Domestic Policy and Conditions Review — Week of 12 October 2026 Current through 0800 Eastern Time, 12 October 2026 | Covering period since 0800 ET, 5 October 2026 Sections: I. Economy, Cost of Living and Inflation II. The Three Branches III. Immigration and Border IV. Health Care: Access, Quality and Cost V. Education VI. Domestic Watch List Foreign policy and national security, including the conduct of the war, are covered in the companion Candidate’s Weekl

My father was a bell captain. My mother was a waitress. I grew up in hotels and restaurants, which means I grew up watching people read rooms for a living. A bell captain reads a guest the way a good clinician reads a patient. Within thirty seconds of someone walking through the door — before they've said more than hello — you know whether they're tired or anxious or celebrating something or carrying something they haven't told anyone yet. You know whether they want to be wel

There is a particular kind of teacher who does not give you answers. He gives you just enough to make the answer findable — and then he waits. Ian Duncan Clement had a PhD, a career at the State Department, and a decade directing a scientific and academic exchange program between Harvard and Cuba, centered on a botanical research station in Cienfuegos. He had spent years as the kind of person governments send when the work requires someone who understands both the science and

Every profession that exists to serve others has some version of the same agreement. As a nurse, I made it when I walked into the hospital at the beginning of a shift. Firefighters and paramedics make it when they pull on their gear. Even bus drivers make it when they open the door at the first stop of the morning. The agreement's not written down anywhere that matters. It's understood. The job exists to benefit others. Your personal feelings, biases, prejudices, hopes, and a

Before I start — this one has some rough language in it. Carlin and Pryor did, and so does the story I'm going to tell. If that's not for you, I completely understand. Skip this one and read the first comment instead — I've put a clean version there. The lesson is the same. It just loses a little something without the original words. That's actually part of the point. Before I start — this one has some rough language in it. Carlin and Pryor did, and so does the story I'm goin

My parents taught me two things I have never been able to separate from each other, no matter how many years I've spent trying to understand either one on its own. My father taught me what honesty means. My mother taught me what it means to stand up — not just for yourself, but for someone else. I was five or six years old. My father was working to become a stockbroker, reading the Wall Street Journal at the kitchen table. There was a cartoon at the bottom of one of the pages

I was twelve years old when someone first taught me to think. His name was Butch. He was my football coach — put me on the offensive line and the defensive line, wherever he thought I'd do the team the most good. He was also a firefighter paramedic. Which meant that by the time I was thirteen, I could read a lethal cardiac arrhythmia on a strip. He taught me because he knew it and knowing something you could teach seemed to him like reason enough to teach it. Butch had a way

Before we get into policy matters, I'd like to tell you about some people I've known over my life. The policy matters when it comes down to the papers that are written, the videos about them and so forth, they're very serious. There's a lot of math in them, well, at least some of them, but the policy comes from somewhere. The way a person thinks comes from somewhere. And if you're going to trust what I've written or decide you don't, you deserve to know a little about where t

This is the first in a series of planned videos to introduce not only the candidate, but how he came to learn enouogh to make the recommendaations that form the basis of the campaign and showing the policy work he believes will help us all pull together to elevaste ourselves and our country. It's time to replace rancor with reason. I hope you'll join in. Respectfully, Martin

This is just a short hello in hope that you might choose to join the conversation. Respectfully, Martin

Election fraud is real. It happens. And the worst case of it in this country in the last ten years happened about two hours from my house. So I am not here to tell you that nobody cheats. I am here about something narrower than that: what counts as evidence that somebody did. When I was a new nurse I walked into a room before I had gotten report. I talked with the patient. I talked with her family. Then I noticed she was on a portable defibrillator, pads front and back, sitti

What a Monitor Means The voter rolls in this country are dirty. I did a whole piece on that, and on the tool the states built to clean them. This one is about something else. This one is about what it means when the federal government sends people to your county. In November the Department of Justice plans to send about a thousand of them. In the presidential cycle of 2024 it sent 714, across 86 jurisdictions in 27 states. For the mid-terms of 2022 it was 289. Almost four tim

The voter rolls in this country are dirty. That's true, and I want them cleaner than they are. Anybody who tells you those lists are in good shape has not looked at the lists. People move. People die. Almost nobody thinks to tell the board of elections either way. So the argument I want to have tonight is not about whether the rolls are dirty. It is about what we built to clean them, and what we have been taking apart. When something goes wrong in a hospital — or when somethi

We keep hearing about lawful votes. But the people who keep screeching about wanting all lawful votes counted don't tell you what they call a lawful vote. Here's an introduction to North Carolina's description of a lawful vote. P.S. It isn't mine. Not in the last three presidential elections, anyway.

Every candidate I've ever heard says the same three things. We're going to cut the cost of living. We're going to bring down inflation. We're going to grow the economy. And I believe they mean it. That's not my objection. My objection is one word, and I have never once heard it answered. How? If you're not telling me how, all you're selling me is a pipe dream. And in my years as a young and dumb kid I smoked enough pipes to know what those dreams look like, and what

The Transcript https://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/transcripts/meet-press-august-23-2026-rcna593995 The Video: https://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/video/aug-23-sens-tim-scott-and-chris-van-hollen-268741701821

A plan you cannot read is not a plan — it is a dream. My wife and I have bought two houses in the time we’ve been married. Before that an apartment, then a townhouse we sold, then a rented house in another city, and now the place we’re in — two doors down from where we were renting. Not once did we walk in and pay cash. I don’t know anybody who’s paid cash for a house. I don’t know anybody who’s paid cash for a car. And I’ve never met a soul who wrote a dissertation before th

A plan you can't read is not a plan — it is a dream. Yesterday I laid out what the interest is costing us. About $970 billion in fiscal 2025. Twenty-eight hundred dollars a head. Fourteen cents out of every dollar we spend, and a bill you can't reform because there's nothing in it to reform. Today, what to do about it. And here's where I part company with pretty much everybody in politics. There are two arguments you'll hear about this, and you'll hear each one delivered as t

A plan you cannot read is not a plan — it is a dream. When we talk about the national debt, a few things flood into my head. Ever since the late 1970s I've heard people say the national debt would collapse the American economy — that the world as we know it was about to end. It hasn't happened. Forty-five years. People still lend us money. We still borrow when we need to. We still spend. So if you've quit listening to people who panic about the debt, you're not stupid. You've