The Lincoln Project

America is 250 years old, and the fix is in — the DOJ bent to serve whoever's holding the whip, the rule of law treated like a suggestion, the guardrails quietly sawed through while everyone's distracted by the fireworks. This week Rick Wilson sits down with two people who've seen the rot up close and refuse to shut up about it: Congressman Jamie Raskin, the constitutional scholar who's spent his career defending democracy on the House floor, and Liz Oyer, the DOJ pardon attorney who got fired for one unforgivable sin — saying no. What she saw inside the building should scare the hell out of you, and what Raskin knows about how this ends should light a fire under you.
Here's what they won't tell you at the birthday party: the republic doesn't save itself, and nobody's riding in to do it for us. Rick, Jamie, and Liz get into what's already broken, what we can do right now before the next crisis lands, and the longer fight to reclaim, rebuild, and reinforce a country worth keeping. At 250, the tools are still in our hands and the door's still open — but not for long. They stole it in broad daylight. This is the conversation about taking it back.
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Congressman Jamie Raskin (MD-08), constitutional scholar and author, is at @RepRaskin.
Liz Oyer, former U.S. Pardon Attorney at the Department of Justice, is at @lawyeroyer.
Rick Wilson is on X @TheRickWilson and on Substack at therickwilson.substack.com or https://www.againstallenemies.net/. 
More from LP at www.lincolnproject.us and @ProjectLincoln.
#America250 #JamieRaskin #LizOyer #RickWilson #LincolnProject #TakeItBack #RuleOfLaw #DOJ #Democracy #Politics #July4th #podcast

America is 250 years old and the guardrails are cracking in real time — the courts, the rule of law, the FBI, the DOJ — and the people doing the cracking are counting on you not to notice. This week Rick Wilson pulls up two of the sharpest legal minds in the country: Jeffrey Toobin, who's spent a career dissecting the Supreme Court, and Asha Rangappa, a former FBI special agent who knows exactly how democracies get gutted from the inside. No hand-wringing, no doomscrolling — just a straight, unsparing conversation about what's already broken, what's still worth saving, and how we reclaim, revise, and reinforce the whole rickety machine before the next crisis finishes the job.
Here's what the fireworks won't tell you: the republic doesn't defend itself. Every generation either fights for it or hands it to whoever's willing to burn it down — and at 250, that generation is us. This is the last clean shot we get to take it back. Sit down, buckle up, and let's talk about saving the country.
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Jeffrey Toobin — lawyer, legal analyst, and bestselling author @JeffreyToobin
Asha Rangappa — former FBI special agent, attorney, and Yale lecturer @AshaRangappa_ or asharangappa.substack.com
Rick Wilson is on X @TheRickWilson, Bluesky @TheRickWilson.bsky.social, and Substack at therickwilson.substack.com. 
More from LP at www.lincolnproject.us and @ProjectLincoln.
#America250 #JeffreyToobin #AshaRangappa #RickWilson #LincolnProject #TakeItBack #RuleOfLaw #SupremeCourt #Democracy #FBI #Politics #July4th #Podcast

Six men signed both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. You can probably name Franklin. You've almost certainly never heard of James Wilson — the man who did more than almost anyone to put "We the People" at the heart of American government, sat on the first Supreme Court… and then died broke, on the run from creditors, and was quietly erased from the story of the founding.
As part of our special 250th podcast rollout celebrating this amazing country of ours, Rick Wilson sits down with Jesse Wegman — New York Times editorial board member and author of the new book on James Wilson — to resurrect the most important founder nobody remembers. They get into how Wilson shaped the Constitution, why his radical idea of popular sovereignty still defines (and haunts) American democracy, how a founding genius ended up in a debtor's ruin, and what his erasure tells us about the myths we build around 1776. It's the perfect 250th-birthday story: not the founders on the money, but the one history decided to forget — and why remembering him matters now more than ever. 
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Jesse Wegman is a member of the New York Times editorial board and the author of the new book, The Lost Founder: James Wilson and the Forgotten Fight for a People's Constitution. Find more of Jesse's work at the Brennan Center for Justice, the Kohlberg Center on the U.S. Supreme Court, and the Future of the Constitution Advisory Committee.
Rick Wilson is on X at @TheRickWilson, on Bluesky at @TheRickWilson.bsky.social, and you can check out Rick's Substack at therickwilson.substack.com. 
You can check out more of LP's work at www.lincolnproject.us and on X at @ProjectLincoln.
#JesseWegman #JamesWilson #LostFounder #America250 #RickWilson #LincolnProject #FoundingFathers #Constitution #PresidentialHistory #July4th #History #Politics #Podcast

Two hundred and fifty years ago, a handful of revolutionaries bet everything on an idea no one thought would survive a decade — a country that governs itself, with no king and no crown. So how the hell did we get here? This week, Rick Wilson sits down with legendary Democratic strategist James Carville — the Ragin' Cajun himself — for a no-holds-barred conversation about America's 250th birthday and the long, strange road that led to this moment.
A Democrat and a Never-Trump Republican walk through how the country actually got to the brink: the slow erosion of norms, the parties that lost the plot, the voters nobody listened to, and the economic anxiety that keeps getting ignored while Washington fights culture wars. Carville and Wilson don't agree on everything — but they agree the experiment is closer to the edge than it's been in a long time. Equal parts history lesson, gut check, and two old bulls telling it exactly like it is. America has survived worse than this. The question is whether we still remember how.
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Follow James at https://www.youtube.com/@Politicon and on social at @JamesCarville. 
Rick Wilson is on X at @TheRickWilson, on Bluesky at @TheRickWilson.bsky.social, and you can check out Rick's Substack at therickwilson.substack.com. 
You can check out more of LP's work at www.lincolnproject.us and on X at @ProjectLincoln.
#JamesCarville #RickWilson #America250 #LincolnProject #PresidentialHistory #July4th #Democracy #Politics #PoliticalPodcast #Elections #CurrentEvents #Podcast
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Two hundred and fifty years ago, a handful of revolutionaries bet everything on an idea no one thought would work: a country that governs itself, with no king and no crown. This week, Rick Wilson is joined by acclaimed presidential historian Timothy Naftali — former director of the Nixon Presidential Library and one of the sharpest minds on the American presidency — to walk the entire arc, from George Washington voluntarily handing back power to the constitutional crisis staring us down in 2026.
Rick and Tim get into what the founders actually built, the presidents who tested the guardrails and the ones who saved them, how close the Republic has come to the edge before, and what history tells us about a moment when a sitting president treats the Constitution like a suggestion. They dig into Nixon and the limits of executive power, the long erosion of democratic norms, and why the 250th birthday is less a fireworks-and-hot-dogs photo op than a genuine gut check. America has survived worse than this — the question is whether we still remember how. Happy birthday, America. Now let's talk about keeping you.
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Timothy Naftali is a presidential historian, former director of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library, and professor at New York University. Find his work and writing at https://www.sipa.columbia.edu/communities-connections/faculty/timothy-naftali, and follow him at @TimNaftali.
Rick Wilson is on X at @TheRickWilson, on Bluesky at @TheRickWilson.bsky.social, and you can check out Rick's Substack at therickwilson.substack.com. 
You can check out more of LP's work at www.lincolnproject.us and on X at @ProjectLincoln.
#America250 #July4th #PresidentialHistory #TimothyNaftali #RickWilson #LincolnProject #Constitution #Democracy #Nixon #Trump #Politics #PoliticalPodcast #Washington #History #Podcast