Grounded with Jon Tester & Maritsa Georgiou

It was a big weekend in Big Sandy, Montana. Jeff Ament, through his nonprofit Montana Pool Service, hosted the 16th annual Big Sandy Skate Jam + Pig Roast Saturday. It gave us the perfect reason to host our first joint episode from the Tester farm (and snag some MPS merch)!

A few days ago, our friend Dana DuBois connected us with Nick Paro, a disabled veteran and advocate who recently joined forces with Disability Community to craft a call to action based on a recent Department of Justice memo. It's raising serious concerns, but hasn’t been widely covered in mainstream media yet. The Arc published a great explainer.

The memo basically reinterprets the 1999 Supreme Court Olmstead decision that ruled disabled people can’t be forced to be institutionalized if they can get support and services in their communities. The ruling said the institutional segregation of people with disabilities and mental illness is a form of discrimination under the Americans with Disabilities Act. That decision has been the basis for requiring states to improve access for community-based services. People briefed on the situation told reporters with Bloomberg Law that White House adviser Stephen Miller was the driving force behind the DOJ memo.

The DOJ memo doesn’t change the law, but it does signal a shift. The National Alliance on Mental Illness says the language in the memo has the potential to promote a shift back toward institutionalization. It prompted Sen. Tammy Duckworth and other Senate Democrats to introduce a resolution that reaffirms the promise of Olmstead. It prompted Paro and his partners to publish their own call to action, saying this is an issue which will impact all of us. “Now is the time to speak — before they change the laws — and not after,” Paro’s group wrote.

As the Arc wrote, “this isn’t the end of Olmstead. It’s the start of a new fight to protect it.”

Stay tuned for more farm content from Big Sandy. If you want to learn more about MPS skatepark builds, make sure you check out Montana Grind and Paving the Way, two documentaries that feature Ament’s projects!

Oh so much to talk about with former RNC Chairman Michael Steele, who co-hosts the Weeknight on MSNOW. We discuss why Steele joined the GOP 50 years ago, his efforts to get the party back to its roots, and why he has no patience for Republican lawmakers (and pundits) speaking out against this administration only when it’s politically convenient.

“Right now our system is broken because of the infestation of stupid,” Steele said. “The infestation of people who don’t give a damn about public service and are more interested in their grift. How much I can make. How much I can churn the system up.How can I piss off my base enough to write me a check?”

Plus, Steele lays out why this upcoming election really is so critical, despite how many times we’ve heard that before.

Former DOJ pardon attorney Liz Oyer joins Grounded for the third time to discuss her new focus on Acting AG Todd Blanche's pending Senate confirmation. Hear why Liz thinks he's one of the most dangerous people in Washington right now, and what citizens can actually do to stop him. Plus, Oyer flags a potentially dangerous new policy change at the Bureau of Prisons and why she sees it as a tool to further weaponize the DOJ.

What does a secret, beautiful girlfriend in Canada have to do with the newly announced (and still unpublished) deal with Iran? Economist Justin Wolfers will tell you both stories smell off. He uses an "unraveling" argument from game theory and economic concepts to explain.


“If I have an amazing deal, I would definitely run out and hold a press conference and show you the text right now. The fact that I’m not doing that tells you that I don’t have an amazing deal,” Wolfers explains.


He breaks it down in even simpler terms.

“If you’re on a dating app and the person doesn’t have their photo up what would you infer?”

We cover the war in Iran’s economic ripple effects, including energy price spikes and the true cost of the conflict to people across the globe. We also tackle tariffs, the current impact on farmers, and what the AI revolution means for the future of work.


Wolfers just launched the new Platypus Economics Substack channel with a simple mission: teach the world economics in an accessible way that helps us all collectively.

“So, look, we all have our own theories about what ails the world right now. Mine is I think the world would be a better place if we all knew a little bit more economics,” Wolfers said. "The radicalizing moment for me is actually look at another field, medicine, where they’ve discovered these incredible vaccines that can prevent enormous amounts of illness and injury and death. And there’s not enough trust, public trust, in what the doctors are doing and people won’t even take the vaccines. Now my field, economics, we don’t have literal vaccines but we have metaphorical vaccines. We have ways of understanding the world that we think can lead people better, richer, fuller lives.”

The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, the country's oldest civil rights coalition, has put a lot of work into documenting the Trump administration’s efforts to turn back the clock on civil and human rights progress within the United States.

The organization’s president and CEO Maya Wiley joined Grounded for a wide-ranging conversation to discuss several interconnected threats to civil rights.

We discuss the Supreme Court's decision that led to the erosion of the Voting Rights Act, ICE detentions of people based on appearance and language rather than actual status, and threats to the nonprofit sector broadly. Wiley emphasizes that these attacks reach ordinary people, not just powerful figures — and that civil rights advocacy and voting are the tools citizens have to fight back.