Barb McQuade spent her career as a US Attorney prosecuting organized crime, including the conviction of former Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick on extortion, bribery, and fraud charges. Trump later pardoned Kilpatrick. In her new book, The Fix, she argues the Trump administration is running the exact same playbook she spent her career prosecuting. Her words: "it's just crime."

Grant and Barb walk through the parallels in detail. The kickback scheme that sent Kilpatrick's associates to prison looks a lot like the DOJ's immunity deal and slush fund. The pattern of inflicting pain until someone complies, then owning them permanently, is the same pattern Barb saw with extortion victims in Detroit and the same pattern she sees in how Trump dismissed the bribery case against Eric Adams in exchange for cooperation on immigration enforcement.

But this isn't just a conversation about the problem. Barb has actual proposals: moving the US Marshal Service under the judicial branch so courts can enforce their own contempt orders, ranked choice voting to reduce the power of extremists in both parties, independent redistricting commissions like Michigan's, and term limits for Supreme Court justices that would prevent any single president from reshaping the court for a generation.

0:00 An optimistic episode, finally: meet Barb McQuade, author of The Fix

3:11 Why Barb calls this a "mob-style government" instead of authoritarianism

6:39 "It's just crime": why this framing matters and how Peter Magyar used it to defeat Orban

7:30 The Kwame Kilpatrick case: kickbacks, extortion, and the contractor who couldn't say no

11:04 The Eric Adams parallel: dismissing a bribery case in exchange for loyalty

12:17 Win by losing: how Trump flexes power even when courts block him

14:00 The real fix: bolstering Congress as the check the founders intended

17:00 Ranked choice voting and how Alaska elected Lisa Murkowski's independence

19:30 Ending gerrymandering: Michigan's independent redistricting commission as the model

21:30 Getting money out of politics: Michigan's utility contribution ballot measure

25:12 Should Democrats expand the Supreme Court? Barb's answer: term limits instead

28:51 A radical idea: moving the US Marshal Service under the judicial branch

31:52 Does this collapse from the inside, or is Trump too big to fail?

34:07 Where to find Barb's book and her podcast, Sisters in Law

The Fix: Saving America from the Corruption of a Mob-Style Government

Make It Make Sense Substack

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