified as children and parents at Dilley wrote letters to share with the public and reporters and relatives recorded video calls with the detainees, including those published by ProPublica this month. The children’s stories, many told in their own words, fueled an outcry over the scope of the Trump administration’s deportation campaign, which the president had promised would focus on criminals.” (February 26, 2026)
* Perhaps you have seen all the Republican influencers and politicians on X promoting the SAVE act, which would require a photo ID to vote in federal elections. “But upon closer inspection, something very strange is going on,” Mark Novicoff writes at the Atlantic. “For decades, the politics of voter-ID battles were based on a simple premise: The voters most likely to be screened out by such restrictions were probably Democrats. In 2024, however, that fact stopped being true.” Well, bring it on! “Republicans’ current voter-ID push seems almost custom-designed to disenfranchise their own voters.” (February 26, 2026)
* “Trump believes he is popular, strong and successful,” New York Times opinion columnist Jamelle Bouie wrote after Tuesday’s State of the Union address. “The truth says otherwise. Trump is as unpopular as he’s ever been.” Bouie has a lot to say about Trump’s catalogue of missteps and policy pratfalls, but here’s the truth: “What Trump has, a little more than one year into his second term, is a failed presidency: one that has crashed on the rocks of his ambition to supplant constitutional government with that of his own will. Yes, Trump has done a tremendous amount of damage. And yes, he has degraded American democracy to the point where it is on life support. But he’s failed to make himself a dictator, and the public is poised to punish his party for his transgressions.” (February 25, 2026)
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