We open Wednesday with the crew debating whether a short handwritten to-do list can help people fall asleep faster, and Nick’s annual planner habit quickly turns into jokes about Dawn’s fridge calendar and his twins turning 12. Dawn’s first news run brings Trump’s unusual Texas midterm convention, the first reaction to the Lindsay Clancy juror interviews, and a Northeast Philadelphia car-theft chase in which a fleeing vehicle strikes a police cruiser. We also get the Chosen 300 vehicle theft, Temple ending Christopher Barnett’s $55 million commitment, Zymire Hughes returning to Philadelphia, and protests over the planned Academy of Natural Sciences closure.
Sports gives us the Phillies’ 6-5 loss to Houston, another round of frustration over baserunning, Brandon Graham saying his playing days are finished, and the new Sixers-Flyers arena renderings for 2030. We also talk about John Fetterman’s problems inside his own party and Brendan Boyle’s criticism as Pennsylvania politics starts to bleed into the national discussion. The arena pictures bring out one of the morning’s lighter debates as the crew compares the proposed building with everything from the Spectrum to a space shuttle and fast-food advertising.
Nick’s Big Take dominates the back half of the hour as we mark 25 years since 9/11 and argue that the country now reads the attacks through a partisan lens. We move from Trump’s firefighter story to Abdul El-Sayed, Hasan Piker, Zohran Mamdani, young voters and socialism, Gallup’s American-pride numbers, and then turn our criticism toward Republicans who accepted the Iraq weapons case and now back the Iran war. We finish the hour on the PATRIOT Act, FISA and the surveillance powers that expand after 9/11.
