Episode May 27, 2026 2 hr 30 min

Full Episode - Ken Paxton’s Victory Gives Dems An Opportunity In Texas - Tackling Trump’s Rampant Corruption & Pay To Play Politics

Chuck Todd opens with Ken Paxton's runoff blowout over John Cornyn — a result that confirms Texas Republicans remain the base of what eventually grew into MAGA nationally, that the insurgent wing of the GOP consistently wins in the state, and that Paxton is somehow simultaneously the least electable nominee Republicans could have picked and still electable enough to make this a real fight. He argues Texas is slowly moving toward swing state status the way Georgia did over the past decade — the ingredients are there for a Democrat to finally break through, the question is whether James Talarico can move his 45% number higher and prove he's the political athlete this moment requires. The downstream consequences for Republicans are brutal: the GOP will have to drop a $500 million anvil on Talarico that can't be deployed in other races, and Democrats' path to a Senate majority just got measurably wider.

But the more fascinating story Chuck unpacks is Pope Leo's stunning new document on AI, automated weapons, and concentrated power — a text Chuck argues is essentially an indictment of American military dominance dressed in the language of moral theology. The Pope explicitly compares AI-driven targeting systems to slavery, arguing both reduce human beings to data points and dehumanize their victims, and apologizes for the church's historic slowness on slavery while warning Catholics that they cannot afford the same slowness on artificial intelligence. He declares the centuries-old "just war" framework outdated, argues that no algorithm can ever make war morally acceptable, and pushes back forcefully on the entire concept of nuclear deterrence — drawing a direct line back to Pope Leo XIII's 1891 intervention on industrial capitalism. He argues the document, while never naming the United States, is speaking directly to American politicians: it's framed as a call for a moral framework around AI that can live above the political discourse, an explicit argument that technological capital must be regulated, and a warning that AI is not morally neutral no matter how much Silicon Valley wishes it were. The larger message is unmistakable — the Pope, who Chuck notes is now arguably the most formidable global moral voice that even secular Americans look to for clarity, has just put concentrated technological power on notice in a way no head of state has been willing to.

Then, Virginia Kase Solomon — president of Common Cause, one of the country's oldest and most respected pro-democracy organizations — joins the Chuck Toddcast to deliver a clear-eyed assessment of just how broken American self-government has become, and what it might actually take to fix it. Kase Solomon argues that Trump's corruption has gone so far beyond anything in modern history that it makes Watergate look quaint by comparison — she points to Trump stealing roughly $1.8 billion from American taxpayers as a single staggering example — but warns that the most dangerous development isn't the corruption itself, it's that young voters are growing up normalized to it, with no living memory of an administration where this kind of behavior carried consequences. She makes a striking comparison to Hungary, where it took genuinely staggering levels of corruption before Orbán could be toppled, and where the opposition only succeeded once it tied that corruption directly to degrading quality of life for ordinary people — a lesson she says American Democrats badly need to learn. They note that there are real bipartisan calls to address money in politics, that a congressional stock trading ban enjoys overwhelming public support, that Amy Klobuchar's Disclose Act keeps getting reintroduced and ignored, and that forced disclosure of large-dollar donors alone would significantly reduce political giving — but the country is on a runaway train, with big tech money flowing to whoever holds power and Trump openly running the country like a corporation.

The conversation broadens into Kase Solomon's structural diagnosis of why American democracy isn't working. She argues that the way the founders designed the country no longer functions in the modern era — but that the founders also gave us the tools to fix what's broken if we choose to use them. Congress is too small to genuinely represent the public, the Senate is horribly malapportioned, the Supreme Court has offered no real solution to the gerrymandering crisis, and we've completely lost the "statesmen" in Congress who once voted their conscience because there's no longer any incentive to compromise or work across the aisle. She is deeply concerned about the regulatory vacuum around AI — deepfakes have terrifying implications for elections and civil litigation is currently the only meaningful path to push back — and she warns that the election of judges has corrupted the rule of law in ways America needs a movement to address. Despite all of this, she is genuinely hopeful: Common Cause is litigating against the corruption, organizing a million conversations between activists and ordinary Americans, and operating from the conviction that the public isn't stupid and still loves this country. Her closing argument is the most American one possible: the United States has always emerged from its darkest periods better than it went in — but only because people refused to accept the broken system as permanent, and that work has to start now.

Finally, Chuck reveals his ToddCast Top 5 list of Democrats who could be vaulted into 2028 contender status for the presidency if they perform well in the midterms. He highlights two midwestern gubernatorial candidates, two upstart senate bids and one name that stands above the rest… Jon Ossoff of Georgia. He also answers listeners’ questions in the “Ask Chuck” segment.

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Timeline:

(Timestamps may vary based on advertisements)

00:00 Chuck Todd’s introduction

03:30 Ken Paxton trounces John Cornyn in runoff election

05:00 Texas Republicans are the base for what grew into MAGA nationally

07:15 The insurgent wing of the GOP consistently wins in Texas

09:00 Paxton is the least electable nominee, but he’s still electable

10:30 Is 45% Talarico’s ceiling, or can he move that number higher?

11:30 Texas is slowly moving towards swing state status like Georgia did

13:00 Ingredients are there for a Democrat to finally break through in TX

15:30 Senate Republicans won’t be happy having to serve with Paxton

16:00 Texas is more winnable than other races for GOP, will have to spend in TX